DETERMINE YOUR TRUE GOAL- for teenagers working in offices

A Great Thinking Tool
In 1142, William of Ockham, a British philosopher, proposed a method of problem solving that has come to be referred to as “Ockham’s Razor.” This way of thinking has become famous and popular throughout the ages. What Ockham said was that, “The simplest and most direct solution, requiring the fewest number of steps, is usually the correct solution to any problem.”

Many people make the mistake of over-complicating goals and problems. But the more complicated the solution, the less likely it is ever to be implemented, and the longer the time it will take to get any results. Your aim should be to simplify the solution and go directly to the goal, as quickly as possible.

Double Your Income
For example, many people tell me that they would like to double their incomes. If they are in sales, I ask them, “What is the fastest and most direct way to double your income?” After they have come up with a series of suggestions, I give them what I consider to be the best answer. “Double the amount of time that you spend face to face with qualified prospects.”

The most direct way to increase your sales has always been the same. “Spend more time with better prospects.” If you don’t upgrade your skills or change anything else about what you are doing, but you double the number of minutes that you spend face to face with prospects each day, you will probably double your sales income.

According to studies that go back as far as 1928, the average salesperson today spends 90 minutes each day face to face with prospects. The highest paid salespeople spend two or three times that amount. They organize their days efficiently to assure that they spend more minutes in the presence of people who can and will buy their products or services. And the more time they spend with prospects and customers, the more skilled they become at selling. The better they get, the more they sell and the more they earn, and in less time.

Double Your Productivity
If you examined your work, you would find that 20% of what you do accounts for 80% of the value of all the things you do. In my Advanced Coaching Programs, we teach our clients to identify those 20% of activities that contribute the very most value and then do twice as many of them.
Instead of using their intelligence to juggle their time and accomplish a greater number of tasks, we teach them to do fewer tasks, but tasks of higher value. Some of our clients double their productivity, and subsequently, their income in as little as 30 days with this approach, even if they have been working for many years in the same position.

Always look for the simplest and most direct way to get from where you are to where you want to go. Look for the solution that has the fewest number of steps. And most of all, take action! Get going. Get busy. Develop a “sense of urgency.” The best ideas in the world are of no value until they are implemented. As the poet said, “The saddest words of mice and men are these: it might have been.”

Wave A Magic Wand
In determining your true goals, use the “Magic Wand” technique. Imagine that you have a magic wand that you can wave over a particular area of your life. When you wave this magic wand, your wishes come true!
Wave a magic wand over your business and career. If you could have any three wishes in your work, what would they be? Wave a magic wand over your financial life. If you could have any three wishes in your financial life, what would they be?

Wave a magic wand over your family life and your relationships. If you could have any three wishes in this area, what would they be? If your family life were ideal in every respect, what would it look like?
Wave a magic wand over your health and fitness. If you could have any three wishes with regard to your body and your physical well-being, what would they be? If your health were perfect, how would it be different from today?

Wave a magic wand over your skills and abilities. If you could have any three skills or abilities, developed to a high level, what would they be? In what areas would you like to excel?
The magic wand technique is fun on the one hand, but quite revealing on the other. Whenever you imagine that you have a magic wand, your true goals in that area emerge. You can also use this exercise for other people who are not sure about what they want or where they are going. It is amazing what comes out when you ask this question.

Six Months To Live
Here is another goal setting question that reflects your true values. Imagine that you went to a doctor for a full medical check-up. Your doctor calls you back a few days later and says, “I have good news for you and I have bad news for you. The good news is that, for the next six months, you are going to live the healthiest and most energetic life you could possibly imagine. The bad news is that, at the end of 180 days, because of an incurable illness, you will drop stone dead.”

If you learned today that you only had six months left to live, how would you spend your last six months on earth? Who would you spend the time with? Where would you go? What would you strive to complete? What would you do more of, or less of?

When you ask yourself this question, what comes to the top of your mind will be a reflection of your true values. Your answer would almost always include the most important people in your life. Very few people in this situation would say, “Well, I’d like to get back to the office and return a few phone calls.”

Make Up Your Dream List
In setting your true goals as an extension of imagining that you have no limitations, make up a “Dream List.” A dream list is a list of everything you would like to be, have or do in your life, sometime in the future, if you had no limitations at all.

Mark Victor Hansen, co-author of Chicken Soup For the Soul, recommends that you sit down with a pad of paper and make a list of at least 100 goals that you want to accomplish in your lifetime. Then imagine that you have all the time, all the money, all the friends, all the abilities and all the resources necessary to achieve these goals. Let yourself dream and fantasize. Just write down everything that you would like to have as if you had no limitations at all.

The amazing discovery you will make is that, within 30 days after writing out this list of 100 “Dreams,” remarkable things will begin to happen in your life, and your goals will start to be achieved, at a rate that you cannot even imagine today. This seems to happen to virtually once they have written down at least 100 goals. You should give it a try. You could be amazed at the results.

The Instant Millionaire
Here is another goal setting question; “If you won a million
dollars tomorrow, cash, tax free, how would you change your life?” What would you do differently? What would you get into or out of? What would you do more of or less of? What would be the first thing you would do if you learned today that you had just received one million dollars cash?
This is a way of asking the question, “How would you change your life if you were completely free to choose? The primary reason that we stay in situations that are not the best for us is because we fear change. But when you imagine that you have all the money that you will ever need, to do or be whatever you want, your true goals often emerge.

For example, if you were currently in the wrong job for you, the idea of winning a large amount of money would cause you to think about quitting that job immediately. If you were in the right job for you however, winning a lot of money would not affect your career choice at all. So ask yourself, “What would I do if I won a million dollars cash, tax free, tomorrow?”

No Fear Of Failure
Here is another question to help you clarify your true goals: What have you always wanted to do but been afraid to attempt? When you look around your world, and you look at other people who are doing things that you admire, what have you always wanted to do as well, but you have been afraid of taking the chance?
Have you wanted to start your own business? Have you wanted to run for public office? Have you wanted to embark on a new career? What have you always wanted to do but been afraid to attempt?

Do What You Love To Do
In setting goals for your life, short and long-term, you should continually ask yourself, “What do I most enjoy doing, in each area of my life?” For instance, if you could do just one thing all day long in your work, what would it be? If you could do any job or full time activity all the time, without pay, what would it be? What sort of work or activity gives you the greatest joy and satisfaction?

The psychologist Abraham Maslow identified what he called “peak experiences,” those moments or times when the individual feels the happiest, most elated and exhilarated. One of your aims in life is to enjoy as many peak experiences as possible. You achieve this by thinking back and identifying those moments of peak experience in your past, and by then by imagining how you could repeat them in your present and future. What have been your happiest moments in life up to now? How could you have more of those moments in the future? What do you really love to do?

Make A Difference
You should have goals for social and community involvement and contribution as well. Think about what kind a difference you would like to make in your world. What organizations, causes, needs or social problems would you like to work on or in? What changes would you like to see? Who is there who is less fortunate than you that you would like to help?
If you were independently wealthy, what causes would you support? Most of all, what could you do today to begin making a difference in your world? Don’t wait until some future date when everything will be ideal. Instead, start today in some way.

Set Clear Financial Goals
One of the most important areas of goal setting is your financial life. If you could earn and accumulate all the money you need, you could probably achieve most of your non-financial goals faster and easier than you can today.

If your life were ideal, how much money would you like to earn each month, each year? How much would you like to save and invest each month and year? How much would you like to be worth sometime in the future? What sort of estate would you like to accumulate by the time you retire, and when would you like that to be? Most people are hopelessly confused about their financial goals, but when you become absolutely clear about them for yourself, your ability to achieve them increases dramatically.

