It is only  when we explore these recurring patterns of thoughts, feelings, behaviors that we begin to understand what it is we are here to learn and accomplish.  In these quiet moments of reflection, each one of us understands two important elements of a life well-lived:  our purpose and our potential.

For most of my life, I have been fascinated by the pursuit of excellence.  High ideals and standards thrill me.  These were,  in fact, the very reasons that attracted me to Tri-Delta in the first place. Thirty-one years later, though I still hold firmly to these principles,  I understand very clearly when they apply and when they do not.  It took some living to make that distinction.

Like so many  women, I got the pursuit of excellence mixed up with a quest for perfection.  For much of my life, I thought they were the same thing.  Looking back, I can see how the misunderstanding occurred.

Early on, I discovered a strategy that allowed me to excel.  This winning approach always required extreme levels of both discipline and focus that, when consistently applied, met with an outstanding outcome, usually  reinforced with praise, recognition and reinforcement.  I repeated this strategy with increasing levels of  success, again and again. And though  it benefited me greatly when it applied to my academic and professional  achievements, somewhere along the line I began applying the perfection ideal to areas of my life where it didn’t make any sense. Perfection as a goal or a way of being started in my teens with my personal  quest to a achieve the thin ideal.  Later, it progressed to other self-imposed standards that defined success:  being the perfect friend, the perfect daughter, the perfect hostess, the perfect mother. The list of roles that required perfection knew no bounds.  Without even knowing it, this approach had become a self-imposed lifestyle, applying to subjects from magnificent to mundane.

Herein lies the problem: There is no such state of being. There is no such standard.   We waste valuable time and energy because it is an ideal we can never live into or up to.  If anything, we become something we never intended to be  at all: alternatively self-absorbed, exhausted and disappointed.  It’s a terrible combination and the exact opposite of what we wanted to be in the first place: the best version of ourselves possible.

So what has been the life lesson? Pursue excellence but only in clearly defined areas of your life.  Make sure there are measurable positive outcomes in place that will let you know if you achieved that which you set out to accomplish.  It’s important that those benchmarks can be linked to the growth and development of yourself, of others or for causes you believe in.  If  what you strive for  has the potential to make a difference in the life of another human being , pursue it with everything you’ve got.  I have learned that when you begin to live outside yourself, that is the very moment when  you truly understand what it means to live into your full potential.  The pursuit of excellence and the acceptance of imperfection can co-exist.  They are, in fact, a much more effective and dynamic duo in helping anyone create a life of meaningful engagement and purpose. I encourage you to actively invite the participation of both of these elements in your life. You’ll be better for it and so will everything and everyone you touch. Carpe diem!

The Guest Experience

Like Tri-Delta, The Guest Experience’s mission is to mentor individuals to live into their full potential, providing innovative opportunities for personal growth.  We are particularly passionate about assisting students in the defining years from middle school through college. We know that identifying innate talent at an early age and creating opportunities for students to express those strengths is the way to promote the development of tomorrow’s leaders. As a channel partner to Talent Plus®, a world-renowned global authority on The Science of Talent®, The Guest Experience is uniquely able to bring the positive performance outcomes of talent identification and development from the corporate world to students.  Using each individual’s talents as a blueprint for success, students are better able to create a vision for the future while feeling a greater sense of their unique mission, purpose and ability to make a difference in the communities they touch.

As a proud supporter of the Fat-Talk-Free Week and Reflections program, Heidi Guest, Founder of The Guest Experience, will donate 25% of the student talent assessment service, or $75.00, in your name, directly to Delta Delta Delta.  For more information on the Student Talent Discovery Interview please visit them at: http://www.guest-experience.com/private-mentoring/

When you contact us, simply share that you are a Friend of Tri-Delta.