Stanley Cup of Chowder ran an Article on their website called “Ask a P-Bruin: Submit Your Questions For Bobby Robins”. This gave fans an opportunity to fire away, and ask anything. 

I wanted to treat this as a writing experiment and actually answer the questions in depth, as well as provide creative content. In a lot of Q and A articles with pro athletes, it seems like stale answers and surface topics are the norm. You end up hearing a lot of, "we gave it our best shot out there" and "the team played hard tonight", or sometimes even the dreaded self-gloating and self-references in the third person. And in rare occasions, you hear self-gloating, self-references in the third person, and a third person self-gloating reference using a nickname. Very rare, but I've seen it done. "The Robinator brought it tonight. The Robinator brings it every night. Cuz that's what the Robinator does. He brings the pain. Cuz he's the Robinator."

 
 
It seems that it is not only athletic folk who deal with maintaining consistency and the pursuit of excellence. I've received emails from many different people from many different walks of life, telling me how these articles on excellence have affected them. There is certainly a common vein that exists in all of us. We want to excel.  We want to be great. But no one ever tells us how. I truly believe that each of us has our own path to greatness, and it is impossible for anyone else to understand it. We can begin to grasp the idea or the notion, or see the accolades of our peers and appreciate those accomplishments, but we don't get to see what's at the true core of someone else. And we don't get to gauge how different or similar our thoughts and ambitions are. 

 
 
I think I'm on to something. Has anyone else tried these magic words? 

“I'm going to be excellent today.”

I've been saying this to myself pretty much all day, every day for the past week. I've come to the conclusion that they are truly magic words. I say it before bed, and right when I wake up, and on the way to the rink, and in between drills, and any time the Doubt Demon makes an appearance. That's when I say it with the most authority. Any time the Doubt Demon breaks through that dimensional barrier and shows his fangs and claws, I now stand firm, and announce my excellence. I won't let that wretched worm influence me anymore. I'm stronger now. My words are stronger now. My words have magic. So do yours. There is excellence brewing, and no room for negativity or second-guessing.


 
 
We all have good days and we all have bad days. We have days where we are firing on all cylinders, clicking, buzzing, emitting vast clouds of potent energy out into the world. We know and embrace those special days, and acknowledge when we are lucky enough to experience that. We live out that day in the Zone, and go to bed, curious(or oblivious) to what the next day will hold. 

We wake, and wait, and see what comes our way.

I'm trying to break this pattern. I'm tired of being on top of the world one day, and dangling in space at the tip of some Antarctic icicle the next, jutting out into oblivion at the bottom of this spinning orb. I'm tired of inconsistency. Aren't we supposed to be at our best every day? Is that even possible?