A Habit Called Excellence

Hi there and welcome. It’s Kerstin Jatho here from 4Seeds Consulting, a transformational coach who shifts people from languishing to flourishing. In this video, I want to talk to you about excellence, and the habit of excellence.

Aristotle once said, “excellence is not an art, it’s a habit”. And I agree with him. To strive for excellence is a habit. You start with it slowly, and you start scaling it up more and more. But the question is, what is excellence for you? What does that definition do for you to actually say to yourself, “I am performing at an excellent level”. Find your own definition before you start the journey of creating this habit.

And like with any habit, when you start it, you become so consciously aware of how you are not meeting up to this expectation. But that’s great, because that awareness helps you to create more observation and evaluation of saying, “how can I change this? What can I do? How can I grow? What needs to happen next?”

So, the starting point is always a bit wobbly on creating excellence. Some strategies on how to develop excellence is to surround yourself with people who are already in that excellent bracket, if you can call it that. So, surround yourself with a network with people who inspire you, because it does rub off on you. Plus, you can observe how they do it, and then you can adjust your behaviour accordingly. Continuously ask for feedback from others, but also be critical on your own deliverables or performance, but critical in a kind way.

So, be curious how you could have done it differently next time or in future. So, don’t always beat yourself up. You are still, remember, in the learning process. Celebrate your wins as you go along, and then as you are going along, change the levels. So, increase the level of difficulty, change that hurdle, make it a little bit more complex and a little bit higher, because that creates excellence.

And lastly, buddy with somebody who wants to do the same and can hold you accountable or where you can discuss things together. Because doing excellence on your own becomes sometimes a bit exhausting and tiring, and it’s sometimes nice to get another person’s neutral and independent feedback on your own growth. Because we are not always kind to ourselves when it comes to growth and development. We are our harshest critic and we do need a buddy.

So, choose today to make excellence a habit and really increase your level of well-being, job satisfaction, fulfilment, and just being at your optimal.