What Does “Personal Excellence” Mean To You? [Survey]
by Celes | 
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Image © eleaf
In the past year, Personal Excellence has drawn readers from all around the world. Today we have 4,000 readers reading from over 200 countries, almost 4,000 subscribers to the RSS feed and email newsletter, and over 110,000 pageviews a month. All of us, as different as we may be (whether geographically, by race, culture, language or interests), are united by one common theme of excellence.
While all of us are drawn to the same desire for excellence, I’m curious as to what “Personal Excellence” means to you, the reader. I’ve done reader surveys in the past before, such as on symbolism of the Personal Excellence logo (follow-up post here), and received very interesting responses. I thought it’ll be great to have a reader survey on this, which will help me know you guys better. 
At the same time, it’ll also be fun for all of you to read answers from others. I’ve my own take and definition of “personal excellence”, which I share with all of you after the survey.
So, what does personal excellence mean to you? What does it mean to achieve personal excellence? Why even achieve personal excellence anyway?
Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments area below – I’ll love to hear what you think! Remember, there are no right or wrong answers, only what you feel is true for yourself
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| Filed in: Updates | Posted on May 26 2010 | |
It’s getting the utmost from myself. I feel like I’ve been living my whole life doing average. I want to maximize my potential and search other things I can do and areas I can excel with. And it helps me make my days exciting and that I have something to look forward to.
That’s excellent SKZY
Have you nailed down any areas you want to try out?
Yes, and still adding. Aftert I graduated college, two months ago and started working, I found that there are a lot of areas I can still explore than what I have learned from college. so yeah. I hope I can do well. xD
Personal excellence mean a lot for me. It is about the feeling of conducting the life correctly. To look back and feel good about it. To maximize opportunity/talent at hand and to say that even I could get back in time, I could not do it better than that. ; ) People would not be smart/healthy with lots of energy forever. All of those are borrowed and the responsibility of individual is to maximize their own resources for good feeling when looking back.
Your blog is the most organized blog I have ever seen and I still use it as reference/guideline.
I think it is individual duty to have “Reality check” (as Guy Kawasiki said) his/her own life for what are the missing part of his/her life for gap improvement and for the betterment of life.
Hey O, thanks a lot
I agree it’s our onus to do a “reality check” from time to time. Reviewing and reflecting are key to ensure we are on the right track and heading where we want to go.
Excellence is the quality of being outstanding or extremely good. In order to obtain it one must excel at something that is be exceptionally good in an activity or subject. ‘Personal’ means I take my own responsibility for the choices of these particular areas I want to excel at. That’s why for me personal excellence is doing something I enjoy my best.
You’ve put it very beautifully Mark
Thanks so much for sharing with us!
It’s striving to be the best person that you can become. And with that; the person YOU want to become. Not someone elses idea of who you should be. In the journey of finding yourself you begin to see that you already know yourself more than anyone else. With this knowledge comes success. You have already succeeded in being yourself. Which makes everything you desire possible. No one cant take that away from you. Now; is the only time you have. So use this moment to REmember who you are. And live this moment knowing that this is the only thing you’ve got. Permanence.
I love that Jace. Personal excellence is all about excelling in our own definition, not others definition. That’s the first step of conscious living – being conscious of who we are, what we want, so we live the lives of our own creation.
Personal Excellence is very important to me. It means using whatever abilities I have to do the best in everything that I am doing. Without trying my best, there would be regrets in future. So I do my best in everything which I take on. No regrets no matter what the outcome….
Thanks Lilian!
I totally second that – When we do our best, there’s no room for regrets 
That’s when we are truly living life to the fullest!
Excellence is a habit that works 99 times out of 100, be it in the spiritual, mental, physical or emotional domain. It is that which will bring satisfaction and delight in all these areas. The 1 time that it won’t work is when you have challenged the impossible. That one time only takes a little longer than you expect. It is that which will bring euphoric results, miracles, breakthroughs, awesomeness and genius to the fore.
Regards,
Dipal
Hey Dipal, since the 1 time just takes longer than expected, that would mean it works 100 out of 100 times, yeah?
Yes it does! Even more importantly, it satisfies you, allows you to think … “If I died trying to do this, I’d be lucky”…
cheers!
personal excellence means inspirations to me.
