Tag: excellence

Prime Time

I really enjoy listening to the speeches given by Deion Sanders, the former professional football and baseball player, and now head football coach of the Colorado Buffaloes, college football team. Deion has always been passionate, intense, and inspirational. He’s been an attention-seeking and an attention-getting character since he first started emerging as a big football star at Florida State University. He went on to mostly be known for his years playing in the NFL (while playing major league baseball in the off season), winning two Super Bowls during his career, and once being named “NFL Defensive Player of the Year.” Deion Sanders’ latest gig is being “Coach Prime”, the head football coach for the Buffaloes, for whom two of his sons play on the team. Yesterday, the Buffaloes lost to Stanford, 46-43 in double overtime. This happened despite a 29-0 Buffaloes lead at halftime. Needless to say, Coach Prime was not happy. Needless to say, Coach Prime hates to lose. Before I touch on the part of Coach Prime’s press conference which was held after the game- the part which really got me to thinking, I should mention that five hours ago, Coach Prime tweeted this: “Lord I thank u for everything. I’ve learned to accept the bad with the good because if it weren’t for the bad I wouldn’t know what Good is.” Four hours ago, a member of the Colorado sports press, Brian Howell tweeted this statement: “Side note: Before the season, a lot of people wondered how Deion Sanders would be after losses. I’ll say this: Win or lose, he’s been great with media after games. Clearly upset tonight but told us, “You deserve my best and I’m gonna try my best to give it to you.”

Clearly, at age 56, Deion Sanders seems to have matured a great deal, and he works to be an example for the youth whom he coaches. During the press conference, Deion was visibly disappointed and frustrated with how the game ended. He spoke a lot about complacency and how much he can’t stand complacency. This is how the Oxford Dictionary defines complacency: “a feeling of smug or uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one’s achievements.”

Here is the part of his conference that perked my ears up enough to really think about it and to write about it this morning:

“Make up your mind whether you’re in love with this game or you are in like with it. When you like it, that’s just a button you push. That’s what we do on social media. I, without a shadow of a doubt, am 100 percent in love with this game. When you love something you give to it unconditionally. You give it everything you got. Match me with my passion. Match me with my heart. Match me with my love. Match me with my consistency. . . .I love (the game) so much, but the game don’t even occupy the ability to love me back, that’s a strange love isn’t it?”

No, Deion, that’s not strange. That is the actual definition of true, unconditional love. I decided to use Deion’s speech for myself, for use in my own life. Perhaps you would want to join me in this little exercise? I have decided to list (privately) about five activities/occupations/roles in my life that I believe are the most important things to me. I am going to ask myself if I have grown complacent in any of these areas. I want to make sure that the people/places/things/actions which I am in love with, are getting my full passion, my heart, my love and my consistency. I don’t want to just smugly press “the like button” on the things which mean the most to me. That’s not living fully. That’s not living passionately. That’s not living with the unconditional love which is given to us freely, with the gift of life. Thank you, Coach Prime. I got the message. And it’s a beautiful message and not strange at all.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Women of Excellence

The good news is that my daughter’s COVID test was negative yesterday. We all sighed a big sigh of relief. She works at a local credit union. It started as a summer internship and they asked her to stay on and work part-time during the school year, which happens to be her senior year of high school. I was hesitant about this, for time management reasons, but my daughter loves working there, so my husband and I acquiesced. Recently, one of my daughter’s female managers got promoted, and she was moving to a different location. Upon leaving, the manager wrote a hand written thank you note to my daughter, in which she wrote that my daughter is “a woman of excellence.” I love that terminology, and this is not just because I am a proud mama. One, I love women who support and mentor other women. This is a rarer phenomenon than it should be. Second, I have honestly never seen that terminology in writing before. “A woman of excellence.” What does that mean? I want to be one. I want to be called “a woman of excellence.” I want to believe that I am “a woman of excellence.”

I looked up the word “excellence” in the dictionary. It means “the quality of being outstanding/extremely good”. That’s pretty general, right? I think that we all have things that we are extremely good at, and we all have areas that we could probably work on. Maybe we don’t care enough about certain traits, to work hard enough to become excellent at them. There are certain areas that I do believe that I am “a woman of excellence” and then there are other things in my life that I believe that I am more likely to be called “a woman of sub-standards.” To be “a woman of excellence”, does that mean you have to be good at everything? That feels like a lot of undue stress and pressure, and perhaps, a lesson in frustration and futility. Perhaps being “a woman of excellence” means knowing yourself, knowing your values, and your priorities, and your purposes, and being excellent at these things. I’m not really sure. All that I know is that I would like to be one. I would like to be known as “a woman of excellence.” And I also know that I am grateful that another woman acknowledged and appreciated this quality of excellence in my daughter, besides just her adoring mother. That was an excellent thing for that woman to do, for a young woman coming up in the world behind her. And this vital encouragement is something that all of us “women of excellence” are more than capable to do, for the future generations of excellent women, for whom we are paving the way. If this encouragement and inspiration for young women is the only area that we choose to be excellent at, I am convinced that this will be more than enough.

“Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence.” – Anonymous (probably written by an anonymous person of excellence and humility)

“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” – Vince Lombardi

“Excellence is not a skill. It’s an attitude.” – Ralph Marston

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.