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Excellence is a habit, says Aristotle

carriesuepepper • Jun 26, 2010

When a letter comes from the IRS, most tend to shiver in their boots.  Granted, it’s not something you’d like to frame and admire, yet, the fact that money is owed and needs to be paid isn’t always a measure of success – or lack of it.  In fact, the way I look at it is that the details that are attached to the past few years of my life, which actually began much farther back than that, are actually helping me to learn that the next few years are going to be totally different.  Why?  Because I said so.

 I have learned that whatever I put into my unconscious mind and continue to believe it, and continue to enforce it, and work on that process, will come to fruition.  Of course, this takes a lot of (this is what stops most people) WORK .  That’s the one thing that stops the majority from doing it.  You can change your life, your circumstances, your habits, and your situation.  At least I know that I am changing mine.   And, I know that it is a lot of work and that sometimes I don’t want to be the “big me” as a dear woman I know who knows all about the big me and the little me because she works as a family therapist and deals with these kinds of things all the time.  She knows when people are hedging and hiding from the real work necessary to grow.  Why?  Because it’s hard work !  But the rewards can be – and will be – the reward at the end of a long, rocky, dusty road.

 “We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” 

Aristotle I read this quote last night while sitting in the cool of the evening under our plum tree. I read it, and then I read it again and it really started to take root. And, so I carried that thought with me into the evening and to bed.  And when I awoke, another famous quote was sitting in my head: Begin with the end in mind.  I’d heard this before but it didn’t really make a lot of sense to me.  I couldn’t relate somehow.  But today, it did.  And I started thinking, “what is the end? For me?  How do I define that?  The end of my life?  The end of my professional career?  The end of a single day? 

 This morning, as I walked down the path to my Little House, I thought to myself, how would I act IF and started filling in the blanks – IF I were the published, successful author I aspire to be?  If I were the Blue Diamond Executive I strive to be?  If I were a person people look to for inspiration and know they can count on me to be there?  If I were running my animal rescue operation in Wyoming ?  I just filled in the blanks.  And my heart was changed.  The daily and hourly things I must do began to arrange themselves in my head.  And so, I came here and I did the very thing that the little me often finds a way to put off doing – I sat down and I wrote this blog.  Because I love to write; because it fills my heart; because it is who I was born to be.  And, yes, it is hard work something every single day and put it out there into cyberspace, but at the end of the page, at the end of the day, it will become a habit that will change my life and enable me to reach so many, and that is my dream.

Carrie Pepper

Relaunch

By Carrie Pepper • 15 Feb, 2024
Separate Lives

Time to Fly

By Carrie Pepper • 04 Feb, 2024
Today, while out on a walk in a very high wind, I spotted a little bird way up in the tip top of a bare oak tree; she was holding on every so tightly as the wind tossed and shook the branches. Hold on, little one, I thought. And just then, this quote came to mind. “A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not in the branch, but in her own wings.” ― Charlie Wardle As I watched her, I imagined my own wings and wondered just how hard the wind is going to need to blow in my life for me to loosen them, pinned tightly to my sides, unfurl them—then TRUST as the currents lift me off my (branch) and I soar effortless and without fear.

Street Signs Can Be Memory Joggers

By Carrie Pepper • 30 Nov, 2023
Out on my morning walk, street signs acted as memory joggers. Perhaps they were nudges so that I could remember, and be grateful for, these two women who were there for me as a kid. BRADFORD was the first sign. Grammy Bradford. I never called her anything else and I have no idea what her first name was, but I do remember she was there to tend to me when I was little while my mother went off to work at her government job "in procurement," which she hated. I know nothing, really, of what she did there, but I do remember the room. It seemed there were hundreds of desks in this huge room, no partitions. Dark grey desks and heavy black telephones. I visited her there a few times and she'd give me tablets and pens to keep me busy. I was ALWAYS thrilled to have a tablet and a pen! What she did there is a mystery to me, but when she and my father would argue, which was often, she'd always say, "I want my own money," and so off she went to work every morning at the Defense General Supply Center. He told her she didn't need to work, that he could support her, but, again, she wanted her own money. Back to Mrs. Bradford, Grammy. She was a bit on the heavy side (which I thought made for the best, most cuddly hugs) with long grey hair that she wore up with tons of bobby pins. She always wore a floral bib apron with large pockets and she'd fill them with pears when we'd go to that special corner of our back yard. Oh the smell! Those yellow pears and the carpet of yellow leaves. Memories of Grammy Bradford brought back memories of Thelma Massenburg. She looked exactly like Aunt Jemima (OH FOR HEAVEN'S SAKES, we can't say Aunt Jemima anymore!) Recently a friend told me he'd made pancakes and I asked what kind of syrup he used. When he said, "Pearl Milling," I thought it sounded kinda cool, but when I looked it up I found out it was the new name for Aunt Jemima syrup. SERIOUSLY? Anyway, she was wonderful. She cleaned our house, scrubbed the floors and walls and worked harder than anyone I'd ever seen. I loved her. She always wore a bandana tied around her head. She lived in a tiny reddish tar papered house with ten children. Who knows where they all slept! She was diabetic and I was a little stinker and liked to tease her with Hershey Bars. I'd wave one in front of her nose and she'd smile and say," "You bad, chile." The last time I saw her she was in the hospital and her eyes were very, very yellow. Liver disease. The scarf that was always wrapped around her head was gone and I am sure that I could hear her say, "You bad, chile," although she probably didn't. Thank you my sweet Thelma. My Aunt Jemima.
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