27 Principles for Reclaiming Excellence: A Manifesto
On why each and every one of us should fight for more excellence in our lives.
Things That Are Not True.
We are being sold a series of lies.
Over the last decade, countless influencers have seized the opportunity to exploit increasing interest in personal improvement for their own gain. The result is a tidal wave of people on the internet who reduce performance to monetizable clickbait, marketing gimmicks, hacks, secrets, and quick fixes—none of which actually work.
The diet gurus.
The optimization gurus.
The supplement gurus.
The 37-step morning routine gurus.
The turning of rest and recovery into an exhausting job gurus.
The posting of pictures of their six-pack gurus.
The posting pictures of their six packs from their cold-plunge gurus.
And on, and on, and on.
Taken together, it represents what I call pseudo-excellence: a whole bunch of elaborate kabuki masquerading as the real thing.
Pseudo-excellence has many negative repercussions, including the following:
People get caught hopping from trend to trend and fad to fad without making meaningful progress.
People hear the word “performance” or “excellence,” cringe, and say to themselves: That’s not for me because it is associated with all the junk above.
People come to believe that life is hard, so the only reasonable thing to do is to complain about everything always. (In certain circles, this is even how you gain status.)
People check out, surrender agency, and float along an algorithmic conveyor belt to nowhere.
Things That Are True.
Humans are a unique and incredible species. We are capable of terrible things. We are capable of awesome things. Look to history, and you’ll see examples of both.
Genuine excellence means involved engagement in something worthwhile that aligns with your values and goals. It is our birthright. We are wired to create, contribute, and grow.
Aspiring toward excellence fills you with deep satisfaction. Nobody can buy, influence, bribe, or authority their way to excellence. It must be earned.
The pursuit of excellence is not just for the elite or those who have impeccable genetics; it is for all of us.
When people are given opportunities to strive for excellence, they live their best lives, make their best contributions, and push the world forward on the axis of progress.
The pursuit of excellence gave us Mozart and Bach, Jordan and LeBron, Monet and Rothko, antibiotics and vaccines, sewage and sanitation, democracy and transplant surgery, electricity and air travel, and so many other awesome feats that make life better.
We need to reclaim genuine, heartfelt, humanistic excellence: in sport, in creativity, in science, in medicine, in business, in music, in the arts, in all areas of life that we care about.
Our future—both individually and collectively—depends on it.
Affirming the following beliefs and principles can help.
Beliefs and Principles.
We believe that caring is cool. There is nothing to celebrate about an attitude of nonchalance. It’s a cop-out. A protective mechanism. A way to avoid stepping into the arena and risking failure. There are things worth caring deeply about, and you should care deeply about them.
We believe you should never sacrifice your values. Your values are your North stars, the qualities toward which you aspire. Regardless of what you are pursuing, do it in a way that aligns with your values.
We believe the things you work on also work on you. You aren’t just shaping the table, manuscript, marathon, scientific discovery, canvas, or song. Those pursuits are also shaping you.
We believe in pursuing big goals but climbing where you are. Once you know what peak you’re aiming for, you’ve got to shift your attention to the day-to-day ascent; you’ve got to climb where your feet are. The bigger the goal, the smaller the steps.
We believe in embracing the process. Outcomes matter, but they are always the byproduct of a sound and attentive process. Focus on the process. Let the outcomes take care of themselves. Learn and adjust. Rinse and repeat.
We believe in prioritizing consistency over intensity. Anyone can crush themselves and have a heroic day, a heroic week, or maybe even a heroic year. But excellence is about playing the long game: the goal is to generate a heroic body of work. Some days will be great. Some days will be terrible. Most days will be somewhere in between. Become known for your consistency. Keep showing up
We believe in the law of compounding. Little by little it becomes a lot.
We believe that nothing great happens without focus. You’ve got to set aside time and space without distraction so the important projects in your life can receive your full attention.
We believe that you should use technology. And that technology should not use you. A good question to ask yourself regularly: Am I in charge of this technology, and is it helping me? Or is this technology in charge of me and is it hurting me?
We believe in the power of designing your environment and creating self-imposed constraints. Philosophers distinguish between two kinds of freedoms: Negative freedom is freedom from constraints, such as not having rules about what you eat, how you use your phone, or when you go to bed. Positive freedom is the freedom to live your best life. Prioritizing positive freedom often means sacrificing certain negative freedoms.
We believe that “balance,” at least as it has been popularized by the self-help industrial complex, is an illusion. You simply cannot do it all. Trying to is a surefire way to be miserable.
We believe in tradeoffs. We also believe in adjusting over time. Many of the best lives have a seasonality to them. You can emphasize different pursuits in different seasons of life.
