FEED: You try to help your clients work toward excellence. But what is ‘excellence’?
EDDIE O’CONNOR: To tell another embarrassing personal story, excellence used to be a dangerous thing for me. I was really burdened with an achievement orientation. Now, it did kind of work – I got my PhD, I published, my first job was being a chief psychologist, and all of that fed my ego. I’ve met a lot of athletes like that, too. But no matter what they did, they were never satisfied. The best they could actually feel when they won was relief. I used to think the definition of excellence was obvious: ‘Beat everybody else.’ I had on my business card, “Because average isn’t good enough.” I loved that tagline! But when I showed it to some people at the hospital where I was working, the marketing person in particular had the most disgusted look on her face. I’m like, “What?You gotta work, you gotta go get it!” Now I see what a horrible message that is, because what is excellence? The best in the world are pretty unbalanced. I’m not speaking bad of it, it’s just a fact.We have to make choices. Excellence can mean you beat everybody else. But excellence can also be personally defined. Did you reach as far as you wanted to go? Maybe your definition of excellence is a personal best in a 5K run? And that’s excellent, because that’s as far as you want to go. Sometimes excellence is a well-balanced life. My definition of excellence for my clients is: ‘What would make a really wonderful life?’ And if you want to win a championship, there are going to be sacrifices. If you want a well-balanced life, then you’re also going to have to make sacrifices, maybe in the level of excellence in each individual area.
“I USEDTOTHINKTHE DEFINITION OF EXCELLENCE WAS OBVIOUS: ‘BEAT EVERYBODY ELSE’”
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