Listen now | how consistency plays a powerful role into shaping excellence, accompanied by a deep dive and interpretation into a famous Aristotle quoteGood Morning listeners! Happy Tuesday. It's a beautiful rainy day where I am and I am enjoying this busy morning on my end with a cup of coffee and some words as we start to dive in here to connect over some explorations of thought and mind. I'm Coach Kate and I host this space for explorations of all kinds weekday mornings. Here we focus on mindfulness, motivation, gratitude, and more, so if that's your jam-- feel free to give me a follow and even listen in to some of my other talks too!
Today we are going to talk about achieving excellence-- now excellence is when we excel at a particular thing, task, movement even, consistently. It's the consistency aspect of excellence that often gets left out. It's not poetic or romantic, or interesting even to be consistent, but that's the secret sauce to a level of excellency that we admire in others. Most people sum up excellence as a talent without work or merit, because our minds like to make things appear easier in our heads. Someone once told me, that it takes years to be an overnight success, and I think about that nearly every day. We chalk up other's success and even their excellence as luck, or because they are particularly gifted or blessed in a certain way-- and they might be blessed, they might be talented, or they might have access to places, people, or even finances that make that connection to excellence appear easy. But none of those are anything without the vision and the work. Excellence often happens after an extended period of time or hard work, all behind closed doors and most of the time consisting with rote, even boring practices put in place. We are often seeing the culmination of hard work, dedication, and passion to reach that point of showcasing excellence. So I came across a wonderful quote attributed to Aristotle, who was an ancient Greek philosopher known for excellence and braving those big why questions. I think this quote got interpreted, very generously so I did a deep dive into this quote and I wanted to include both the quote that is often attributed to him, and what he probably said instead. Here it is:
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not a choice but a habit.”
- Aristotle
This quote was interpreted by the famed Historian Will Durant who wrote many books on origins of thoughts, ideas, and translating these to the public throughout the earlier part of the 20th century, and the actual interpretation of this quote probably is closer to this:
"Virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions"
- Aristotle
So we could probably do a deep dive into this whole interpretation, but since this is Minute Explorations today, I wanted to highlight the commonality of these quotes instead. Both of these Aristotle quotes point toward the intrinsic value of consistency. Virtues are a form of excellence: repeated patterns of our moral obligations to ourselves and our spirit. Excellence does not need to be an outward portrayal of mastery, it can be a lifelong internal dedication to ourselves as well. And how else to beautifully know ourselves, by none other than dedicating consistent habits to repeat and empower ourselves upon?
With that, this wonderful Tuesday morning, ask yourselves:
* What consistent patterns are defining you and your life right now?
* What does excellence look like to you?
* What consistent habits are you building upon for your own excellence ahead?
We are what we do in the quiet, repetitions of our daily habits, so today, I hope you align yourself with building towards your own excellence. Excellence lives in all of us, and it can also start today. Don't be afraid of those small movements, or the time it takes to get there.
I'm Coach Kate, Thanks for listening today. If you liked what you heard, feel free to give me a follow and subscribe. I have this space weekday mornings where we dive into thought, ideas, and words that are often bigger than ourselves and can bring us all together too. See you all again tomorrow.
