What happens when excellence is not developing in your life? The result is potentially devastating. I will show you what I mean. Let's start with a statement:

The journey of excellence begins with a want.

A want is an indication of a latent excellence waiting to be released in your life. If you want something, it means that either the object of your want is necessary for your excellence, or whatever that want is pointing to is necessary for your excellence. Here's an example  I Want An iPad:

Let's say you want an iPad. You think your life would be excellent if you could only use an iPad to organize all your stuff, perhaps go all digital, and not have to carry all those books and notes with you.

The iPad is the object of your want. Do you really need the iPad? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it's the fact that you like to be productive. Being productive equals excellent for you. When you're more productive, you're more profitable. You learn quicker. You develop in your job and establish job security. Ahh, now we're talking excellence. It's not the iPad. It's what the iPad represents that is the latent excellence. You need to be more productive.

In this example, the iPad acts as a rocket booster. It got you into the orbit you needed to be in to understand the real latent excellence, but it drops off once it serves its purpose.

UnExcellence

So I've established that a want, any want, is an indication of latent excellence. There are a few options to handling a want:

1. You can ignore it. This leads to a life of mediocrity. You end up living life by default, not by design.
2. You can cling to it. This leads to a potentially unhealthy relationship with things. Especially if it's a rocket booster want and not a real want.
3. You can learn from it. This is the better way. If you can increase your understanding of yourself with every want, whether it's a legit want or a rocket booster want, you are on the journey of excellence.

So, the big problem I want to highlight for you here comes from Option 1, ignoring wants.

When you ignore your wants, you learn to live with unhappiness and unfulfillment. Over time, you accumulate years of living by default. You take whatever comes your way and react to it as though the locus of control is outside of you (you're being controlled) rather than inside you. A life by default is further intensified in a world of extreme marketing. If you're not aware of your wants and learn from those wants, you are victim to marketing efforts that exploit your wants. This is life by default and it is devastating. Why devastating? Let's look at the regrets of the elderly who are about to die.

Bronnie Ware has done an incredible job chronicling the regrets of the dying. One such regret I want to focus on here is this:

 "I wish I had been more true to myself instead of the person others expected me to be."

This is tragic. Fast forward to your 95th year of life. You're lying in your bed and all you can say as you look back on your life is, "I wish I hadn't lived a life others expected of me." All those wasted years, wasted opportunities, wasted fulfillment, wasted impact.

Unexcellence never ends well.

ACTION STEPS

• List 10 things about you
• Ask a close friend to list 10 things about you
• Compare lists, and see if there is any area of life you're living just to please others

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