Best Success Secret II: God's Direction

A man’s heart plans his ways, but the Lord directs his steps. ­– Solomon David

Can you but love people who know how to plan? It is interesting working with such because it seems every advice you give yields good results. You can help anybody who has a plan get to where he desires to. What can you do with a plan-less folk? You cannot push him. You cannot motivate him for greatness. You cannot direct him because which way will you direct a traveler who has no idea where he is going?

Irrespective of my best intentions in guiding someone with a plan to his goal God does it beyond all imagination. He specializes on giving the right direction at all times to the person with a plan. God will tell you what steps to take, what turns to make, what foot to put forward next. He will guide you to the best stocks to buy, when to buy and when to restrain yourself.

It is God’s desire to guide you to heights beyond the limits you have imagined. Interestingly we find it difficult to believe. We often see our goals as ours. We think on a straight line that because if our hearts have conceived the vision then we must find our way through to it. With God in the picture it isn’t so by any stint of the imagination. He desires to guide you as you take one step and then another toward a vision. “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, “This is the way; walk in it,”” says an envoy from God.

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If you desire God’s direction in accomplishing your plans you must do your part by;

1.     Having a plan

2.     Acknowledging God’s place in your plans

3.     Pursuing goals that would be of benefit to others

4.     Overcoming crippling fear

5.     Taking steps in faith

6.     Obeying the last instruction received exactly as it was instructed

There are certain pointers I have identified through which you may know that God is leading you:

1. Breakthrough ideas you haven't thought of pop-up into your mind
2. You find help from people at times and places you never imagined to find them
3. You coincide with opportunities that suit perfectly with your inherent gifts, talents and skills
4. You encounter bigger burdens that move you to act

Best Success Secret I: Planning

A man’s heart plans his ways, but the Lord directs his steps. ­– Solomon David

The quote above outlines what may be the best success secret of all time. It shows two things that will ensure a person achieves his goals; your plan and God’s direction.

A colleague once wrote me a request that he wanted to work with me and help me accomplish the goals I have set. I appreciated his interest in my work but replied that he sends me his personal vision, dreams and goals set. I could have jumped on the opportunity of making my goals more achievable because of his input but I know two things; he would be no good to me if he has no personal goals, and the person who will help you achieve anything worthwhile must first know how to plan his own life.

          A plan is an outline of how a vision will be achieved. It tells, in detail, how a person will get from point A to B. It breaks down goal pursuit into simpler steps. To make effective plans every time you try, ask yourself the following questions:

1.     What do I want to achieve?

2.     Where am I at the moment in reference to my goal?

3.     What resources do I have at my disposal?

4.     Who can help me?

5.     How much time do I have?

6.     What are the small steps I can take today that will move me closer to achieving my goal?

7.     When do I begin?

The answers to these questions are the framework for your plan. As you answer them you begin to see what it will really take to achieve your goal and if you have what it takes at the moment to achieve it. I believe that it doesn’t matter how far a person is from his vision, he can achieve it if he has a plan that clearly tells how to achieve it.

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When you have outlined your plan you step out in faith that your plans will work. It is at this time that the second ingredient to your success recipe – God’s direction gets rolling. We will deal with that in the next article.

Take a Quantum Leap to Success!

When You get to the other side you
become a different person!

Taking the leap felt appropriate. Only it wasn’t just a short hop. It was a full plunge off a cliff. ­– Maya banks, Rush

Success depends a lot on how you see yourself. Your self-image, or personal mind picture or personal definition – whatever you call it – determines how far you go in life and the quality and quantity of goals you achieve in your lifetime.

          We all have a mind picture of ourselves in every area of life. The way you see yourself determines the extent of your success in an area. For example I consider myself a very good inspirational writer – not the best – just very good. Because of this self-image I write good articles – if the responses I get from my posts are anything to go by with. On the other hand I consider myself a horrible dancer. When I am anywhere around dances I immediately look for something else to do to take the attention away from me.

          Your self-image is developed over several years and through various experiences and environments. It grows so strong that it more-often-than-not keeps a strangle hold on you. It ensures you don’t become anything contrary to the image – you see why I may never be a renowned dancer? The same can keep you sick, sad, poor, or an all-round failure for the rest of your life.

There is some hope for folks like me. If you want to do greater things in the area your self-image cannot permit, you need to shake things radically. You need to set and accomplish a goal you could never have imagined in your most wildest of dreams. The type of step I mean is the glutton going on a forty days fast, or the lazy woman joining the marathon race, or me registering for a highly publicized dancing competition.

When we set such goals and are able to achieve them, something happens within. The image changes! We suddenly see ourselves differently and will be more able to accommodate more possibilities.