We believe in keeping the main things the main things. Hacks, fads, and quick fixes have been cycling in and out since the beginning of time. In the fifth century BC, Herodotus searched for the Fountain of Youth as a way to live forever. Thousands of years later, we’re still searching. But there are no quick fixes or shortcuts.
We believe that the secret is there is no secret. The driving force of excellence is hard work done the right way with the right people at the right time. It’s often simple, but simple doesn’t mean easy.
We believe in discipline. Not the chest-thumping machismo performative variety, but the real thing: showing up and doing what you need to do, with care and integrity. Doing the hard thing today often makes tomorrow just a little easier.
We believe in renewal. Stress plus rest equals growth. If you never step away and allow your mind-body system to recover, then you’re guaranteed to stall out long before you reach your potential. It takes discipline to keep going. But it also takes discipline to rest.
We believe that confidence comes from evidence. If you want to believe in yourself, then you’ve got to give yourself evidence for that belief. You’ve got to put in the reps.
We believe in owning your seat. Do the training. Then have the courage to trust it.
We believe in patience. There is no such thing as an overnight breakthrough. Most good things take time. You can’t rush the process.
We believe in stick-to-itiveness. The rare quality of staying power in a world that is obsessed with instant gratification. Stick-to-itiveness leads to gumption: forward momentum you gain from repeated practice, paying close attention, hard work, and resting when necessary.
We believe in ritual and routine. This does not mean a series of 27 elaborate steps to start the day. It means having a few anchors to keep you grounded in an increasingly chaotic world. Your routine should work for you, not the other way around.
We believe that motivation follows action. You don’t always need to feel good to get going; sometimes you need to get going to give yourself a chance at feeling good.
We believe that curiosity is a powerful antidote to fear. Whether you play basketball or cello, repair cars or build tables, write books or coach teams, your craft can be a vessel for self-discovery. When you are driven by a genuine curiosity to see what’s possible, nothing can stop you.
We believe in resilience. Failure sucks. Failure hurts. But if you are going to explore your full potential, then failure is also inevitable. Trust that the love of the pursuit is big enough to hold the hurt of failure.
We believe in community. Every modern science and every ancient wisdom tradition tells us that the people with whom we surround ourselves shape us. Going at it alone will make you angry and resentful, irrespective of what the internet bros say. Find your people and work together. This is the way.
We believe that intensity and joy can coexist. One of the greatest joys is working toward your aspirations with great intensity.
We believe that excellence is an infinite game. The goal is the path, and the path is the goal. So much of success simply comes down to staying on it.
Obstacles and Traps.
There are obstacles and traps for which we must be on the lookout.
An endless deluge of digital distraction and slop.
Outsourcing meaningful endeavors, including our ability to think, to artificial intelligence.
Trading human relationships (messiness and imperfections included) for illusory relationships with servers and robots.
The temptation of a frictionless life filled with only convenience and ease.
The overlords and merchants of the attention economy are motivated not by humanistic aims but by profit (and narcissism). Far too often, their creations leave devastation and destruction in their wake.
Anyone or anything else that attempts to alienate us from ourselves and each other.
Conclusion.
Now more than ever, we need to reclaim excellence: the real, genuine, heartfelt, and humanistic variety.
We need to reclaim it as a personal aspiration.
We need to reclaim it as a cultural aspiration.
Reclaiming excellence will not happen from the top down. Nobody is going to wave a magic wand and do this for us. It will happen from the bottom up.
It will happen when we choose to unplug from the rage, gossip, performative nonsense, conspiracy theorists, and all the other grifters who pervade the internet (and increasingly public life).
It will happen when we exert our agency and prioritize lasting satisfaction, creation, and contribution over cheap thrills and fleeting pleasure.
The good news is that the way of excellence is not some far-off pipe dream. It is at our fingertips. It is ours to claim, model, and share.
When we reclaim excellence, we reclaim connection to each other, to ourselves, and to our humanity.
P.s., If you found today’s post valuable, you are going to love my new book, The Way of Excellence. It’s the culmination of my last decade of work—and it feels more timely than ever. The book is a big swing on genuine excellence, with fascinating research, inspiring stories, practical application, and examples from numerous crafts, from sport to business to the creative arts.
It comes out at the end of this month but if you pre-order now you’ll get it on your doorstep publication day, along with an incredible package of bonus materials, including a values and goal-setting exercise I use with my performance coaching clients, an interactive workbook to use in conjunction with the book, a 90-minute professionally produced masterclass, a reading list, and more.
Pre-order the book from Amazon, Bookshop, or Barnes and Noble
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book is preordered.
The perfect thing to read heading into the new year. The path to 2026 Excellence. 🙌🏻