Favorite Inspirational Quotes

You are what you repeatedly do.  Excellence is not an event - it is a habit.

Aristotle

Going on the theory (or fact for some) that practice makes perfect, then it seems practice also makes excellence.  However, we all know that there are some people, no matter how much they practice, they will never be perfect nor excellent.

Something could be said about that being because they do not practice the correct technique but errors over and over again.  I guess that would mean that as errors are what they constantly do, then that is what they are.  “You are what you repeatedly do.”  What do we do repeatedly?

I know some in sales and marketing say there are people who, though they have been in the field chronologically for 20 years, actually only have one year’s experience.  They keep making the same errors and mistakes of that first year over and over.  Maybe that means we should find new errors to make after learning from the old.

Back to the quote.

If I take this advice and I want to be excellent at something, then I just need to do that something over and over, correctly, until it becomes a habit of excellence.  This makes it especially important to learn to do things the correct way in an excellent manner.

Well, that’s the theory behind music lessons and practice.  I still remember being told to practice piano an hour a day outside of lessons.  Those who are really excellent at playing the piano do a lot more than one hour of practice a day.  That is their excellent habit.

Tags: habit