The MONTHLY Motivator - August 2009

Living with excellence

A life of excellence is possible no matter what time or circumstance you may find yourself in. Wherever you are, whatever you have or don’t have, you can fashion a life of meaningful substance and excellence. Excellence is not easy, and that’s the point. For it compels you to reach deep within yourself and to discover, often with great effort, what is truly meaningful in your life and in your world. Beyond that, it challenges you to put effort and commitment into the expression and manifestation of those things that mean the most to you.

For excellence is not just an idea. It is the successful and elegant implementation of an idea into something real and useful and substantive. And a key component of excellence is the ability to persist and to sustain what it has wrought.

Throughout history, excellence has been achieved despite great handicaps and disadvantages. And when that happens, the achievement of excellence raises up not only the achiever, but also anyone who sees and understands that excellence. Excellence inspires, and that inspiration spreads far and wide and begets even more excellence. In this way, excellence takes on a life of it’s own.

Excellence comes at considerable expense and effort, and yet it never takes anything away from life. Excellence adds greatly to the richness of life. Excellence demands much, and yet it always gives much more. Excellence is every bit worth the trouble and the effort and the pain and frustration and the inconvenience.

Excellence is profound, but not necessarily sophisticated or complex. In fact it is usually very simple. There may be great complexities involved in bringing it about, and yet the essence of excellence always rings pure and true and clear and easy to see. Excellence just works, and it works elegantly. As such, excellence has no need to argue or cajole, for its unique value is clearly evident.

Life is a grand adventure, and excellence is what opens that adventure up to its fullest extent. The challenge of achieving excellence is one

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--Ralph Marston

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