Clarity Makes Your Dreams Become Your Realities
When you are absolutely clear about what you want, you can then think about your goals, most of the time. And the more you think about them, the faster they will materialize in your life.
This process of asking yourself questions about your goals in each part of your life begins to clarify your thinking and make you a more focused and definite person. As Zig Ziglar says, “You move from being a wandering generality to becoming a meaningful specific.”

Most of all, you reach the point where you can determine your major definite purpose in life. This is the springboard for great achievement and extraordinary accomplishment.
Your major definite purpose will be the topic of the next chapter, and how to achieve it will be the subject of the chapters to come.

Determine Your True Goals
1. Write down your three most important goals in life right now.
2. What are your three most pressing problems or worries right now?
3. If you won a million dollars cash, tax free, tomorrow, what changes in your life would you make immediately?
4. What do you really love to do? What gives you the greatest feelings of value, importance and satisfaction?
5. If you could wave a magic wand over your life and have anything you wanted, what would you wish for?
6. What would you do, how would you spend your time, if you only had six months left to live?
7. What would you really want to do with your life, especially if you had no limitation

DETERMINE YOUR TRUE GOALS

“Realize what you really want. It stops you from chasing butterflies and puts you to work digging gold.” (William Moulton Marsden)

My favorite word in goal setting, and in success in general, is the word “Clarity.” There is a direct relationship between the level of clarity you have about who you are and what you want, and virtually everything you accomplish in life.

Superior men and women invest the time necessary to develop absolute clarity about themselves and what they really want, like designing a detailed blueprint for a building, before they begin construction. Average people just throw themselves at life, like a dog chasing a passing car, and wonder why they never seem to catch anything, or keep anything worthwhile.

Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “Have you built your castles in the air? Good. That is where they should be built. Now, go to work and build foundations under them.”
In this chapter, you begin to crystallize your visions and values into concrete goals and objectives that you can work on, every single day.

Make Your Goals Personal
Earlier I mentioned that intense, burning desire is absolutely essential to the overcoming of obstacles and the achieving of great goals. For your desire to be intense enough, your goals must be purely personal. They must be goals that you choose for yourself, rather than goals that someone else wants for you, or that you want to achieve to please someone in your life. In goal setting, for the process to be effective, you must be perfectly selfish about what is that you really, really want for yourself.
This doesn’t mean that you cannot do things for other people, either at home or at work. This simply means that, in setting goals for your life, you start with yourself, and work forward.

The Great Question
One of the most important questions in goal setting is this: “What do I really want to do with my life?” If you could do or be or have anything at all in life, what would it be? Remember, you can’t hit a target you can’t see. You should return to this question, over and over again, in the months and years ahead. “What do I really want to do with my life?”

In determining your true goals, you start with your vision, your values and your ideals. When you begin, these will often feel a bit like fantasies, detached from reality. However, now your job is to make them concrete, like designing a dream house on paper.

Decide What You Really Want
You start with your general goals and then move to more to more specific goals:
1. What are your three most important goals in your business and career, right now?
2. What are your three most important financial goals right now?
3. What are your three most important
family or relationship goals, right now?
4. What are your three most important health and fitness goals, right now?

Identify Your Major Worries
The flipside of the above questions is for you to ask, “What are my three biggest worries or concerns in life, right now?” What bothers you, worries you, concerns you, and preoccupies you, in your day-to-day life? What aggravates or irritates you? What is robbing you of happiness, more than anything else? As a friend of mine often asks, “Where does it hurt?”

Once you have identified your biggest problems, worries or concerns, ask yourself:
1. What are the ideal solutions to each of these problems?
2. How could I eliminate these problems or worries immediately?
3. What is the fastest and most direct way to solve this problem?”

CLARIFY YOUR VALUES - PART II by Gasto Nswima

Perform At Your Best
The moment that you begin walking, talking and behaving in ways that are consistent with your highest ideals, your self-image improves, your self-esteem increases and you feel happier about yourself and your world.
For example, whenever you are complimented or praised by another person, or given a prize or an award for accomplishment, your self-esteem goes up, sometimes dramatically. You feel happy about yourself. You feel that your whole life is in harmony, and that you are living congruent with your highest ideals. You feel successful and valuable.

Your aim should be to deliberately and systematically create the circumstances that raise your self-esteem in everything you do. You should live your life as if you were already the outstanding person that you intend to be sometime in the future
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Know What You Believe
What are your values today with regard to your work and your career? Do you believe in the values of integrity, hard work, dependability, creativity, cooperation, initiative, ambition, and getting along well with people? People who live these values in their work are vastly more successful and more highly esteemed than people who do not.

What are your values with regard to your family? Do you believe in the importance of unconditional love, continuous encouragement and reinforcement, patience, forgiveness, generosity, warmth and attentiveness? People who practice these values consistently with the important people in their lives are much happier than people who do not.

What are your values with regard to money and financial success? Do you believe in the importance of honesty, industry, thrift, frugality, education, excellent performance, quality and persistence? People who practice these values are far more successful in their financial lives than those who do not, and far faster as well.

What about your health? Do you believe in the importance of self-discipline, self-mastery, and self-control, with regard to diet, exercise and rest? Do you set high standards for your levels of health and fitness and then work every day to live up to those standards? People who practice these values live longer, healthier lives than people who do not.

Think Only About What You Want
Remember, you become what you think about — most of the time. Successful, happy people think about their values, and how they can live and practice those values in every part of their lives, every single day. The big payoff is that, the more you live your life consistent with your values, the happier, healthier, more positive and energetic you will be.

Be True To Yourself
Perhaps the most important value of all is that of integrity. A billionaire once said to me, “Integrity is not so much a value in itself; it is rather the value that guarantees all the other values.”
Wow! This was a great insight for me. Once you have decided that you are going to live consistent with a value, your level of integrity determines whether or not you follow through on your commitment. The more you discipline yourself to live consistent with the very best you know, the greater is your level of personal integrity. And the higher your level of integrity, the happier and more powerful you will feel in everything you do.

Truly great men and women are always described as having high levels of integrity. They live their lives consistent with their highest values, even when no one is looking. Mediocre men and women on the other hand, are always cutting corners and compromising their integrity, especially when no one is watching.

Live In Truth With Yourself and Others
Decide today to be a man or woman of honor. Resolve to tell the truth, and to live in truth with yourself and others. Crystallize your values in each area of your life. Write them down. Think of how you would behave if you were living consistent with those values, and then, refuse to compromise them for any reason.
Once you accept complete responsibility for your life, and for everything that happens to you, and then create an ideal picture of your perfect future and clarify your values, you are now ready to begin setting clear, specific goals in every area of your life. You are now on the launching ramp and ready to take off toward the stars.

Clarify Your Values:
1. Make a list of your 3-5 most important values in life today. What do you really believe in, and stand for?
2. What qualities and values are you best known for today among the people who know you?
3. What do you consider to be the most important values guiding your relationships with others in your life?
4. What are your values regarding money and financial success? Are you practicing these values daily?
5. Describe your picture of an ideal person, the person you would most want to be, if you had no limitations?
6. Write your own obituary, to be read to your friends and family at your funeral, exactly as you would like to be remembered.
7. What one change could you make in your behavior today that would help you to live in greater harmony with your values?

                                   "Opportunity only favour the prepared"

CLARIFY YOUR VALUES - PART I by Gasto Nswima(teenagersfactory.blogspot.com)

“One universe made up of all that is: and one God in it all, and one principle of being, and one law, the reason shared by all thinking creatures, and one truth.” (Marcus Aurelius)

One of the most important characteristics of leaders, and top people in every area of life, is that they know who they are, what they believe in and what they stand for. Average people are usually confused about their goals, values and ideals, and as a result, they go back and forth and accomplish very little. Men and women who become leaders, on the other hand, with the same or even fewer abilities and opportunities, go onto accomplish great things in whatever they attempt.

