Achievement Four ALL Consulting Group

There are mornings when the fog rolls in—not the kind that clings to trees, but the kind that settles in your chest. A quiet melancholy. A weight. You wake up and the world feels muted, the path ahead blurred. But you get up anyway. Because the compass still points north. Excellence doesn’t ask how you feel. It doesn’t wait for motivation. It doesn’t care if the sky is clear or if your heart is heavy. The work—the real work—demands something deeper than enthusiasm. It demands commitment. 

There’s a strange power in holding both melancholy and maniacal focus in the same hand. One slows you down, the other pulls you forward. Together, they reveal what’s real. When the emotional rewards fade, when the applause quiets, when joy isn’t there to carry you—what remains? That’s the test. That’s the wilderness. And in the wilderness, you learn whether your standards were ornamental or essential. Whether your dedication was decoration or foundation.

The fog doesn’t erase the trail. It just makes you look harder. It forces you to trust your compass, to lean on your principles, to grip the handrail of high expectations when everything else feels uncertain. So I keep going. Not because I feel like it. Not because the melancholy has lifted. But because the work matters. Because service matters. Because excellence is not a fair-weather friend. Some of our best work doesn’t come from the mountaintop. It comes from the trudge. From the quiet, determined steps through difficult terrain. From the decision to show up when it’s hardest. The wilderness teaches you who you are. And sometimes, who you are is someone who keeps going anyway.

Dr. Darryl S. Diggs, Jr.