We don't progress through the journey of excellence in a vacuum. There is an arena where the journey of excellence unfolds. Think about this arena as a whirlwind. The whirlwind is everything life throws at you good or bad, easy or hard, necessary or unnecessary, exciting or depressing. It’s all part of what happens as we progress through our excellence journey.

Some events in the whirlwind have the potential to either slow us down or knock us back to a previous stage. This doesn’t mean that all events are negative, but even good events can bring us to a standstill.

Imagine this, you give birth to a child. Your newfound parenthood requires you to be occupied most of the day and keeps you up at night. Due to a lack of time, attention, and focus, some things in your journey of excellence will simply have to wait (i.e. you've been slowed down). After an adjusting to your new role as a parent, you can recalibrate and once again begin to make progress in your journey of excellence.

Another scenario could be the sudden death of a loved one. This may impact you so deeply that, no matter how good things are going, the wind is knocked out of your sails and you get stuck in the event, put off the progress you're making and slip back to stages previously achieved. This regression likely is not permanent, but it takes time and effort to move forward towards excellence.

Bruce A. Miller (Your Life in Rhythm) shares, the key is to understand life stages and life seasons and not look at the journey of excellence in terms of life balance (the expectation to keep all things going well in every area equally) but in terms of life rhythm (appropriate response to the ebbs and flows of life seasons and stages).

Keep in mind that the seasons and stages of life that Bruce is referring to are different things. A Season includes things like: illness, the birth of a child, adopting a new pet, a business startup, etc. However, a stage would be categorized as: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, mid-life, seasoned age, and end of life. Bruce’s thoughts are important because how you handle the whirlwind of excellence will look different depending on the intersection of your stage and your season of life (your experience level and circumstances).

Action Step

• Think about a time when a new season of life slowed down your journey of excellence. Would you consider that season to be positive or negative?
• Consider how your stage of life impacted your view of the season you faced.
• Read an overview of Bruce A Millers book here: https://voice.dts.edu/review/bruce-miller-your-life-in-rhythm/ or take the time to read his book in its entirety.

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