“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” – (Quote attributed to Albert Einstein)
Excellence is the quality of being outstanding. We all celebrate excellent results, looks, or achievements, and there is nothing wrong with that. The Tokyo Olympics just finished, and we could see how people who competed in the games and won medals got rewards. It appears our environment wants us to compete against each other rather than cooperate to achieve societal advancement.
What if I told you that there is excellence in you! That you too can be celebrated by other people! That you don’t have to compete with anyone to succeed. I understand if this is shocking to you, especially when our society always pushes us to battle, especially with other people.
There is no shortage of competition globally, from our classrooms to our sporting fields and then into our lives. People continually try to outdo one another. Competition is more pressurizing and intense when we judge everyone by the same standards. For example, if we believe that everyone that writes an examination must get the highest distinctions. When you have this mindset, you will see everyone else as an obstacle to your success that you must crush. For goodness’ sake, everyone must not get A1s in all subjects in WAEC or NECO or score 390 in JAMB.
When we talk about excellence, we do not mean you have to struggle to be the best in your class or neighbourhood. We instead want to see that you have discovered yourself and are working towards constant improvement. A fish is a genius when in the water. But take the same fish out of the water, and in a few minutes, you see it struggling for life. Most birds can fly, but not all birds can swim underwater and survive. The fish is an excellent swimmer in the water, just as the bird is a fantastic flyer in the sky. They do not compete, but they shine in their ways. There is a natural ability in everyone that, once discovered, makes you excel naturally.
Do not judge your life by competing with other people and their achievements. Discover areas of your life where you do things without much effort. It could be acting or singing, fixing machines, an interest in fashion, and ability to organize things in detail, or nutrition. If you cannot discover your abilities, do not shy away from asking people around you to point out areas where they think you might be doing things effortlessly. At B2SL, we aim to help you discover and use your natural abilities to succeed.
Let me know your thoughts or questions in the comments section below.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Besidone Ebule is the Project Director at B2SL, where he works to encourage personal development and build success networks. You can contact him at bessy.ebule@b2sl.org.
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Awesome, this write up addresses a lot of issues, the part that struck me most was ” we all have an excellent attitude in us”
This week’s post has really enlightened me. Prior to this time,i had always had the intention of being the best anywhere I am.
So when I and a group of people are assigned to carry out a task, I feel bad if I do not come out as one of the best. Although I am happy for the best, I am not happy with myself
But from the blog post I’ve come to see that I need not use other people’s excellence as a benchmark to measure mine.
Provided that I keep improving myself,becoming a better version of myself, then I’m excelling
Wow
This is awesome
This is the most part that we student don’t understand ✌️and we really need to know that excellence is not a competition not all student will be good in academics and not all will be good in other aspects like drawing,crafting and singing. But with time if we have the passion to be good at whatever we want to do,then we will keep excelling
This is exceedingly impactful…
Every excellence work have a great reward.
So we have to work to be an excellence and great people in life
Everyone is a genius in thier area of specialty. The maximum use of our of this *genius habit* brings about excellence.
Also, excellence is not defined as competition of which most people have misunderstood, it is the use of one’s skill, talent or specialty in the maximum way and bringing out success and achievement from it.
There is a natural ability in everyone that we don’t have to compete but shine in our own way.
Excellence is not a Competition. Excellence is the quality of being outstanding in ones true potential…not trying to be what you are not… competition, most times will only drag ones mentality from focusing on ones abilities, thereby aiming to become like other people, which in most times, people get hooked up at the point, because one is not at the surrounding of his potential niche… We are created to be better than everybody else. We are distinct! We are humans! The word human race is unique for every individual! So run your race, and don’t tample on other people’s race! Else, one can get broken up!
In this blog I learnt that Excellence is the quality of being outstanding.