The Quest for Excellence

“The quest for excellence is an inward one. You will not find it in a book, in a seminar, or in an expensive piece of high-tech equipment. You will however, find it within yourself…” — Nido R. Qubein

I am grateful for well written, insightful, and inspirational books, speeches, and blogs. I appreciate a good seminar and the motivation it may provide. I appreciate the value and help, which high-tech equipment has brought to mankind today. All of this is good and can help to motivate us to being our best. What all of these will not do is make us excellent. Excellence is an attitude. Excellence is something we determine to become and spend a lifetime to develop. Excellence is the attitude of knowing and believing we can be a little bit better; we can reach another level; we can become more.

Interesting that Mr. Qubein says excellence is from within, not from a book, seminar, or some type of high-tech equipment. Never was a truer statement made. You cannot find outside of yourself that which you need to make you better, to make you excellent. Everything you need is within you. In his book, As a Man Thinketh, James Allen, tells us how to think. He tells us it is our thinking that makes us sad or happy, bad or good, a failure or a success. He further states one can remake his life by transforming his circumstances with his thoughts. It is a book on the power and right application of thought.

The book opens with the statement:

Mind is the master power that molds and makes,
And man is mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of thought, and, shaping what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills.
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass,
Environment is but his looking-glass.

What we are outside is a reflection of what we think inside. The outside is a picture of what we think of ourselves and the world around us. What we think will determine how we react or respond. How we react or respond will determine whether we become cynical and blame this life for why we are not happy, or whether we become a person of excellence by right and proper thinking and enjoy this life. When we stop looking at what is outside us as the cause, and understand what we think is the cause, we are on our way to becoming a person of excellence.

Best of LUCK as you
Labor Under Correct Knowledge…

Respectfully,

Rick Cox