Excellence is wonderful to experience or watch. It is rare though. Due to the amount of effort one requires to reach a state of excellence, most people settle for good or occasionally great.
To strive for excellence is to work harder and longer than you ever thought. And then push past that too!
Do you have it in you to reach excellence?
Don’t leave it to chance. Don’t be lazy with it. Be in your best shape. Eat the best, nutritious, natural food that you can.
It’s your one body for life. Treat it that way.
Eat better. Eat less. Walk more. Lift some lite weights, or cans of soup, for just 5 minutes per day. Make your body glow.
You’ll miss what you had if you don’t spend 10 minutes per day on upkeep. So easy to make it a habit. So easy not to as well. What type of person are you? Maintainer of your amazing body? Or the, ‘Who cares’, type?
Notice how this philosophy permeates the rest of your life. Be brutally honest with yourself – is this what you actually, truly want and would wish for, if a genie granted you three wishes?
My income? Career? Relationships? My sock drawer? My fitness? Other things?
Now what am I going to do about it?
Why are people so quick to judge? It feels like a natural tendency. But haven’t we learned to either not pay attention or wait a year for all the evidence to come?
What is the point of coming to some conclusion after only some evidence is in?
Let the people do their work. Let the reports come out. Let the courts decide.
People like stuff. People also like to move their bodies from one place to another. People also like foods and drinks that are manufactured or transported over long distances. People also want to live as long as they can or want their loved ones to live their longest life possible.
These things are all part of the conundrum. We like these type of things but it is these things that have a significant impact on pollution and climate.
We want to eat bananas and strawberries out of season. So we ship them in from some country like Chile or Egypt. These food items can perish before arrival so need to be moved quickly. Oh, and maybe they need a little refrigeration. This all means using a lot of fossil fuels to get these items to our fridge. And the single use plastic bag or punnet they come in can’t be great either.
But we need these foods when we want them.
Then, sometimes they go off or are half eaten and thrown away. They are brought half way around the world by ships, planes, trucks and our car, to be jettisoned because of a little bruise on it or we just don’t fancy the whole thing.
Think of all the useless trinkets and junk we purchase or are given. And all the wrapping and how that was all made and shipped to us. Also consider all the waste and single use items in doctors offices and hospitals. Hospitals are great because they help save, prolong or improve lives. But they mustn’t be great on the plastic and industrial or contaminated waste scale. Especially with all the full body PPE of recent years.
But we want our favourite foods or a plastic bottled drink when we are out. We need the stuffed toy or plastic flowers to demonstrate our love. We must take holidays that require an airplane travelling 1,000 to 10,000 miles, each way. We want hospitals and all the good they do.
However, we also want “the world”, the government, big companies and other people to reduce their carbon emissions and help with the fight against climate impact. The conundrum is that getting “them” to do something is a nice idea. But really, they will just create environments to reduce your usage through policy and pricing – which most people would complain about. You could do the right thing yourself, but most wont. At least not in a meaningful way. The power is in our hands every day, but most people are unwilling to make the material personal sacrifice.
And that is the climate conundrum.
I love serendipity and you should too. That positive things are happening by chance is an incredibly fortunate thing.
Whether you think there is a true serendipity or it’s simply, ‘the more seeds you sow, the more ye shall reap’ doesn’t matter. Even if it were really the idea of, ‘the harder I work the luckier I get’, you should pay attention to serendipity.
Look for it. Recognise it. Acknowledge it. And be grateful for it. Thank the universe each time. Then maybe, like a well appreciated friend, you’ll find the universe coming through for you again and again.
Look into the details. Learn all you can. Ask clear questions. Require specific details in the answers. Make informed decisions. Don’t get caught out. Trust but verify. Look before you leap. Don’t just assume all will be fine. Get into the weeds on it.
These two words can dramatically improve your life. Why? Because most people have trained themselves in short term, one-step thinking. People often do better, in the long term, if they incorporate more ‘several-step’ thinking into their life.
Simply by asking, ‘Then what?’, more often, you will train your brain to consider outcomes beyond the immediate and into the longer term.
This can help in all sorts of areas of your life. Weight loss is one. If I eat this delicious cake, then what? I will need to work out more tomorrow. And it will take more time. Then what? Then I’ll be late for work. So with just a couple of ‘then what’s’, we see undesirable outcomes because of our initial behaviour.
This can be applied to house purchases, holiday planning and career path considerations, to name a few things.
Usually you know what is right. You just don’t want it to be so.
Often we ask advice from whoever is around. But if you go to someone specifically, it is often because you know they’ll tell you what you want to hear; even if you know it’s what you need to hear.
If you focused and were excellent with your time, could you be more productive? Could you get more done in a day?
It’s amazing what you can achieve when you don’t get distracted, procrastinate or do only the fun things.
If you seriously want to change your life, put the work in. Stop talking about it. Get it done.
