Excellence and Mastering the Art of Living and Leading An Inspirational Life

You have no doubt heard  or seen the quote:

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his (their) work and his play; his (their) labor and (their) his leisure; (their) his mind and (their) his body; (their) his education and (their) his recreation. He (they) hardly know which is which. He (they) simply pursues his (their) vision of excellence through whatever he (they are) is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he (they are) is working or playing. To (themselves) himself, he/she/they always appear to be doing both.”

What is excellence?

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There are seven areas of life…  You know that. So, you’ll be fully cognisant that there are seven definitions of excellence. For example, what is excellence in health or mental? Financial excellence and spiritual?

To “get it right” in each area of life, you can become your worst enemy. What if your expectations block your love for life itself? In striving for excellence, you can, inadvertently and accidentally, become your own worst enemy. Have you met people who are so hard on themselves that they cannot smile in the face of adversity, who cannot enjoy failures, who take everything to heart as if it is doomsday and the world will end tomorrow when the stock market changes or the dishwasher breaks down?

Excellence must be known. We must know what is and isn’t excellent and then strive for it, as shown in the above quote. So, then, it becomes our responsibility to define this excellence.

In the Ten Commandments of the Christian religion, there is a misinterpretation. Thou shalt not … and therefore, the opposite can become excellence. Political correctness in corporations can become excellent, and then another misunderstanding can occur. Parents of partners can cast a shadow on their loved ones by expecting something impossible.

We must, therefore, define excellence as the achievement of something that is possible. A good place to start is with ourselves. There are seven levels of mind; here they are in a graphic.

Each level has a different definition of excellence at a personal level. Take got to, for example. It is associated with a very low level of consciousness but high levels of polarity: extreme righteousness, extreme attraction, extreme repulsion, extreme highs, and extreme lows. A person might repel another based on their opinion of the other and call their opinion excellence.

My neighbour has a leaf blower. It’s an extremely loud leaf blower. He has a property the size of a handkerchief and blows one or two leaves for around 2 hours on a Saturday afternoon when the entire neighbourhood is relaxing and enjoying the day, having birthday parties and BBQs. His noise echoes everywhere. If I chose, I could define excellence as a neighbour as caring about others, in which case, he is wrong, I am right, and my judgement and subsequent annoyance be justified. But is my opinion right? Is my definition of excellence just my way of justifying my emotional stand against his ignorance? And the answer is conspicuous … in this case, excellence, in my opinion, is not excellence in his. Our rigid adhesion to our views, his right to do what he likes when he likes, and mine, being to care about the neighbourhood, are in conflict. Excellence has created a war. Justified opinions that harm.

I will share WISDOM with you now. Wisdom is required before we can define excellence. Wisdom elevates excellence. It puts it beyond the grasp of opinion, justified judgment, and unrealistic expectations of ourselves and others. Here we go:

  1. There is balance in everything: a benefit to every drawback, a silver lining in every cloud, a right balancing a wrong, a bad neutralising a good. There are two sides to every coin. Seeing the balance is excellence, accepting the balance is realism, and expecting the balance to be true.
  2. Nothing is missing: While our expectations of excellence are measured in the presence of something in a particular shape or form, we are locked and sealed into a straight jacket and immersed in water like Hudini, the great magician. And like him, we will eventually drown in our sorrow. If you don’t appreciate it the way that yuo’ve got I, you’ll never get it the way that you want it. Nothing is missing. It just appears in a different form than you want it. A billionaire will value something in their life as a billion dollars long before they make that change form to a billion dollars. It may be surprising that billionaires are billionaires long before they make money. They are billionaires of life, love, fun, or happiness and know it.
  3. Everything changes. To the unrealist, who is expecting to make it and never break it, excellence is always temporary and frustrating, they are waiting for the chase to end, the journey to be finished, nirvana to arrive, love to be forever, happiness to last, relationships to be always on the honeymoon. These individuals die young and sad. Life grows at the border of order and chaos, success and failure, win and lose, high and low, attraction and repulsion. Growth is excellence, and we grow at the border of support and challenge. This is excellence, the journey, and mastery of the time it takes to move between order and chaos. It can be instantaneous. Healing is the instantaneous recognition that crisis is a blessing.

Conclusion:

Excellence is not a fixed destination but a dynamic balance that evolves as we grow. It’s not about rigidly adhering to ideals but embracing the wisdom to see both sides of every situation, finding harmony in the chaos. When we define excellence with this broader perspective, we liberate ourselves from unrealistic expectations. True excellence lies in the ability to see the beauty in both success and failure, in understanding that growth happens at the edge of order and chaos, and in living with the awareness that every experience has value.

Living a life of excellence is about aligning with the natural flow of life, where balance, change, and wisdom guide our decisions and actions. By embracing this approach, we not only elevate our standards but also create a life that is truly inspired, grounded in the reality of life’s dualities, and enriched by every moment we experience.