“I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.” — Duke Ellington

I found myself playing catch-up yesterday. Dropped in a room full of hustlers and hard chargers, you either step up or fall back. I was inspired by what was possible but apprehensive about the leap. And that’s exactly why I was there. Who wants to walk into a room and know they’re the smartest one in it? We are the average of the people we associate with, so make it a stretch towards excellence instead of a settle into the abyss.

We all have the same amount of time to work with. We ought to ask ourselves more often, what are we doing with it? Finding people who challenge us to raise our own standard is the path to personal excellence (Arete) in whatever it is we choose to do is the most effective way I know of to get out of our own head and get moving. Whatever brought us to today set us up with a certain amount of skill, knowledge and discipline. We can either wallow in what we haven’t got yet or start writing the script for who we’re going to be. Decide what to be and go be it already.

We have a short time horizon in front of us with which to do something, so why not create something exceptional? But even a short time horizon seems like plenty of time if we don’t pay attention. There’s no time for pouting about what might have been in our lives, or for any unproductive emotion at all really. Today is our day. We must utilize all of our available energy to make our leap now.