PERSEVERANCE- (THE TEST OF SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE)

PERSEVERANCE- (THE TEST OF SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE)

“Perseverance” according to the Microsoft Encarta Dictionary is the determined continuation with something; it is steady and continued action or belief, usually over a long period despite difficulties or set backs.

Thomas Edison according to history tried more than one hundred experiments before he was able to come out with the invention of the incandescent light bulb. Thus it makes sense to say that Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

Abraham Lincoln also failed many times in his political career before he was finally elected to become the president of the United States of America. Almost every successful person faces difficulties on the road to success.

Failures, disappointments, setbacks, and oppositions are very normal when it comes to the pursuit of any vision. They actually come one after the other without invitation. Setbacks are difficulties or problems which delay you from moving forward with a vision. Failure is  lack of success in or at something. Disappointments are feelings of sadness or frustration because something was not as good, attractive, or satisfactory as expected, or because something hoped for did not happen.

The biography of every successful person almost always has some chapters littered with stories of failure, pain, disappointment, and breaking accounts of real life crisis.

The great achiever knows that failure is not a permanent feature but just a momentary event. Many people lose their nerve when faced with set backs, but the great achiever always fights back, despite the challenges he or she may face. Problems, challenges, pain and disappointments all come to test the level of commitment in the pursuit of our dreams and goals.

Perseverance in the face of difficulties is the proof of commitment. Failure is no obstraction and perseverance is the ability to keep doing what you know best without leaving your confidence and self-esteem in the face of difficulty. When your ego, reputation, bank account and your very name are all in jeopardy, you can only continue to fight back if you have an instinct for greatness.

There are many uncompleted relationships, dreams, churches, books and organizations because people who started them could not endure the pain, hardships, and frustrations of life. However, with perseverance, you move from start to finish- and from beginning to end.

Taking a close look at children learning how to walk, you will realize that they stumble once they make the first tentative attempts; but it is in their stumbling, that they learn how to walk properly. Perseverant people get up when they fall, they don’t stay down, because they know it is just a temporary setback and not the end of their lives.

 Whenever you stumble, don’t fall with your face flat on the ground; but fall with your face up, because if you can look up, you can rise again.

Whatever you are going through now or have gone through in the past, never give up. The persistent person refuses to let anyone or anything keep him or her at the back stage of life. A setback is only a setup for a come back. You may have lost everything but so far as you have life there is hope- Never give up.

It is not over till you win. With God on your side nothing can be against you. Think like a winner, and an achiever, and rise up and be a victor in this life. You have only one life and this is it. Just do it for your generation

PREACH A BETTER SERMON WITH YOUR LIFE THAN WITH YOUR LIPS

PREACH A BETTER SERMON WITH YOUR LIFE THAN WITH YOUR LIPS

You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips. We are the Bibles the world is reading: We are the creeds the world is needing: We are the sermons the world is heeding. - [Dr. Billy Graham]

St. Francis of Assisi one day said to several of his followers, "Let us go to the village over the way and preach, for a true Christian is a living sermon, whether or not he preaches a word.”

As they went, they met a humble pedestrian who was greatly burdened.  Francis was in no hurry and listened carefully to his tale of woe. When the village was reached, Francis talked with the shopkeepers, spent time with the farmers at their fruit and vegetable stalls, and played with the children in the streets.

On the way back they met a farmer with a load of hay, and Francis spent time with him.

The morning gone, the group reached the monastery from where they had set out in the early morning. One of the followers, who was greatly disappointed, said to Francis, "Brother Francis, you said we were going to preach. The morning is spent and no sermon has been given."

And the saintly Francis replied, "But we have been preaching all the way." Kindness has converted more sinners than zeal, eloquence or learning.

My point is that as, Mahatma Gandhi once said “If all Christians acted like Christ, the whole world would be Christian.”

My dear readers, we are writing a Gospel, a chapter each day, by the deeds that we do and by the words that we say. Men read what we write, whether faithless or true. The big question to be answered here is what is the Gospel According to you that others are reading? –[Paul Gibert]

We must know that People are won to our religious beliefs less by description than by demonstration.

