Creating A Life Of Excellence - Ben Bergeron | Modern Wisdom Podcast 295

There's a level above the extreme realist, which is what I call the curious competitor, which they're actually seeking out adversity. They're seeking out challenges, they're seeking out hardship, they're seeking out the hard conversations, they're seeking out the discipline, because they know it's only through those actions that they forge their character.

(wind blowing) Mr. Ben Bergeron, welcome to the show.

Hi, Chris. Glad to be here.

I'm really happy to have you here, man. It's been a long, a long time planning. Very glad that we finally got to sit down.

Well, that's 'cause you were traveling the world.

And-

It, it's hard to get you to sit, settle down and-

Yeah.

... from your adventures.

That's true. Dubai was, Dubai was fun briefly. Uh, today, I want to dig into your principles for excellence. This is like your, your specialist subject, right?

Uh, I don't think I'm a specialist at anything. I'm a generalist, I would say. Yeah. (laughs) And, and, and, uh, and excellence, I don't think... Uh, it's like an oxymoron, right? Like, you can't be a specialist in excellence 'cause it's so elusive. It's like it... That's why it's a, it's... The idea is, like, to chase it. It's not to own it. Like, you can't... You're not gonna get there. So... At least, I'm not there. (laughs)

(laughs)

All right. What's... So, what does excellence mean to you? Like, what is it? Yeah. It's a, um, it's a good question. And I, I, you know, in real time, I'm going through my head right now. I was like, "You should have a good answer for this," and I don't. (laughs) It's like I, I wrote a book called Chasing Excellence, and you ask what, "What is excellence?" It's, "Ah, wow, that's, yeah, something I should have an answer to."

(laughs)

But really, it's, um, it's, it's a catchall term for, um, greatness. It's a term for, um, achieving what you want to achieve. It's life on your terms. It's, uh, world-class. It's, um, um, being incredibly proud of something. Um, and I think that it's, it's supposed to be. Um, like, yeah, you could put all these, like, what is, you know... Um, you know, it goes from the spectrum of, like, world-class to, like, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, you know? A slang word to whatever you... It means whatever you want it to mean. To me, though, when I say the word excellence, it, it means, um, like, the best of your ability. That's what it really means. It's like... And that's why it's about chasing that, 'cause you're never... You know, call it maximizing your potential, if you want to, which is a complete unknown. No one knows how much potential they have or what they're a- actually capable of. And you could also argue that people, like, every now and then exceed their potential in some extenu- i- you know, e- extraordinary e- circumstances. People actually perform better than they are capable of because they get, um, whatever these magical powers are that people can lift a car off a, off a child, whatever it might be. Or, um, you know, there's these kind of moments that people have where they get to these incredibly deep flow states where, um, they, they, they magnify their own abilities by twofold, whatever it might be. So, I'm not so interested in the definition of what excellence is. I'm more interested in what are the practices that we should put into our everyday lives to get as close to whatever that term might be as possible. Because whether it's fulfillment, whether it's success on your terms or success on society's terms, whether it's winning, whether it's, um, um, freedom, whether it's, uh, the disciplined pursuit of less, whether it's... It's kind of like, it's up for you to decide what excellence is, and then the pursuit of that is fairly consistent across all those different, different domains, right? It's, it's... I'm not writing anything that... Anybody that's b- kind of dabbled in this world, like, I'm not doing anything unique. I'm just putting it through the prism of a coach. That's it. Like, I'm taking the same things that have been talked about for years, whether you talk about it from the, the early Stoics to the monks, to the, um, Abraham Lincoln, to the Ryan Holidays, to the James Clears, to the Stephen Coveys, to the... It's all, like, the, the same, um, principles put into action. It's just, I'm putting them through my own, like, little prism and the things that I've found worked. And, um, I'm learning a lot more than... (laughs) You know, continually, and, you know, when I wrote the book, I don't even know when, I guess it was 2016, and that's five years ago. There's a lot of things in the book that I'm like, I, I, I'm not like, "Damn, I wish I didn't write that," but it's, I, like, I don't agree with it anymore. You know, there's some interesting things that I've, like, I've just changed perspective on.