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Before you read i suggest that you look for part 1 of this article to have a clear understanding.
In this our generation today people have all miscellaneously understood comfortability to either mean, having all the money and being able to buy anything and never going to work again or believing that you have accomplished almost everything that is deemed to be perfect or being in a state where you are neither rich nor poor a state commonly known as comfortably making a living. Comfortability in literal sense can be best described as the state of being stable. Now stable is a word associated with something good like a stable income, stable life but in real sense when something is stable then its not moving, not growing or but rather stagnant. Don,t get me wrong I am not saying we are never to be comfortable. What am saying is the idea of being comfortable constantly seduces people into believing they are alright when in fact they have merely adjusted thier lives to their current status.
However let me give you a better understanding of comfortability - in life the only way we can ever be truly happy or be close to being "comfortable" is as if in everyday of our life we are constantly accomplishing three things.
1.) Growth.
–If you don’t feel like you are growing it doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter how much money you make, it doesn’t matter how many people love you or how many people you love, it doesn’t matter how much acknowledgement you have it doesn’t even matter how much you’ve accomplished in your life time you will never be close to being comfortable or happy. I mean we have heard real life stories of people who’ve achieved all their goals and still said - is this all there is?
Have you never wondered why is it that most millionaires especially in the show business today are addicted to drugs? Do you call that being comfortable or successful just because they have billions? Remember I said success is when you begin to face up to the challenges of life. So until they can face up to all the challenges of life they will never be happy and will never be successful.
You,ve probably heard the story about the owner of JJB Sports. The man had accomplished almost all his goals and yet he still ended up killing himself. Have you ever wondered why? Listen I don,t care whether you own all the money in the banks - if you can,t grow in what ever it is that you do then you will never experience happiness. The secret path to a life of happiness and success is to constantly grow. How then do we grow, by breaking the barriers of failure, by breaking the habits of being comfortable. And besides the only way to be competitive in this business world, and the only way to have security for our future is to constantly find a way to improve our lives by growing so that for every single day of our life, we will live with a passion to excel and grow instead of getting caught up in this adopted role of being comfortable instead of really designing our lives.
How then do you design your life? Find a passion in your life and commit yourself to constantly grow with it and in it. For Instance my passion as a Christian is to be more like my Jesus and hence it is my responsibility to not only commit my life to Christ and live up to that passion but to also constantly grow with it and in it. Now ask yourself this question – what is it that you want in your life, what is your passion, what is it that really gets you fired up? If you have to find that passion in you, you will have to break that barrier of failure, if you can’t break it then step over it and release yourself from that state of belief were you are no longer just making a living but now really experience life to the fullest and discovering what you are capable of. That’s growth.
I always tell my friends especially at church that - the moment you begin to feel you've done it all and you feel you are so comfortable and safe with your current status, then please also ask yourself - why then am I still alive? I tell you as long as you continue breathing while on earth, then its also true that you mission is not yet complete, If that doesn,t shake you then ask yourself " did I really survive one in a million sperms to end here? I think not. The secret to life and happiness my friends is to always grow.
2.) Something to look up to -
The second thing that can bring us close to being comfortable or happy in life is as if we have something to look up to like a mentor, tutor, model or anything that will stimulate our inability to perform and be active. Again speaking from a Christian point of view, you should ask yourself “what is it that really inspires me to go to church, what is it that causes me to be a committed Christian”. I don’t about you but the only man that inspires me to be as committed as I am in my Christian life is Christ. He is my provider, my savior, my everything and hence I can only follow his footsteps and look up to him.
In the same way, in what ever you do be it in your business, your life style you should always have someone to look up to. As they say always follow the footsteps of those who went before you and found happiness and success. However, let me point out that who ever your mentor/motivator is going to be, you should never get addicted to them. The reason I say this is, I have known so many people who found success by following the footsteps of those successful and gradually addicted themselves to those people so much that they ended up following every footstep that their mentor took. What do you think this means? It means when they fall and fail they too fall and fail. You will do yourself a favor never to follow blindly.
Every man is prone to fall once in a life time. But those who know their roots of success can always pick up from where they failed. But if you follow blindly you will be left in pieces while your motivator re-establishes his passion. So once you’ve established that passion and thrill of not only knowing what you want to do but also doing what you know you have to do then its time you started designing your own road to success. The only man that I can encourage you to get addicted to and follow blindly if you wish is Jesus. Because he never fails and even if you followed blindly he can never lead you astray.