Life is lived from the inside out. The very core of your personality is your values. Your values are what make you the person you are. Everything you do on the outside is dictated and determined by your values on the inside, whether clear or fuzzy. The greater clarity you have regarding your values on the inside, the more precise and effective will be your actions on the outside.

The Five Levels Of Personality
You can imagine your personality by thinking of a target with concentric rings, from the inside to the outside. Your personality is also made up of five rings, starting from the center, your values, and radiating outward to the next circle, your beliefs.
Your values determine your beliefs, about yourself and the world around you. If you have positive values, such as love, compassion and generosity, you will believe that people in your world are deserving of these values, and you will treat them accordingly.

Expect The Best
Your beliefs in turn determine the third ring of your personality, your expectations. If you have positive values, you will believe yourself to be a good person. If you believe yourself to be a good person, you will expect good things to happen to you. If you expect good things to happen to you, you will be positive, cheerful and future oriented. You will look for the good in other people and situations.

The fourth level of your personality, determined by your expectations, is your attitude. Your attitude will be an outward manifestation or reflection of your values, beliefs and expectations. For example, if your value is that this is a good world to live in, and your belief is that you are going to be very successful in life, you will expect that everything that happens to you is helping you in some way.

As a result, you will have a positive mental attitude toward other people and they will respond positively toward you. You will be a more cheerful and optimistic person. You will be someone that others want to work with and for, buy from, sell to and generally help to be more successful. This is why a positive mental attitude seems to go hand in hand with great success in every walk of life.

The fifth ring, or level of life, is your actions. Your actions on the outside will ultimately be a reflection of your innermost values, beliefs and expectations on the inside. This is why what you achieve in life and work will be determined more by what is going on inside of you than by any other factor.

 As Within, So Without
You can always tell how a person thinks, most of the time, by looking at the conditions of their outer lives. A positive, optimistic, goal and future oriented person — on the inside — will enjoy a happy, successful and prosperous life on the outside, most of the time.

Aristotle said that the ultimate aim or purpose of human life is to achieve your own happiness. You are the very happiest when what you are doing on the outside is congruent with your values on the inside. When you are living in complete alignment with what you consider to be good and right and true, you will automatically feel happy and positive about yourself and your world.
Your goals must be congruent with your values, and your values must be congruent with your goals. This is why clarifying your values is often the starting point to high achievement and peak performance. Values clarification requires that you think through what is really important to you in life. You then organize your entire life around these values.

Any attempt to live on the outside in a manner that contradicts the values you hold on the inside will cause you stress, negativity, unhappiness, pessimism and even anger and frustration. Your chief responsibility to yourself in the creation of a great life is therefore for you to develop absolute clarity about your values in everything you do.

Know What You Really Want
Stephen Covey once said, “Be sure that, as you scramble up the ladder of success, it is leaning against the right building.” Carly Simon once sang a famous line, “Is this all there is?” Many people work hard on the outside to achieve goals that they think they want, only to find, at the end of the day, that they get no joy or satisfaction from their accomplishments. This occurs when the outer accomplishment is not in harmony with your inner values. Don’t let this happen to you.

Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” This applies to your values as much as to any other area of your life. Values clarification is something you do on a “go-forward” basis. You continually stop the clock, like a time out in a football game, and ask, “What are my values in this area?”
In the Bible it says, “What does it benefit a man if he achieves the whole world but loses his own soul?” The happiest people in the world today are those who are living in harmony with their innermost convictions and values. The unhappiest people are those who are attempting to live incongruent with what they truly value and believe.

Trust Your Intuition
Self-trust is the foundation of greatness. Self-trust comes from listening to your intuition, to your “still, small voice” within. Men and women begin to become great when they begin to listen to their inner voices, and absolutely trust that they are being guided by a higher power, each step of the way.

Living in alignment with your true values is the royal road to self-confidence, self-respect and personal pride. In fact, almost every human problem can be resolved by returning to values. Whenever you experience stress of any kind, look into yourself and ask, “In what way am I compromising my innermost values in this situation?”

Watch Your Behavior
How can you tell what your values really are? The answer is simple. You always demonstrate your true values in your actions, and especially your actions under pressure. Whenever you are forced to choose between one behavior and another, you will always act consistent with what is most important and valuable to you at that moment.
Values, in fact, are organized in a hierarchy. You have a series of values, some of them very intense and important, and some of them weaker and less important. One of the most important exercises you can engage in, to determine who you really are, and what you really want, is to organize your values by priority. Once you are clear about the relative importance of your values, you cans then organize your outer life so that it is in alignment with them.

Examine Your Past Behavior
There are some insightful ways to help you to determine your true values. First of all, you can look at your past. How have you behaved under pressure in the past? What choices did you make with your time or money when you were forced to choose? Your answers will give you an indication of your predominant values at that time.

Dale Carnegie once wrote, “Tell me what gives a person his greatest feeling of importance, and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life.” What makes you feel important? What raises your self-esteem? What increases your sense of self-respect and personal pride? What have you accomplished in your past life that has given you the greatest sense of pride and satisfaction? These answers will give you good indications of your true values.

Determine Your Heart’s Desire
The spiritual teacher Emmet Fox wrote about the importance of discovering your “Heart’s Desire.” What is your heart’s desire? What is it that, deep down in your heart, more than anything else, you would like to be, have or do in life? As a friend of mine asks, “What do you want to be famous for?”
What words would you like people to use to describe you when you are not there? What would you like people to say about you when you have passed on? What would you like someone to say about you at your funeral? How do you want your family, friends and children to remember you? How would you want them to talk about you after you had left this earth? How would you like people to talk to them about you?
What kind of a reputation do you have today? What kind of a reputation would you like to have sometime in the future? What would you have to begin doing today in order to create the kind of reputation that you desire?

Your Past Is Not Your Future
Many people have had difficult experiences growing up. They have fallen onto hard times and become associated with the wrong people. They have behaved in ways that were illegal or socially unacceptable. Sometimes they have even been convicted and sent to prison for their crimes. But at a certain point in life, they decided to change. They thought seriously about the kind of person that they wanted to be known as, and thought of, in the future. They decided to change their lives by changing the values that they lived by. By making these decisions and sticking to them, they changed their lives. And what others have done, you can do as well.

Remember, “It doesn’t matter where you’re coming from; all that really matters is where you’re going.”
If you were an outstanding person, in every respect, how would you behave toward others? What sort of impression would you leave on others after you had met them and spoken with them? Imagine you could be a completely excellent person, how would you be different from today?

How Much You Like Yourself
In psychology, your level of self-esteem determines your level of happiness. Self-esteem is defined as: “How much you like yourself.” Your self-esteem, in turn, is determined by your self-image. This is the way you see yourself and think about yourself in your day-to-day interactions with others. Your self-image is shaped by your self-ideal. Your self-ideal is made up of the virtues, values, goals, hopes, dreams and aspirations that you have for yourself sometime in the future.

Here is what psychologists have discovered: The more your behavior in the moment is consistent with what you feel your ideal behavior should be, the more you like and respect yourself, and the happier you are.

On the other hand, whenever you behave in a way that is inconsistent with your ideal of your very best behavior, you experience a negative self-image. You feel yourself to be performing below your best, below what you truly aspire to. As a result, your self-esteem and your level of happiness decrease.

                                      *******STAY TUNED FOR PART II & III**********

:" CREATE YOUR OWN FUTURE" - PART II by Gasto Nswima(teenagersfactory.blogspot.com)

Practice No Limit Thinking
When you answer these questions, imagine that you have no limits. Imagine that everything is possible for you. Peter Drucker once said, “We greatly overestimate what we can accomplish in one year. But we greatly underestimate what we can accomplish in five years.” Don’t let this happen to you.

