First impressions are lasting ones.

If those first impressions aren’t good ones, modify them with new information or live with consequences.

The first impression we get of just about anything looms large in our psyches. This first impression, for good or ill, will resonate for a long time unless we do something constructive and conscious to change it.

Our first impression of a person is an excellent example. Suppose someone strikes us as friendly, jovial, sullen, or arrogant. Unless we later realize that we caught person on a particularly good or bad day, first impression will linger.

Reinforce that first impression continuously with emotional power and mind quickly turns those first impressions into a thermostat.

This means that our thoughts, feelings, and reactions are set just like a living room thermostat.

Do you want to be excellent?

This seems like a daunting task, but it really isn’t.

We admire one who is excellent.

We imagine that he or she must be gifted with an “excellence gene” that somehow places this individual in a more rarified atmosphere than mere mortals.

With possible exception of history’s great geniuses, this view could not be further from truth. It will actually keep us from our own excellence because it erroneously places excellence in realm of heredity rather than volition.

Excellence is result of habit of excellence practiced over time. Excellence is grand accumulation of lots of little excellence episodes.

An “excellence episode” is any instance when you take a little extra time, apply a little extra touch, and extend a little extra effort to insure that your work is very best you can do.