8 Timeless Tips To Achieve Excellence in Life

Excellence in life

Success. Growth. Abundance. Results. Excellence.

These are things we set out to achieve in life. Whether it is at work, in our relationships, with our health, in our fitness regime, or with our friends, we do our best to achieve peak results. We want to achieve excellence in life.

Like you, I’m a passionate advocate for excellence. I love being the best I can be and being the best at what I do. You know the feeling of satisfaction when you achieve something you set out to accomplish? I feel that as well. It reminds me that as long as we set out to achieve something, we will achieve it.

After years of pursuing and studying excellence, I have learned several key, timeless tips to achieve excellence in life. These tips have continuously brought in results in whatever goal I seek. For one, they’ve helped successfully develop my passion into a full-time career. My blog, The Personal Excellence Blog, is read by thousands of people every day and has been featured on prominent media such as CNN. I’ve founded my training school, The School of Personal Excellence, where I coach and train individuals to achieve excellence in their lives.

How to Achieve Excellence in Life

Achieving our fullest potential requires more than just desire—it demands dedication to a higher standard. To help navigate this path, here are 8 pivotal strategies that can help you achieve excellence in life.

1. Have a goal

In life, as in football, you won’t go far unless you know where the goalposts are.

– Arnold H. Glasgow

How true is that? Have you ever seen people play football without knowing where the goalposts are? They’ll be running up and down the field the whole time with the ball and not scoring any goal! Likewise, we need to set our goals for us to move somewhere.

Don’t let your goal be just any goal too. Make it a big, bold, and audacious goal – one that will truly excite and inspire you. It’s pointless to have a goal that will automatically be achieved without much of a fight. On the other hand, if you have a goal where you really have to work for it, that’s one worth striving for.

2. Do what you love

You will not do incredible things without an incredible dream.

– John Eliot

The power of passion cannot be overstated when you are striving for excellence in life. The reason why I’m continuously inspired to write and bring The Personal Excellence Blog to greater heights day after day is because I’m passionate about what I’m doing. I’m passionate about achieving excellence. I’m passionate about helping others achieve greatness. I can do this day after day, for the rest of my life without even getting paid for it.

If I had tried to do something else, say become an accountant or an engineer, I would never have lasted. There’s nothing wrong with those occupations, just that they aren’t what I’m passionate about.

What are you passionate about? What do you love to do? Pursue that, and let the love of what you do drive you to greatness.

 3. Have a strategy

Strategy is more than just planning. A plan is simply what you are going to do. Strategy is like your blueprint for success; the secret keys that will guarantee your victory. A more layman’s term for strategy would be “working smart”.

Every goal has its own set of strategies to guarantee its victory. In all my goals, I’ll always spend proper time developing a strategy. What are the obstacles I’ll face? How can I overcome these obstacles? What is the best mode of action to achieve this goal? How can I achieve this goal faster and better? How have people who achieved this goal done this?

These are some questions I consider. And once I develop my strategy, I set out to achieve my goal. Undoubtedly, strategizing helps me achieve my goals with ease.

4. Study the successful

There’s no matter way to succeed than to study the successful – those who have been here, done that. When I first started The Personal Excellence Blog, I studied A-List bloggers, such as Darren Rowse from Problogger. I also read other big sites such as Copyblogger and Yaro Starak’s Entrepreneur’s Journey. Because of that, I’ve learned a lot about what I need to do to have a successful personal development blog. Even today I continue to study and learn from bigger bloggers so I can grow quickly.

Who are the people who are successful in the goals you want to achieve? What have they done which has enabled them to succeed? What can you learn from them?

5. Overcommit your resources

Goal setting is about getting from point A to point B. When we set goals, we have in mind a set of things we need to do. If we complete these XYZ set of things, we will naturally achieve the goal. Right?

Wrong. When we are creating our plan, we are doing it from the point of view of someone who has never achieved the goal before. So how would we even know these XYZ things are what we need to achieve the goal? They are nothing more than just assumptions of what it takes to achieve the goal. It might be 50%, 60%, or even 70% accurate, but we have no way of knowing if it’s 100% accurate. Most likely it’s not, otherwise, we would already have achieved the goal long ago, wouldn’t we?

So when you set out for your goals, it’s important you overcommit your resources. Come up with what you think you need to achieve the goal, then double it up, or even triple it if possible. That way, you can be almost certain you will achieve it. Even if your original estimations are right and there is no need to up the efforts, then you’ll be exceeding your goal when the results are out, which is more than fantastic.

6. Keep reading

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.

