In part one of Become Untouchable in the Recession, I talked about how Excellence can play a vital role in boosting your confidence and your skill set.  We outlined what excellence actually means and what it looks like in our jobs and in our daily home lives.  We talked in length of various things we can work on that were mainly theoretical.  Excellence is not something that people are born with, it is something that is nurtured and developed.  And you can develop this outstanding quality too.  It’s time to put this theory into practice with some simple tools.

Practical Tools to Develop Excellence

1. Write your own funeral speech. What are you going be remembered for?  What do you want said about you?  Are you doing those things you want to be remembered for?  If not, make a plan to achieve them.
2. What will your resume read like in a few years? Make an ideal resume of yourself that reflects all your successes and accomplishments 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now… And, make concrete baby-steps towards that resume.
3. Create a vision board with milestones with do-able steps that are not hard. A vision board can be a poster, a tack board or a piece of paper that has drawings, quotes, and inspiring stories that you put up in a place you can see everyday reminding you of your future goals. (Paste it in your car, in your bedroom, in the kitchen…)
4. Tell someone about it – become accountable. This person can ask you from time to time how your goals are going.
5. Create a SWOT. It is a web of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Outline these and work on the weaknesses and threats, while capitalizing on your strengths and opportunities.
6. Write or repeat positive affirmations to yourself. Keep reciting good words and it will help take out all the negative things, the fear, in your heart and mind that stops you from being excellent. The mind can play terrible tricks on us.
7. Become an apprentice or job shadow someone who exhibits excellence in your field. What can you learn by observing them? How do they work, what do they read, how do they exhibit and maintain excellence, who did they learn from, can you learn from them too?

“If you sit with a musk-seller, after awhile some of their perfumed scent is sure to rub off onto you.” ~Unknown

A Personal Goosebump Story

I once wrote a report card about this young boy in my grade six classroom. I don’t write the conventional report card, which is to select one sentence comments from a drop-down box from a computer program. (#43 ______ should be commended in the subject of science.)

Instead, that year I wrote a full page report detailing every aspect of all my students in my class (spiritual, physical, emotional, social) including the young boy. The boy moved the following year and transferred to another school. A year later, I was at a conference with over 100 attendants and a teacher approached me and we started talking about education. After a few moments into the conversation, the woman asked me what school I taught at and I told her. She asked me, “Do you know (the young boy’s name)?

I replied, “Why, of course, he was my student last year.” The woman exclaimed, “You wrote the most amazing and thorough report card for _______. He transferred to my class! From your report, I knew exactly what kind of child I was receiving right down to his likes and dislikes. Because you wrote it the way you did, the student was easy to teach and he has excelled quickly because I didn’t have to figure him out first. You didn’t just select comments from the box?”

I got goose-bumps! The hours and days and weeks I spend writing full-page reports actually came back to me!

That day, I felt affirmed that I was on the right track to complete things with Excellence. I left my “mark” on this report card and it came back to me with a reward. I felt elated. I ask myself, “How would this situation be different if I wrote it in a hurry, to get it over with and move on to the next task, only to complete that task in the same haphazard way – what if I just used the drop-down comment box?” I wouldn’t have got the goose bumps that I did that day.

“Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.” Booker T. Washington

Parting Thoughts

Remember that excellence is not the same as perfection. Excellence is striving to be better, to always improve, to strive to be the very best you can be. As humans we are imperfect and full of flaws. Thus, perfection is something we can never really achieve. Perfection isn’t in our reach – excellence certainly is and the great people who have gone before us have proven this to us. This is a reminder first to myself before I send them to you.

An Invitation

What are some practical tools that you use that develops or instills excellence?  Which tools are the most appealing to you?  What works for you and what blocks you from being excellent?  Share with us in the comments below and let’s help each other with this life-changing characteristic.

image credit: geishaboy500

Related posts:

1. Become Untouchable in the Recession Part 1: Make Excellence Your Mark