3 levels of responsibility

Responsibility means accountability, taking ownership of your actions and inactions. You did not grow up for nothing; you grew up to take up responsibility. It’s a deliberate decision you must make, if you want to become a success in life. Be responsible for your word and actions as you journey through life, it earns you trust and if you can be trusted, people will not be careful dealing with you.

Join me in the month of February 2016 as I admonish you on the subject matter, it's going to be instructive and inspiring and I'm sure you don't want to miss it.  

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Don’t assume you know, be trained

Get every training and exposure you need to be effective at whatever you do, don’t just assume you know, seek more knowledge. Training is discipline, it’s not always comfortable but profitable, consider the little child in the nursery, who goes to school to recite same poem every day, it’s not as though it’s easy but it’s required for that child’s success in life as long as academic performance is concerned. It doesn't have to be enjoyable, but you must be trained.

If you refuse basic training in life, you will always pay for it, some times the hard way. If you will not learn to do your laundry, you will have to pay to get it done, same thing applies to every thing you do in life, so avoid cutting corners, always do things the way it is required of you and make effort to do more if you can.

Some time ago, I heard a story on the National Television Authority (NTA) in Nigeria, about one of the prominent athletes in Africa from Kenya who holds world record in long distance race, on how he started in life. He said as a young lad in the village, he runs several kilometers from farm house to school and vice versa every other day, he never knew he was training himself for success in life. He had to endure the days of small beginning when no one thought he existed but today, he is happy for it, his now a world icon. It does not matter who knows you or fail to recognize your effort, either on your job or business, just be your best at all time, the world will read of you soon and you will be celebrated in places you least expected because your fame will spread abroad.

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Training! Necessary prerequisite for successful living

In life, training is one of the necessary prerequisite for successful living, training comes in different forms but basically, you can be trained by someone or self and both can also go together. Whatever it is that you do, ensure you get the required and adequate training in order to be well grounded and not be easily tossed around. Know your onions and be a professional at what you do.

Let me call your attention to this truth; by simple training, you can become and achieve anything in life. Training requires a lot of discipline and stringent commitment to your course. The training you received is what produces result for you, no matter how strenuous things become in the scheme of things, the training you have received will keep you standing. For example, a soldier is trained to endure hardness and function in all possible condition they may find themselves and this is evident in the discharge of their duty. 

Your ability to do what is expected of you irrespective of the prevailing circumstances is what makes you a success, you must not be too comfortable with managing life or merely surviving, No! You should be in control, be in charge and refuse to let life challenges toss you around like you are a novice. Do not be ignorant of the negative programmed system of this world, where every thing seems to be failing and falling apart. Consider businesses around you, most of them started strong and after some few years, they lost their drive and motivation. Have you ever wonder why most businesses around fails to survive up to five years of growing operations? The few that do are merely surviving but indebted and not making profit. Businesses are folding up, economic down turn, job loss, failure in government and governance… This is what we see all around us and in order not to be caught in the web; you must be trained and live by principles that will guide you on your path to success.

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Don’t be a copy, be original

Competition is part of the success journey, it could be healthy or unhealthy but you must not allow competition to distract you from your goals and purpose in life. Either on your job, business or academics, competition is good but you must be careful enough to observe that everyone in the world has his or her own destiny and we are all on different road to success. It will be unwise to use someone else’s yard stick to measure your success because each and everyone in this world probably knows where they are coming from and heading to as regards successful living.

Why do people compare themselves with others? Why do people want to be someone else, other than who they truly are? Sometimes, there are people who wish they were born into one wealthy family or the other. The truth is this, as long as you wish to be someone else, you can only be a copy not an original and this reduces and devalues your personality. It is unfortunate; we have several people stuck in this situation all their life. I challenge you to be the original that God has made you, refuse to be a copy of anyone, improve on yourself and be the best of you. You are not in competition with anyone, so stop comparing yourself to people, it brings a lot of unnecessary pressure on you and this affects your focus in life.

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Compete with yourself

As much as competition is part of life’s success journey, I encourage you to make it personal; you will need to learn how to compete with yourself, by this I mean competing with your past, present and future. Past successes and failures can become distraction or motivation to your present plan for the future, always look forward to out-do your past and have plans in place for the future because your dream for the future can serve as motivating factor to your success today.

Two things we look at here; you can be motivated by the success and failure in your past and you can also be motivated by your dream for the future. This is what I mean by competing with yourself, it helps to measure your level of success as you progress in life and it reduces a lot of pressure on you because you do not need to compare yourself to anyone else. Personally, this is one principle I live by and it has always worked for me, I usually have long and short term plans, my long term plan is usually five years while my short term is yearly and I try as much as possible to measure my short term plan monthly. This keeps me on track and guides me, if for any reason you derail from your plans, this will help serve as check and balance so you can get back on track as you work towards achieving your goals and plans. I encourage you to adopt this today, get a note pad; a good one you can treasure for keeps and write down your plans. You do not need to have all that is required to start planning; that’s the reason it is called planning. So write down your plan for the next five years; you’re here today, where do you want to be in five years? List the things you want to achieve within the period of time, when you are done, flip a new page and try to break down your plans into yearly. For example, if you want to achieve something in five years, how much of this can you achieve in one year? And further break-down your plan on monthly input in order to achieve your overall objective.

As a student in the university, in the year 2007, I’d a long term plan to be married by 2012, as at then, I never knew how it’s going to happen but I wrote it down and it happened according to plan. Whatever it is you want to achieve, write it down, you do not have to know how it’s going to happen, trust God and motivate yourself as I earlier admonish.

As a student in the university preparing for graduation, I wrote certain things down in my planning book; such as, “If after I graduate from the university and still depend on my parent for financial income, then am not wise”. Each time I flip through my book and see these write ups, it encourages me to do more, work hard and today I'm grateful. I've learnt to take care of me, my family and a lot of others around me. So the best way to compete is with your past, present and future. This helps you to remain focused and the issue of jealousy will not come to play, forget about the next person to you, who seems to have all that you so desire in your life, that’s his time, your time will come and it’s closer than you think. So keep doing the right thing, it’s only a matter of time, you will be there and remember your success is possible.

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Welcome to 2016… Time to succeed

I welcome you to the year 2016. It’s time to succeed, your success in this year is inevitable and there are no forces or demon hatched from hell that is strong enough to stop you. Your success story has been written, its time for you to assume your position and begin to celebrate your victories every month as the year roll out. I'm your partner in progress; I will be right here to support and motivate you to succeed against all odds with inspiring articles.

The world today is faced with numerous challenges across all sectors and it appear as though there is no hope but I have good news for you; I can see light at the end of the tunnel and your success is possible at whatever you do. No matter how dark it appears, it can only enhance the brightness of your light but you are going to get ready to do things differently in order to get better result.

I look forward to a beautiful year; together we can make our world a better place by helping one another to succeed. Look out for a human need and do something about it because in helping others, you will be helped.

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