Now, idealize your perfect financial life sometime in the future:

1. How much do you want to be earning five years from today?

2. What sort of lifestyle do you want to have? What kind of home do you want to live in?

3. What kind of car do you want to drive?

4. What kind of material luxuries do you want to provide for yourself and your family?

5. How much do you want to have in the bank?

6. How much do you want to be saving and investing each month and each year?

7. How much do you want to be worth when you retire?

Imagine that you have a “magic slate.” You can write down anything you want. You can erase anything that may have happened in the past, and create whatever picture you desire for your future. You can clean the slate at any time and start over. You have no limits.
Imagine Your Perfect Family Life

Look at your family and relationships today, and project five years into the future:
1. If your family life were perfect five years from now, what would it look like?
2. Who would you be with? Who would you no longer be with?
3. Where and how would you be living?
4. What kind of living standards would you have?
5. What kind of relationships would you have with the most important people in your life, five years from now, if everything were perfect in every respect?

When you fantasize and imagine your perfect future, the only question you ask is, “How?” This is the most powerful question of all. Asking it repeatedly stimulates your creativity and triggers ideas to help you accomplish your goals. Unsuccessful people always wonder whether or not a particular goal is possible. High achievers on the other hand only ask the question, “How?” They then set to work to find ways to make their visions and goals into realities.

Ideal Health and Fitness
Review your levels of health and fitness in every area:
1. If you were a perfect physical specimen five years from now, how would you look, feel and appear?
2. What would be your ideal weight?
3. How much would you exercise each week?
4. What would be your overall level of health?
5. What changes would you have to start making today in your diet, exercise routines and health habits to enjoy superb physical health sometime in the future?

You then imagine that you are an important and influential person, a “player” in your community. You are making a significant contribution to the world around you. You are making a difference with your life and in the lives of other people. If your social and community status and involvement were ideal:
1. What would you be doing?
2. What organizations would you be working with or contributing to?
3. What are the causes that you strongly believe in and support, and how could you become more involved in those areas?

Just Do It!
The primary difference between high achievers and low achievers is “action-orientation.” Men and women who accomplish tremendous things in life are intensely action oriented. They are moving all the time. They are always busy. If they have an idea, they take action on it immediately.

On the other hand, low achievers and non-achievers are full of good intentions, but they always have an excuse for not taking action today. It is well said that, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Examine yourself in terms of your personal inventory of skills, knowledge, talent, education and ability. If you were developed to the highest level possible for you (and there is virtually no limit), answer these questions:

1. What additional knowledge and skills would you have acquired five years from now?
2. In what areas would you be recognized as absolutely excellent in what you do?
3. What would you be doing each day in order to develop the knowledge and skills you need to be one of the top performers in your field sometime in the future?

Once you have answered these questions, the only question you ask is, “How?” How do you attain the skills and expertise you will require to lead your field in the years ahead?

Design Your Perfect Calendar
Especially, decide how you would like to live, day in and day out, your ideal lifestyle. Design your perfect calendar, from January 1st to December 31st:

1. What would you like to do on your weekends and vacations?

2. How much time would you like to take off each week, month and year?

3. Where would you like to go?

4. How would you organize your year if you had no limitations, and complete control over your time?
In the Bible it says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” What this means is that, if you lack an exciting vision for your future, you will “perish” inside in terms of lacking motivation and enthusiasm for what you are doing. But the reverse of this is that, with an exciting future vision, you will be continuously motivated and stimulated every day to take the actions necessary to make your ideal vision a reality.

The Key To Happiness
You remember that, “Happiness is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.” When you have clear, exciting goals and ideals, you will feel happier about yourself and your world. You will be more positive and optimistic. You will be more cheerful and enthusiastic. You will feel internally motivated to get up and get going every morning, because every step you are taking will be moving you in the direction of something that is important to you.

Resolve to think about your ideal future most of the time. Remember, the very best days of your life lie ahead. The happiest moments you will ever experience are still to come. The highest income you will ever earn is going to materialize in the months and years ahead. The future is going to be better than anything that may have happened in your past. There are no limits.
The clearer you can be about your long term future, the more rapidly you will attract people and circumstances into your life to help make that future a reality. The greater clarity you have about GOALS! who you are and what you want, the more you will achieve and the faster you will achieve it in every area of your life.

Create Your Own Future:
1. Imagine that there is a solution to every problem, a way to overcome every limitation, and no limit on your achieving every goal you can set for yourself. What would you do differently?

2. Practice “back from the future thinking.” Project forward five years and look back to the present. What would have to have happened for your world to be ideal?

3. Imagine your financial life were perfect in every way. How much would you be earning? How much would you be worth? What steps could you take, starting today, to make these goals a reality?

4. Imagine your family and personal life was perfect. What would it look like? What should you start doing more of, or less of, starting today?

5. Plan your perfect calendar. Design your year from January to December as if you had no limitations. What would you change, starting today?

6. Imagine that your levels of health and fitness were perfect in every way. What could you do, starting today, to make your vision for yourself into a reality?
             
                              "If you have clarity of life is easy to live without regrets"

SUNDAY MESSAGE :" CREATE YOUR OWN FUTURE" by Gasto Nswima(teenagersfactory.blogspot.com)

“You will become large as your controlling desire; or as great as your dominant aspiration.” (James Allen)
In more than 3300 studies of leaders conducted over the years, there is a special quality that stands out, one quality that all great leaders have in common. It is the quality of vision. Leaders have vision. Non-leaders do not.
Earlier I said that the most important discovery in all of human history is that, “You become what you think about — most of the time.” What is it then that leaders think about, most of the time? And the answer is that leaders think about the future and where they are going, and what they can do to get there.
Non-leaders, on the other hand, think about the present, and the pleasures and problems of the moment. They think and worry about the past, and what has happened that cannot be changed.

Think About The Future
We call this leadership quality “Future-Orientation.” Leaders think about the future and what they want to accomplish, and where they want to arrive sometime down the road. Leaders think about what they want, and what can be done to achieve it. The good news is that, when you begin to think about your future as well, you begin to think like a leader, and you will soon get the same results that leaders get.

Dr. Edward Banfield of Harvard concluded, after more than 50 years of research, that “long-time perspective” was the most important determinant of financial and personal success in life. Banfield defined long-time perspective as the “ability to think several years into the future while making decisions in the present.” This is one of the most important discoveries ever made. Just think! The further you think into the future, the better decisions you will make in the present to assure that that future becomes a reality.

Become A Millionaire
For example, if you save $100 per month from the age of 20 to the age of 65, and you invested that money in a mutual fund earning an average of 10% per annum over time, you would be worth more than $1,118,000 dollars when you retired.
Anyone who really wanted to could save $100 per month, if he or she had a long enough time perspective. What this means is that every single person starting work today can become a millionaire over time if they begin early enough, save consistently enough,
and hold to their long-term vision of financial independence.

Create A Five Year Fantasy
In personal strategic planning, you should begin with a long-term view of your life, as well. You should begin by practicing idealization in everything you do. In the process of idealization, you create a five-year fantasy for yourself, and begin thinking about what your life would look life in five years if it were perfect in every respect.

The biggest single obstacle to setting goals is “self-limiting beliefs.” These are areas where you believe yourself to be limited in some way. You may believe yourself to be inadequate or inferior in areas such as intelligence, ability, talent, creativity, personality or something else. As a result, you sell yourself short. By underestimating yourself, you set either no goals, or low goals that are far below what you are truly capable of accomplishing.

Imagine No Limitations
By combining idealization and future-orientation, you cancel or neutralize this process of self-limitation. You imagine for the moment that you have no limitations at all. You imagine that you have all the time, talents and abilities you could ever require to achieve any goal you could set for yourself. No matter where you are in life, you imagine that you have all the friends, contacts and relationships you need to open every door and achieve anything you could really want. You imagine that you have no limitations whatsoever on what you could be, have or do in the pursuit of the goals that are really important to you.

