Being Excellent: Third in a Series

Sometimes you’re inclined to teach somebody something.
Is that last sentence too vague? Not if you’re Excellent it isn’t.
You see, much like having a pantload of money tends to push the too-rich towards the assuring, conscience-friendly realm of "charity", possessing an over-abundance of Excellence brings with it the need, no, thecompulsion to give back, in whatever form this desire takes - and, like plastic surgery in a dark garage, the results can sometimes be pretty atrocious. The problem lies, invariably, in your utter inability to teach something that you’re SO GOOD at, regardless of said thing’s general ease. Being Excellent, you’re probably very good at a lot of things, and you got very good at them because you were already good at them right off the bat; and what you, almost inconceivably, aren’t good at, well...chances are that you’re not doing that thing very much.

Teaching something that you’re naturally good at to someone who isn’t nearly as naturally gifted is, quite possibly, the most frustrating feeling in the entire world, or at least irritating...like hearing someone laugh before you get to the punch-line: they don’t know what funny is; they’re just trying to fit in. Therein lies the problem: does an unExcellent person REALLY want to know that thing that you’re twisting yourself into knots trying to explain?

If you’re a total ass like me, then probably not...though even if your relative assness isn’t as acute as my own, you’re still coming off looking like that golf-shirt-addled guy wearing sunglasses on an overcast day in a cherry-red convertible: maybe you’re doing what’s right for you, but you look like a total dickhead.

So, don’t teach. If you must, may I suggest this as an Excellence-barometer: charisma.

True Excellence can not, under any circumstances, be achieved without it...though, to be honest, the reverse isn’t true: I know many an unExcellent chap who have more charisma than a cloned-army of Paul Newmans but who also couldn’t snag themselves Excellence if it was in an empty room, at eye-level, bathed in bright, shiny, blinking lights, with an audio-soundtrack of "take me!" blaring from cranked-up loudspeakers in a honey-drenched voice...unfortunately, like the logic of this writing, this dichotomy of Excellence is a terrible characteristic to contend with.

Good luck.

Fourth in a Series