Creating the right mind-set and a positive attitude today, will help you to start crafting a clear plan of how you intend to make your life a success.
Start planning from your internal or spiritual view of things. The external view always has a way of distorting, discouraging and limiting your dream.
A leader, who divides his own people, contaminates his platform and begins to destroy his own territory.
Consider your will to be the vision of your influence on earth after you cease to be a part of it. Crafting a lasting legacy means you start planning and making it possible now.
Teach faith as a non-negotiable – What should your family be aware of? Why should they be aware of these things? How will they become aware? When and at what stages must they become aware?
A leader must produce other leaders. Why do you want to produce followers, when by being called a leader the assumption is that you already have followers? Influence those who follow to birth their kind and develop others to lead.
Everyone is a business person. You must be in the business of managing your time. Managing your time means managing your life. Good time managers are good life managers, and vice versa.
It must start by knowing Time = Life. Spending your life on impulse will lead to a broke life, just like impulse buying leads to an empty wallet! How much value you place on your time reflects in the activities that consume your time.
Not planning for your time expenditure simply means deliberately intending to fail.
Everything you love, enjoy, respect or value will somehow find top priority, even without excessive conscious reminders. Show respect through the way you manage time, especially when others are involved or affected.
Without clarity and motivation, your vision will remain a wish in dream-land… It takes an action-centred and results-driven work ethic to execute your duties and responsibilities, to make your success more deliberate.
A mission without action is equally ineffective and futile as action without mission. Use the “power of precision,” and remember language shapes thought and thought shapes action.
The setting of SMART goals has been written about extensively over the decades, but will only be as useful as the extent to which its principles are used.
You cannot offer quality experiences as an isolated island. Learn to work well with others on the success train. Respect those you work with and appreciate their contribution in making you the best at what you do.
People and organisations should want to be associated with you as a brand. A sign of a depleted and irrelevant brand is unwillingness of your market or peers to associate with you.
If you can listen to yourself and obey yourself more, then you have increased your chances for attaining personal effectiveness.
To achieve your desired success you have to be effectively selling something and to be significant in impact, you must be teaching somehow. How effectively are you selling and how well are you teaching?
The world is always throwing challenges and questions – which ones does your mission and purpose respond to or seek to solve? Do you know your mission and have you clearly defined the life-issues you intend to address?
At times the challenges will displace us or some of the things that are important to us. If we strengthen our belief system from within – those challenges must inevitably begin to float away and not take root or force us to sink.
Even if you bury me underground and put a concrete slab over the hole – one day you will wake up to find a crack in the concrete with a tiny green sprout shooting through. When you see that shoot – that will be me!
Skills and special abilities will only grow if you practice more. You become a star-performer by doing. Let performance and production of desired results become a consistent habit associated with your personal brand.
You cannot bury someone with the Shereketa spirit for long. Even if they are thrown into problems, they will rise back up.
Make sure your reading, studying or research are always adding value to the defined vision, mission, beliefs and values that form your unique personal brand.
An entrepreneurial spirit makes you someone who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business enterprise, talent or calling to become an agent of change.
Entrepreneurship is the process of discovering new ways of combining resources to create change – in whatever area of life.
Money might be a reward (by-product) but should not always be the only goal of your efforts and enterprise.
Dreams are difficult to measure if they remain wishes – crystallise them into measurable goals with specific targets and action plans. Goals/objectives are easier to measure when broken down into tasks with clear targets and deadlines.
Choices and decisions must be supported by your passion, resolve and a productive work ethic. If these meet opportunity – your success has finally come!
Every effective person must be able to sell and teach, whether in private or to a group in public. This applies equally to skills and talents as it does to products and services.
Your personal development is your personal responsibility. No one can study or acquire knowledge for you. There are things only you can do, to bring the change or the results you require to make progress in life.
Make adjustments and improvements to enhance the effectiveness of meetings or surpassing of your target. Learn to define, quantify and be specific about what, how and when you want to succeed in each area of your life.
Be disciplined enough to choose your network and be willing to sacrifice the circles that reduce your effectiveness and make you unproductive.
You are in obscurity when you are still needed but no one cares a lot what you say or think, or even where you are working from. You have no voice or presence that makes you relevant. Grow your voice.
It is imperative that you grow, because your personal growth and development is one of the most important things to you. Your growth is good for you – it must be deliberate.
No matter how much I care for you, you have to do your own growing – it’s your personal responsibility. Muscles do not grow by reading but by lifting weights. Exam grades do not improve by wishing but by studying.