Love-- and the unity it attests to--is the mark Christ gave to us Christians to wear before the World. Only with this mark can the World know that We Christians are indeed Christians and that Jesus was sent by the Father.

Let us endeavour to preach a better sermon with our lives than with our lips, for this is what Jesus Christ, demonstrated to us, and let us not forget that his strength will always be sufficient for us.

DREAM KILLERS

DREAM KILLERS

One important lesson I have come to learn the hard way is that you will face no opposition in life till you start dreaming of achieving big things.

Dreams according to the Microsoft Encarta dictionary means something hoped for: something somebody hopes, longs, or is ambitious for, usually something difficult to attain or far removed from present circumstances.

Dreams attract opposition. It is only when an object tries to fly that it faces the law of gravity. Once you attempt to go up, this law must come into force to pull you down. In Genesis 37:5-28, there is an account of what happened to Joseph when he had a dream and told his father and brothers about it. His own brothers actually sold him out into slavery.

When dreams emerge they come with their train of dream killers and human antagonists; and most of the time, they surface from the least expected sources. Resistance exists in every family, instituition, community, and nation; many leaders have had their fare share of this.

It is an undeniable fact that if you must become successful in any field, you will experience some amount of opposition. Opposition would come from people around you; people who are closest to you. But the greatest opposition would come from you. Your very self can oppose a vision or dream that you have. In other words you can be your own dream killer.

Dream killers are very easy to identify; they could be people, situations, opportunities, or anything that runs contrary to your dream. Upon hearing of your dream all these factors hate you not as a person but because of the dream you have.

Usually the feelings Dream killers (those close to you) have towards you are instigated by the fact that they feel insecure themselves. The declaration of your future plans or record of your successes makes them feel inferior, and instead of focusing on how they can also succeed, they concentrate on why you should not succeed by any stretch of the imagination. People who never value your ideas and make a mockery of your dreams are dream killers. Such detractors also ridicule your personality and your background; they cast doubt on your ability. The irony surrounding some of them is that they are often very close to you; (they could be your wife, husband, mother, father, sister, friend and brother), therefore are privy to all your weaknesses and strategies.

The question now is how do you deal with your dream killers?

In the bible from Mathew 16:21-23 it reads “From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.”

It is interesting to know that Peter who was so close to Jesus Christ tried to kill Jesus`s dream of saving us from sin.. What did Jesus do? He quickly put Peter back to his place.

Life I believe is too short to allow wrong people to influence your dreams. Rule number one identify your dream killers and put them where they belong.

Rule number two; speak not. Never share your dreams, plans, or even successes in the presence of dream killers. It ignites their dream killing instincts immediately. Be careful who you share your innermost secrets with, he, or she may be a dream killer. What they don’t know they can’t kill.

Rule number three; ignore them, don’t give your dream killers attention. You must not allow fear of failure to grip you; fright or panic only serves to smooth the way to failure. A lot of things we fear never exist. It is important you deal with your fear and forget about your dream killers.

The fourth rule is use success as revenge; what the dream killer hates most is to see you succeed. Therefore keep frustrating them with your continuous success.

Finally, trust and have faith in God believe that whatever he says about you would surely come to pass. In Jeremiah 1:4 the lord said` I chose you before I gave you life, and before you were born I selected you’. Meanwhile don’t hesitate to dismiss dream killers if you find them in your camp.

The choice is your but remember that the history of every great achiever is littered with stories of failure. Identify your dream killers and learn how to deal with them now

PLATO’S ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR TODAYS WORLD

PLATO’S ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR TODAYS WORLD

Plato, is one of the most creative and influential thinkers in Western Philosophy. He was born around 428 BC and died around 347 BC. Building on the life and thought of Socrates, Plato developed a profound and wide-ranging system of Philosophy. His thought has bordered on logical, epistemological, and metaphysical aspects; but its underlying motivation is ethical. It sometimes relies upon conjectures and myth, and it is occasionally mystical in tone; but fundamentally Plato is a rationalist, devoted to the proposition that reason must be followed wherever it leads. Thus the core of Plato's Philosophy is a rationalistic ethics. For him, humans have knowledge, and this knowledge they must attain by transcending sense experience in order to discover unchanging objects through the exercise of reason. Of the many literary devices Plato used to illustrate his theories, one of the best known is the allegory of the cave, which appears in Book VII of the Republic.

