Don’t settle.

So often, when we have tasted or experienced something really good, something well made and well done, it exposes how slipshod and careless other efforts might have been. And the same thing goes for love and relationships.

When you have been loved truly and deeply and wholly and honestly, you know it. And it changes the way you love others. It is no longer possible to believe what people call love is the real thing when it is less than the good and holistic love you have experienced.

The metaphor is admittedly commonplace, but the same thing could be said for good business and good work.

When we have learned from or beheld someone truly talented—when we have seen how they labor at their task with rigorous discipline and great effort, and then achieve in making something beautiful—it becomes much more difficult for us to be lazy or slothful in our own work.

Someone has shown us the way, shone a light on the path towards great art and great accomplishment. We are inspired. We want to excel.

We do not want to put half the effort needed into achieving what we have set out to achieve. We want to perform nothing less than the best.

When you really know what great work is, what great love is, you can never go back. The real thing is too wonderful, too rich, too true: you will never be able to settle.

To resign yourself to anything but the best in business, art, relationships, family and community becomes increasingly more difficult the more we experience and strive for the good, the true and the beautiful.

We develop a taste for the best recipes in life. From the kitchen to our business relationships to our families, we want to put in the extra effort to make every day and every experience the very best it can be.

 Sherri Rosen has her own publicity firm in NYC for over l2 years giving a powerful voice to people who are doing wonderful things in the world. She also writes for Gatekeeper’s Post, The Good Men Project, Her own blog, Redhead’s Blog, Triiibes, along with the wonderful elephant journal.  You can friend her on Facebook and Twitter.

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Editor: Carolyn Gilligan