Don’t do things or act out your posture and gestures to impress people, just be yourself and portray the confident ‘you’ with that high self-esteem. So relax because you are ‘you’. Be sincere, be authentic. That will be impressive enough.
Appearance matters, we see your presentation before we get a chance to sample the substance within. You might miss a chance for the latter.
Don’t be intimidated and at the same time don’t intimidate.
You must succeed! Not by accident, but deliberately! You are able to succeed – now you must be willing to succeed and this must reflect in the way you spend your life.
Leave no room for fear and excuses. Be strong in spirit and possess unwavering convictions. Choose to be an optimist and commit to succeed.
Train your emotions to listen to your fundamental empowering beliefs. Be principle-centred and values-driven.
Never stop asking questions. Always take time to reflect and find answers. Stop, Think and Use Your Brain!
Let your resolution and confession be, ‘I will change these things because I want to succeed, and I want to succeed because it will bring me the happiness I seek and desire.
You should be able to criticize and evaluate yourself before others do it. Check for congruity between your defined mission, vision, values and your practiced attitude, behaviour and habits.
You first compete with yourself before competing against others; if you cannot beat your last best result, do not be surprised if it seems difficult to compete against external competitors.
Generate great impressions. This is a direct result of setting higher standards for yourself in your speech, dress, living environment, grooming, etiquette, study, research and commitment.
You must first become – before you are appointed, conferred or pronounced. Unfortunate challenges and failures are likely to be manifested whenever conferment precedes becoming what you aim to be. Be ready to maturely handle success.
If you just want to do something because it is a customary new year resolution, then soon enough the year will get a bit older, and the strength of your decision will also begin to wear off.
Build relationships and friendships by finding common experiences or interests instead of getting discouraged by noticeable differences.
If you are not sure or you don’t know something, politely ask. Asking is not a sign of being daft, but of confidence.
It will take faith, to know success can still be attained regardless of unfairness or disadvantages availed by any system you operate within.
You need to realize there will always be beliefs that seek to limit and others that seek to stretch you to your highest potential. Just because you cannot see or do something, does not mean it is not there or cannot be done.
Your values, as guiding principles, will influence your attitude towards yourself, life, other people, work and even challenges or success itself. Your values are a product of your beliefs.
Attitude is the mind-set, the kind of thoughts you process and meditate on, to generate the kind of feelings you have towards life, people and issues. This is what makes you do what you do in the way you do it.
No one can change your attitude or another person’s attitude – only you can decide to change your own attitude by influencing the whole value chain from programs running in your subconscious mind to beliefs and values you strongly hold.
Because it took you years to become so negative, doubting and dis-empowered – it must now become your daily journey to a life-time of positivity and empowering thoughts, words, actions and beliefs.
Deliberately plan to be exciting and to be excited.
Be deliberate about what you choose to read, watch or listen to – these are source codes to your internal programming.
The deep desire for success must cause a dream to rise to the surface and inspire you to action. The dream must be supported in the physical and natural realm to help you believe more and more in the possibility of its realization.
The challenge therefore, as you strive for success, is to make it a habit to live your life on purpose. You must learn to make deliberate plans and then practice the art and science of doing things on purpose.
The aim is to produce specific results by your actions, so you begin to do things on purpose. If I leave things to chance, I am losing the plot to make success deliberate, meaning I am increasing my chances of failing in any given task.
You need to use you imagined view of the future you dream of, then paint the statement in words, to state that clear dream of your desired future.
Your vision must state the end result and must be stated in the positive so that it will be a constant source of inspiration. Begin by, “I will…
You need to change the questions you ask yourself and of your situations, in order to change the trajectory of your life. These are questions that will help you define and refine your purpose.
We can only continue to promote invention, creativity and success by asking of ourselves, our situations and problems some key questions. What questions are you asking today?
Values are the guiding principles through which you make choices and decisions. They are influenced by your beliefs, and will help you uphold a higher standard of personal character.
Aligning your values and beliefs to your behaviour, increases your chances of being effective at living a fulfilling life without the stress of guilt-consciousness, internal strife or internal conflict
Your personal brand must exude who you are, what you stand for, specifies your target market, what value you intend to add to them and the unique offering through which you will do that.
Whilst you can be a stepping stone to help others succeed, you are not a dirty mat to be abused by others.
There should be a healthy ‘stubbornness’, assertiveness and confidence that comes from knowledge of your clear vision, mission, values and personal brand.
