I’m sending this blog entry through one day early because I will be going to sell copies of Left of the Dial soon.

This is where I differ: my stance is that we should demand excellence: from ourselves, from our treatment providers, and from others in society in how they treat us.

Each of us has the choice: the free will to decide what we want to do and how we want to live.

I make the case though for striving to bring your A Game to the challenges you face.

We don’t have to do well everything we do. Yet doing well what’s important and what we value doing well can boost our confidence.

It’s not always easy to feel good when we’ve made a mistake or not performed well. Yet learning from a mistake and giving ourselves a pat on the back for trying is what will give us the confidence to try again.

My contention is: for too long people with disabilities were discouraged from setting goals and achieving them like other people in society do routinely. Other people take for granted going to school to get a degree and having a job and living in their own homes.

Now is the time for individuals living with chronic conditions to act like we’re hot shit. Demanding excellence signals to other people that we won’t accept being kicked to the gutter while others enter the banquet hall and feast at the table.

It’s a choice. I realize a lot of people are perfectly content to have an ordinary average life.

I’m simply giving out another possible option: setting our sights higher for what we can do and how we expect others to treat us.

I’m all for demanding excellence.