It’s staggering to me to see the number of people that talk themselves into leading a life that’s so far below their real desires and their real needs in both their
spiritual and
physical lives. A lot of people have been kept captive under their own fears. But I am here to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way. I am not also telling you that I have all the solutions and all the answers and that am going to offer them to you in the next 2 to 3 minutes cause that’s not true.
However, what I do have is some of the finest strategies and distinctions adopted from my own experience and hugely from the most successful people in our community today. What am I getting at?
You see, most people have developed a habit of
categorizing themselves to a section where they don’t belong. You may find this a bit awkward but I can assure you that adapting yourself to a certain category to suit your limitations only brings about
fear and
failure in your life. I shall explain later more in detail but for now let us start by looking at ways we can have a
break through and see how we can
unleash the power of success within us adopting a
Christian growth-type technique. But first lets try and find out what success is.
What is SuccessMany people believe success is
money,
happiness,
pleasure;
love and all the things that make you feel you are better off compared to others. Well this could be partly true because all these are just a small portion out of the idea of what success really is. In my own understanding success can be one or all of the following:-
Success comes when you begin to face up to the challenges of life in general.
Success is when you begin to design and take full control of the whole structure of your life now and ahead be it in trials, fear and pain.
Success is when you begin to believe that you don’t belong among the perfectionists but rather among those who believe in constant growth and those who are always looking for new levels in their lives.
Success is when you begin to say NO to the system that seems to design your life and say to it that this is the way my life should be.
Success is when you begin to play foolish in order to open the eyes of those around you.
There is a song by M.Cards called Gods own Fool. In this song he says;
"Even with our foolishness, we thought we were wise, Jesus Christ played a fool so he could open our eyes
"
So in the same way success comes to those who play a foolish or unreasonable.
It goes like this, the reasonable man will always follow what has been said and done and because he is reasonable it makes sense anyway. But the unreasonable man will always say I know that’s the way it has always been done, but I am saying it’s supposed to be done this way from now onwards. And they continue to unleash their beliefs until one day their unreasonable theories become reasonable.
Has it never occurred to you that the first man who thought of flying was probably deemed to be foolish? O yes he was foolish and because of his foolishness he has opened our eyes and his foolish ideas has turned into a technology that we barely can’t do without. But was he really foolish?
In short what I am saying is -
when you begin to see yourself as though you are who you are now, then you only become a fool and a failure. But when you begin to see yourself as though you were who you should be then you become who you really are.
That is what I believe success to be. But does it come easy? Maybe start by asking yourself this question;
A.)
What is it that I really want in my life? Before I became a Christian and that’s 6 Years ago, the first question I asked myself before I made it for the alter was –
What do I really want in my life? And the answer was written all over my face that it was
Jesus. And from that moment it was my responsibility not only to know that I wanted him but also to act upon my wants or desires.
This is to say wanting something in your life does not and can never amount to having it. That is why I needed to take action by not only knowing what I wanted, but doing what I wanted also. This called for me to take that initial step to walk up to the front and say Jesus I need you and recieve him whole heartedly..
In the same way if you want to be successful in life you will first have to find out What it is that you really want for your life before you can make that first step. Now here is something to chew on.
If there is one thing that is very common in human experience is that, many people know what they want to do but they don’t do what they know they have to do.
I have known people who have spent time gathering information on which they wish to build their success on and I have also known others who even get inspired and highly motivated for a moment. But you know what? Their inspiration and motivation is just a bunch of brief thrills because they don’t actually develop the habits that can cause them to consistently use what they know or consistently act upon their inspiration.
How do I know this, I know this by person experience and because for a greater part of the last 6 years of my life I spent time listening to inspirational tapes, reading all the motivational and success books, I even attended all the seminars that I could afford, I eventually reached a point where I was so fired up with passion that I could actually even tell you what to do with your christian life, love life, your business and your life in general and yet my personal testimony was the complete opposite of my inspiration.
Do you know why? Its because I knew what I wanted but I never got myself to do what it took to be what I wanted. One of the great challenges in life is that when people have finally known where they stand now and where they would want to stand in future, they never take the initial step of breaking through. And the only way to break through is by closing that Gap between where you are now and where you want to be in future.
But we are so busy these days experiencing the excitment in knowing the distinction between whats really going well in our lives as compared to other people. And because of this, we get blocked behind this thing I call the barrier of failure. The barrier of failure in my context is the state of being comfortable.
You see just like in Christian circles a Christian is required to grow. You as a Christian should never at one moment be seduced to being comfortable with your Christian status until that day when the Lord shall say you have run the race and have fought the fight now enter into your house of which I have prepared for you. There is no such thing as an absolute or perfect Christian. Our duty is to consistently grow. So until that day - your responsibility is to grow more and more and never be perfect but work at being better each day forth.
In the same way to be in a comfort zone only proves to prevent you from wanting more or reaching higher levels of your standards. Comfort always brings words like – I am fine where I am, or I have read every book or every verse of the bible I know enough or I don’t really belong to that category or I have all the necessary things I don’t really need to be that rich. You see all this comes from being comfortable with your current status. And the truth is if you are too comfortable with your current status then its probably that you are either too scared to try or too proud.
I know most of you believe in being comfortable. To tell you the truth I do too. But you know what the problem is? Let me tell you something you’ve probably never heard before.
In this our generation today people have all miscellaneously understood comfort to either mean, having all the money and being able to buy anything and never going to work again or believing that you have accomplished almost everything that is deemed to be perfect or being in a state where you are neither rich nor poor a state commonly known as comfortably making a living. Comfort in literal sense can be best described as the state of being stable. Now stable is a word associated with something good like a stable income, stable life but in real sense when something is stable then its not moving, not growing or but rather stagnant. Don,t get me wrong I am not saying we are never to be comfortable. What am saying is the idea of being comfortable constantly seduces people into believing they are alright when in fact they have merely adjusted thier lives to their current status.
However let me give you a better understanding of comfort - in life the only way we can ever be truly happy or be close to being "comfortable" is as if in everyday of our life we are constantly accomplishing three things.
Growth
contribution and
I will continue
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