You can and should stand up for who you are and what you represent, without fear or prejudice. You take the promises you have made to yourself and to others very seriously.
The major purpose of defining and understanding yourself is to be able to come up with an objective strategy to map your success.
Personal growth by tackling the ‘big-picture” through focusing on the things you have power to influence is more effective and less stressful.
Remain aware of your weak points; not knowing or choosing to ignore them, means creating dangerous ‘blind-spots’ in the path to your success.
The ostrich-approach of burying your head in the sand, when confronting your areas of weakness, becomes a self-set trigger for failure.
What are the obvious temptations and inclinations that consistently call me or entice me to go against my personal beliefs, values and standards? You don’t need a prophet for this!
If you check your personal blind spots, you can be able to guard against focusing on what you cannot do, but reduce the areas of weakness by taking their space with more of your strengths.
Reprogram your life and mind-set by replacing the bad with the positive, the weakness with the strength.
There is no point knowing your mission if you cannot see the area of need for that mission.
You will only become significant in life, by solving the unique set of problems only you and your mission are meant to solve.
There remains unique questions calling for a unique mission like yours to answer – and that is your key to significance. Find them and be the answer.
Self-discovery is a journey of questioning yourself.
Just like watering the field will cause both the desired seed and the undesirable weed to germinate, the opportunities for your mission in life will be equally presented with real-life threats.
Whilst the greatest threat to your mission is the internal aspects within you, the external circumstances need to be covered against as well. Scan your external environment and circumstances.
The wisdom that comes from being conscious of the real threats to you and your mission will sharpen your deliberateness in decision & choice-making, associations and positioning.
Begin to grow in wisdom and develop an informed approach to more global issues around you and along your path to success and significance.
Everyone has the Capacity to Succeed…Ceteris Paribus!
The truth is that we all have what it takes to succeed and the fact is that not everyone will attain what they define success to be.
The reality of life and an imperfect world dictates that things cannot be held constant to guarantee your success; you have to wiggle your way through a planned path within a maze, to attain your goal.
Your success must never be left to others. You must be able to visualize it and see it through your own eyes, whilst others assist you to see it better and make it clearer.
If you cannot see it in your mind, then it becomes difficult to get. If you can personally visualize it, it becomes easier and more realistic to achieve.
Just because you cannot see it now, does not mean it is not there or not possible. See yourself succeeding and own that vision through all your planning and hard work.
Internalising success means that even if a misfortune takes away all the evidence or traces of success, yet what made you successful, remains. Soon enough, the evidence will return.
What makes you succeed must be possessed where it cannot be taken away. The internal capacity to succeed is more important than the external and temporal manifestation of success.
When success is internalized, no situation, no matter how bad, can convince you that you will not be able to attain your goal. You become adamant and refuse to give up.
You must not end your life because you failed an examination. Failing an examination or making a mistake does not make you a failure at life. The context of life is broader than that.
Taking your own life could become the ultimate failure, because you will be killing and closing the existing door to a chance that might have been waiting to lead you into another path.
Do not define your success in the context of just one situation or challenge you are currently battling or pursuing.
Your mind must be prepared to face some kind of ‘failure’ or mistakes – take the lessons, face the consequences even if embarrassing, and march on.
You do not reduce or eliminate your concerns by crying, shouting or proving you are the victim of whatever happened in your life.
As you grow and develop your talent and skill – you must begin to create a demand for what you possess as a personal brand.
Whatever you possess as an advantage over others, must be meticulously executed to produce desired results and progress.
Work, and not wishing, is what brings motion and results from your vision. Don’t be lazy. Try and try again, learn and practice, review and refine, then go back to implement again.
You must practice the discipline of a champion before you win the actual contest. The appointment and opportunity must then come to confirm what you have already become.
Roll-up those sleeves and work until you see the fruit of your labour. It takes Passion, Resolve and a Productive Work Ethic, meeting with Opportunity, for you to succeed.
Your unwillingness to change to my view point is purely on the justifiable basis that you have your own strongly held beliefs about important life issues.
Whatever you believe in, is true – at least to you! The question is, “How positive and empowering is it, especially in the face of adversity?
Even if the creative brilliance sparks only once, it needs to be accelerated and developed so it has self-sustaining strategies to continue adding value to both the initiator and those it serves.
Poverty might make you obscure, but if you continue churning out wisdom to solve more problems and challenges, you will neither remain poor nor die in obscurity.
