Excellence is an attitude...Be excellent!

It was Aristotle who once said that 'Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.' Nothing can be truer.

Everyday, we have a choice to make. Either to go about our daily jobs barely doing enough to get by, or choosing to go over and beyond with a better touch of quality. The thing with excellence is that it becomes an habit over time. However, we must first be intentional about choosing to be excellent. Sometimes, choosing to be excellent will earn you enemies among friends, foes among peers and haters among colleagues. There are many that will simply hate your gut because you refuse to deliver insipid work. Your pursuit of excellence is a crass reminder of their inadequacies and this will only fuel their disdain for you. You know what? That is fine. Keep churning out quality.

In the final analysis, excellence is displayed in the little things, the small acts, the often insignificant details. And sooner than later, the one who is excellent will be noticed, and the reward for being noticed for great work will come along. In the quest for excellence it is not an eye service game, it has to be something you have in your wheelhouse. Perhaps, the greatest gain of being excellent is that it improves the quality of your life. People will want to drag you to their average level often times. Your task is to refuse to accede to such soulless level. Be and remain excellent, save in the thought that next to excellence is the appreciation of it and that excellence always sells. Excellence is a choice, and you must make that choice over and over again until “doing your best” is all you know.

I will end with the stinging words of the amazing Steve Jobs - “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” 

20 Powerful Affirmations We Should Repeat to Ourselves This Year

1. “The biggest and most complex obstacle I will ever have to overcome is my mind. If I can overcome that, I can overcome anything.”

2. “I cannot control exactly what happens in life, but I can control how I respond to it all. In my response is my greatest power.”

3. “I have to accept whatever comes my way, and the only important thing is that I meet it with the best I have to give.”

4. “I will stop focusing on how stressed I am and remember how blessed I am. Complaining won’t change my reality, but a positive attitude will.”

5. “Being positive does not mean ignoring the negative. Being positive means overcoming the negative. There is a big difference between the two.”

6. “I will not get caught up in what could’ve been or should’ve been. I will look instead at the power and possibility of what is, right now.”

7. “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. It’s about not letting my fear decide my future.”

8. “I will get back up. Again, and again. The faster I recover from setbacks, the faster I’ll get to where I’m going in life.”

9. “My next step in the right direction does not have to be a big one.”

10. “Patience is a genuine expression of confidence, acceptance, serenity, and faith in my own ability. It’s a sign of strength. I will practice it.”

11. “When I find that I don’t have time for what matters, I will stop doing things that don’t.”

12. “I can always feel the genuine, positive power that flows from my decision to rise above the petty drama and distractions that don’t really matter anyway.”

13. “Instead of getting angry, I will find the lesson. In place of envy, I will feel admiration. In place of worry, I will take positive action. In place of doubt, I will have faith.”

14. “The longer I remain peaceful, the stronger I become. Peace on the inside leads to real, meaningful progress on the outside.”

15. “There’s nothing selfish about self-care and self-love. I can’t give what I don’t have. When I enrich my own life, I’ll be life-giving to others too.”

16. “If the grass looks greener on the other side, it’s just life’s way of reminding me to water the grass I’m standing on.”

17. “From now on I will be too busy watering my own grass to notice if yours is greener.”

18. “I will focus on making myself better, not on thinking I am better.”

19. “I will practice gratitude, even in the midst of frustration and despair, so I can better see the positive possibilities around me.”

20. “Happiness does not start when ‘this, that or the other’ thing is resolved. Happiness is what happens now, when I make the best of what I have.”

(MARCANDANGEL).

Harvard Business Review - My New Coworker Is a Nightmare … and I Helped Her Get the Job

Dear HBR:

I successfully referred a friend’s friend to be my peer on my team. We’re under the same manager. She was very appreciative of the referral and was very friendly when I trained her on the job. However, shortly after I finished training her, she turned around and tried to compete with me, and became very aggressive and sneaky. Here’s an example. My manager asked her to work on something I had trained her on. When my manager checked in on the status, she said she was working on a project for the new big boss, so she didn’t have time to do the work. None of us knew about this other project, but we couldn’t stop her for obvious reasons. In the end, my manager reallocated her work back to me.

Another time when I was on vacation she took over my seat. I have a nice window seat. It’s next to my manager and the big boss. When I returned, all her stuff was scattered around my desk, including her dirty shoes. I feel this is very disrespectful. She’s very good at talking and sucking up. I feel even my manager is a bit scared of her. He plans to retire next year so I doubt he’s going to do anything. What should I do?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This is a tough situation that your new coworker put you in. When you refer someone to work at your company, not only are you putting your reputation on the line but you’re hoping that you’ll gain an ally at work.

