Excellence , livre ebook

Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) PTE LTD - Pincott (Editor) J.

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

123 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Informations

Publié par	Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) PTE LTD
Date de parution	01 mai 2007
Nombre de lectures	2
EAN13	9789814312127
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

EXCELLENCE
INSPIRATION FOR ACHIEVING YOUR PERSONAL BEST
EXCELLENCE

EDITED BY J. PINCOTT
Copyright 2007 J. Pincott
First published in 2007 by:
Marshall Cavendish Limited 119 Wardour Street London W1F 0UW United Kingdom T: +44 (0)20 7565 6000 F: +44 (0)20 7734 6221 sales@marshallcavendish.co.uk
and
Cyan Communications Limited 119 Wardour Street London W1F 0UW United Kingdom T: +44 (0)20 7565 6120 sales@cyanbooks.com www.cyanbooks.com
The right of J. Pincott to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including photocopying, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the rights holders, application for which must be made to the publisher.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
eISBN-13 978-9-814312-12-7 ISBN-10 1-904879-73-X
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
To Peter
Contents
INTRODUCTION
BEING AMBITIOUS
Have a goal
Set your ambitions high
Never settle
BEING COMMUNICATIVE
Be personable
Be a leader
Grab them in the gut
Know the value of small, personal gestures
Get others to help you
Network
BEING CONFIDENT
Stand on your own
Find role models
Acknowledge your fears
Cultivate confidence in others
BEING CREATIVE
Be curious
Cross-pollinate
Learn from the creative process
Look at the familiar in a different way
BEING DISCIPLINED
Be your own master
Reduce bad habits
Use props to help discipline yourself
Commit to a routine
Control your emotions
Make a lifelong commitment
BEING ETHICAL
Have a moral vision
Promote the well-being of others
Treat others as you want to be treated
Remember that those who do good, do well
BEING FLEXIBLE
Invite surprise
Test your own convictions
Evolve and adapt
BEING HUMBLE
Fight your ego
Never presume
Don t fall for flattery
BEING INCISIVE
Act as if you re sure even when you re not
Compartmentalize
BEING INTUITIVE
Trust the inner voice
Follow your own instincts
BEING LIKED AND LOVED
Find people to trust
Have a loving companion
Make friends
Be there for others
BEING MEANINGFUL
Embrace a cause
Construct meaning from experience
Infuse your work with meaning
Don t sell out
BEING PASSIONATE
Pick your passion
Build a career on passion
Remember money isn t everything
BEING PATIENT
Remember that it all takes time
BEING PERSISTENT
Press on
Develop stamina
Always be striving for something
Focus
BEING PROACTIVE
Look beyond the present
Imagine the future
Learn from the past
BEING RESILIENT
Grow a thick skin
Learn from your mistakes
Know what heals you
Move on
BEING RESPECTED
Set high standards
Cultivate a public image
Respect others
BEING A RISK-TAKER
Accept uncertainty
Regard life as an experiment
Choose action over inaction
Minimize risks
BEING UNIQUE
Don t be afraid to be different
Find a niche
Try a new approach
BEING WORLDLY
Be a lifelong learner
Experience the world firsthand
Understand current events
SELECTED SOURCES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Introduction
The philosopher Immanuel Kant once said, All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?
Throughout most of human history, the practical answers to these questions depended on the circumstances of birth: class, race, religion, gender, and geographical location. For most people, personal achievement was unthinkable. They were resigned to know little and hope less, and there wasn t much they could do about it.
Times have changed.
Today, throughout much of the world, the answers to Kant s questions may be, anything and everything. Anyone has the opportunity to gain knowledge. Anyone may strive to do meaningful work. Anyone may achieve success and fulfillment. In short, anyone may hope to live a life of excellence.
This book is a testament to that goal.
Excellence is a collection of more than 300 insights from remarkable people around the world, throughout all periods of history, and in all fields. Here are CEOs, popes, poets, actors, directors, entrepreneurs, politicians, and others who have made it to the top of their respective professions and have advice to share. Drawing on interviews, autobiographical writings, essays, broadcasts, and other sources, I attempt to get at the heart of what they consider excellence. In the telling are answers to useful questions: How does one actually achieve excellence? What sort of mindset is required? Who truly leads a life of excellence? What is excellence, anyway?
There are some surprises. Although ambition, persistence, resilience, and risk-taking are the foundation of excellence, other virtues are necessary. True excellence-which goes beyond mere financial and career success-requires you also to be ethical, communicative, worldly, meaningful, and humble. These themes and others are explored here.
Read Excellence for inspiration. Flip through the excerpts at your leisure. And as you read, try to apply the famous Kantian musings to your own pursuit of excellence: What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope?
J. Pincott New York

