If You’re Not Excelling in Life I’m Here to Fix That!
To excel in life is the goal of many of us. Whether you’d like to be a great husband, a great businessperson or a great mother, excelling is possible within that field. This applies to anything, even if you would ultimately like to excel at something really easy like marathon-watching television. I know I do…
To excel at something simply means ‘to be exceptionally good…’. Therefore, excelling can apply to anything. However, most people’s definition of excelling is to be exceptionally good at something positive. For example, a brilliant CEO. Everyone has a field in which they would like to excel. In fact, most of us have two or three. These two or three things are things we hold in high regard. For the majority, work will be one of the three.
To excel at the thing we spend a million hours a week doing is obviously something we all want. The other ones depend on the person. For me, work is at the top, for the moment. After that, I strive to excel socially. Being the ‘life of the party’, or simply, a great friend is something I hold in high regard. Thus, my social life is one of my ‘things to excel at’. My last is being a father. When this part of my life comes to be, being a great father to my children and a great husband to my wife is something I absolutely want to excel at. There are two or three of these ‘things to excel at’ for everyone, the trick is identifying yours. I’ll tell you this for free; it is not as easy as it seems after number one.
Why You Aren’t Already Excelling
The tricky thing with intangible goals like ‘I want to excel at…,’ is that there is no way to measure them. Maybe you are already excelling. Before setting goals, recognise the ones you have already reached. As I say, you are probably already excelling at something.
Let’s make ourselves feel good for a second. I know that I already excel at the following things:
- Laying in on Sundays.
- Cooking bolognese.
- Drinking beers.
- Catching Skittles in my mouth.
- A little-known video game called ‘Speedrunners’. – Juggling.
Now, go off and make your own little list of things you excel at already. It feels great to recognise the good in yourself, even if it is partially about being great at sleep…
The point here is that the reason you may not be excelling already is as much as you would love to excel you have no goal in place to make excelling a tangible, achievable destination.
The Key to Excelling in Life:
Step 1: Figure out How You Would like to Excel
As I said, it is probably work. However, this is not quite enough for our tangible goal. Does excelling at work mean getting a great appraisal? What does that appraisal look like? Are you after a specific score or comment from your boss? As you can see, there are plenty of levels to these goals. It is important that you work through them all to find out exactly what it is you want to achieve.
Basically, it is all about understanding what your definition of ‘excel’ actually is. It can mean such a vast array of things for different people. So figure out what it means for you and you are one step closer to building your goal.
It also might not be work, it might be that you want to excel in your relationships. Being a great spouse is not easy, nor is it easy to be a great parent or even a great friend. These are, however, things you can excel at if you so desire. To excel in your relationships might be that you need to be more communicative. Ask your friend how they are doing more often than you do, take a bigger interest in your child’s ambitions, and tell your husband you love him. These are all things you can do to excel in your relationships. It is all down to your specific situation, of course. Identify two things; what things do you want from a great relationship and what of those things do you not currently do or do enough of? Those two steps will help take you where you want to go.
This applies if your goal is to excel socially as well. Maybe this is within your group of friends, or in unfamiliar social situations. To excel socially is to identify again; what you want out of a social situation and what of that you are not currently doing. That process is pretty much the bread and butter of figuring out how to excel at something.
What does great look like? VS. Where am I right now?
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Step 2: Realise What You Really Want
Whilst I possibly sound a tad harsh, hear me out.
A tricky subject to approach, but maybe simply excelling at something is not your ultimate goal. An article on excelling in life should not be particularly goal-oriented as this one has been, however, there is a reason for this. The fact that you have read to this point means that, to some extent, you have been engaged by the first few hundred words. Within those first few hundred words, you have not read ‘how to excel in life’, you have read ‘how to set goals’. The fact that you have, again, been somewhat enticed by it, means that what you believe you are looking for is a method for being great at life. Let me tell you this: if such a method existed, you would receive a life manual at birth outlining the necessary steps to being awesome at life.
Your Goal
So, is your goal to excel? Or, might it be ‘I want to be less stressed at work?’ The reason for this question is that the idea of being great at something directly means that it will be easier for you. I hate maths because I am totally bad at it. If I was to excel in maths, however, I would probably find it much easier and much more enjoyable. For me, the goal here would not be to excel at maths, it would be to find it less intimidating and a more enjoyable task. Applying that same process, is my goal to excel in life? Well, yes. However, my reason for wanting to excel is so that I am happy. My happiness lies in achieving the career-oriented goals I have had for a long time. So to excel in my work would mean to be happy in my life. That is the true goal; happiness.
