People of Excellence: Getting Beyond Not "Feeling Like It"

I have used a phrase which I have sometimes applied to some whom I have mentored.

People of Excellence

(or)

Potential People of Excellence

I have generally applied the former phrase to them who have “been in the faith” longer than those whom I have assigned the latter phraseology.

And whether I laid the first or second characterization on them, I have not done so without due witness and reflection. And before that three or four word phrase, (as the case may be) ever spilled from my lips, I have found it necessary to define the components of these phrases.

What is it to be a Person of Excellence (or) Potential Person of Excellence? Of what sort of material is such an individual composed?

Granted, you or I might check off various attributes from a long, and arbitrary list. But at any rate, I believe there are some common elements of which both you and I might agree.

Intelligence. I mean, who hasn’t admired the writings of Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking? (Given, of course, whether you or I are able to grasp, and regurgitate a tenth of it).

Strength. I fancied myself a mean (though not green) body-building machine at 17, (you like my rhyme)… but everything is relative. I certainly wasn’t an Arnold S.

Fluency. Given the opportunity to listen to, (or better yet, spend the day with) Winston Churchill or Pee Wee Herman; well, it’s a forgone conclusion whom I would choose. (Not to mention the former of the two was a distant relative of mine).

And the list goes on.

However, it occurs to me that the foregoing attributes, and many others on our hypothetical list are as much gifts, as they are attributes.

God-given gifts.

Outside of selflessness and empathy, (traits which I will, no doubt, allude to in some future writing) my favorite characteristic of all time involves

… a lack of motivation.

But before you shake your head, or think I’ve lost my mind allow me to say that the implied attribute to which I allude may be accompanied by a lack of motivation. However, the lack thereof is not, so much in itself, something to be desired.

(Be patient. We’re getting there).

You see, my friends. Motivation is highly overrated.

I know. This is heresy in an age of diets, gym memberships, and treadmills.

Allow me, however, to say that motivation is highly overrated because motivation depends on

…feeling a feeling.

Who among us haven’t heard a friend or family member exclaim, “I just have to get motivated,” or “I used to be motivated, but…” or (here’s comes one we’re all guilty of,

…”I don’t feel like it.”

My readers, if you wait to do anything positive and worth doing, ‘til you experience that nebulous quality we call motivation, (or until you feel like it) you may be 103!

Hold onto your seat belts. Here it comes.

I believe one extraordinary attribute we should desire, no, that we should crave, is that of purposeful decision making and subsequent follow through, or more simply put

…On Purpose Living.

My friends this is where it’s at.

Who can deny that unlike many attributes, this is one ability which is much less a innate gift, and much more an embraced and practiced mindset. I put the foregoing trait near the top of the list since it requires something of us. It requires us to make a decision and to do something about it.

Too many of us wait around for motivation to fall on us like the gentle rain from heaven. And it may never happen.

In the movie, “Shawshank Redemption,” one of the characters uttered the phrase, “Get busy living or get busy dying.” I think we really live, we only live when we throw off the limitations imposed upon us feelings and faulty mindsets.

My friends, this attribute I’ve chosen to title On Purpose Living is available to all of us. Not one of us are excluded from the power to run with it, like we would run with a football.

Every good thing which comes to us requires you and me to cooperate with God in the plans He dreamed for us

…before He made the worlds.

And we are quite capable of doing so.

When I characterize anyone with the title, “Person of Excellence” I think of the attribute of On Purpose Living

…First.

(By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 4)