Practice Blue Sky Thinking
In Charles Garfield’s studies of “Peak Performers,” he made an interesting discovery. He analyzed men and women who had achieved only average results at work for many years, but who suddenly exploded into great success and accomplishment. He found that at the “take-off point,” every one of them began engaging in what he called “Blue Sky Thinking.”

In blue-sky thinking, you imagine that all things are possible for you, just like looking up into a clear blue sky, with no limits. You project forward several years and imagine that your life were perfect in every respect sometime in the future. You then look back to where you are today and ask yourself these this question: “What would have to have happened for me to have created my perfect future?”
You then come back to where you are in the present in your own mind, and you ask, “What would have to happen from this point forward for me to achieve all my goals sometime in the future?”

Refuse To Compromise Your Dreams
When you practice idealization and future-orientation, you make no compromises with your dreams and visions for yourself and your future. You don’t settle for smaller goals or half successes. Instead, you “dream big dreams” and project forward mentally as though you are one of the most powerful people in the universe. You create your perfect future. You decide what you really want, before you come back to the present moment and deal with what is possible for you within your current situation.

Start with your life . Imagine that your  life was perfect five years from now. Answer these questions:
1. What would it look like?
2. What would you be doing?
3. Where would you be doing it?
4. Who would you be working with? What level of responsibility would you have?
5. What kind of skills and abilities would you have?
6. What kind of goals would you be accomplishing?
7. What level of status would you have in your field?

                            *********TO BE CONTINUED**********

TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR LIFE: PART II

Develop Your Own Strategy
Just as the president of a corporation is responsible for the strategy and activities of that corporation, you are also responsible for the personal strategic planning of your own life and career. You are responsible for overall management strategy, setting goals, making plans, establishing measures and performing to get results.
You are responsible for achieving certain outputs, for the quality and quantity of the work that you produce, and the results you are expected to get.

As president, you are responsible for marketing strategy, for self-promotion and advancement, for creating your image and packaging yourself to be able to sell yourself for the very highest price in a competitive market.

You are responsible for financial strategy, for deciding exactly how much of your services you want to sell, how much you want to earn, how rapidly you want to grow your income year by year, how much you want to save and invest, and how much you want to be worth when you retire. These numbers are entirely up to you. You are responsible.

You are responsible for your people strategy and your relationships, both at home and at work. One piece of advice I give my students is to “choose your boss with care.” Your choice of a boss is going to have a major impact on how much you earn, how fast you get ahead, and how happy you will be at your job.

Make New Choices, New Decisions
By the same token, your choice of a mate and friends will have as much or more to do with your success and happiness than any other decisions you make. If you are not happy with any of your current choices, it is up to you to begin taking steps to improve or change them.

Finally, as president, you are in complete charge of personal research and development, personal training and learning. It is up to you to determine the talents, skills, abilities and core competencies you will need to earn the kind of money you want to earn in the months and years ahead. It is then your responsibility to make the investment and take the time to learn and develop these skills. No one is going to do it for you. The unavoidable truth is that no one really cares as much as you do.

Become A “Growth Stock”
To take this analogy a little further, see yourself as a company with a stock that trades on the market. Is your stock the kind of stock that people could invest in, confident that it will continue to grow in value and profitability in the months and years ahead? Are you a “growth stock” or has your value leveled off in the marketplace?
If you have decided to be a “growth stock,” what is your strategy for increasing your income 25% - 30% every year, year after year? As the president of your own life, as the spouse or parent in your own family, you owe it to the important people in your life, to be on a growth curve, to be continually increasing in value, income and profitability as the years progress.

Take The Wheel of Your Own Life
From this point forward, see and think about yourself as the master of your own fate. See yourself as completely in charge of your own life. See yourself as the president of your own personal services corporation. See yourself as a powerful person, completely self-determined and self-directed.
Refuse to whine and complain about things that happened in the past, which cannot be changed. Instead, orient yourself toward the future and think of what you want and where you are going. Above all, think about your goals. The very act of thinking about your goals makes you positive and purposeful again.

Determine Your Locus of Control
There is a large body of psychological literature that revolves around the concept of “Locus of Control Theory.” In more than 50 years of research, psychologists have determined that your “Locus of Control” is the determining factor of your happiness or unhappiness in life.

Here is why a person with an internal locus of control is a person who feels that he or she is in complete control of his or her life. This person feels strong, confident and powerful. He or she is generally optimistic and positive. He or she feels terrific about him or herself and feels very much in charge of his or her destiny.
On the other hand, a person with an external locus of control is a person who feels controlled by external factors, by their boss, their bills, their marriage, their childhood problems and their current situation. They feel “out of control” and as a result, they feel weak, angry, fearful, negative, hostile and disempowered.

The good news is that there is a direct relationship between the amount of responsibility you accept and the amount of control you feel. The more you say, “I am responsible!” the more of an internal locus of control you develop within yourself, and the more powerful and confident you feel.

The Golden Triangle
There is also a direct relationship between responsibility and happiness. The more responsibility you accept, the happier you become. It seems that all three –responsibility, control and happiness- go together. The more responsibility you accept, the greater amount of control you feel you have. The greater amount of control you feel you have, the happier and more confident you become.

 When you feel positive and in control of your life, you will set bigger and more challenging goals for yourself. You will also have the drive and determination to achieve them. You will feel as if you hold your life in your own hands, and that you can make it into whatever you decide to.

It Is In Your Hands
The starting point of goal setting is for you to realize that you have virtually unlimited potential to be, have or do anything you really want in life, if you simply want it badly enough, and are willing to work long enough and hard enough to achieve it.
The second part of goal setting is for you to accept complete responsibility for your life, and for everything that happens to you, with no blaming and no excuses.
With these two concepts clearly in mind, that you have unlimited potential and that you are completely responsible, you are now ready to move to the next step, which is to begin designing your ideal future.

Take Charge of Your Life Personal Quiz
1. Identify your biggest problem or source of negativity in life today. In what ways are you responsible for this situation?
2. See yourself as the President of your own company. How would you act differently if you owned 100% of the shares?
3. Resolve today to stop blaming anyone else for anything and instead accept complete responsibility in every area of your life. What actions should you be taking?
4. Stop making excuses and start making progress. Imagine that your favorite excuses have no basis in fact, and act accordingly.
5. See yourself as the primary creative force in your own life. You are where you are and what you are because of your own choices and decisions. What should you change?
6. Resolve today to forgive anyone who has ever hurt you in any way. Let it go. Refuse to discuss it again. Instead, get so busy working on something that is important to you that you don’t have time to think about it again

TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR LIFE- from Brian Tracy

“A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with – a man is what he makes of himself.” (Alexander Graham Bell)

When I was 21, I was broke and living in a small one-room apartment, in the middle of a very cold winter, working on a construction job during the day. I usually couldn’t afford to go out of my apartment in the evenings, where at least it was warm, so I had a lot of time to think.

One night as I sat there at my small kitchen table, I had a great flash of awareness. It changed my life. I suddenly realized that everything that happened to me for the rest of my life was going to be up to me. No one else was ever going to help me. No one was coming to the rescue.
I was thousands of miles from home with no intentions of going back for a long time. I saw clearly at that moment that if anything in my life were going to change, it would have to begin with me. If I didn’t change, nothing else would change. I was responsible.

The Great Discovery
I still remember that moment. It was like a first parachute jump. It was both scary and exhilarating. There I was, standing on the edge of life. And I decided to jump. From that moment onward, I accepted that I was in charge of my life. I knew that if I wanted things to be different, I would have to be different. Everything was up to me.
I later learned that when you accept complete responsibility for your life, you take the giant step from childhood to adulthood. Sadly enough, most people never do this. I have met countless men and women in their 40s and 50s who are still grumbling and complaining about earlier unhappy experiences, and still blaming their problems on other people and circumstances. Many people are still angry about something that one of their parents did or did not do to or for them- twenty, or thirty, or even forty years ago. They are trapped in the past and they can’t get free.

