“It’s time to reclaim excellence. Excellence is less about what you do and more about how you do it. You can aspire toward excellence in any worthwhile project.If you strive to do it well, just about anything can be truly transformative.” -Brad Stulberg
The reason to pursue excellence is…well…to pursue excellence.
Brad Stulberg in his book The Way Of Excellence points out that biologically we are wired to do so. He uses the concept of “homeostatic upregulation” to support this claim. While standard homeostasis is an organism’s baseline drive to maintain stability and survive, homeostatic upregulation is the innate biological tendency to go beyond mere survival and actively grow, adapt, and flourish.
Stulberg argues that even the most primitive organisms do not just sit passively in their environment; they possess a sophisticated form of “sensing and responding” that forces them to seek out better conditions, optimize their functioning, and expand. In humans, this exact same ancient, biological life force is what manifests as our psychological desire to master a craft, learn a new skill, and realize our full potential. According to Stulberg, because this drive is hardwired into our biology, working against it or living a completely disengaged, passive life feels inherently unnatural and unfulfilling.
So like it or not, it’s our job, our duty, our nature to constantly pursue excellence. That’s reason enough.
How you do anything is how you do everything.
