Success in life is not automatic. You don't
stumble on success, you plan and work and follow through your plans before you
can confidently say you're successful.
Now, as I'd always explain that success is not
measured by riches or material possessions. Real success is about knowing your purpose, having
a dream in line with the purpose, writing out a plan, developing strategies for
accomplishment, implementing your strategy, achieving stated goals and
fulfilling purpose – that is success.
Now if you do not know your purpose; if you're
not clear about why you exist, if you don't have a clear understanding of your
place in this world, if your life is about guesses, trial and error; following
the masses, chasing after the next popular thing, I'm afraid you may never
savour what real success is like. The real fulfilment that comes when you serve
your reason for being may elude you, there would be this emptiness which no
money, fame, popularity and material possessions can fill, everyone may look at
you and your accomplishment; envy you and term you successful but on your
inside there would be this void, an emptiness, a dissatisfaction you will feel.
Chasing a purpose not meant for you and
realising dreams you're not commissioned or designed to accomplish in life is
tantamount to failing successfully no matter how rich and popular and admired
you become.
Success is a personal and private experience.
My success is not your success and your success may not be same as mine. Money,
fame, popularity, material possessions are some of the reward for being
successful and are not success in themselves. Hence you can be a wealthy
failure. Success is not about what you have, it's about what you feel.
A Fulani herdsman somewhere in Nigeria may be
rejoicing and excited about nursing a sick cow through a season of protracted
sickness and eventually this cow comes out of it and starts to produce so much
milk and birthing very healthy calf. This Fulani man may not have a beautiful
house, lovely clothes, a diamond wrist watch, fleet of cars and investments all
around the world; yet he feels very happy, fulfilled and accomplished with his
life as it's nomadic.
On the other hand an oil magnet with billions
in local and foreign accounts; houses all over the major cities of the world,
best of material possessions and private jets with many powerful highly placed
friends may be extremely depressed and even result to substance abuse just to
feel high and happy occasionally. Such a one may even be contemplating suicide.
There is an emptiness; a void that the money, fame, friends and power can never
fill. Success is not in material possessions, it's in knowing your purpose and
fulfilling it.
Your life's journey is about fulfilling your
purpose. You have been allotted time on earth within which you're supposed to
deliver to mankind all the treasures and great gifts you carry on the inside of
you.
Everybody is born great with something valuable
on their inside the world is in dire need of. Unfortunately, the systems of
this world and popular opinion keep making many bury their gifts and talents
and valuable treasures and till their time is over they never do anything with
it.
A very popular and successful Yoruba music
living legend Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey once did a song challenging us not
to bury our talents as one day we shall answer to our maker what we did with
it.
Too many people keep burying their talents;
their reason for coming to this world, what they were designed by the almighty
to do, a natural talent the world is in dire need of under so called popular
and respectable professions and careers they are really not designed for.
Extremely talented famers, fashion designers,
event planners, actors, caterers, comedians, public speakers, writers, film
makers, administrators, housewives, social reformers, painters, broadcasters,
teachers, photographers, traders, dancers, on air personalities, politicians
have totally abandoned their purpose for being, their reason for existing –
taking on so called respectable and trending professions. They are unhappy,
dissatisfied and wasting their lives. Listen to this, working very hard at what
you're not meant to do or designed for is called stress, working even harder;
without much sleep and rest at what you're designed for and created to do is
called passion.
Many people today are so stressed, coming down
with high blood pressure and cardiac arrest not because of too much work but
simply because they're working wrong. Hard work does not kill when you're
working right, in fact it's delightful. Hard work in the wrong place will
eventually break you down; you will malfunction and breakdown because you're
putting yourself to a wrong use.
Let me illustrate, you see a donkey and a
horse may somewhat look similar and are both very strong. But you can never
ride a donkey to battle; no; its horses that are meant for battles. A horse is
delighted at the cry of a battle, they charge forward towards the enemy, they
do not flee; they stay within and function within the fiercest of battles.
Horses are designed for battles not donkeys. A donkey will run away in the face
of intense battle and at the roaring sound of a cannon. But that same donkey
will refuse to move until you load it with so much burden. If it's not heavy
enough, the donkey is not satisfied. A donkey is a beast of burden. Donkeys
don't flee upon the sight of any load or burden, but a horse might kick you if
you over load it.
A horse and a donkey look similar and are both
strong but are designed to function differently. Using either of them for a
different purpose will bring about malfunctioning and destruction.
Dear friend, you may be designed to function
like horses; thrilled and excited to take on challenges and business battles as
entrepreneurs but sadly are tied down and burdened like donkeys by their
employers, and there are some of my listeners that are perfect at carrying official
responsibilities, weights, and tasks but due to a reason or the other, they
want to battle like horses in business and entrepreneurship wars. They will get
hurt.
Dear friend, too many of us are in the wrong
place, doing the wrong things for a long time with all our might – all stressed
up, not fulfilled; so worried, so afraid, just surviving without guarantee of a
great future. We're stressed about what we do, not passionate.
We are probably in this state today because we
allowed into our minds information that eventually deformed our mind-set and
divine programming. We allowed their virus corrupt our perfectly designed and
divine software. We allowed people different from us, sell to us their own
purpose passionately and because they; in addition, have riches and wealth to
show for what they're doing, we abandoned our own purpose and took on their own
purpose; a purpose we are not designed to fulfil. There, our trouble lies.
Dear friend, shut your doors; enough is
enough! Enough of waiting for people to tell you who you are and what they
think you are designed for. Truth is deep on your inside, you know what you
should be doing you're just probably not proud of it; thinking it's not
prestigious enough or you don't know how to go about actualising it. You may
also be unwilling to accept yourself because of the opinion of people; thinking
they will look down on you, make fun of you and dub you not classy, enlightened
or crème. Hmmm.
Shut your doors, close your eyes and ears to
all the too many information derailing, deforming and delaying your
manifestation. You naturally carry a glory that can only manifest if you fulfil
your purpose. Stop coveting the glory of others. Reveal your own glory. The
whole creation eagerly await your manifestation. Don't disappoint the world and
your maker because you want to impress men. We want to see your glory.
Shut out distracting and confusing voices from
friends, family, colleagues, bad mentors who want to replicate themselves in
you instead of teaching you how to be the best of you. Shut them out, listen to
your own inner voice, connect with those who can truly help you locate your
place and manifest your glory. Its beyond religion, good employment and
popularity, it's about your calling, your purpose, your reason for being. Don't
bury your talent, you are accountable.
Written By : Muyiwa Afolabi
CEO; Frontiers Consulting Services
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