Is There a Connection?
The other reason for questioning the ‘real goals’ is to identify whether excelling at this one thing will actually achieve that goal. If the true goal is to excel at work, is that because you feel underappreciated at work? Becoming great at what you do may not solve this problem. There is a lot of time and effort put into excelling at something and, when the true goal is not exactly that, it is worth uncovering the motivations behind the goal first. Your true goal could be any one of a thousand things, excelling in life as a whole is working towards your true goals, rather than the specific ones that motivate you every day.
Step 3: Focusing on What Matters
Now that you have some true goals to work towards, we reach the real ‘excelling in life’ methods. The key here is looking at life as a bigger picture. Understanding exactly what it is you really want out of life and, more importantly, the reasons why. There are some tips for doing this:
Know Thyself
My old college teacher used to say this to my classmates and me all the time. ‘Know thy self’, he’d say, ‘know what makes you tick’. This is a hugely underestimated practice for figuring out exactly what you want from life. Start now by thinking about three things that really make you ‘tick’. For example, these are mine: music, time alone and feeling respected. Music is something that, at times, I feel I actually need. There’s cool jazz swinging through my headphones whenever I am working, I cannot work without it. My social battery runs out quickly, and alone time is a necessity for me to avoid being irritable and cranky. Feeling a lack of respect from someone can instantly switch me off – it is something I really need to feel to be part of a relationship of any kind. There – that is me in a nutshell. The things that keep my cogs turning. What are yours?
Knowing these key principles of who you are and, more importantly, unapologetically being those things is a fantastic start to excelling in life.
Find The Balance
Like everything, life is a balancing act, as I am sure you have heard before. Excelling in life is not solely about working a hundred hours a week and being great at your work, in fact, that is largely the opposite. You will excel at your work doing this but you’ll likely do exactly the opposite in your relationships and in your social life. For you, work may be the only priority, in which case being awesome at your work is the definition of excelling. However, this is not the case most of the time. Balancing home, work and social is tough, but balancing these well will absolutely help you excel. Balancing positive things you want to do and positive things you don’t want to do is tough, too. Furthermore, balancing negative things you want to do but shouldn’t and negative things you don’t want to do but feel you have to is also very hard. Once again, balancing these well will help you excel in life. It’s all about balancing the negatives with the positives, the pros with the cons, drawbacks with the benefits of everything in your life.
Prioritise Happiness
To contradict briefly, there is one actual method for excelling in life – prioritising happiness. An analogy for this a film mentor of mine once told me is, ‘story is king.’ When making films, there is a large number of people, departments and working cogs in the filmmaking machine. The bottom line is: every person, every department and every working cog is there to serve the story. If there was not a story to be told, no one would be there telling it. This applies to what I am telling you here – happiness is king. Everything in your life should be aimed towards you being happy. There is quite literally nothing that should stand in the way of this. If your ultimate goal is always to be happy, and everything you do leads to this one goal, you are guaranteed to excel in life.
Look After The Little Things
The age-old phrase ‘look after the pennies…’ applies here. There are some fundamentals to life. We can start by assessing our everyday lives, and our routines. Here is an example of two people:
Person 1: This guy wakes up, snoozes his alarm, and lays in for what seemed like ten minutes but was actually an hour. He makes some coffee, still half asleep and then sits down, an hour later than he had planned to, to get some work done. He doesn’t spend much time outside, he doesn’t have a morning routine and does not exercise, read or spend much time with his family.
Person 2: This person wakes up on their alarm sound, showers, makes some coffee and eats breakfast before creating her to-do list for the day. She carries it out task by task and ultimately finishes the day doing something she likes to do. She spends time with her family, exercises two or three times a week and ensures she has some downtime to herself to avoid burning out.
Person 2 has their fundamentals down while person 1… does not. This is why looking after the little things really does matter. It lays a bedrock of consistency and structure in your life – we tend to excel much better in these environments.
Finally…
Excelling in life really comes down to focusing on the things you really want and figuring out why you aren’t already there. This simple equation will get you on your way to excelling in your life! Good luck!