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
Aristotle
BEING AMBITIOUS
Excellence depends on ambition, the will to do well. Ambition motivates you to constantly challenge yourself. It s the drive that helps you realize your dream. Have grand expectations-even immodestly high ones-and believe in them. Only when ambition prevails over inhibition is excellence truly possible.

Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.
Pat Riley, National Basketball Association coach
High expectations are the key to everything.
Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart
It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us ...
Isaac D Israeli, writer
... The world is your oyster ... I grew up thinking that despite the obstacles presented by the swine, I would be successful no matter what I did.
Hunter S. Thompson, writer

Have a goal
What is your greatest vision of yourself? In five years? Ten years? Twenty? Forty?
Vision is perhaps our greatest strength ... it has kept us alive to the power and continuity of thought through the centuries, it makes us peer into the future and lends shape to the unknown.
Li Ka Shing, chairman of Cheung Kong (Holdings) Limited and Hutchison Whampoa Limited
Ask yourself these questions and answer them honestly: What do you want? And how will you know when you get it?
People really do have their own solutions. The problem is, either they don t know how to discover them, or they avoid discovering them. But if you want to come up with good decisions for your work and your life, simply ask those two questions-because it all comes down to very simple things.
Richard Leider, author, speaker, and counselor
The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose.
Ayn Rand, writer and philosopher
It was my life s ambition to see a book I had written on a shelf in a bookshop. Everything that has happened since has been extraordinary and wonderful, but the mere fact of being able to say I was a published author was the fulfillment of a dream I had had since I was a very small child.
J. K. Rowling, writer
You need to develop a very clear picture in your mind of how you want and expect to work and live ... The more clarity you bring to the decision, the better the decision will be.
Several years ago, I worked with a man who came to a very clear picture of what he wanted in his life: He wanted to own a sports team. Once that became clear, he worked out, step by step, what it would take to reach that goal: To own a sports team, I have to amass great wealth. To do that, I have to be an entrepreneur. To do that, I have to learn about running a business-and it needs to be in an industry where there s a great deal of upside potential. As he worked out the logic, it not only made a lot of sense, it also helped guide his decisions.
James Waldroop, management consultant and co-founder of Peregrine Partners
People ask how can a Jewish kid from the Bronx do preppy clothes? Does it have to do with class and money? No. It has to do with dreams.
Ralph Lauren, designer
Set your ambitions high
The higher your expectations, the greater your chances of excellence in whatever you set out to do.
You know the story of the farmer who in his backyard had chicken, and then he had a chicken that was a little odd looking, but he was a chicken. It behaved like a chicken. It was pecking away like other chickens. It didn t know that there was a blue sky overhead and a glorious sunshine until someone who was knowledgeable in these things came along and said to the farmer, Hey, that s no chicken. That s an eagle. Then the farmer said, Um, um, no, no, no, no man. That s a chicken; it behaves like a chicken.
And the man said no; give it to me please. And he gave it to this knowledgeable man. And this man took this strange looking chicken and climbed the mountain and waited until sunrise. And then he turned this strange looking chicken towards the sun and said, Eagle, fly, eagle. And the strange looking chicken shook itself, spread