Sev­eral years ago a client asked me to deliver a speech on “The Essence of Excel­lence.” I won’t drag you through the entire process, but I spent weeks re-reading books from my library, call­ing CEOs and college/university Pres­i­dents and ask­ing every­one I could get to talk to: What is excel­lence to you?

In the end it came down to three key watchwords…

FOCUS: To be truly excel­lent at any­thing you must have an incred­i­bly clear def­i­n­i­tion of what excel­lence is to you, what it will look like in your life and how you will mea­sure it. I call this your “Per­sonal Phi­los­o­phy of Excel­lence.” Once you have thought­fully cre­ated your own per­sonal phi­los­o­phy of excel­lence you must then focus on it intensely, day in and day out, always keep­ing a clear pic­ture of specif­i­cally what you must do to achieve the level of excel­lence you hon­estly want in your life.

DISCIPLINE: Once you have deter­mined what excel­lence looks like to you and cre­ated a plan to move your life in that direc­tion, you must then exhibit a level of dis­ci­pline that most peo­ple are unwill­ing to put forth. Lots of peo­ple talk about excel­lence, many say they want to be more effec­tive, suc­cess­ful, hap­pier, more joy­ful… but is the rare per­son who applies con­sis­tent dis­ci­pline in order to turn their plan… into reality.

ACTION: The amount of suc­cess you achieve in your life is directly pro­por­tional to the amount of action you apply to stay­ing dis­ci­plined around your per­sonal phi­los­o­phy of excel­lence. Not quite clear on what excel­lence and suc­cess looks like to you? Or, you know exactly what you want but you’re not very dis­ci­plined about pur­su­ing it? Or per­haps you really under­stand what level of excel­lence you want to achieve, and you’re very dis­ci­plined, but you just don’t apply much action to your phi­los­o­phy? The out­come is medi­oc­rity, and we have a say­ing in my firm: ” The minute you start accept­ing medi­oc­rity in your life, you become a mag­net for medi­oc­rity in your life.”

The truth is; the process to achieve excel­lence is not that com­pli­cated if you sim­ply apply focus, dis­ci­pline and mas­sive action. Of course, the same could be said for win­ning an Olympic gold medal in the 100 yard dash; Run really fast — faster than every­one else!

by John Spence

• A Damn: “Life is a dar­ing adven­ture – or noth­ing at all” ~ Helen Keller
   
• Help: to any­one you can offer it to.
   
• LOVE: to your­self first… then to as many oth­ers as pos­si­ble – you have an end­less sup­ply!
   
• Respect: because EVERYONE is wor­thy of it.
   
• Hugs: as long as HR does not have a rule against it – ugh!
   
• Freely of your best ideas: the future will be unlocked through col­lab­o­ra­tive cre­ativ­ity.
   
• Advice: when it is asked for… and then… care­fully!
   
• Advice: some­times – only some­times – when it is NOT asked for… and then even MORE care­fully!!
   
• Men­tor­ing: help oth­ers to avoid some of the mis­take you have made.
   
• Gen­er­ously: to a char­ity you are truly pas­sion­ate about.
   
• Time: to peo­ple who will not waste it.
   
• Wis­dom: to those who love you and will lis­ten.
   
• Your­self a break: you are not sup­posed to be per­fect – let that go.
   
• Praise and thanks: to every­one – often!!
   
• 100% of your per­sonal effort: life is not a dress rehearsal.
   
• A smile: pass along some warmth and joy to oth­ers.
   
• Under­stand­ing: remem­ber that every­one you meet is fight­ing a mighty bat­tle.
   
•  Give, give, give and give some more. Embrace an abun­dance men­tal­ity by under­stand­ing deeply that if you just help enough other peo­ple get what they need – you will get every­thing you need.

I promise this works – I GIVE you my word!

Now… would you like to give me some addi­tional things to add to my list?

by John Spence

My post this month will likely be dif­fer­ent than the other authors here at Jun­gle of Life, because I am going to be a cham­pion for mas­sive over­con­sump­tion!! That’s right, I am going to encour­age you to be a glut­ton, a pig, an absolute and total over­con­sump­tion freak for… learning.

If you were to look at learn­ing as “food” for the brain, the major­ity of peo­ple in busi­ness today would be dying of star­va­tion. I recently saw sta­tis­tic that said the aver­age busi­ness per­son reads 1.5 business-related books per year!!  Here is a star­tling fact: if you were to read just one busi­ness book every two months – six busi­ness books a year – you would be in the top one per­cent of self-learners and Amer­ica. If you were to read one busi­ness book every month – 12 books a year – you would be in the top one per­cent of self-learners on the face of the earth.

