The Enemies of Excellence by Greg Salciccioli Patrick Lencioni

Author:Greg Salciccioli, Patrick Lencioni
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Life / General, SELF-HELP / Spiritual, SELF-HELP / Personal Growth / Success
Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
Published: 2011-10-09T14:00:00+00:00

The Need for Speed

I drive fast. It’s a bad habit and hard to break. I grew up in the 70’s during the muscle car era with a group of high school buddies who loved to build street rods. We didn’t have much cash, but our cars could get up and go.

My need for speed started when my dad moved our family out of Burbank, California to a small town in the high desert above Palm Springs, where everything revolved around football and fast cars. For a small high school, it was surprising how the expectations to excel were high in both academics and athletics. You were expected to hit the books and hustle in practice. I learned a lot. When we were done with our studying, we would take some time to tinker with our cars. Our auto shop teacher was a bit of a speed enthusiast. He didn’t just teach us how to change the oil in our cars—he helped us build some machines that were fast in the quarter mile.

Friday nights in the fall were fun! First, we did our best to beat the visiting team, then we grabbed our girlfriends for a night on the town to see who had the hottest car. My blue beauty was a ‘68 fastback Mustang with a 351 Cleveland under the hood. It was powered with 300 ponies that pounced on some pretty tough competition. I didn’t always win, but I sure made a good showing as long as my car held together.

Street racing was fun, but definitely a bad habit. It’s dangerous, and many things can go wrong in a very short amount of time. It can also get you into a lot of trouble, as most bad habits can. One day during my senior year I was at the Dairy Queen eating burgers with friends. As I was leaving the parking lot, I just had to spin the tires a bit before I merged into traffic—not the smartest thing to do in the middle of the day. I turned the corner toward the high school when an officer flashed his lights and pulled me over. I thought to myself—no, not another ticket! I’d already had a steady stream of speeding violations that were rapidly burning up my paychecks. Between the gas, tires, repairs, and tickets, this bad habit was beating me up.

That’s the way bad habits work. They’re a lot of fun—that’s why they became habits in the first place. But they always have a high price tag, for us and for the people that are connected to us. In some cases, the cost can be even higher—my need for speed could have cost me my life and the lives of my friends. Bad habits not only consume our resources; they put us at risk and contaminate our lives.

Looking back, of course, I can clearly see how I had gone too far. On top of schoolwork, leadership activities, and playing three sports a year, I was working evenings and weekends mainly to support an expensive car.

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