Your Worst Enemy
The greatest enemies of success and happiness are negative emotions, of all kinds. It is negative emotions that hold you down, tire you out and take away all your joy in life. It is negative emotions, from the beginning of time, that have done more harm to individuals and societies than all the plagues of history.
One of your most important goals, if you want to be truly happy and successful, is to free yourself from negative emotions, and fortunately, this can be done, if you learn how.
The negative emotions of fear, self-pity, envy, jealousy, feelings of inferiority, and ultimately anger, are mostly caused by four factors. Once you identify and remove these factors from your thinking, your negative emotions stop automatically. When your negative emotions stop, the positive emotions of love, peace, joy and enthusiasm flow in to replace them, and your whole life changes for the better, sometimes in a matter of minutes, or even seconds.

Stop Justifying
The first of the four root causes of negative emotions is justification. You can only be negative as long as you can justify, to yourself and others, that you are entitled to be angry or upset for some reason. This is why angry people are continually explaining and elaborating on the reasons for their negative feelings. However, if you cannot justify your negativity, you cannot be angry.
For example, a person is laid off from a job due to a change in the economy and declining sales in the company. However, the individual is angry with his boss for this decision and justifies his anger by describing all the reasons why his being laid off was unfair. He can even get himself so incensed that he decides to sue, or get even in some way. As long as he continues to justify his negative feelings toward his boss and the company, his negative emotions control him and absorb much of his life and thinking.
However, as soon as he says, “Well, I’ve been laid off. These things happen. It’s not personal. People get laid off all the time. I guess I’d better get busy finding a new job.” His negative emotions vanish. He becomes calm, clear and focused on the goal, and on the steps he can take to get back into the workforce. As soon as he stops justifying, he becomes a more positive and effective person.

Refuse to Rationalize And Make Excuses
The second cause of negative emotions is rationalization. When you rationalize, you attempt to give a “socially acceptable explanation for an otherwise socially unacceptable act.”
You rationalize to explain away or put a favorable light on something that you have done that you feel bad or unhappy about. You excuse your behavior or actions by creating an explanation that sounds good, even though you know that you were an active agent in whatever occurred. You often create complex ways of putting yourself in the right by explaining that your behavior was really quite acceptable, all things considered. This rationalizing keeps your negative emotions alive.
Rationalization and justification always require that you make someone or something else the source or cause of your problem. You cast yourself in the role of the victim, and you make the other person or organization into the oppressor, or the “bad guy.”

Rise Above the Opinions of Others
The third cause of negative emotions is an over concern or hypersensitivity to the way other people treat you. For some people, their entire self-image is determined by the way other people speak to them, talk to them or about them, or even look at them. They have little sense of personal value or self-worth apart from the opinions of others, and if those opinions are negative for any reason, real or imagined, the “victim” immediately experiences anger, embarrassment, shame, feelings of inferiority and even depression, self-pity and despair. This explains why psychologists say that almost everything we do is to earn the respect of others, or at least to avoid losing their respect.

No One Else Is Responsible
The fourth cause of negative emotions, and the worst of all, is blaming. When I draw the “Negative Emotions Tree” in my seminars, I illustrate the trunk of the tree as the propensity to blame other people for our problems. Once you cut down the trunk of the tree, all the fruits of the tree, all the other negative emotions, die immediately, just as when you jerk the plug out of the wall that lights up the Christmas lights in the tree, all the lights go out instantly.

Responsibility Is The Antidote
The antidote for negative emotions of all kinds is for you to accept complete responsibility for your situation. You cannot say the words, “I am responsible!” and still feel angry. The very act of accepting responsibility short-circuits and cancels out any negative emotions you may be experiencing.
The discovery of this simple but powerful affirmation, “I am responsible” and its instant ability to eliminate negative emotions was a turning point in my life, as it has been for many hundreds of thousands of my students. Just imagine! You can free yourself from negative emotions and begin taking control of your life by simply saying, “I am responsible!” whenever you start to feel angry or upset for any reason.
It is only when you free yourself from negative emotions, by taking complete responsibility that you can begin to set and achieve goals in every area of your life. It is only when you are free, mentally and emotionally, that you can begin to channel your energies and enthusiasms in a forward direction. This is why, without the acceptance of complete personal responsibility, no progress is possible. On the other hand, once you accept total responsibility for your life, there are no limits on what you can be, do and have.

Stop Blaming Others
From now on, refuse to blame anyone for anything - past, present or future. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Buddy Hacket, the comedian, once said, I never hold grudges; while you’re holding grudges, they’re out dancing!
From this point forward, refuse to make excuses or to justify your behaviors. If you make a mistake, say, “I’m sorry,” and get busy rectifying the situation. Every time you blame someone else or make excuses, you give your power away. You feel weakened and diminished. You feel negative and angry inside. Refuse to do it.

Control Your Emotions
To keep your mind positive, refuse to criticize, complain about or condemn other people for anything. Every time you criticize someone else, complain about something you don’t like, or condemn someone else for something that they have done or not done, you trigger feelings of negativity and anger within yourself. And you are the one who suffers. Your negativity doesn’t affect the other person at all. Being angry with someone is allowing him or her to control your emotions, and often the entire quality of your life, at long distance. This is just plain silly. Remember, as Gary Zukacs says in his book, Seat of the Soul, Positive emotions empower; negative emotions disempower. Positive emotions of happiness, excitement, love and enthusiasm make you feel more powerful and confident. Negative emotions of anger, hurt or blame weaken you and make you hostile, irritable and unpleasant to be around.

Once you decide to accept complete responsibility for yourself, your situation, and for everything that happens to you, you can turn confidently toward your work and the affairs of your life. You become “the master of your fate and the captain of your soul.”

Hello, Mr. President!
In a study done in New York some years ago, researchers found that the top 3% of people in every field had a special attitude that set them apart from average performers in their industries. It was this: they viewed themselves as self-employed throughout their careers, no matter who signed their paychecks. They saw themselves as responsible for their companies, exactly as if they owned the companies personally. You should do the same.
From this moment forward, see yourself as the President of your own personal services corporation. View yourself as self-employed. See yourself as in complete charge of every part of your life and career. Remind yourself that you are where you are and what you are because of what you have done or failed to do. You are very much the architect of your own destiny.

You Choose, You Decide
You have determined your entire life up to now by the choices and decisions you have made, or failed to make. If there is anything in your life that you don’t like, you are responsible. If there is anything that you are unhappy about, it is up to you to take the necessary steps to change and improve it so that it is more to your liking.
As the president of your own personal services corporation, you are completely responsible for everything you do, and for the results of what you do. You are responsible for the consequences of your actions and your behaviors. You are where you are and what you are today because you have decided to be there.
In a large sense, you are earning today exactly what you have decided to earn, no more and no less. If you are not happy with your current income, decide to earn more. Set it as a goal, make a plan and get busy doing what you need to do to earn what you want to earn.
As the president of your own career and your own life, as the architect of your own destiny, you are free to make your own decisions. You are the boss. You are in charge.!!
                
                                 *****TO BE CONTINUED**********

SUNDAY MESSAGE: " UNLOCK YOUR POTENTIAL"

UNLOCK YOUR POTENTIAL
“The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean unsailed, a new continent unexplored, a world of possibilities waiting to be released and channeled toward some great good.”
Success is goals, and all else is commentary. All successful people are intensely goal oriented. They know what they want and they are focused single mindedly on achieving it, every single day.

