Pursuers of Excellence Alumni Club

Here is a great little annimation about growing up. The narration is by a little girl, but she uses very grown up words. It is a message to children but also to the child in our adult selves. Take a moment and listen to the child within!

Growing Up Growing UpAnother great film by Jr. Canest

Tim R.

A big part of getting in the game is just showing up as illustrated by my favorite comic strip "Frazz". To get more Frazz, go to Comics.com

Copywrite Jef Mallett, July 2, 2009

Inspiration comes from all quarters. I love to listen to music.... really listen, especially to the words. Chris B. sent me the lyrics to a song he likes:

Consider this:
92% of the world's population
feel that their lives could be better.
what about you?
If you could do anything,
anything at all,
what would you do?
What are you doing now?

Imagine that
you could live your life,
knowing that it could not be better,
and never feeling that you would rather
be doing something else,
be somewhere else,
or be someone else.

Now consider this:
some people actually live that way
and so could you.

Contemplate this:
What if 90% of the problems you encountered in your life
were mere illusions and only existed in your mind?
In your everyday life
whenever something annoys you,
stresses you, makes you mad, or makes you sad,
consider if that something really matters.

Will you even remember
how you felt in one day, one week, one month, one year,
or what about in ten years?
So when the people you work for pressure you, and fail to understand you, does it really matter?
And when they call you on the phone,
screaming and yelling,
does it matter and should you really allow that to influence your life?
It's all about choices.

This song is by the Barcode Brothers. I think it about sums up the Pursuit of Excellence view of being responsible for your own actions and having a positive outlook. Stay in the moment and focus on taking that next small step.

-- TAR

It's been great in 2008!  Get connected in 2009

It's been a while since I could say I've had a truly great year, but 2008 was definitely one!  For that, I'd really like to thank my Ipod, my car, my lap top computer and my cell phone, which seems to be able to do almost anything I need!  Yes, I can truly say how grateful I am that I had all these gadgets in my possession to help me lose the 60 pounds I lost this year, and attend 21st Century Leadership -- something I've put on the back-burner for far too long.  These electronics and toys even helped me get to Hawaii for a church conference!  How great is that?!?

For those of you now wondering how your Ipod will help you lose weight and go on trips, here's the secret: it won't.  No, for that, and any other great improvement, you may actually have to look beyond the pixilated screen and into the retinas of a real person.  How did I lose the weight I've lost?  I pushed into being very vulnerable with my friends Ajae and Carmell.  And how did I get to 21st Century Leadership and Hawaii, all in the same year?  If you think I did it all on my own, you'd be mistaken there too.  Again, I have some great friends who knew how important these things were to me, and so they wanted to help out.  How do I do anything I think is worthy of doing?  With a lot of help.  In fact, that reminds me of one of my favourite quotes.  It goes something like this: In order to do anything significant, it should be so great that it could not be accomplished on your own.

As of late, I have been saddened to see just how many people lose touch with people who could be the closest to them: spouses, children, parents, etc.  Getting connected is a vision for learning even more about relationships and how I am in them.   

And so, as an executive team, we have chosen to make the focus of 2009 one of getting connected -- to an even greater degree -- to one another and to ourselves.  It's a great time to ask yourself:

• Where am I really strong in relationships?
• Where do I want to grow?
• Do I run away, or do I push through to create even stronger bonds?
• Do I have enough relationships and are they as significant as I want?
• What do I do that doesn't work for me? (And how will I change that?)
• What's one thing I will do today to strengthen a relationship?

Like losing weight, all of the little actions (and inactions) add up in relationships.  If you'd like to be closer to someone, how often have you reached out to that person?  And if you've grown distant from someone, how often have you made a critical remark to them? However you'd like to grow in relationships, we want to help.   

We encourage you to participate fully in the events we have planned for you: our monthly breakfast are always (ful)filling, our social events carry a risk of fun and you may even accidentally learn something by staying involved with the Excellence Series programs, either as a participant or as an assistant.   

As always, please feel free to connect to us with your feedback, questions and comments and feel free to respond to us on this blog!  We're looking forward to connecting with you.

Our email is info@pursuersedmonton.com, (we do not guarantee that you will lose weight by emailing us)

      Your PAC president,

      ~Ashley Jacobsen

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