I believe we learn the most from our own set of circumstances. We can certainly learn how to respond to life through other people’s experiences, but ultimately the doing is our own. If maturity is to live life appropriately in every situation, then that maturity only comes from living your OWN life appropriately.
Each of us has a phenomenal spectrum of scope before us to achieve excellence. Greatness is not just about fame and money; it is about serving all that is other than you appropriately. The way to achieve this greatness is to ‘see things as they are’ and ‘give everything its due’ as we at Schuitema call it.
In our workshops, many people confuse giving with being a doormat. We tell them that giving appropriately is to give to the other what is in the best interest of the other. What determines what this best interest is? To achieve this sense of appraising situations correctly and responding likewise is an ongoing endeavour in life. There are some indicators though that tell you whether you are ‘seeing things as they are’ and ‘giving everything its due’:
Do you view your past with gratefulness despite the tribulations?
Are you courageous in confronting the bully?
Are you generous towards those who have less than you? And this generosity is not just about doling out money… it is about an attitude that humbly wishes to give out what it has aplenty.
Do you trust the beneficence of the Design that brought you to this point in life?
Do you still see the butterflies and the flowers with a childlike fascination and awe?
Can you withhold your judgment where it is not needed? Can you stop being biased and hear that trinket seller out without shooing him off?
For some, these attributes of generosity, patience, courage, awe, trust or gratitude seem like old world lessons on morality little applicable in the ‘real’ world today. But these are the very elements that life wishes to give us to make us human. These equip us to interact with life about us. Excellence is needed to excel after all!
Success is not a trophy that others will confer upon you. It is not about making others happy. It is an intrinsic sense of achievement that comes from knowing that you have given your absolutely best to a transaction in life.
In our recent open workshop in Lahore on ‘Achieving Life Balance’, a few participants said that to achieve a sense of balance, we must follow our own heart to know that we have done our best in a situation. Same is true of achieving greatness or excellence. The question here arises, ‘what tells you what that best is, in a given situation?
I believe in many cases, that best is determined by a strong sense of moral accountability. In one of my earlier articles, I wrote that perhaps the only fear that’s useful for us is the fear of accountability. It is the sense of accountability that asks you to return that lost wallet with money to its rightful owner even if you desperately need the money. It is this call of the conscience that requires you to testify against your own beloved brother if he has committed a crime. Perhaps this intrinsic sense of accountability coupled with the urge to be appropriate in each transaction is what leads one to greatness or excellence.
Excellence then is about filling the blanks life puts out in front of you with the correct answers. And the lovely part is that life allows you many instances to insert that right answer. Notice how you keep attracting the same set of circumstances that are designed to refine you in a particular way. If you are overly submissive, you might attract a fair share of bullies and so on.
So then, on this path to seeking excellence, life emerges as a beautiful riddle solving itself. Life starts speaking to you once you pay attention to it.