So here’s my rec­om­men­da­tion to you: become an obscene over-consumer of qual­ity learn­ing. Ded­i­cate your­self to read­ing at least one busi­ness book every month, go and watch the videos on Ted.com and Big Think, lis­ten to audio books, get all the free pod­casts and audio down­loads from iTunes, read a few indus­try mag­a­zines and check out a few blogs every month – month after month – with­out fail. If you will do this, I will absolutely guar­an­tee that in five years you will built a base of knowl­edge, ideas and infor­ma­tion that will dra­mat­i­cally increase your value in the marketplace.

How can I state with this with such cer­tainty? Well, I have read a min­i­mum of 100 to 120 busi­ness books a year, every year since 1989 and lis­tened to an addi­tional 30 to 50 each year as well. I also read nearly a dozen busi­ness related mag­a­zines every month and spend at least one hour a day read­ing blogs or watch­ing videos from the top busi­ness web­sites on the web.

How did this work out for me?

In early 2011 I was rec­og­nized as one of the top 100 busi­ness thought lead­ers in Amer­ica. Now I tell you this not to impress you, but to impress upon you this: I’m not really very smart, I’m just very, very focused. I under­stood a long time ago that employers/clients pay for ideas, strate­gies, and infor­ma­tion that will help them grow their busi­ness and gen­er­ate more prof­its. The more high-quality ideas and infor­ma­tion you have – the more valu­able you are in the mar­ket­place – it is just that simple. 

So pick up a book, lis­ten to an audio book, peruse a few dozen web­sites and begin a steady diet of mas­sive over-consumption of the best infor­ma­tion you can put in your brain.

by John Spence

Right now many of us are faced with mas­sive amounts of change in our careers. Lay­offs, down­siz­ing, off-shoring, reduc­tions, bud­get cuts… It can be over­whelm­ing. Although there are many fac­tors that go into deal­ing well with change, I’d like to focus on two spe­cific issues that I feel have the biggest impact in a person’s abil­ity to effec­tively adapt to change.

1. Face the hard facts

I see a lot of pain cre­ated in people’s lives when they fight the inevitable. Unwill­ing to accept the changes that are thrust upon them, they com­plain, they stress, they fight and strug­gle, they get depressed and they get beaten down. Although it is exceed­ingly dif­fi­cult to do it, the best way to deal with change is to sim­ply accept it and begin adapt­ing to the new nor­mal.  I do a lot of work in the health­care indus­try, a sec­tor of our econ­omy that is under­go­ing gut-wrenching and incred­i­bly over­whelm­ing changes. Some of my health care clients are see­ing their entire orga­ni­za­tions turned upside down and their employ­ees nearly par­a­lyzed with fear and unwill­ing­ness to accept the changes.  Bud­gets have been slashed, patient sat­is­fac­tion is drop­ping, and employee sat­is­fac­tion is nonex­is­tent.  Yet oth­ers are adapt­ing to the change mag­nif­i­cently, because they have instilled in their work­force to clear con­cept that things are never going back to the way they used to be – these changes are unas­sail­able – so don’t even try to resist!  Instead they help their peo­ple learn to spend all of their energy and emo­tion on adapt­ing to the changes and find­ing a way to make things as good as they pos­si­bly can even in the face of incred­i­ble chal­lenges.  It works exactly the same with you in your career; you can fight it and be mis­er­able, or accept that change is inevitable and become a mas­ter of change.

2. Fig­ure out what you can control

One of the major fac­tors that makes change so dif­fi­cult is that it gives peo­ple a feel­ing of help­less­ness.  One day every­thing seems fine, and then the next day some­one four lev­els up in the orga­ni­za­tion makes a change that has a ter­ri­ble neg­a­tive impact on you.  Again, I see great pain cre­ated in people’s lives when they spend a sig­nif­i­cant amount of their time wor­ry­ing, com­plain­ing, fight­ing and get­ting highly stressed over sit­u­a­tions that are com­pletely out of their con­trol. The best tech­nique I know to deal with this issue is to sit down and write out a long list of all the things that are giv­ing you stress and anx­i­ety in your life.  Then take a long hard look at each of them and decide whether you CAN con­trol or CANNOT con­trol this par­tic­u­lar item.  If you can­not con­trol it, then you must learn to have the dis­ci­pline and courage to com­pletely let go of it.  Do not obsess about it, do not think too much about it, do not worry too much about it – sim­ply keep telling your­self this is not some­thing you can really do any­thing about – so you should let go of it and put it out of your mind.  How do you put it out of your mind?  By then look­ing at the other list of items that you can con­trol – and tak­ing mas­sive con­trol of those.  Stress­ing your­self to death about the econ­omy, pol­i­tics, the ozone layer, the weather, taxes, other people’s opin­ions of you… this will only drive you crazy. Instead take all of that emo­tional energy and focus intently on the areas of your life where you have control.

If you will fol­low these two pieces of advice you should become much more adept at deal­ing effec­tively with change.

by John Spence