Inner excellence, time, and experience make a beautiful soul. And here’s a metaphor comparing the soul to wine to drive the point.
The world’s most unique wines are produced by the grape’s environment. Wine aficionados call this terroir, and this is made up from several factors that influence its flavor. Terroir includes soil, climate, elevation 🏔️, sun exposure ☀️ , and vegetation 🌿 nearby.
There’s a great scene in the film French Kiss 🎥 starring Kevin Kline and Meg Ryan. Kevin Kline plays a Frenchman from the countryside looking to start a vineyard. When he and Meg Ryan visit his childhood home, he introduces her to an experiment. He gives her a glass of wine and asks her to describe the flavor. Ryan describes it as quality but is unable to elaborate on the flavors. Kline opens a box and has her sniff different types of scents such as mint, oak, and vanilla. She tastes the wine again, and instantly she detects the different influences that make the wine. It’s at this moment the film delivers a powerful line. You can watch the clip here for the full story experience.
“Wine is like people. The vine takes all the influences in life all around it—it absorbs them and it gets its personality.”
As grapes experience terroir, so do people. These elements that make up the souls terroir are inner excellence 🔨 time 🕰️ and experience 💎. Like grapes on the vine, we too are shaped by three key elements—inner excellence, time, and experience. Let’s unpack how each leaves its mark on the soul.
Inner Excellence 🔨
During the 2025 Super Bowl; A.J. Brown was reading the book Inner Excellence: Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life by Jim Murphy from the sidelines and it piqued my interest. The writing is excellent, with powerful ideas centered on cultivating healthy competition, performing under pressure, and developing strong mental habits I highly recommend it to everyone. What does inner excellence mean? It means striving to be better, turning your focus inward, and controlling the controllable. Murphy in his book shares these excellent ideas:
Process > Not the Outcome 🏃
Train the mind like the body 🏋️♀️
Your ego isn’t your amigo 🇲🇽
Live from the inside out ❤️
High performance comes from inner peace 🙏 Master thoughts and emotions 🧘
Serve a bigger purpose 🌎
These principles act as goals and standards to aspire to. THEY ARE NOT ACHIEVABLE OVER NIGHT. Imagine drawing out a constellation. We have our points and now it’s up to us to connect the dots. The next step, is putting in the time and experience.
Time 🕰️
Arguably, most people get better with time. Recently I ran into someone from high school who had a reputation of being a jock, ego centric, and a player last I saw them. After 10 years he went out of his way to say hello when he recognized me. I learned he was married, had children, and successful work. He reminded me that people aren’t static. Time has a way of transforming even the most unlikely characters
Regardless if a conscious effort is made to improve oneself, time is the master teacher towards self awareness. Time humbles, it reframes what’s important, produces good and bad times, and gives us wisdom (most of the time).
Experience 💎
To take this home, experience is the last variable in this equation.
Inner excellence + time + experience = 🍇🍷🤯
Experiences come with time and we there are lessons learned when we see them. This can come from daily reflection, journaling, or speaking with a mentor. Our growth often comes from two types of experiences—those we plan, and those that surprise us. Both kinds carry wisdom. But we need to pause, reflect, and extract meaning to truly grow from them.
Like a wine that pulls its flavor from its environment, inner excellence, time, and experience influence the soul for better. The key is to be deliberate in pursuit of inner excellence, take advantage of the time we have, and leverage experiences as a means of learning. In the end, we are all aging into ourselves. The goal isn’t to be perfect—but to become a vintage worth savoring.
Cheers!🍷
Want wisdom that sticks? Follow this blog and the Underline This Podcast on YouTube and social media for short, impactful articles and videos that get straight to the point. Plus, explore curated tools, books, and resources on the Recommendations page—everything that’s brought real value to me, shared so it can do the same for you.
Underline This Podcast 