Now let me briefly talk about the positive side of following those who found success before you. If you observe these people you will notice that they each posses a certain type of modeling. The way they talk, the way they move and even the way they handle and face up to challenges in life, work and relationships carries a certain amount of authority that shows that they are in total control of their destiny. They are always on the move to meet new challenges; they read a lot of books bad and good because they believe there is always something to be learned from a good as well as a bad message. They study and learn from failures of their own and others and construct a strategy to transform that failure into success and if you have noticed they always have two or three people that they mention or refer to – (people they look up to).
Now listen to me I was one person who thought I could learn everything through my own experience, of course one can but then how long would it take you before you find your success if you are going to use personal trial and error experiences? Look at people like Anthony Robbins the guy who managed to make millionaires in less than two years of discovering his dreams – in one of his testimonies he says he used to be fat and frustrated, he tried every trick that he read in the books about dieting and slimming, it worked for a bit but he got fat again. Until one day he came to realize that if he was going to learn how to loose weight through his own personal experience in life he’ll probably end up being very old and frustrated before being successful. He started using the process of modeling what works, he realized that if he could find someone who was fat like him, lost weight and stayed thin then he could do the same exact things and probably get the same results. For those who know his life story you can agree that after he started modeling the exact steps he lost about 30 pounds in 30 days and round about 38 pounds over a period of eight weeks and has been thin ever since. Now what steps did he take? He didn’t just discipline himself but he changed his relationship with food. In his own words he says – “the food was no longer my reward”.
So in the same way find someone who was once in your shoes and found success and still is successful and then begin to break that barrier of failure and begin not only to know the process of modeling what worked for them but also working the process of modeling what worked for them. I can tell you that I started doing online business in June 2000 and it was not until December 2003 that I realized all the knowledge that I had about Internet business was all in vain until I can find someone that I can look up to and when I did this stimulated my passion and deep need of wanting to be successful. And within 3 months I was able make unbelievable sales both offline and online and you know what! I am still not through cause my passion is to break every barrier of comfortability at every stage so that I can move far and far away from the reason of making a living and get closer and closer to point where am in full control of my life.
3.) Sharing and contributing - And the third thing that you got to accomplish in life to be happy or comfortable is when you have reached a place were you are doing so well that you can contribute and share to other people as well. If you have a sense that you are growing, and you are constantly being stimulated and that you are contributing then you will feel incredibly happy in your life. Let me ask you. Has any of you done something incredibly amazing for your partner, husband, wife or children and never felt a sense of relief and happiness? I bet you know what I mean.
There is great joy and happiness in sharing cause this is a sign not only to the person who receives but to you as well that you are no longer the same person that you were five or whatever years ago but that you have been successful enough to even cause others to want to be like you. The bible says all heavens rejoice when you bring a soul to the kingdom of God. How do you bring a soul? By sharing and this is usually a sign that your Christianity is growing stronger. Am sure there are times that you’ve felt that way, and maybe even right now in your life - is one of those times, maybe you have been a major contributor in your church, at work or maybe you have just found that passion that has eventually caused your relationship to be on a major row and you are literally in heaven. If you are - keep it up and keep growing and continuously strive to discover new ways and passions to spice up you’re your life even more.
B.) Raising Your Standards - This point is simple. As I said in my first paragraph, the vast majority of us have a tendency of lowering our standards. We've heard and still hear them all the time, the testimonies and phenomenal stories of how this and that seminar had changed their lives. We hear Christian brothers and sisters tell of great miracles that fell upon then. Some even get so motivated they even unleash a great vision and dream that has never been foretold. Some begin to see preachers in themselves in not so far a future, some begin to see themselves owning massive chain store markets and so forth. But you meet the same people 3 to 5 years later and you find out the worst. And that is - the vast majority of them who once saw that vision, that dream or that light and that miracle or that pastor in them are not even in a position were their life is on the row. In-fact they are in a position were they are still holding on to their dreams, but what they are really doing is, constantly adjusting their dreams and visions to their current circumstances. Hence they don’t succeed.
What I mean is they’ve simply lowered their standards. Just like them - we all start up with these dreams and goals at some point in our life in my case my I had my dreams when I was very young that I had difficulty even remembering them and maybe for some of you your dreams are very recent. So what causes this? Why is it that we have so many people who get motivated and stimulated to excel and advance yet only about 10% actually make it to their dream? I will tell you why – You know the majority of people don’t have a problem establishing a dream or knowing what they want. The problem begins when it comes to doing what they know they have to do. It goes like this, most people when they begin to pursue a goal or dream and then they don’t achieve it time after time and after time, pretty soon they adjust.