But you are also not alone. Research from Chris Porath and Christine Pearson shows that 98% of people have experienced incivility at work. And there are real costs to being on the receiving end of this type of behavior. A team of researchers looked at how people get away with rudeness. They write, “People who experience workplace rudeness…report lower engagement, suffer more mental and physical health problems, and are more likely to burn out and quit their jobs. Which begs the question: Why do we tolerate this behavior at work? The results from the study show that people get away with being rude when they have a tight relationship with the boss or are high performers.

So what might you do now? One of my first instincts in any conflict situation is to try to think about it from the other person’s perspective. Annie McKee, the author of How to Be Happy at Work, says you need to have cognitive empathy (the ability to understand another person’s perspective) to “unearth your curiosity” when someone is bothering you at work. Ask yourself: What’s motivating your peer to behave this way? Is she really just obnoxious? Is she trying to impress other people? Is she trying to get away with not working? What could be going on here?

You may not have the answers to these questions so you should consider gathering more information and figure out whether others in the office perceive this woman in the same way that you do. People may be having a similar reaction and not telling you because they know you referred her.

If you find out that she is actually well respected, don’t try to convince everyone that she’s a jerk. Instead, try to understand why others may be working well with her when you aren’t. Is there something about the dynamic between you two that’s causing problems? Is there something you can do to shift your behavior? Maybe you need to stand up for yourself more, to be stronger and firmer.

For example, you could casually — and without emotion — move her stuff back to her desk and say, “It looks like you left your things on my desk.” Or if she expects you to take on her work, you can say, “No actually I need you to do that. It’s part of your job, not mine.” It may feel uncomfortable to be this direct at first but it’s important to establish boundaries, especially with someone who’s not respecting yours. Assuming positive intent can help here so you don’t further the conflict. Maybe she left her stuff on your desk by accident? Maybe she didn’t know that project was part of her job? In this article about peer accountability, Joseph Grenny found that the health of a team can be measured by “the average lag time between identifying and discussing problems. The shorter the lag time, the faster problems get solved and the more the resolution enhances relationships. The longer the lag, the more room there is for mistrust, dysfunction, and more tangible costs to mount.”

Therefore, you might consider having a direct conversation with her to try to clear the air. Caroline Webb, author of How to Have a Good Day, shares five steps in this article on how to raise difficult issues with a tough teammate. In step two, she encourages people to share “true facts” — “the things you know for sure, stripped of emotion, interpretation, or generalization.” When you talk to your coworker, be specific about what’s happened and how it’s made your job harder. And then ask her how she sees the situation.

That said, given what you shared in your letter, I suspect that that conversation might not go well. Then you have to decide whether to escalate it to your boss. It’s always better if you can solve the issue yourself without your manager stepping in. But there are some people who care a lot about hierarchy and will only change their behavior when encouraged to do so from someone senior. This might be what your peer needs. If you do go to your boss, be ready to list everything you tried to solve the situation yourself. And have a proposal for what you’d like them to do. Do you think it would be best if they talked directly to the person? It sounds like you feel like your boss may be hesitant to get involved but given that they are leaving, they might have a lot of leeway to actually do something and ruffle a few feathers because they’re on their way out the door.

If you find that the conversations with your peer, and with your boss, don’t change the situation, you’ll need to protect yourself and change your mindset. Otherwise, this is likely to eat you up inside and ruin your work experience. Consultant Abby Curnow-Chavez, in her article about dealing with a toxic coworker, says, “Own what you can, let go of what you can’t influence, and make a change if you have to.” Hopefully this doesn’t mean leaving your job, but try to establish boundaries so that you don’t have to work with her, even sit next to her. In this article, Greg McKeown shares a useful framework for how to set emotional boundaries without becoming walled off. And don’t stoop to her level — behave in a way that’s aligned with your values.

And have some self-compassion. Remember: it’s much easier to try to change your reaction to someone, than to change them.

10 Uncomfortable Things You Need to Start Doing for Yourself in 2020

1. Challenge your understandings and certainties. – Warren Buffett once said, “What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.” This is a tragedy, this kind of thinking. Don’t do it to yourself. Don’t just look for data that confirms what you already know. Be willing to be wrong in 2020. Be willing to learn in 2020. Be mindful, humble and teachable every step of the way. There’s always room for a new idea, a new perspective . . . a new beginning. Life changes every second, and so can you. Find ways to provide a healthy challenge to your current understandings of life, and you will discover and experience far more of life’s magic in the year ahead.

