No one wants to live a life that is average, but it can be challenging to achieve excellence. How does one achieve excellence?
Because of the type of industry we are in, the Resilience Institute is lucky enough to have access to vast amounts of data regarding productivity, high-performance levels and excellence. We asked the question: “what are the key differences between the bottom 10% and the top 10%?”
The answers are very interesting….and quite unexpected.
Let’s have a look at the results. We used 21,200 of our Resilience Diagnostic assessments and categorised people by their personal resilience ratios. We have designed the Resilience Diagnostic and resilience ratio specifically to measure resilience effectively. The assessment is based on 60 factors of resilience and captures the many different ways in which a team or individual can display resilience.
There is a huge difference between the top 10% and the bottom 10%. The question is…which category do you fall under?
What Excellence is
What factors drive excellence and resilience? From our assessment, we gathered that the top 11 characteristics (in descending order) that makeup resilience are:
- Focus
- Purpose
- Fulfilment
- Optimism
- Vitality
- Presence
- Decisiveness
- Values Alignment
- Assertiveness
- Ability to Bounce Back
- Sleep Quality
The results are quite clear and speak for themselves.
The top performers, and those in the top 10%, all got very high scores for the above factors. These factors are all obviously vital to live a high-functioning and excellent life. There should be a focus on consistency and incorporating these factors into your everyday life in a long-lasting and sustainable way.
One of the most interesting aspects of these results is that fitness and nutrition did not make it onto the list. While healthy lifestyle choices are very important, it appears as if the top 10% have a higher focus on emotional and mental values.
What Excellence isn’t
Now we come to look at what holds us back from excellence, and what top performers got the lowest scores in. The top 10 factors (in descending order) that define the bottom 10% are the following:
- Fatigue
- Intensity
- Worry
- Self-Critical
- Overload
- Apathy
- Chronic Symptoms
- Sloth
- Self-doubt
- Hypervigilance
When comparing these two lists of factors, it is easy to see that they are almost exact opposites.
Why would one indulge in the above factors?
Looking at these two lists side-by-side, it seems easy to simply focus on the list of excellent factors and ignore the restrictive ones. But unfortunately, life is far more complicated than that and it is easy for us to get caught up in negative cycles of worry and self-doubt. In many cases, it is easier to hold onto negative emotions instead of positive ones.
Luckily, there are many small and practical steps you can take towards becoming more balanced, resilient and excellent!
How resilient and excellent are you and your team? The Resilience Institute South Africa performs in-depth Resilient Diagnostic assessments, to determine your resilient levels. We believe that resilience is a journey, and our training methods are designed to carry out sustainable results.