The purpose of this write up is to come out with the various elements in the allegory of the cave, their meanings and finally the implication of this allegory to our modern world.

According to Plato, because of how we live, true reality is not obvious to most of us. Almost all the time we mistake what we hear and see for the reality and the truth. This is the basic premise for Plato's Allegory of the Cave, in which a group of prisoners have been kept in a cave since childhood. These prisoners, according to Plato, are made to watch shadows of certain figures and objects cast on a wall in front of them. They watched these shadows for a very long period of time; to the extent that, it has become a normal occurrence for them and they in-turn believe in the shadows as real things.

In actual fact, the prisoners are not aware that behind them are some men who are holding figures and objects, with a fire serving as an illuminator from the background, hence the shadow on the walls. According to Plato, it happened by chance, that one of the prisoners had the singular opportunity to be taken out of the cave. Upon going out the prisoner did not want to believe what he was seeing outside the cave. But after seeing how bright the sun was shining and the other realities of nature, this prisoner came to believe that life inside the cave was an illusion. He realized that he and his colleagues back in the cave had been living a life of deception all this while.

The individual then makes the painful re-adjustment back into the darkness of the cave to free the prisoners. However, because he now seems mad -describing a new strange reality - they reject him to the point of threatening to kill him.

The allegory metaphorically describes our situation as human beings in the world today. In his allegory, Plato utilizes several key elements to portray his metaphor of the human condition.

     The Prisoners, watching life unfold on the cave wall in front of them, accepting what they see
as truth, as reality, are literally, people. People like you and me. Every average person in this world is a prisoner, who is chained down. These chains that bind the prisoners to the floor are beliefs. By beliefs, I am referring to those beliefs that are not reasonable, but because we are so used to them we still hold on to them.

      The shadows and figures on the wall that the prisoners are made to look at all the time refers to all those ideologies that we are made to believe in which later turn into our belief systems. It must be noted that this ideologies are more of negative than positive. To break free in this world, we must look at objects, individuals, cities, societies and even the universe as a whole, with reason. We must not simply rely on perceptions and senses to grasp concepts, because as Rene Descartes once said in his meditations “whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses. But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once” [Meditations 1, 18].

        The people carrying figures of humans, animals, and plants crafted from wood or stone, which cast images on the wall for the prisoners to look at are the political, business, and educational leaders that feed the average person their own ideologies and beliefs about various things.

         We must not simply accept every ideology and belief system that is handed over to us; we must subject them to the judgment seat of reason. What is relevant, though, is that in questioning ideologies and belief systems, we will formulate our own opinion and belief on the subject, thus not simply buying into the views and beliefs being fed to us by our political, religious and educational leaders.

         A roadway is described as being behind the prisoners, and it is this roadway that the men walked on when carrying the figures. This roadway depicts the path used to deliver whatever message it is that the leaders previously mentioned want delivered. The print, electronic media and social networks are very profitable sources for these men.

            Above and behind the prisoners is a fire burning, which happens to be the power source of the shadows. This fire refers to the institutions and organizations that support the dubious acts of these leaders. The shadows on the wall are what the prisoner’s mistake for truth and reality. Finally the sun outside the cave represents the good. Out of the good come knowledge, reason, goodness and enlightenment.

ü  What then is the implication of Plato’s allegory of the cave to our modern world?

            First of all we should try to investigate and use our reason to digest issues and ideologies instead of just swallowing them anytime they are given to us by those in authority or leadership.

           Secondly when reading information from the print media or listening and watching information from the electronic media, let us be very objective in our listening. We should not accept information just like that, for these are some of the mediums that some of our corrupt leaders use to drum home their negative ideologies. And before we realize those ideas become so normal to us that they become our belief systems no matter how debased they are.

