Staying Hungry

One of the keys to sustained excellence is staying hungry.  Being driven to not only achieve excellence, but also to maintain excellence is a hallmark of those who accomplish great things.  We must never rest on our past successes, nor dwell on our past failings and misgivings.  We must always be looking forward.

To truly achieve excellence, you must first learn to master whatever it is you are doing.  This can usually only be done through hard work- and lots of it.  To the athlete who desires to rise to the top of his sport, many hours of practice must be put in to accomplish that goal.  The basketball player who is possessed of some talent, attends practice with his team, but does no extra work may perform adequately and even have the occasional stand-out performance.  It is the player that stays after the minimum team practice time has been fulfilled that goes on to develop a great career.  Putting in the time, energy, and effort to master your job is vitally important if you want to attain excellence.

Putting in the work to become excellent and achieving that goal in the short term, however, is not the sign of true greatness.  Continuing to put in that work to maintain and even improve your performance is the only way to achieve an excellent record.  Again, excellence is not a short-term or one time event; it is the continued achievement of a high standard.  How does one sustain the energy and effort it takes to pull this off?  He stays hungry. 

Paul admonishes us in Philippians 3 to "forget those things which are behind" and to "press toward the mark..."  This is an example of staying hungry.  Have you had past failures?  Forget about them, they are where they will always be- in the past!  Have you been successful before?  Forget about that too, because past success is not a guarantee of future achievement.  Stay hungry!  Constantly have your focus on what is right in front of you, and on what lies ahead.  This is the only way to achieve excellence.  Having a desire to be excellent must be the motor that will drive you to act and behave in ways that will result in your development of excellent habits.  Absent the desire to achieve excellence, a man becomes apathetic and lethargic.  These are not becoming qualities for a Christian to possess.  Strive to maintain high personal standards of excellence, and stay hungry to do and be better than you were yesterday.