Personal excellence is the ability to always learn, grow, and be challenged. Excellence is not being perfect, as it’s more about being perfected….
Personal excellence to me means to do the best you can do, while having the most enjoyable time doing it, with the resources/circumstances you have. It means when you look back on your day, week, month or year, you feel and know you had the “best experience ever” based on your circumstances. It means you also feel and know what to do to improve your circumstances as well in order to have an even better “best experience ever” for the time to come. Finally, it is a uniquely “personal” experience that can only be evaluated and judged by you, that is only you know and feel if you are living a truely “excellent” life.
Personal excellence to me is achieving what you once thought was impossible. I completed a half marathon and I never in my wildest dreams thought that could ever happen in my lifetime. Goes to show that if you focus on something and have the will and determination, anything is possible.
I now have a love for marathon races (who knew?!) and plan to continue adding to my collection of medals.
“It’s never to late to become who you might have been.” – George Elliott.
This mindset can go through all aspects of life. I am now more motivated and inspired to tackle life’s challenges whether that be competing in races or in work, family, and relationships!
Nice one! Personal excellence it’s appreciating myself and being proud of myself
I like what Kasiwoot and JACE had to say. To me, it means to raise my standards continuously. It means to work on continuing and never ending improvement to develop my gifts and strengths, and to have a plan of action to replace poor habits with good ones. It also means identifying and pursuing my life mission, vision, goals, and values.
To me, personal excellence is something that no one else can define for me but myself. It’s not about the tangible results of my actions, like salary, gpa, number of wins, etc., even though I would like all of them to go up.
It’s about me knowing I did everything in my power to reach my fullest potential. If I can look back and say that I tried my hardest and did the best I could with the knowledge I was given, then that’s my personal excellence.
For example, I have gotten A’s in classes in which I barely studied. I’ve also gotten B’s in classes where I studied my butt off. Yet, in the end, I am more satisfied with the class in which I got a B than the class in which I got an A. I know I pushed myself past my limit in terms of studying, so whether I get an A, B, or C, it is outside of my control after I finish taking the test. If my efforts don’t translate onto paper, it sucks but I’ll be fine. I just have to revise my studying methods and repeat.
No regrets
Personal exellence could in other word be: be the best you can be. I like the thought of improving your way of living, thinking, and become the best you can be. (though there might not be a limit) Personally I hate the idea of becoming just another regular citizen and have a boring 9-5 job. (Though I am not saying every 9-5 job IS boring)
Why all of us should strive for this personal exellence is in my opinion very obvious, since we eventually will improve the quality of our own life and the lifes of those around us.
For me, Personal Excellence is living up to one’s full potential. It can be summed up more precisely by the greek word Arete.
On a side note, I once held a contest in where Litemind readers shared their best tips for Personal Excellence, so this might give you an idea on more people’s opinions:
66 Best Personal Excellence Tips
Cheers!
Hi Celes, personal excellence means being the best you can be and being happy. What more could we want in life? I think happiness is the meaning of life and believe everyone should focus on their own personal happiness. Thanks for asking:)
Knowing exactly what kind of person you want to be and achieving that
Personal excellence means for me being the best version of yourself, so you can experience life to the fullest. If staying in library all day and reading would make you experience life to the fullest, then that’s personal excellence. If traveling the world and being a digital nomad would make you experience life to the fullest, then that’s personal excellence.
The word “personal” is really heavy here, as you may see. Excellence is always personal, there is no “one size fits all” recipe for that :-)
Hey Celes!
Thanks for the invitation on Twitter:)
To me, personal excellence means doing the best you can and living your life to its full potential. Strive to live life the way you want it to, follow your passions and let your heart guide you in the choices you make. Personal excellence is not about money or material wealth, it is about inner wealth and happiness:)
Cheers
Diggy
Thanks for joining the conversation here Diggy!
I love your distinction between extrinsic wealth and intrinsic wealth. Our external reality reflect our internal reality – only when we achieve abundance on the inside, will everything flow into our lives 
Hi Celes,
To me Personal Excellence is to know myself and help myself to live life to the fullest every moment .
Thanks for sharing your life with us.
Thanks so much for joining us here Liz
Welcome to the community, and look forward to connecting with you 