       {To order for my new book, Do it Like Kids, click here}

If you take this seriously you will have set yourself up for huge accomplishments. It will happen as such because your boundaries of limitation will be expanded with every goal achieved.

How to Generate Hunger and Drive to Achieve Any Goal

It doesn't matter if you are the ONLY one

You’ve gotta be hungry for something if you’re going to get it. you’ve gotta want it as bad as you want to breathe. ­– Les Brown

It is a one thing to have a dream, a completely different thing to have the hunger and drive to achieve it no matter the stakes. I have set countless goals which I was certain (at the time of setting) that I had all it may take to achieve them only to fall short of hunger and drive the next morning. Sometimes I wonder what motivated me in the first place.

          Hunger and drive are two different pals always travelling together. Hunger is the pain within that will not leave you comfortable until a goal is accomplished while drive is what pushes you, your motivation to get going towards the goal. Hunger and drive are differ for different goals but the principles behind generating them are the same.

1. Ensure your goal is within the boundaries of your burdens. Goals outside burdens may never be achieved. The burden keeps you in it when the chips are down.

2. Do not exaggerate the problem. Problems have a special way of looking bigger than they actually are. Don’t join in exaggerating the problems confronting you.

3. Clearly understand the gains of victory and fix your attention on them. Victory will motivate you. Keep your gaze fixed on it. It is a common idea for military commanders to ensure their soldiers have their eyes fixed on victory, its profits, and nothing else if they would stand a chance.

4. Recall past victories and the feelings you had. You have succeeded before. Everyone has. Recall your past victories. None is too small. If it happened before it will happen again!

5. Count God in; He has your back. Don’t rely solely on your strength or what you know – they will fail you. God is able and willing to ensure you succeed.

       {To order for my new book, Do it Like Kids, click here}

If you would align yourself with these five principles you will find that you have the hunger and drive to accomplish every goal you set.

Kill or be Killed

I once said of an unhealthy habit, “I’ll change but not today.” I later realized that’s the perfect recipe for failures. ­– Yusuf Leinge

I have my share of crazy unhealthy habits. These are those things that I know I must change if I would make the impact I am envisioning. Unfortunately, I’ve also had the habit of pushing the change I need to make in these areas for another time.

You probably understand what I am talking about. That little thing you don’t talk about – “After all,” you say to yourself, “it is little and rarely affects another person.” Then why not change it? You have identified that it has the power of stopping you so why not stop it before it stops you?

Maybe it is because such habits kill slowly and softly. Just tiny drops once in a while from a drum filled with water wouldn’t get it empty – or would it? Individual drops make no difference but what about all the drops put together? Note that some of the most effective killers are silent killers.

    {To order for my new book, Do it Like Kids, click here}

If you have identified an unhealthy habit stop it now. Not next year. Not next month. Not next week. Not later today. All these lie in your future and the only time you really have is this moment here and now. No unhealthy habit is small. Remember to, “Catch the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines, because your vines have tender grapes.”

When you train yourself to kill an unhealthy habit now, you would be indirectly training and increasing your capacity to identify quickly and solve monster problems before they consume you or your efforts.

Are You a Thinker or a Doer?

Thinker VS DOer

Faith by itself, if it does not have action, is dead. ­– James 2:17

 My brain loves the human brain. I mean, where will we be without it? Imagine a brainless head? Our brains ensure we think through every single step and action before we take it. It processes and analyses data fed to it at unbelievable speeds. More excitingly, it senses environments and can inform you to stand and fight or take flight when the need arises.

In your success journey your brain is very important. It is God’s gift to think and grow into success. Deep thinkers go into the recesses of the mind and draw out the solution to every challenge that they face. Thinking is a part of the success formula – a part.

The other part of it is DOing. Without doing, thinking is impotent. Thinking × Doing = Chance for Success. If either thinking or doing is zero, chance for success will certainly be zero. The higher the figures of both, the higher the chance for success in any venture.

Unfortunately a good percentage of great thinkers don’t act. They sit down, think, think, and produce no results. Have you met such? I bet you have. Isaac Newton’s first law of motion shows us that any object will remain in its state of rest or uniform motion until an external force is applied to it to either get it into motion or alter its direction and speed of motion

{To order for my new book, Do it Like Kids, on Amazon.com, click here}

In life your actions are the external force. Without them all situations will remain the same. It doesn’t matter how much you think about it, you will continue to fail, continue to stay poor, continue to stay unhealthy, continue to stay sad until – and only until – you take actions to alter the trend.

Never underestimate the power of your actions. Never say there’s nothing you can do. Take the right actions no matter how insignificant they seem.