– Mark Twain

The more you read, the more knowledge you gain. There is no end to what you can read. Seth Godin, best-selling author on Business Week and New York Times, buys 400 new books every year, and probably reads a lot more than that.

Lately, I’ve been frequenting the local library to borrow books and enrich myself. The book I’m currently reading is How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield, and it’s a great read.  With the wide availability of information on the internet, there’s even more reason to read now than ever.

7. Work hard

There’s working smart (tip #3 – Have a strategy), then there’s working hard. In order to succeed, you have to both work smart and work hard.

And working hard really isn’t all about toiling and sweating and dreading what you are doing. If you are doing what you love (tip #2 – Do what you love), then it really isn’t work at all. I work hard day in and day out, writing new articles for my blog, coaching others, and building my business, but that’s because I love what I’m doing so much that I can’t get enough of it. It doesn’t even feel like work.

Are you working as hard as you can? How can you put more effort in what you are doing? The more effort you put into your goals, the more results you will see.

8. Ask for feedback

Feedback gives us a different perspective – one which you cannot see because you are looking from your point of view. I’ve learned a tremendous lot from my readers’ and clients’ feedback, which in turn helps me to write better articles and be a better coach day after day. All of us have blind spots we can’t see and these blind spots are exactly what’s preventing us from achieving results. The more feedback you get, the more aware you become, and the better you will become.

Pick five people you interact with frequently. Ask them for feedback on how you can improve as a person. They’re probably going to say you are fine and I believe you are too, but there’s always room for improvement.  Press them to name three key areas of improvement for you. You might just learn something new in the process.


In conclusion, the journey to achieve excellence in life is a deliberate and continuous one, built upon commitment, passion, and strategic actions. By integrating these 8 timeless tips into your daily routine, you equip yourself with the tools and mindset needed to rise above the ordinary and step into a realm of unparalleled greatness. Remember, excellence is not just a destination but a lifelong journey. Commit to it, and watch how every aspect of your life transforms in remarkable ways.

18 thoughts on “8 Timeless Tips To Achieve Excellence in Life”

  1. Never stop reading. Always keep broadening your horizon.

    As a medical student, I am reading ‘Endless Consciousness’, a book about near death experiences. I am highly sceptic about these experiences, but I will read 400 pages about it. Just to keep broadening my horizon, to have a funded opinion about it.

    Success doesn’t come overnight, or over one book. Read a lot, and succeed!

  2. Hey Celestine,

    Studying the successful is one of my favorite strategies. If you look at enough of them , and you’re a bit obsessed with patterns like I am, you discover patterns of thinking and behavior that successful people share. Most of them are very subtle, but they’re also very powerful.

  3. Hey Peter, thanks for this guest post opportunity :D It’s great to be able to reach out to readers at The Change Blog :D If you have any feedback or questions on this post, please feel free to contact me or post your comments here :)

      1. Beyond reading even though reading is preferred by many you can hone your sense of excellence through interaction with those who achieve excellence or pursue excellence. This is perhaps like your blog but I am think more 3D high definition in the manner of the ancient Greeks who brought the seminar and the forum to a level of high art. Being with excellence can be both instructional and inspiriational.

  4. Excellent and classic tips on how to achieve excellence. I appreciate tip #8 the most. Simply because I generally do well at the first seven, but I often forget to ask for feedback. That is something I need work on. Thanks for the reminder.

    By the way, this article will be featured this Friday in my weekly post about excellent resources I read to help people turn problems into solutions.

  5. What a great set of tips! I love that book by Jack Canfield too – I read it a few years ago and it really helped me alot. I skim through it often to remind myself of all the points he makes and this post is another that I will take on board. I have only recently found your blog and must say I really like it and find your style and what you are putting out there great :) :)

  6. I’d love to comment on each and every tip but that would take up too much space. So I’ll just settle on #6. Reading is one of the best sources of knowledge. I also try to read up on various things I want to know more about. I find it annoying when there are those who prefer asking questions from other people first (and waste those peoples’ time) because they are too lazy to read and find out what they need to know from the many available reading materials (online and offline) we have today.

  7. Nice post! Definitely timeless! Personally though, I’d change “have a goal” to “have a purpose”. For me, that would be a more effective way to achieve excellence. :)

  8. I really like this and these are great ideas. It’s important to have goals and to have ideas on how to achieve those goals. Life is always changing so it’s equally important to be watching out for roadblocks and ready to take them on when they come your way.

  9. Venkatesan kannan

    Hi Celes, I am facing some issue with my motivational level. its fading away soon. can you share some tips to keep it up always ?

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