2. Build up your confidence and your progress, one day at a time. — Start each day of 2020 with the truth: It’s not too late. You aren’t behind. You’re where you need to be. Every day and step is necessary. Don’t judge yourself for how long your journey is taking. We all need our own time to travel our own distance. Give yourself credit, and then take the next step. The present moment is always the beginning of anything you want. Yet too often we waste our time waiting for the ideal path to appear. But it never does because we forget that paths are made by walking, not waiting. And no, you shouldn’t feel more confident before you take the next step. Taking the next step is what builds your confidence and ultimately moves your life forward.

3. Track how you invest your energy and make productive shifts. – To attract better outcomes in life, you have to become better on the inside. Again, you can’t do the same things and expect change. You can’t blame someone else. Take full responsibility for the next step. Start transforming your mindset. Start upgrading your habits. Your life is 90% your choice! Seriously, don’t settle! Don’t exchange what you want most for what’s easiest at the moment. Study your agendas and routines closely. Figure out where your time goes, and remove needless distractions. It’s time to focus on what really matters.

4. Work diligently and consistently on meaningful goals. – When you focus your heart and mind upon a purpose, and commit yourself to fulfill that purpose through small daily steps, positive energy floods into your life. Sadly, many of us miss the mark. A few years ago when the Guardian asked a hospice nurse, Bronnie Ware, about The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, one of the most common regrets she noticed was that people regretted not being true to their goals. In fact, she said that most of the people she cared for admitted to not honoring even half of the goals that were meaningful to them, and so they ended up dying with regrets. Let this be your wake-up call! Good health brings a level of freedom and opportunity very few of us realize until we no longer have it. As they say, there are seven days in the week and “someday” isn’t one of them.

5. Do the hard things. – Lose the expectation that everything in life should be easier. There are rarely shortcuts to any place worth going. Enjoy the challenge of your achievements. See the value in your efforts and be patient with yourself. And realize that patience is not just about waiting, it’s the ability to keep a good attitude while working hard on your important goals. It’s knowing deep down that doing the hard things is worth it. Why? Because those are the things that ultimately define you. Those are the things that make the difference between existing and living—between knowing the path and walking the path—between a life of mediocrity and a life filled with progress and fulfillment.

6. Study your mistakes closely and learn from them. – Disappointments and failure are two of the surest stepping-stones to the places you want to go. Again, don’t let a hard lesson harden your heart. When things go wrong, learn what you can and then push the heartbreak aside by refocusing your energy on the present step. Remember that life’s best lessons are often learned at the worst times and from the worst mistakes. We must fail in order to know, and hurt in order to grow. Good things often fall apart so better things can fall together in their place. And what’s better already is the more informed step you’re able to take right now.

7. Choose a positive and effective response. – Happiness doesn’t start with a relationship, a vacation, a job or money. It starts with you. If you want life to be happier, you need to be mindful of your present response. It’s how you deal with stress in each little moment that determines how well you achieve happiness in the end.

8. Directly confront the thoughts that worry you. – A tiny part of your life is decided by completely uncontrollable circumstances, while the vast majority of your life is decided by how you respond to them. Whenever our Getting Back to Happy course students and Think Better, Live Better conference attendees come to us feeling down about a life situation they can’t control, we typically start by reinforcing the hard truth: sometimes changing your situation isn’t possible—or simply not possible soon enough. But you CAN always choose a mindset that moves you forward. And doing so will help you change things from the inside out, and ultimately allow you to grow beyond the struggles you can’t control at any given moment. Here’s a powerful question that will support you with an attitude adjustment when you need it most: Who would you be, and what else would you see, if you removed the thought that’s worrying you?

9. Learn to be more present again. – Don’t avoid eye contact. Don’t hide behind gadgets. Smile often. Ask about people’s stories. Listen. You can’t connect with anyone, including yourself, unless you are undistracted and present. And you can’t be either of the two when you’re Facebooking, Instagramming or Snapchatting your life away on your smartphone. You just can’t! If you are constantly attached to your smartphone and only listening with your ears as your eyes check for the next social update, you are ripping yourself off of actually experiencing real relationships and real life. The same is true for texting too. Yes, someday you will be slapped with the reality of a missed MEMORY being far more unsettling than a missed TEXT!

10. Be strict about making time for the right people. – At some point, when it comes to relationships, you’ll just want to be around the few people who make you smile for all the right reasons. So be intentional about spending more quality time with those who help you love yourself more. And remember that nothing you can give them will ever be more appreciated than your sincere, focused attention—your full presence. Truly being with them, and listening without a clock and without anticipation of the next event, is the highest form of compliment.

(MARCANDANGEL).