“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny” – Aristotle
Intention
Starting this personal blog with a quote from Aristotle feels somewhat glib. It speaks to my propensity of starting lofty things and yet never following through. What Aristotle says here, that I must start with the highest of intentions, is the easiest part for me. I’ve always felt I can dream up any sort of worthwhile goal for myself. I’ve started many projects that become mere dust collectors, and ashamedly quickly after their purchase. There’s something about fresh beginnings that invigorate and mollify the anxieties towards having a life that’s not well lived; yet paradoxically, it seems to also perpetuate the vapid feelings that come with not feeling capable of rising to your own challenges. So in my case, I have intention in spades. (I had a long talk about what intentions mean with my friend. I’ll make a separate post on that and link it here.)
Sincere Effort
Next, let’s look at sincere effort. What does that mean? Effort is action put towards some goal. Sincerity, in terms of action, is to do something for its own intention; to feel in yourself that you are doing something purposeful in its own right. In contrast, an insincere effort would be to raise your hand in class in order to speak with the aim of appearing smart and to get in good graces with the professor. In this case, the sincere effort is to raise your hand in an attempt to either contribute to the conversation in good faith, or to clarify some gap in concept between what is being taught and where you’re standing. To do otherwise has a level of insincerity.
With this in mind, why is it important for effort to be sincere? Couldn’t one say that because the outcome is the same, the consequences justify the effort? It is true that when we perform an action, regardless of the intention, we reap the benefits (or consequences) of the action. Why this fuss about sincerity then? I’ve heard Alan Watts quote, from an unknown source, the following phrase:
“If the wrong [person] uses the right means then the right means work in the wrong way.“
In our case, I guess it to mean that if we do not begin from a place of honesty, with good intention, then that leaves us down a path towards dysfunction, and this dysfunction can manifest in either a cessation of the actions that lead about to the dysfunction, or in cases where the action is persistent or sufficiently severe, a corruption of character around the desired effect of the action.
In essence, this plays into the opening quote from Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” We become what we do, and when what we do is guided by false premises, how can that develop into a sincere growth of the underlying virtue?
Intelligent Execution
As Aristotle says, the wisest choice must be made amongst a wide variety of potentials; and how many of these potentials tempt us with their more-or-less instant gratification? Between 80-85% of individuals who lose a large amount of weight fast tend to regain it, theorized by Stanford that we tend to gain weight back faster when our metabolic rate is lowered via extremely low-calorie diets. (Weight Loss Maintenance | Stanford Health Care, n.d.)
Why even undertake such a diet? Because It’s seen as fast, and I imagine most of us fail with the instant gratification problem (a future post I’m working on). We want results, we want it now, and gradual gains that are imperceptible cannot hold a candle to the rush of elation we get from quicker-gained avenues.
How does this relate to intelligent execution? Personally, I feel like I fail the marshmallow test in thousands of different little ways everyday. It seems to me impossible to execute anything intelligently if we are unable to reason through those troubling and unsatisfied emotions that require us to be constantly keyed up on positive reinforcement. It seems that so many goals require consistency across time; which can be so difficult when it feels like your brain has been wired to seek the feel-good chemicals in every instance.
What Can Be Done?
We can try. That’s the first thing. To make progress in anything, self-improvement especially, requires an effort of some sort. Even just existing requires the intention to just exist, and that takes effort to come to that conclusion and to maintain. The mutability of life and emotions compels us to move and take action.
The second thing we can do is to follow the framework of the quote above. If we desire excellence (and honestly, that is a big if. Excellence for what?) We must make sure that we examine closely our intentions with each action to make sure we’re doing things for their own sake, to take sincere effort that our actions are aligned with that clear intention, and that our actions are executed in a way that provides real benefit towards our goals.
How do we do this? Well, I feel like this is a case where there can be many roads to the center. For some the answer will look different than for others; and for all of us I doubt the same solution will be applicable for all time. Perhaps even just for stretches of time. Aristotle and many other philosophers believed that to do life well is to be exposed to philosophy and different ideas about how the world works. I agree. When looking for the best way to execute our actions towards our goals, we must be aware of many of the frameworks that come before us. Additionally, we must make sure that the frameworks we’ve tried in the past are examined and known so that we either do not make the same mistakes, or so that we can categorize them as useful for different purposes.
Aristotle himself provides us with an interesting framework in his divisions of the soul in Nicomachean Ethics. I won’t give a full explanation here, but in essence there is a rational and irrational part of ourselves.1 In the irrational part lives our desires; of these desires we can either permit them, reject them, or in the worst case, be controlled by them. The biggest issue for me is the third scenario. Those cases where you know should be doing something or not be doing something, but the emotional and desirous parts of ourselves impose on us even when our minds are screaming to act otherwise. What a sore state of affairs.
The solution? Well, part of it he says is to make the virtues we value habitual by actually acting out those values. Once they become habitual they leave the realm of needing judgement by the rational mind and we simply be the people we want to be. We skip on the extra helping of cake because we know we value our health or weight-loss goals. We tell the truth even when it will put us in a worse light because we know that we value honesty. All of these little victories along the way will result in an individual who learns to do life well.
Conclusion
Don’t like the sound of this? That’s fantastic, because now you’ve discovered something about what it means to live a good life for yourself. This is the gift of exploring other ideas through whatever means work best for you. Keep exploring and find what works for you and share it with others along the way. We’re all in the process of becoming. Let’s look at this process objectively, with intention, sincere effort, and thoughtful execution.
This is the first post on this blog. I know this is a very round-a-bout way to introduce things, but I feel it’s important. I need to make sure my intentions, efforts, and execution are in alignment towards my goals with this blog. That is, to see how far I can better myself through learning and achieve the well-lived life I’ve been so desperate for.
Sincerely, thank you for reading, and I hope you join me in exploring what life is all about through the social sciences together. I am but a neophyte and I’d be overjoyed to have as much input and ideas shared so that we can all learn and grow together.
1(Aristotle would say our souls, but I’m avoiding the word because of how heavily spiritual the connotations are for soul in the modern world).
Works Cited
Aristotle. (1892). Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle.
Vonnegut, K. (2015). Mother night. London: Vintage Books.
Weight Loss Maintenance | Stanford Health Care. (n.d.). Retrieved from stanfordhealthcare.org website: https://stanfordhealthcare.org/medical-conditions/healthy-living/obesity/weight-loss-maintenance.html
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