Hurdles of Excellence

(Written By : Chitra)

From birth, one is asked to aspire for excellence, and nothing else. Maybe that is why when you are in your late teens and nearing the point of choosing a degree, you end up feeling puzzled. 'What am I excellent at?' 'What is my calling?' 'Where do i belong?' 

So you end up picking a professional course because normal college majors are mediocre. And you find yourself sitting in the orientation program for architecture, aspiring for excellence, with a picture in your head that depicts you standing in a podium accepting the best Young Architect of the year award; because, that is excellence. That is what you are conditioned to aspire for.

However the one thing they forgot to mention was that, not everyone can be excellent at everything.

So in your head, you are winning the Pritzker price or receiving the RIBA gold medal, but in life you always fall a few steps short of being the best. The hurdles always seem a bit too high.

Since you have always been taught to strive for being excellent, you just cannot handle being not enough.

Why aren’t you the best ‘ student architect’ in the class ?

Then you start feeling a lot of emotions; from anger and frustration, to feelings of worthlessness and incompetence, to transferring blame to whoever is around you, and hating the people who are jumping the hurdle you set for yourself. Then the cycle slowly changes to self-blame and self-accusation. Then absolute depression sets in. and before you know it, you are tumbling down into an abyss of darkness, and there, you will be sitting in the darkest corner unable to love yourself.

The world is so busy teaching us to be excellent, it often forgets to teach us the important things in life; simple things like happiness and self-love.

What are your pre-set ideas of excellence, if your soul is not at peace? What is excellence if you are not able to go to sleep without regrets? What is your life for, if you are not in complete sync with your vibrations?

So when you are mediocre and struggling, here are a few points to keep in mind.

Be your own best friend; after all, no one can crack you up when you are down and no one can keep you grounded like yourself.

Keep in mind that, you don't have to pretend to be anything you are not.

Excellence is relative, and the pursuit of something so variable isn't actually the best thing you can do with your life.

Take it slow. Take a deep breath and stop running. You might see and learn a lot more when you walk, than when you run.

Don't weigh yourself against the scale of someone else's achievements. They are not you, and your priorities are different.

Try to see whatever you do as an opportunity to learn and not as a test to examine your competence. After all, there is no harm in learning a thing or two.

And at last, realize that the only person you can try to better than, is yourself. So grow a bit every day and keep making progress at your own pace.

The moral of all this ranting being, in a world that constantly asks you to strive to be excellent, it’s hard to unlearn and relearn the goals you’re expected to live up to. But once you unlearn and relearn those basics, no-one will be able to beat you at being an excellent version of yourself.

And my dears’, if that's not excellence, what else is?