Consistency and acceleration are both key to sustaining success. One-day-wonder persons who slouch back to mediocrity will soon be forgotten.
What are the beliefs that give life, spirit and passion to your dream and which values will guide your decisions and actions for you to be fulfilled by your own success?
Have a clear plan or strategy to translate your success philosophy into desired results. Adopt an effective work ethic, with a laser-focus and requisite execution strategies to produce results.
Don’t waste time. Avoid the company of wasteful people who lack the desire to achieve. Become assertive and action-oriented.
All around you, production must be taking place to bring you closer to realizing your defined success. Adopt a personal responsibility attitude to enable the realization of your dreams.
Be in love with what you do. Love wisdom. Love life. Love people. God is love.
Do not seek success just for the sake of succeeding or for self-gratification. Seek a life of impact and significance.
Plan for the sustainability of your success so that you do not drift back to failure and mediocrity.
Do not plan to die, do not plan for the death of your name or your influence – rather, plan for the resting of a life well lived. Make an eternal mark.
There is more fulfilment when sharing with others than enjoying on your own – whatever success you achieve.
The unfairness of judging others comes in that we judge them on the basis of our own values and beliefs, yet we can never exactly stand on common ground.
The key to success is to first know thyself. The definition of success by another person must not paralyse you or make you think less of your potential to succeed in your own way.
The person who will end up enjoying success, is the one who planned for it and who knew why they are seeking to succeed.
Most of the things to guarantee your death have already been done so you can spend the rest of your time focusing on the things that can guarantee your success and happiness.
Plan from your internal or spiritual view of things. The external view always has a way of distorting, discouraging and limiting your dream.
Beginning to work your plan means movement and action. The success of your movements and actions can only be guaranteed if they are well calculated.
Success must be personalised, contextualized and internalized. Success means something different to each one of us. We each have a unique and peculiar mission in life.
Who are you? Where are you coming from? What are your strengths and ambitions? What makes you happy and fulfilled? What are your inherent gifts and talents? Clearly define yourself.
Stop, think and use your brain! Don’t’ rush through life. Take time to reflect as you define what success means to you. Always remember you are one of a kind!
To become successful, do the little extra things that ordinary people refuse to do. The little extra hard work, little extra practice, little extra studying and the little extra positive attitude.
Defining what success means to you requires important meetings – board meetings with yourself. When the “me, myself and I” committee meets and passes transformational resolutions.
People are different and it is this uniqueness that also makes it imperative for the definition or meaning of success be left to each individual to determine.
If your belief system, mission, values and attitude are poisoned or contaminated, then expect whatever you enjoy and perceive as success to be short-lived.
To succeed, with or without money, have deliberate plans to make success out of opportunity. If you are totally dependent on chance, then chances are that you will fail.
Never fool yourself, success will not come by accident – it must be deliberately planned for. If opportunities don’t come on their own, they too must be created or attracted.
Those who succeed after a rare opportunity, only succeed on the back of a plan they already had or one they craft and begin to pursue after receiving the windfall.
Personalising success means defining it in line with your defined mission and beliefs. This will help ignite a passion for the dream as well as develop underlying values and attitudes.
Cease from envy, prejudice and unhealthy competitiveness. Never abandon your own mission and brand to pursue the seemingly exciting mission or vision of another.
Success can never be enjoyed if there is no congruity or alignment of your beliefs, values and how you behave in attaining your achievements.
No one can become successful for you. It takes personal definitions, personal decisions, personal convictions, personal actions and personal responsibility to succeed in life.
Your belief system should be positive and empowering enough to influence a strong mental state and a positive attitude that will rise up to defeat any suggestion that you are destined to fail.
Whilst a level playing field cannot be guaranteed, one thing that is guaranteed is your fair share of challenges. It’s not a matter of IF they come, but WHEN you will encounter them.
Your vision at a leadership level needs to be more global and selfless, it needs to go beyond you. Reflect and project your dream for a perfect world, even if you can only make it a great world.
Why is the world in need of a leader like you? You must lead for significant impact. As a leader, find the “cause” driving your leadership brand and pursue its resolution with passion and excellence.
The key to leadership remains influence. What kind of a leader are you and how do you deliberately model your leadership to achieve desired impact on those you influence or you seek to influence?
Principle-centred leadership, consistent leadership, stewardship and servant leadership are all values-driven. Always go back to reflect on your beliefs and values as you go about your leadership responsibilities.
The principles of stewardship and servant leadership challenge you to look at leadership differently. Consider these values.