It Is In You

Like a balloon, it is what is in you that will determine the height you can fly in life. To be a champion, you have to believe in yourself when nobody else will. Encourage yourself even if no one else does it. Your future and success depends on so many things but mostly on you. It is the you that is in you that will make you the you that you will be. Aim at developing yourself. The easiest thing to be in the world is yourself. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Discover your truly great self and be yourself to the utmost. You cannot be everything. You are here for a purpose; find out your assignment and pursue it. Discovery of one’s purpose builds self confidence that leads to success. If you don’t discover your purpose in life, you will join the queue of frustration. He that is blind in the eyes is better than he that is blind in the mind. Many people fail in life because they copy from others, not knowing that life is an examination in which each individual has a different question paper. You better live your own destiny imperfectly than live another’s life perfectly. Wealth does not begin with cash; it begins with vision and information. It begins with ideas. Ambition without vision is destructive. Vision is your purpose in creation, while ambition is your self desire. A man of vision looks up to heaven for assistance, but to a man of ambition, nothing is too evil for him to do to achieve it.
Experience is a good teacher but life is too short to wait to learn all you should know from your own experiences. You should learn from other people’s experiences. They may have lived and died but their books are here with you. There is priceless wisdom to be found in books. All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been is lying in matchless preservation in the pages of books. The more you read, the more you will know. Associating with good people and good books will give you a bright future. Make good books your friends. All knowledge is useful because it enables you to by divine guidance in time of emergency to select some of the things which you have learned and apply them to the crisis which confronts you. Whatever you want to do, people had done it successfully. You can trace their know-how. There is no surer way along the road to success than to follow in the footsteps of those who had successfully journeyed before us. One of the signs of a really great man is his eagerness to learn from anyone and anything. Seek and you shall find. Success leaves trace. Man is lazy because he is ignorant, and equally, man is ignorant because he is lazy. Those who are lazy to search will remain ignorant. Successful living means continual, conscious effort with a clear-cut, intelligent use of time and direction of life. All creatures are useful. A weed is a plant whose virtues we have not yet discovered. A life spectator cannot appreciate ornithology, but participants know that it has helped to a great extent in improving human life. Discover the great treasures the Almighty deposited in you. Within you lies all you need to excel. In the common walks of life, there maybe one patiently treading the round of daily toil, unconscious that he may possess ability which if called into action, would raise him to an equality with the world’s most honoured men. Man’s major weakness consists not in riches he does not possess but in the failure to make use of that which he has. Only those who take advantage of their advantage obtain the advantage. Laziness is a vice, but do you know that lazy people sometimes accomplish more. Their laziness makes them to find out the easiest and quickest ways of getting things done. Skill is a developed talent and until a talent is developed into a skill it lies waste. Talent is divine, skill is human. Undeveloped talent is a burden and a source of sorrow but a developed talent is wealth and honour. We only pay for skill not talent.
Life is so much like the game of tennis; those who don’t serve well end up losing. He profits best that serves best. The law of attraction is good service. The basis of all work, all business and all manufacturing is service. Every idea of success must start with desire for better service. Learn the discipline and rudiments of service. Service is the place of discovery and progress. The only man who will pay you money is the man for whom you do service, and the better you do it, the more he will pay you. If you give out the best in you for the world, the best in the world for you will come to you. For the seed a man sows he will reap. Goodness has its own way of coming back. The return of goodness happens automatically. So take time to develop yourself to work better. You have not yet graduated. There is nothing that cannot be done better. He who stops being better stops being good and may soon become obsolete. It is not good to remain in business today with yesterday’s idea. Avoid sitting on a sheraton chair. You must keep pace with time. If you don’t run with the changing world, you will be runover. Formulate ideology adequate for the present crisis. It is easy to talk about the good old days, referring to the past, and say, “why can’t we do the same thing today”? Know that the world changes. People and circumstances also change. The answers of the past are not adequate for today. We need new answers for the new problems of the new age. Compete with yourself if you want to grow. Try to do today more than you did yesterday. If what you did yesterday is still big in your eyes, you have done nothing great today.
A wise saying says, “Give the boy time and he will be a man”. Time ripens the grain in the field and the fruits of trees and makes them ready for human enjoyment and sustenance. Naira is the currency of Nigeria and dollar is the currency of America, the currency of this earth is time. With time you will discover your greatness in your field of endeavour. Becoming a master takes time. One of life’s realities is that major achievements take time; they don’t happen overnight. If a sculptor needs time for his sculpture and an architect demands time to build, you need enough time to develop yourself. Make enough time to learn. Spend time to prepare to work. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Doing a job fast is good but taking time to do it better is better. People may soon forget how fast a job was done but will always remember how well it was done. You are not born qualified, so you must become qualified and it calls for enough time. No goal is far if we take the journey step by step. Forget the peak of the mountain and climb it as you can. Even if your pace is slow, what is important is that you are moving forward. Even a turtle can finish a race if it does not give up. Remember, you are not competing with anybody. So spend time to be well equipped for your work. It is not enough to know something; you must know enough of what you know. If your knowledge of it is 30%, you know something but not enough for success or excellence. Go for 100% and achieve at least 90%. Is good to be the best of whatever you are. The gain of high quality remains long after the pain of high price is forgotten. Spend time to learn, then after the learning, you remove the “L” and begin to earn. It is learning before earning.
Great people can be found anywhere even in you. You are great if you believe and act it. Never underrate yourself. What man has done, man can do. You can if you think you can. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. What the mind sees is more real than what the eyes see. Never look at your future with the eyes of fear if you want to succeed. Fear in the heart of man becomes weapon for the enemy. Compared with most flying things, a bee is very small and ugly but the honey it makes is the sweetest of foods. I put it to you that you are the champion your people are waiting for. Goliath must die and Israel delivered.
Every accomplishment great or small starts with a decision. Be decisive. Do not allow “could have”, “might have”, and “should have” to summarize your life. If they do, you are a failure. Vacillation causes vacuity. The purpose of life is to have a life of purpose. If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will spend his life for, he isn’t fit to live. Only one lease of life is granted us; and the inquiry with everyone should be, “how can I invest my powers so that they may yield the greatest glory to the Creator and the benefit of my fellow human beings?” For life is valuable only as it is used for the attainment of these ends. Let not the younger disqualify himself from this pursuit of championship. Age is not a qualifying factor in this field of play. For the old age of Methuselah has nothing to do with the Wisdom of Solomon. It is beautiful to see wisdom in a young body. If you can do nothing about the length of your life, you can do something about its width and height. Man’s highest good consist in freedom to develop the essential potentialities in his nature without hindrance. Pray that the Helper, the Spirit of truth will guide you into knowing your purpose on earth, that you may get lost in it. So that at the end you can boldly look up and say; Father, I have glorified You on earth. I have finished the work which You have given me to do. There is a way for every man, namely, his own proper calling in life; and if we devoutly walk therein in the fear of our Maker, He will preserve us from evil. We may not travel luxuriously but shall walk safely. We may not be able to run like strong men, but we shall be able to walk like good men. And being good is better than being great or having goods.
Focusing on possibilities instead of on problems lets you see more opportunities. Press on the upward way. Gain new heights every day. Though rough the way and hard the fight, plant your feet on higher grounds. Today, the noise of battle, the next, the victor’s song. In life, the destination will take care of itself if the journey is done well. We are to do our work and leave the rest with the Creator. There is a point beyond which human effort is in vain. The sower can sow seed, but the power that alone produces life is from above. Surely He will give us rain and dew for a bumper harvest. LEARN TO BELIEVE
-BKC YAHKA