     

       Plato describes the Good as having power and energy, just as the sun has the power to warm
our skin. He sees the Good as the source of beauty, right, reason, and truth. The Good is
courage and strength, values that provide dependable ground for moral conduct. In this
world of shadows, the Good we experience is too a shadow of the true Good. We must
break free from the chains of this world to experience the true ideals of the Good.
      Plato's cave is an allegory of the human condition: each of us a prisoner, until we can
break free. We perceive reality through imperfect eyes, accepting this distorted illusion of
reality without question. Accordingly, to break free, we must open our eyes and see the
truth about the world around us.

YOU CAN OVERCOME WORRY, DOUBT AND FEAR

YOU CAN OVERCOME WORRY, DOUBT AND FEAR

Three of the worst enemies we all have to learn to conquer in life are worry, doubt, and fear. Each one of us faces  at least one of them  in our daily activities. There is probably nothing else in life that can, if we let it, waste so much of our time and strength as do these three negative feelings.

On the other hand the good news is that with proper motivation we can learn to conquer them. In fact we must conquer them or else they will destroy our desire and ability to reach our goal. We must first of all learn not to be chronic worriers: there are many people out there who are chronic worriers, they are always uncertain about what is going to happen. As soon as they are able to dispel one worry or doubt, another takes it place.

For example, the chronic worrier fears it is too cold outside and may catch cold if he or she goes outside. He or she might also be afraid of catching an infection if he goes out there; then fears he will be unable to escape if his house catches fire. The chronic worrier always doubts a good outcome. He is really a person to be pitied.

There is the category of people who also worry about things they have done or might not have done in the past. Some also worry about the future; will the package I mailed reach the right person? Will it rain on Thursday? Will I have an accident as I embark on this journey?

The question I will like to ask now is, does worry accomplish anything?

 No! Worrying is unproductive, it has not solved problems in the past, it does not solve a single problem today, and it will never solve problems in the  future.

The truth is that it is only motivated positive action that solves problems. Whether you are a chronic worrier,  whether you express worry, doubt, and fear occasionally, the cause is the same- fear of the unknown and not knowing how to react to it. Typically, this displays a combination of fear and lack of faith in God almighty and yourself.

It is possible to overcome these feelings of fear, worry, and doubt completely. But it demands motivation and positive action. To help in diagnosing the remedy to worry, doubt and fear, I would categorize worry into two. The first one concerns things that have happened in the past. What we must understand is that, there is probably little that can be done about the worry from the past. Whatever it is you are worrying about has happened, it is just like water going down the drain, you cannot retrieve it: and the lapsed time should be a healing period to allow you to banish the concern from your mind. There is absolutely no need to cry over spilt milk it is gone for good. What you should rather do is to learn from your mistakes and move on.

The second category involves things concerning the present and the future. These are concerns over which we  do have some control. Most of the time, we cause many of our worries, doubts and fears because we neglect to analyze our own activities, we fail to do the right thing. How often we cause our own worries just because we fail to solve the situation that causes them. It is lack of positive action on our part that causes us to fret and doubt. For instance, sometimes you are faced with a situation you know the right thing and yet you refuse to do it, later on you are worried and scared of the effects of your action. You would not have to go through all the stress if you had practised some kind of positive action.

Fear is another powerful force that keeps millions of people from their accomplishments, and it can, in one way or another, prevent you from getting what you want in life. Fear is very real. It stops people from taking advantage of an opportunity. It can tear you down physically, shorten your life, and actually make you ill. It can freeze you when you want to speak. I must admit that it is a healthy and natural thing to be afraid of certain things. For example, being afraid of death makes us drive cautiously. However, when you become afraid and worry about things beyond your control then you are playing with trouble.

There are people who have conquered fear, people who are at ease everywhere and at all times. How do they do it?

They were able to surmount fear through faith and action. Believe it or not, but faith and action do cure fear, worry and doubt. I repeat the only cure to end worry, fear and doubt is to have faith and practise some positive action. Faith in yourself, faith in God, and knowing in your faith that God knows what is best for you. Having it at the back of your mind that no matter what you are going through God knows what is best for you and that although you may not understand, he loves you and his plan for you will turn out to be the best.

Faith will always overcome fear, worry and doubt. In Psalm 34:4, the psalmist tells us; “I sought the Lord and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.”  It did not say some of my fears, neither did it say most of my fears but all of my fears, just believe this and you are free from all worry, doubt and fear.