Excess is GOOD!

In “The Big Year,” Mark Obmascik says:
“If you had a year of your life to do anything you wanted, and you could only do that thing for a year, what would you do? These three guys all chose to chase birds.”

Doing any one thing for a year or even just a couple of months might seem excessive to many people! But is excessive bad? Certainly excess can be bad, for example alcoholism, binge eating, and other examples quickly come to mind. Chasing birds for a year could be “bad excess” if it involved avoiding responsibilities such as not seeing your young children often enough.

But excess is not fundamentally bad and can be extremely good. Certainly any aspiring Olympic athlete needs a training regimen that most humans would consider excessive. And most successful entrepreneurs will tell you that sometimes business requires almost Herculean amounts of efforts to succeed.

Excess is GOOD. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say excess is good when properly focused. Excess is sometimes desirable or perhaps even required, and can more than repay for itself. Sometimes just a little more effort makes all the difference in the world – the difference between success and failure. Excess helps to ensure we get that extra effort that can make a big difference. We are not talking about “the straw that broke the camel’s back”; rather we are talking the extra effort that allowed us to achieve success, whether that success is personal or in business. When something really matters, “just enough” is a risky proposition. Several talented individuals may be trying to achieve similar desired results and obviously “just enough” may not be enough for several of them.

“My name is Ted Demopoulos, I am an excessive person, and I’m proud!”