Increasing Your Chance of Excelling

I believe the idea that to excel in life, you should spend as much time as practical doing the things that you are exceptionally good at.  (I was partially influenced by Marcus Buckingham's books First, Break All The Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths.)

I’ve noticed in my own life that at the core, my talents don’t change much over time. Finesse in using talents and the applications in which talents are used may both change in time, but the very core of the things at which you excel, the types of activities that you are drawn to, will probably change very little. 

An Exercise to Identify Your Talents

Here’s a useful exercise that I came up with one evening  as I was trying to sort out

Don't wait to be asked

The kitchen was a mess and I had a justification for a celebration, so I took my wife and kids recently to one of my three favorite pizza places in Albuquerque: Mario's Pizza.

Unexpected service
The waitress was friendly and outgoing.  After the usual routine of taking drink orders and then coming back to take our food order, she reappeared again with a small plate of croutons, sliced cucumber and ranch dressing.  She didn't even ask if we wanted them.  She knew that any parents at a restaurant waiting for food with little kids would want them.


Doesn't that seem like such an obvious thing to do?  Yet that has never