THE JOURNEY OF EXCELLENCE TO EXCELLENCE

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."  - Aristotle

I generally don't like to speak about myself, I am a very shy person in that sense. But here, I would like to share a small story from my life just to make an important point. You see, most lessons we need to learn are stored in our past, we just need to visit it once in a while to refresh the lessons learnt without getting caught up in it.

THE EXPERIENCE OF EXCELLENCE
I started chanting 16 rounds of the Hare Krishna Maha-mantra and became committed to spiritual life, towards the end of my 11th std. This was way back in 1999. During this time, there were few dozen devotees in ISKCON, all over Goa. When I entered 12th std, I decided to focus fully on my studies and top the college. I thought, this would be the best way to preach to all my friends - by showing them how spiritual life helps one achieve success in life. And, it was also the best way to protect my spiritual life amidst the crazy college environment of which I was a part of, just a year back - I had to have a solid challenging goal to keep me focused on my spiritual life. And what better goal than this, I reasoned.

I had to be extremely focused in my studies because I had many things to balance. First, my spiritual practices of everyday devoting two hours to the chanting of the Holy names, doing a bit of reading scriptures, attending Satsang and serving devotees who would quite often visit our house. Second, I had opted for both Maths and Biology even though I knew very well I wanted to pursue my career in engineering which had nothing to do with Biology marks. Many of my friends choose to opt out of Biology. That means I had to study both the subjects and do well in both keeping in mind my ambitious goal of topping the college.

I was so focused and obsessed with my goal that I wouldn't waste a moment, if it was not an important activity. In fact, I would mentally solve Math problems even while riding my cycle back and forth from college. Yes, that one year was stressful but it was also one of the most blissful periods of my life. I thoroughly enjoyed my studies.

The results was all the more exciting. I don't remember if I topped the college but I was definitely in the first three. I still remember during the admission rounds, my name was in the first few to be called out for admission in the Medical College which I didn't choose. My name was in the first few for admission in NIT Suratkal which also I rejected. And I was probably the first to get admission in the engineering college in Goa. At that time I understood that, I not only excelled in my college but in the state of Goa as well. My hard work, focus and strong desire had paid off more than expected.

THE PRINCIPLE OF EXCELLENCE
In the long run, 12th std exam results seem meaningless - life keeps going on. But my success was not the results per se but learning that a burning desire to achieve something, coupled with consistent and focused effort to achieve it can make anything possible. This is called the principle of excellence. This applies to excelling in any area of our life - be it our personal life, our corporate life, our social life or our spiritual life. The principles are always the same, only the application changes.

I am so grateful to have had a first hand experience of the principle of excellence early in my life. I had almost forgotten that experience but somehow remembered it a few months back. I recently heard a wonderful quote by Mahatma Prabhu, one of my mentors and heroes. He said - "Okay is not okay, excellence is okay." That means, we should not settle for anything less than excellence. We should become allergic to mediocrity. This is an allergy everyone should get infected by.

Someone might object, "What if one has a desire to excel but fails? Will it not depress him or her?" Here is another quote that will put to rest this doubt. This is another quote that I love. It goes like this - "The problem is not that we aim high and miss it. The problem is that we aim low and get it."

Having a desire to excel and working for it, itself is success. For such a person, the journey itself is so exciting that it's much more rewarding than the destination itself. And 100%, sincere efforts are always rewarded more than one's expectation, like in my case.

For those practicing spiritual life, it is so very important to develop this mindset of excellence in life. Otherwise, spiritual life may seem boring and dull. Spiritual life is never boring, it always exciting but to experience it, one has to bring a certain level of disposition and energy into it. If we are anyway practicing spiritual life, why not practice it in the best possible way.

It's time to raise our performance bar in every aspect of life from average to excellence and not settle for anything less than the best. We are meant to receive the best but for that we have to give our best.
THE FRAME WORK FOR EXCELLENCE
Write down different aspects of your life like personal life, spiritual life, family life and social life. Within each, you can have more subcategories. For example in your personal life, you can have categories like peace, happiness, emotional control. In your spiritual life, you can have subcategories like chanting, reading, serving. For each of these items, write down your present score in the scale of 1-10. 1 being the least and 10 being excellent. We need to be honest while doing this exercise. Now look at the figure and ask yourself what you need to do, to go to 10 points. Randomly keep writing everything that comes to your mind. Now, we know exactly where we are in each of these aspects and we have a clear map to get to the point of excellence - we just need to implement the map we drew ourselves and very soon we will be at our cherished destination of excellence. Wishing you all the best on this most exciting journey of excellence to excellence.

- Achyut Gopal Das