Last month I posted about Organizational Excellence, provided some examples of who has achieved it, and challenged my readers to define how they can personally support the “journey”.

OK, so that makes me think about Personal Excellence.  Wow. That’s a loaded concept.  It’s embedded in many things – your view of life, of work, of yourself, and of your WHY.

To a degree, I feel someone needs to define (even loosely) who they are as a person and what they stand for.  All “measurements” require some form of baseline to compare against.

But … we are complex beings.  We can have excellence in some areas and be woefully short in others. Is there an overall “score” for that?  Adding more complexity, we may place different weight or emphasis on some areas over others.

Thanksgiving is next week. Most people will use the holiday (and the season) to reflect more deeply on what they are thankful for. 

I’ve spoken about this in numerous posts over the last two years. In short, I am: 

• Grateful to be alive (I’m now 8 ½ years with cancerous tumor wrapped around the Aorta) 
• Grateful for my wife and family (not just caretakers, but love and comfort) 
• Grateful to have a job I love (my own business). Note: some clients are better than others. 
• Grateful to be safe   
• Grateful to have co-workers/business partners who I really like and trust 
• Grateful for the environment and its beauty (especially during this fall season) 
• Grateful to be fully immersed in two different cultures (white and Latino) 
• Any many more 

How about you? 

We don’t get through life alone. 

We have parents, teachers, bosses, (for me) the military, and others that play a more formal role. 

But we also have those that “take us under their wing”. 

Sometimes we seek it; other times they find us. 

I’m not going to debate the terms mentor (longer-term, less outcome-based) vs. coach here. 

It used to be that we could point to one person as our mentor. 

Over the past 20 – 30 years it’s become common to have multiple mentors that help us in different ways. The concept of reverse mentoring is now pretty commonplace.