Defining Excellence: Beyond Chance
(about a 5.5-minute read)“I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for; perfection is God’s business.”
[Michael J. Fox]
Excellence is an attitude. It is expressed in many areas of life, from personal development, to leadership, in sports and arts and in the realms of creativity and innovation.
Despite this broad applicability, there are a few key “ingredients” that are crucial if you’re seeking excellence, no matter the context.
Our mindset in fundamental. How we “set our minds”, whether we adopt a positive one that embraces challenges and stays curious, or a more negative one that fixates on “what does not work” has an immediate impact on our personal growth and in turn our pursuit of excellence.
Closely linked to our mindset is also how we deal with failures and mistakes, and the ethical standards we set for ourselves.
Welcome back to Spiegelbild!
Achieving excellence is something many of us aspire to.
Regardless of the area you are seeking to achieve excellence in, you will need a certain attitude, a resilience, an assertiveness to go further. After all, achieving excellence is not an accident — it requires grit and continuous improvement.
I’m sure we have all experienced situations when we got discouraged, or doubted we have what it takes to attain the level of excellence we were reaching for. The good news is: we can grow and improve our ability.
By placing our focus past the immediate result and looking instead at the learning curve, we can overcome obstacles, change our perspective, spot a different approach, and come up with a creative or innovative solution.
The point is, achieving excellence requires not only continuous work, but also continuous motivation, and the belief that something is possible.
The importance of mindset
Most of you will have heard the terms fixed mindset and growth mindset. How our minds react to challenges and difficulties — how our minds are “set” when facing obstacles — is crucial for personal growth, and in turn for pursuing excellence.
Dr. Carol Dweck coined these terms. Her intensive studies show that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you live your life.
If you believe that your talents and qualities are carved in stone, that they are fixed and deeply rooted in who you are, then you believe in a fixed mindset. It also means that you believe there are only limited opportunities available to you. If you have to work with the —finite — basic qualities you already have, you better make them count. Can you see how this mindset might create an urgency to constantly prove yourself?
I, for myself, love to ask the questions “why?” and “why not?” (Just ask my husband!) This can be annoying to the people around me. But I just can’t help wonder if there are not more answers than one to a challenge, or why we need to keep doing things the same way if there seem to be so many options out there. I love the challenge of venturing into unknown territory and trying something I haven’t tried before.
The growth mindset believes that your qualities are not simply a hand you’ve been dealt and have to live with. It believes instead that your basic qualities are something you can cultivate, and you can grow your ability through application and experience. Growing your abilities and qualities is directly related to achieving excellence. This includes how we are dealing with failure and mistakes.
The gift of failure and mistakes
I believe that the best lessons we learn in life come from situations where we have not been successful. Yes, celebrating success is great, uplifting, and self-esteem-boosting. But wouldn’t you agree that true growth evolves from those situations that didn’t turn out as planned? From the challenges that kept us up at night until we found a solution?
Achieving excellence does have a component of trial and error. If you think about it, how would you improve something that is already perfect? Achieving excellence, no matter the area you’re pursuing, is a journey and you’ll experience setbacks. What makes the difference is how we deal with these setbacks.
Adopting a growth mindset in the face of adversity means that you don’t consider what happened as a direct measure of your competence, intelligence or worth. Instead, you turn your focus to the process, or the circumstance and assess honestly what could be improved or changed to get closer to the desired result.
It hurts when I feel rejected, or don’t perform as well as I wanted to. Especially if it’s a skill or quality that is really important to me. Sometimes I feel defeated. And it takes some time to find the energy to dust myself off and keep going. If I find myself in those situations, I try to think of them as “not yet”. Rather than focusing on the “now”, I turn my mind on to what I need to learn, practice, and develop further. Shifting my mindset allows me to dream big.
Applying a growth mindset can transform the meaning of effort and difficulty. If you keep your eyes on the big dream, you’re not focussing on the hard work, or the sacrifices. You focus on the learning curve, and as you put in the work you’ll get better, more experienced, more knowledgeable — or more excellent — in the area you’re pursuing.
Ethical behaviour
Now, you might be asking, what does ethical behaviour have to do with all of this?
I understand ethics in this context as rather broad. In essence, I believe that ethical behaviour when striving for excellence means prioritizing integrity, values and principles.
In my pursuit of excellence, I try my best to make decisions that are aligned with my moral and ethical standards. It also means that I seek to consider the broader implications of my actions.
In other words, achieving excellence means taking a long-term view and considering the consequences of decisions beyond the short-term wins.
Don’t confuse excellence with perfection
It can be a fine balancing act between striving for excellence and getting paralyzed by perfectionism.
To me, pursuing excellence is something positive and exciting. It is focusing on opportunities and new horizons. It is embracing challenges and growth by navigating through them. It is about moving and continuous learning.
Perfectionism, on the other hand, can be stifling. No matter how hard you try, how creative you are, it is never enough. Succumbing to perfectionism can lead to anxiety, stress and to feeling a sense of futility. No matter how much you give something your all, it is just never enough.
Here again, embracing a growth mindset can make all the difference. Instead of focusing on a “perfect” end result, focus on your learning journey. It is the difference between believing you’re not able to get smarter and giving yourself the chance to do so.
I want to leave you with this quote from Dr. Dweck:
“The more we know that basic human abilities can be grown, the more it becomes a basic human right to live in environments that create that growth.”
If the thought of adopting a growth mindset, changing your perspectives, and exploring all the opportunities that are promised by “not yet” gets you excited, book a free discovery call by using this link.
I’m looking forward to meeting you and discussing how equine-assisted coaching can support you in adopting a growth mindset and pursuing excellence.
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