31 Days Toward Greater Wisdom - Proverbs 31 - Excellence
No matter your gender, age, ethnicity, connectedness or status, excellence is realized in consistently developing your best.
What is your best? For some, “personal best” is unfortunately found a web of perfection and comparisons while excellence for the more balanced is interpreted as consistently living and offering your best, now. Excellence is not perfection, but a willing pursuit of your personal best.
Perfectionists are hard to live with because few things are ever good enough to satisfy. The pursuit of flawlessness can be habitually driven by fear that a mistake will expose personal or professional inadequacies and bring harsh critical judgement. Perfectionists are as critical with themselves as they are with others. The inner conversation of a hairsplitter can be unforgiving and personally disparaging. Perfectionism is often a consequence of growing up in a world of reactionary, vicarious, or performance-based families. If you grew up in a home with an alcoholic parent or with a family member who tried to live a second childhood through you, you may have been conditioned to believe perfect was the only path toward full acceptance and family peace.
Hypercritical expectations of yourself, no matter how well you hide them, leak onto others through the way you speak, perform, participate, develop excuses, think through and work exhaustively toward a failure-free experience, struggle to make decisive decisions, or react to not meeting your own expectations. Excellence is not perfect!
Proverbs 31 details four arenas of investment of those pursuing excellence.
- Parents of excellence invest in their families – love that yields time, grace, discipline, fun, resources and equipping
- Exceptional employees or employers invest in their business models to develop – a future, profitability, work ethic, and continual growth opportunities
- Exemplary neighbors invest in their communities – recognizing real need and creatively and generously serving people who are struggling or hurting.
- Outstanding people– invest in themselves to grow in wisdom, confidence and an identity that expands their capacity as a parent/spouse, employee/employer, neighbor and human being of distinction.
You won’t find much about developing faith in Proverbs 31 because it is assumed that this person is guided by wisdom that is only found in a God who has given them a capacity for excellence.
Col. 3:23-24 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
- Listen - Proverbs 1
- Application - Proverbs 2
- Trust - Proverbs 3
- Focus - Proverbs 4
- Faithful - Proverbs 5
- Diligence - Proverbs 6
- Aware - Proverbs 7
- Decisive - Proverbs 8
- Learn - Proverbs 9
- Contrast - Proverbs 10
- Righteousness - Proverbs 11
- Speech - Proverbs 12
- Longing - Proverbs 13
- Thoughtful - Proverbs 14
- Temperament - Proverbs 15
- Motivation - Proverbs 16
- Pleasant - Proverbs 17
- Pause - Proverbs 18
- Balance - Proverbs 19
- Legacy - Proverbs 20
- Plan - Proverbs 21
- Intentional - Proverbs 22
- Craving - Proverbs 23
- Tenacity - Proverbs 24
- Humility - Proverbs 25
- Discernment - Proverbs 26
- Conflict - Proverbs 27
- Confession - Proverbs 28
- Teachable - Proverbs 29
- Observation - Proverbs 30
- Excellence - Proverbs 31
