I<\/strong> Excellence is a state of mind, of being conscious, aware, open, ready to grow. As a consequence, the products of this state of mind have the rare quality of being special, unique, or simply (and powerfully) free of errors. These questions need to be answered, if one has to not only recognize it but also promote it.<\/p>\n Perhaps the single critical idea is the concept of \u201cmeaning\u201d. What is meaningful is intrinsically worth doing, in and of itself. What is not meaningful does not have within its womb this seed of excellence.<\/p>\n Meaning comes from that which I need most. My needs emerge from my need for self esteem, my need for uniqueness, my need for survival, my need for \u2018occupying myself\u2019, my need for satisfying my desires, my need for peace, my need for simply being, and so on.<\/p>\n All these needs manifest themselves in various socio cultural constructs such as a need for power, position, authority, expression, fame, etc.<\/p>\n Diverse are the needs of every person, and the whole of existence goes towards meeting this diversity of needs.<\/p>\n When the needs get more and more concentrated, (aggregated to be more precise) around one or the other socio-cultural desires, the level of motivation towards one goal to the exclusion of others being increases. The answer to this one question can be found on different planes of thinking, each more complete than the previous.<\/p>\n To a child everything is meaningful, and equally meaningless. A child will play with a toy and scream and shout if you take it away. The same child will after an instant just throw it away causelessly. As one grows older, the child begins to impose an \u201corder of things\u201d, a hierarchy of priorities which Maslow described. This then is the state of society at any point in time, each person carrying within him or her a wide range of diverse \u201cinternal\u201d needs manifesting themselves as focused or less focused socio-cultural desires or goals. The answer lies in a powerful but simple idea. In these \u2018successful\u2019 societies \u201cexcellence\u201d is not an adjective or a norm, it is a verb. Some societies promote the \u2018practice of excellence\u2019 while other societies don\u2019t.<\/p>\n Whenever or wherever people consciously undertake the practice of excellence, they naturally end up living consciously, in awareness, with an open mind. Most important they assign a special value or meaning to the \u2018idea of excellence\u2019 which is first borne out of practice and then results in greater efforts at practice.<\/p>\n Those who undertake the practice of excellence in any one endeavour will naturally find themselves approaching that \u201cstate of mind\u201d of special meaning and special effort in at least that one area. First and foremost, attention \u2013 in terms of time, effort, energy, money, or anything else that may be required as an ingredient for successful practice.<\/p>\n Second, concentration and discipline, the training and subordination of our various and diverse desires to that one goal or set of goals.<\/p>\n Third, the practice of commitment which involves persistence, developing the capacity to absorb failure, and a relentless willingness to learn and relearn what we think we know.<\/p>\n A society that first inculcates these practices as \u2018habits\u2019 and the cultural constructs that allow \u2018special meaning\u2019 to be added to \u2018quality\u2019 or excellent outcomes will naturally have more and more individuals grow into virtuous cycles or centres of excellence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Whenever or wherever people consciously undertake the practice of excellence, they naturally end up living consciously, in awareness, with an open mind. Most important they assign a special value or meaning to the \u2018idea of excellence\u2019 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/srinivasv.com\/mapsofbecoming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7399"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/srinivasv.com\/mapsofbecoming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/srinivasv.com\/mapsofbecoming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/srinivasv.com\/mapsofbecoming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/srinivasv.com\/mapsofbecoming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7399"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/srinivasv.com\/mapsofbecoming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9352,"href":"https:\/\/srinivasv.com\/mapsofbecoming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7399\/revisions\/9352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/srinivasv.com\/mapsofbecoming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/srinivasv.com\/mapsofbecoming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/srinivasv.com\/mapsofbecoming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/srinivasv.com\/mapsofbecoming\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWhat is Excellence?<\/p>\n
\nIn its wake it brings attitudes such as care, ownership, belonging, directed purposeful thinking, etc.<\/p>\n
\n
II<\/strong>
\nWhat brings about this state of mind? What are the conditions in which it flourishes? What are the primal causes?<\/p>\n
\n
III<\/strong>
\nSo the questions moves on to defining \u201cWhat is or should be meaningful to someone, and why?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n
IV<\/strong>
\nThis is true of all societies. Yet in some societies, excellence is more manifested and in others, less. Some cultures seem to promote economic or artistic excellence but others don\u2019t, why ?<\/p>\n
\n
V<\/strong>
\nWhat does the practice of excellence involve ?<\/p>\n