Your ability to set goals is the master skill of success. Goals unlock your positive mind and release ideas and energy for goal attainment. Without goals, you simply drift and flow on the currents of life. With goals, you fly like an arrow, straight and true to your target.

The truth is that you probably have more natural potential than you could use if you lived one hundred lifetimes. Whatever you have accomplished up until now is only a small fraction of what is truly possible for you.

 One of the rules for success is this, it doesn’t matter where you’re coming from; all that matters is  whereyou’re going. And where you are going is solely determined by yourself and your own thoughts.
Clear goals increase your confidence, develop your competence and boost your levels of motivation. As sales trainer Tom Hopkins says, Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.

YOU CREATE YOUR OWN WORLD
Perhaps the greatest discovery in human history is the power of your mind to create the aspects of your life. Everything you see around you in the man-made world began as a thought or an idea in the mind of a single person before it was translated into reality. Everything in your life started as a thought, a wish, a hope or a dream, either in your mind, or in the mind of someone else. Your thoughts are creative. Your thoughts form and shape your world and everything that happens to you.

The great summary statement of all religions, philosophies, metaphysics, psychology and success is this: “You become what you think about — most of the time.” Your outer world ultimately
becomes a reflection of your inner world, and mirrors back to you what you think about. Whatever you think about continuously emerges in your reality.

Many thousands of successful people have been asked what it is that they think about most of the time. The most common answer given by successful people is that they think about what they want, and how to get it most of the time.

Unsuccessful, unhappy people think and talk about what they don’t want most of the time. They talk about their problems and worries, and who is to blame, most of the time. But successful people keep their thoughts and conversation on the topics of their most intensely desired goals. They think and talk about what they want most of the time.
Living without clear goals is like driving in a thick fog. No matter how powerful or well engineered your car, you drive slowly, hesitantly, making little progress on even the smoothest road. Deciding upon your goals clears the fog immediately and allows you to focus and channel your energies and abilities.

 Clear goals enable you to step on the accelerator of your own life and leap ahead rapidly toward achieving more of the things you really want.

Your Automatic Goal Seeking Function
Imagine this exercise: you take a homing pigeon out of its roost, put it in a cage, cover the cage with a blanket, put the cage in a box and then place the box into a closed truck cab. You can then drive a thousand miles in any direction. If you then open the truck cab, take out the box, take off the blanket and let the homing pigeon out of the cage, the homing pigeon will fly up into the air, circle three times and then fly unerringly back to its home roost a thousand miles away. This is the only creature on earth that has this incredible cybernetic, goal-seeking function, except for man.

You have the same goal achieving ability as the homing pigeon, but with one marvelous addition. When you are absolutely clear about your goal, you do not even have to know where it is or how it is to be achieved. By simply deciding exactly what it is you want, you will begin to move unerringly toward your goal, and your goal will start to move unerringly toward you. At exactly the right time, and in exactly the right place, you and the goal will meet.

Because of this incredible cybernetic mechanism located deep within your mind, you always achieve your goals, whatever they are. You move toward them and they move toward you. If your goal is to get home at night and watch television, you will almost certainly achieve it. If your goal is to create a wonderful life full of health, happiness and prosperity, you will achieve that as well. Like a computer, your goal seeking mechanism is non-judgmental. It works automatically and continuously to bring you what you want, regardless of what you program into it.

Nature doesn’t care about the size or scope of your goals. If you set little goals, your automatic goal achieving mechanism will enable you to achieve little goals. If you set large goals, this natural capability will enable you to achieve large goals. The size, scope and detail of the goals you choose to think about most of the time is completely up to you.

        

                                                      " Go Big OR Go Home"

FRIENDSHIP vs YOUR SUCCESS or FAILURE

For ages now many people have spoken about success and failure. Many books have been published to educate people if they want to walk on  the road of success and get out of failure life. And many methods have been written to guide people through the journey of success and how to learn from a failure. Many books if you read them, they will recommend steps like change your mindset, have vision , keep hard working, don't give up and things of a sort. These are  great steps which anyone should possess if he/she wants to be successful and if not possessed it leads to failure .But among the crucial fundamental elements which most of them don't talk about alot is people we keep around our lives or in other words we call it "friendship!!".
What is friendship?!...The word friendship carries a very concrete meaning which most people don't really know about and am going to show you how concrete that word is.
"Meaning of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.H.I.P"

• "F" is for Fun............That friends share when they are together.
• "R" is for Reliability....A true friend is someone that you can always rely on.
• "I" is for Interest.......Someone who is genuinely interested in you, your fears, joys, and life.
• "E" is for Energy.........They pick you up when you are down, and give you the energy to go on and believe in yourself.
• "N" is for Nothing........Nothing is ever too much, no matter what time it is, night or day.
• "D" is for Distance.......Although the miles may separate you, a true friend is never far away.
• "S" is for Secrets........Your feelings and personal/private thoughts that you can only share with a friend.
• "H" is for Happiness......The way I feel when we are together.
• "I" is for Inseparable....Through good times and bad, tears and laughter. A friend will always be there for you jst frnds like u ..
• "P" is for Perfect........The friendship that you and I share. You make normal days into special days. Turn my tears of sorrow into tears of laughter. My world is a brighter place due to the friendship and love that we share.

 Friendship in our lives has a very huge consequences whether  positive or negative. Many of our lives today have been ruined or constructed because of people we let hanging around our lives. Among the success or failures we incur in life 70%  is either from bad friendship or good friendship. You can have good vision, you can be hardworking, you can be persistance, you can be whatever successful individual needs to be, but if you have bad friendship it can throw all your strength in the trush and take you back to square one.
Here is the thing about friendship, friendship is like an injection of medicine in the patient's body, it enters directly into the blood and controls the all system of the body to heal.
 So if is injected in over dose it can cost patient's life or even lost of life eventually but if injected in the correct dose, eventually a patient will heal. This is so true to friendship, if you have bad people around however much you  try to rise above the bars, they will pull you back and if you have right people around certainly you are winner everywhere. Friendship is addictive, which means it can influence any person to become another person whether a winner or a looser. And it controls a golden territory of wealthy called "MINDSET". This is where friendship starts to influence first, that's why is strongly advised that to be careful with people we allow to hang around our lives, they contain either poison or sweetness. If you hang with negative friends don't expect to live positive life. Because when someone listens how you talk or the way you live, is so easy to know what kind of people are in your life. Have you been frastuated about whatever you try fails?!, have you been not satisfied by the life you have?!, Are you frastuated by the results you get?!, you always want to become successful but you feel that is impossible?!!,, Well, reflect at this simple truth, LOOK WHERE YOU HAVE BEEN, LOOK WHERE YOU ARE TODAY, LOOK WHERE YOU WANT TO GO and LOOK THE PEOPLE AROUND YOUR LIFE, do they fit into your destiny?!.. Here are tips for choosing friendship which will lead to success and avoid you to failure

1. Hang with people who are ahead of you  in success of area of your interest, because these people help your spirit of success to be motivated everyday
2. Choose a friendship which will challenge you to get out of your comfort zone and take forward step to your destiny
3. Choose a friendship which will support your vision not telling you that you can't do it
4. Choose a friendship which has constructive criticism in your life not destructive one
5. Choose a friendship which will always supply good thoughts in your mindset
6. Choose a friendship which will build itself on the basis of understanding each other not backbitting each other
7. Choose a friendship which is based on trust and sharing
8. Choose a friendship which will base on mutual love and respect

                          Remember: " Your capital of life is people, so choose wisely"

 

IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO START YOUR DREAM

I absolutely love this story. She is such an inspiration. Take time to read. You will not regret it!
An 87 Year-old College student named Rose. The first day of school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn't already know.I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder. I turned round to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me
with a smile that lit up her entire being.
She said, "Hi handsome. My name is Rose. I'm eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?" I laughed and enthusiastically responded, "Of course you may!" and she gave me a giant squeeze. "Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?" I asked. She jokingly replied, "I'm here to meet a rich husband, get married, and have a couple of kids”
"No seriously," I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age. "I always dreamed of having a college education and now I'm getting one!" she told me.
After class we walked to the student union building and shared a chocolate milkshake. We became instant friends. Every day for the
next three months, we would leave class together and talk nonstop. I was always mesmerized listening to this "time machine" as she shared her wisdom and experience with me. Over the course of the year, Rose became a campus icon and she easily made friends wherever she went. She loved to dress up and she reveled in the attention bestowed upon her from the other students. She was living it up.At the end of the semester we invited Rose to speak at our football banquet. I'll never forget what she taught us. She was introduced and stepped up to the podium.
As she began to deliver her prepared speech, she dropped her three by five cards on the floor. Frustrated and a little embarrassed she leaned into the microphone and simply said, "I'm sorry I'm so jittery. I gave up beer for Lent and this whiskey is killing me! I'll never get my speech back in order so let me just tell
you what I know."
As we laughed she cleared her throat and began, "We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop
playing. There are only four secrets to staying young, being happy, and achieving success. You have to laugh and find humor every day.
You've got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you die. We have so many people walking around who are dead and don't even know it!There is a huge difference between growing
older and growing up.
If you are nineteen years old and lay in bed for one full year and don't do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old.
If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight.
Anybody can grow older. That doesn't take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding opportunity in change. Have no regrets. The elderly usually don't have regrets for what we did, but rather for things we did not do. The only people who fear death are those with regrets."She concluded her speech by courageously singing "The Rose."She challenged each of us to study the lyrics and live them out in our daily lives.At the year's end Rose finished the college degree she had begun all those years ago. One week after graduation Rose died peacefully in her sleep.
Over two thousand college students attended her funeral in tribute to the wonderful woman who taught by example that it's never too late to be all you can possibly be. When you finish reading this, please send/share this peaceful word of advice to your friends and family, they'll really enjoy it!
These words have been passed along in loving memory of ROSE.

"REMEMBER, GROWING OLDER IS MANDATORY.
GROWING UP IS OPTIONAL. We make a Living by what we get, we make a Life by what we give"

11. 

SUCCESS IS DETERMINED BY HOW STRONG IS YOUR OF SERVICE TO OTHERS

A true story, happened in 1892 at Stanford University ( Must Read)

An 18-year-old student was struggling to pay his fees. He was an orphan, and not knowing where to turn for money, he came up with a bright idea. He and a friend decided to host a musical concert on campus to raise money for their education.

They reached out to the great pianist Ignacy J. Paderewski. His manager demanded a guaranteed fee of $2000 for the piano recital. A deal was struck and the boys began to work to make the concert a success.

The big day arrived. But unfortunately, they had not managed to sell enough tickets. The total collection was only $1600. Disappointed, they went to Paderewski and explained their plight. They gave him the entire $1600, plus a cheque for the balance $400. They promised to honour the cheque at the soonest possible.

“No,” said Paderewski. “This is not acceptable.” He tore up the cheque, returned the $1600 and told the two boys: “Here’s the $1600. Please deduct whatever expenses you have incurred. Keep the money you need for your fees. And just give me whatever is left”. The boys were surprised, and thanked him profusely.

It was a small act of kindness. But it clearly marked out Paderewski as a great human being.

Why should he help two people he did not even know? We all come across situations like these in our lives. And most of us only think “If I help them, what would happen to me?” The truly great people think, “If I don’t help them, what will happen to them?” They don’t do it expecting something in return. They do it because they feel it’s the right thing to do.

Paderewski later went on to become the Prime Minister of Poland. He was a great leader, but unfortunately when the World War began, Poland was ravaged. There were more than 1.5 million people starving in his country, and no money to feed them. Paderewski did not know where to turn for help. He reached out to the US Food and Relief Administration for help.

The head there was a man called Herbert Hoover — who later went on to become the US President. Hoover agreed to help and quickly shipped tons of foodgrains to feed the starving Polish people.

A calamity was averted. Paderewski was relieved. He decided to go across to meet Hoover and personally thank him. When Paderewski began to thank Hoover for his noble gesture, Hoover quickly interjected and said, “You shouldn’t be thanking me Mr. Prime Minister. You may not remember this, but several years ago, you helped two young students go through college. I was one of them.”

The world is a wonderful place. What goes around comes around!

 

Sunday Message: "DON'T GIVE UP "

A reading from GENESIS 16:1-6

"1Now Sarai Abram's wife bare him no children: and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar.

2And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.

3And Sarai Abram's wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.

4And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived: and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes.

5And Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee: I have given my maid into thy bosom; and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes: the Lord judge between me and thee.

6But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face."

Sarai was a wife of abram and both of them had grown very old without any child. It was their dream like any other parents in the world to hold a baby in their hands May be you also it's your dream to pass in your final year exams, may be it's your dream to become a greatest entrepreneur in the world, may be it's your dream to be a doctor, may be it's your dream to be a musician. And you can see that for sarai being barren was a huge depression to her, she lost all hope, she felt so useless that she accepted the defeat to her dream and let abram to sleep with her maid . May be you have been trying by all efforts to accomplish something  in your life but it all fails, and you have decided to give your opportunity to others to use it. When abram slept with the maid, he made her pregnant and she conceived a child. Suddenly the maid started humiliating sarai simply because she couldn't have a dream of having a child anymore, because she gave up. As a result of sarai giving up on her dream look what happened

1. She lost sense of self worthy 
2. She accepted a defeat and eventually was defeated
3. She gave opportunity to her maid which was hers
4. She exposed herself to a mockery of her maid
5. She became very moody
6. She blame abram for her failure of hope 

 Ooh!..poor sarai, look what happens when you give up it's athousand time loss than perseverence. If you read past chapters , you will find that God appeared to abram and told him that from sarai' s womb he was going to establish his convenant of blessing to generations. This was just more than enough for sarai to be happy and confident about herself because it was almighty God who said that she was going to hold her dream child and nations were going to be blessed . You know God' s word is unaltered when he says something he fulfils it (read: isaiah 55:11, james 1:17), sad enough many of us don't believe it and still dwell in our heartbreaks. But let me tell you what causes people to give up.
 Most of us give up in our dreams because we are so much distilled in FACTS rather than TRUTH. Facts is what your enviroment says, fact is what your poor life says, fact is what your situation says that you can't bear any child, that you can't afford school fees, that you can't  accomplish your dream.Those facts wear the mask of truth but is not  truth. But truth is what God says about your life. When they say " you are finished", God says" it's just a beginning", when they say" you won't succeed" God says "succeed in everything as your spirit succeed". It doesn't matter what happens in your life, education,health, dream but never give up because God is the one who knows where you will end. It doesn't matter how many have said that you can't make it in life and they have already concluded you as a failure, you know what?!!..they are just human beings like you and they are not the ones who hold your destiny, is God who holds it. It's normal for people who sit around and do nothing in their lives to discourage those who have decided to take a forward step in the lives. You will meet alot of vision killers, haters, who will tell you to look at your situation and convince you that "it won't happen" but understand this" if God says yes, no one can say no" . Listen to what he says and not what people say. Always have faith in him, yield to his world and persue your dream with courage, good things will happen.

WHAT TO DO NOT TO GIVE UP

• Always look and act upon what God says about you not people
• Have faith in God (hebrews 11:1-7)
• Be persistant (Mathew 7:7-8)
• Have patience( Hebrews 6:14-15)
• Maintain your focus 
• Rise above your problems

"If you are going to edit someone's life put a comma, because God has a full stop" 

*************WISH YOU BLESSED SUNDAY*********************