Monday’s Meditation: On Doing Your Best & Excellence

July 14, 2014

Classic Maya Angelou quote on doing the best you can.

If you are committed to serving yourselves and the world, you must also be committed to a standard of excellence.

Doing excellent work means doing it to the best of your abilities. It means making the wisest use of your available resources. Excellence is putting forth into the world what you consider to be your most loving, most helpful, most impactful efforts at any given moment.

If your aim is continual improvement, which it ought to be, it follows that your work, tactics, and skill sets are always evolving.

The good news is that excellence is not a fixed measure. As you refine your approach, broaden your knowledge base, and call upon the wisdom of past experience to inform decisions of the present, that standard progresses with you.

Your internal measures of excellence are not comparable, then, over time.

What was once your best still represents your best for that moment. It retains its status if it was created with an attitude of love, and it does so regardless of how it compares to the benchmark you are setting now.

Do not confuse your very best of the past for inferiority. Do not confuse your very best of the present for your ultimate capacity.

You will inevitably find better, smarter, faster, Simpler ways of doing things.

Keep focused on what you have and know now, on creating and sharing your gifts, and excellence will be a guide that follows you naturally all your life.

3 Comments

  1. David on July 14, 2014 at 9:11 am

    The ancient Greeks had a word for excellence/virtue: Arete. Things (humans and inanimate objects like) have Arete when they fulfill their true purpose. This blog is a manifestation of your Arete. 😀

  2. accordingtoken on July 16, 2014 at 6:43 pm

    From the first time I read this quote years ago, it has been framed on my desk as a daily reminder. I have high regard for it, however, you have shed light within it I had not seen before. You have brought even more meaning to it and more ways to look at our past. Thank you.

    Another favorite by Maya is, “When someone shows you who there are, believe them.” I like to add, believe them the first time.

    Love your blog!

  3. […] are here to do something grand. You are capable of living your life according to a standard of excellence, focused on rising to your highest level of health, beauty, and goodness, and mostly, devoted to do […]

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3 Comments

  1. David on July 14, 2014 at 9:11 am

    The ancient Greeks had a word for excellence/virtue: Arete. Things (humans and inanimate objects like) have Arete when they fulfill their true purpose. This blog is a manifestation of your Arete. 😀

  2. accordingtoken on July 16, 2014 at 6:43 pm

    From the first time I read this quote years ago, it has been framed on my desk as a daily reminder. I have high regard for it, however, you have shed light within it I had not seen before. You have brought even more meaning to it and more ways to look at our past. Thank you.

    Another favorite by Maya is, “When someone shows you who there are, believe them.” I like to add, believe them the first time.

    Love your blog!

  3. […] are here to do something grand. You are capable of living your life according to a standard of excellence, focused on rising to your highest level of health, beauty, and goodness, and mostly, devoted to do […]

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