Its like my first days in England, coming from a hot continent – Africa, I found it pretty had to enjoy living under a cold climate. Despite having the gas heaters in the house I still bought extra electrical heaters. But when I realized that it was costing me dearly almost instantly I began to adjust my body to the London cold weather. But it’s so sad that people actually adjust their dreams and their hope for a better future to suit their current conditions like they were just adjusting to the weather conditions. They say well, I really don’t need to think that big or dream that big that’s not really me I don’t even have that capability, besides pastoral work only demands a lot of attention and restrictions and being that pop star is just not me am an out going person and wouldn’t like to be confined to my cottage for life but why? – Its not that they don’t want to be successful but its because they don’t want to be disappointed and they don’t want to be frustrated, they don’t want to be denied, if it’s in a relationship - they don’t want to be serious because they don’t want their hearts to be broken. As I said it’s all about comfortability and now fear. They are afraid that if they try they will fail. This now brings me to Fear.
C.) How to handle Fear – You know what – It’s pretty obvious what the difference is between those successful and these who are not. People who are successful always begin by eliminating all traces of fear in them by believing and adopting models. They develop faith in themselves by taking a step by step approach to immediately removing themselves from that place of feeling unwanted, frustrated and denied to a state of absolute confidence, and they make certain that they are committed to their passions so much that they can make themselves to take actions against their own negative will. But as long as inside we think that – “what if I take those actions and then I fail” – Listen to me, nobody wants to fail, nobody wants to be disappointed and nobody wants to be let down. What most of us do in relation to this is, we narrow our dreams and abilities so that we don’t have to deal with the fact that our lives are not at the same level we are committed to. And again most people achieve a dream and then they say – is this all there is? Its because they don’t realize that the secret to a life of success is to constantly find new levels (and not just a level) of growth by constantly overcoming that fear or that barrier of failure in you. I always say the worst enemy to your life is not the people around you but the person within you. Do you know why? Because, its only you who knows all the things that can make you fall and its only you who can stand in your way. So how do you overcome these fears? By believing in yourself and always aiming for higher levels by growing. Never stay in one placed and under the name of comfortability. We all know that if water just sits in one place for a while it becomes stagnant. If you remain at a certain level, be it a level were you are comfortable or not, if you don,t exercise your growth by moving to a higher level, you become stagnant. And when you are stagnant you soon start to experience, frustrations, feelings of denial, feelings like why even try, why even put myself out there – you will have no sense of meaning for your life. Almost all stagnant people turn to food, they turn to alcohol, they overheat, they over drink, they smoke, they gumble, they become reserved not willing to learn not willing to share, they turn to television; they even try to find someone to blame saying why isn't working out well, why can’t we have babies, you are not doing your manly duties or you are not a very productive woman. They finally find all kind of faults with their spouses, they easily forget the good times and only talk about the bad ones, soon they find fault in themselves too and this could lead to fetal results. You see you don’t want to be in that place and am sure you are not.
But the way to prevent this is to be pro-active, and immediately say what do I want with my life and how do I make that happen? And if I tried many ways in the past that haven’t worked, does that mean nothing will ever work? Of course not. This is why you need to be persistent. For me to achieve my first dream of coming to London with no money for a ticket and no money for my college fee, I sat down on my work computer for hours. And listen, I didn’t even have a computer at home so every day I had to allow myself to be locked in the office until the following morning writing email letters to hundreds of colleges in England. My passion was that if I can write over 5000 emails to 5000 colleges in the whole world chances are at least one will be able to give me a scholarship even if I was the unluckiest person in the world. And that’s just what I did and guess what. One email found itself on one student welfare Manger’s computer. And all yes she accepted my plea and I was granted 75% scholarship. And today as I am writing this article this woman is now my wife to be. I have been with her for over 3 years now. Now you see how persistence pays?
D.) Be Persistent - Persistence is the willingness to keep seeing that even though nothing has worked up until now I shall continue trying until it works thus adopting the concept of prudence in my life. And unless you are willing to persist and really still believe in your dream – you will be robed. You will be robed of what really matters most in your life.
I hope you have learned a few things just as I learned from others also. As I said sharing brings happiness in ones life, be it love, be it a cake or a simple get well combined together with the ability to constantly grow in you dreams is what can be constructed to what is known as a comfortable and successful life. So please let me know how helpful some of these tips have been.
To your success and God bless
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