Tag: excellence

Today in Church I listened to several awesome talks, but one phrase stood out to me, I don’t even know if this is exactly how it was worded, but this is what I got out of it: “Don’t let my doubts stall me in my progress forward.” How often do we have an awesome idea, or feel like we should do something specific, maybe we know we need to make a change of direction to make our lives better. But we stop, we don’t move forward because we are afraid, or we are can’t see how to accomplish the big goal. We get comfortable even if it’s not really where we want to be, so we give up before we start.

Doubts don’t just affect big ideas and goals, they can affect every aspect of our lives. But doubts are not good or productive in any way. We should always find out information, ask questions. But when we seek for answers, we should never look for those answers from sources that doubt. We need to make sure we are looking at legitimate sources with real truth. Those sources need to be carefully looked at, and the good pulled out of them. Sometimes they are people close to us, sometimes they are experts in their field. But the worst person to look at is the one that is already doubting, the one that already gave up on the goal.

I have learned in my business to seek out successful people. See what they are doing that I might not be doing. How do they spend their time and where do they put their energy. It is the same with anything we value or what to learn. Don’t ask the person who has given up, find the person who is succeeding. If you want to have more faith, don’t ask the person who has fallen away from your faith. Find the person who is succeeding, the person most at peace. Find out what they are doing in their lives different than you are and try to implement some of those things into your thinking, your habits, your priorities.

Failing is different than doubting. I still refer to Einstein’s invention of the lightbulb. 10,000 times he found out how a light bulb didn’t work. But he didn’t doubt that he would eventually find an answer, he kept persevering through the questions, through the data. I’m sure there were people who thought, even told him he was crazy. But he never gave up. That is what determination can do for us. That determination can increase as we see progress in our lives. I am so grateful for the many, many people through my life who have encouraged me to write down my experiences. I don’t write down a ton, maybe a couple of sentences every evening, but about once every 2 or 3 months I hand write those things down in my journal from my phone. I could print them off and put them in a binder, but I love handwriting them as I get to look back, read about my experiences, and often see the fruits of whatever I was unsure of, but kept pushing through. Sometimes I am reminded of some inspiration that I had forgotten about that propelled me forward to where I was that day, and I am so grateful when it came, and again when I reread about it later. Looking back renews my determination in so many aspects of my life.

I have said this several times here on my blogs, but I’ll say it again, “Average is the enemy of excellence.” When we choose to doubt, when we choose to stop our progress we become average, or worse, mediocre. Even if we don’t accomplish exactly what we set out to do, if we persevered through those doubts then we grew. Growth is one of the most important things we can do in this life. Growth may change the direction we thought we wanted to go, but growth always leads to good, whether that good is simply within us that makes us a better person, or something physical outside of us. That growth makes us more than just average, it starts to elevate us towards excellence. This week I am going to move forward with a piece of inspiration that I had several months ago, kept in the back of my mind because I wasn’t exactly sure how to proceed, but because I didn’t throw the idea out, I have a new direction to go. If it doesn’t work, I will continue forward, having more data to learn from and a new direction to move. I am grateful for the opportunity to continue learning and growing every day. What are you doing to remove doubt from your life and proceed forward in faith?