Steps To Excel

Assalamualaikum and hopefully everyone in great today :)

Today, my topic on my blog is about "Steps to Excellence". Well, as a student, all of us want to make our parents proud of us :D 
Here, i will share some steps to be an excellence.

1. Have a Strong Desire for Excellence 

Passion is the first but most important step to reaching excellence. Without passion, everything is done with only half heart and it will give you only half results.

So unless you have a strong desire to achieve your goal, you will never be able to achieve excellence in it.

2. Make Firm Blueprints

Every long term goal you make has to be supported by a solid plan. You can‰’t just make a goal to win a gold medal at the Olympics and then stop. You have to follow through and break that large long-term goal into smaller manageable chunks. So an example of that could be to go the gym every single day. And then you break that down to work out for 3 hours. And then break that down even more and so on.

3. Believe in Yourself
Self-confidence is single-handedly one of the most important things you can have in your life. If you believe that you can do something that alone gives enough strength to complete the task.

So if you combine your desire for success with your self-confidence and belief in yourself, you will light such a fire that you will have an unlimited drive, which will greatly help you achieve excellence.

4. Learn from the Best ( Role Models)

Rather than doing everything on your own. Try to learn from the best of people who have already done everything that you are doing now. These people who have already achieved success have built-in themselves all the skills and habits required to be excellent and successful and you can learn a lot from them.

5. Work really Hard
Success comes to those who put the work in. So using your strong drive put everything you got into your goal. The more you feed your goal with energy and love the more fruit it will give you.

Also the more focused you stay the better; people tend to work really hard but towards the wrong things. So if your goal is to become a good student and this means you have to also do good in physical education, don‰’t waste all of your energy towards running and working out.

Distribute your energy evenly and focus on the areas which are more important.

6. Never Give Up
No matter what bumps you face on your journey to excellence. Never give up. Just like goals break down any big problems you face into smaller more manageable chunks and get out there and achieve your goal.

Excellence can be obtained if you:

…care more than others think is wise;

…risk more than others think is safe;

…dream more than others think is practical;

…expect more than others think is possible.

"There is no failure except in no longer trying."

7. Be adaptable.

Adaptability is one of the essential pillars of excellence. As you may already know, change is inevitable – You can either cower in the face of change, learn to deal with it or even turn it into your favor. Be ready for change at all times and develop a friendly relationship with change.

This also applies to changing your plans. Don’t be overly attached to your plans and be prepared to alter them where needed. If there are certain things you are doing which are not very effective, be prepared to improvise them or drop them totally.

8. Focus your efforts.

Once you have finished trying out every single thing that you can see, now focus your efforts in the areas which bring you the most results. I subscribe to the 80-20 principle, where 20% of causes lead to 80% of effects you see in a situation. Focus your energy in the few key drivers of success which will lead you to the results you want. This way, you will utilize your efforts more effectively, which can be subsequently channeled into more value-added activities.

9. Go all out; Work really hard.

With every success, comes hard work. Without hard work, you cannot achieve results. People who try to find the easy way out are kidding themselves if they think they can achieve excellence without putting in hard work. If you observe around you, the people who seek out ‘get-rich-quick’ methods are also the very people who don’t achieve much in their lives. Hard work is the universal quality that will pay off in the long-term. Once you invest the due time and effort, the results will start coming in.

10. Do not limit yourself.

Don’t be afraid to try every single thing that might take you to your goal. In fact, be more concerned about the potential opportunities you might be missing out on when you don’t try something. Opening yourself up to possibilities will enable you to pick up on things which might be fundamental to your success.

11. Build concrete strategy & plans.

Every goal needs a proper strategy and plan for it to come to life. Setting a goal and not following through with proper planning is like getting into your car to drive to your destination without knowing how to get there or even having a driving license. Many people fail in their goals because they fail to follow-through with planning. The bigger your goals, the more important that you invest proper time in building your plan. I have written a 7-part Goal Achievement series on what it takes to successfully achieve goals, which includes how to devise your winning strategy, create a robust plan, execute it and review.

12. Benchmark against the best.

What is it you are working on? Who are the people who are the best in this area? What are the results they have achieved? Set your targets to the same level as their best results, or even higher if you are feeling up to it.

At the moment, I’m setting up my school of personal excellence for anyone who has a passion for personal excellence. My long-term vision for this school is to be as big as the Xavier’s School in X-Men. ;) (In fact, I have the picture of Xavier’s School up on my vision board since last year!) While this vision may seem far-fetched to many, it’s a vision which I’m working towards and one which I have absolutely no doubt will come to life given time and effort.