The Importance of Self Development

Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound. - James Allen.

The desire to become great and a celebrity is common to all human right from the time they become conscious of self. Dale Carnegie, in his best-selling classic, describes this as the “deepest urge in human nature.”

While the majority of humankind nurse this, usually unexpressed, craving to become larger than life and be revered by fellow men, only a few individuals really choose to advance beyond desiring to pay the price required to build a great life.

The price for greatness is a disciplined and sustained investment in oneself, otherwise called personal development. Jim Rohn, a renowned business philosopher and self-development guru, once quotes his former employer and mentor to have advised him thus: “if you want to be wealthy and happy... learn to work harder on yourself than on your job.” While this may sound absurd, it is good counsel. The general practice is that most people expend their time and energy the other way round; working more and often on the job - in order to earn so much - while devoting little or no attention to improving themselves.

As normal as this may look, it is a misnomer. While it is important to be dedicated to your work and put in a good shift above the average mark, it is equally essential not to neglect the regular cultivation of your mind. Every individual who has a sense of self should have a self-development programme he or she is observing to unleash his/her potential, sharpen latent skills and bring out the champion within.

Not all of us are destined for the stage. Therefore, drawing out the champion within you does not necessarily mean that you will become a maestro with millions of followers. Your own niche may be to a few dozens of people, it doesn’t make you lesser than someone with a global fan base. The important thing is to develop yourself such that you are both useful and relevant to your world.

A personal development programme is nothing complex or far-fetched. It can be as simple as following a schedule of conscious reading, listening, speaking, and/or writing, as well as putting to practice what you are learning in the process of those exercises. It is important you are aware about your objectives for embarking on these exercises so that you can be able to track the results. You should also have a schedule for what you do, rather than merely follow your whims by doing them when you feel like it.

To Your Success!

How to Maximise your Potentials (Part 5)

Some Quotes on Potentials

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence. - Eddie Robinson

The potential for greatness lives within each of us. The key to achieving greatness is found when we discover and then develop our dream. - John Maxwell

Adventure isn't hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain. Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day to day obstacles of life - facing new challenges, seizing new opportunities, testing our resources against the unknown and in the process, discovering our own unique potential. - John Amatt

No one fulfills his purpose, develops his potential, or consistently help others without goals. Your goals determine your priorities – and your priorities determine whether you’ll reach your goals. - John Maxwell

Nothing is more effective when it comes to reaching potential than commitment to personal growth. - John Maxwell

Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential. Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British prime minister during WWII

I’d rather reach 90 percent of my potential with plenty of mistakes than reach only 10 percent with a perfect score. - John Maxwell

To keep moving to a higher level and reach your potential, you… have to be willing to… trade security for significance. - John Maxwell

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential. - Ellen Goodman

How to Maximise your Potentials (Part 4)

Means of Expressing One’s Potentials

Potentials are expressed through the following:

• Actions
• WorkOutputs
• Interactions
• Service

Avenues for Expressing One’s Potentials

• The family
• The workplace
• The society
• Business ventures
• The church, associations or other voluntary societies

How to Maximise your Potentials (Part 3)

How Can You Maximise Your Potential?

¡By setting life and project goals

¡By drawing up a roadmap to achieve the set goals

¡By always taking actions – instead of idling away or procrastinating

¡By holding yourself accountable for living out your potential

¡By adopting a steward’sattitude toward your potential, knowing that you will have to give account to God on whatever potential has been besotted to you (remember the parable of the talents in the Bible)

¡By making the most of time and opportunities, and wasting none

¡By giving of yourself whenever occasion demands

¡By getting a coach, a mentor or an accountability partner who will guide or hold you accountable to your ideals

How to Maximise your Potentials (Part 2)

How Can You Discover Your Potential?

¡By self-examination and reflection

¡By self-expression or applying yourself in various activities

¡By being adventurous, learning from trials and errors

¡Through informal interactions with families, friends, colleagues etc

¡Through divine revelation

¡By chance and unpremeditated happenings

¡During a coaching or mentoring session

How to Maximise your Potentials (Part 1)

What is Potential?

Dictionary Definitions:

Capacity to develop: the capacity or ability for future development or achievement.– Microsoft® Encarta® Dictionary

Natural abilities or qualities that may possibly develop and make someone or something very successful or useful.– Longman Dictionary

The inherent capacity for coming into being.– WordWeb Dictionary

Personal Thoughts on Potential

Potentials are the gifts, the talents, the endowments, the riches, the resources as well as the blessings inherent in a human that are yet to be expressed in his/her actions, interactions and works. Once these find expression, they cease to be called potential and then become skills and abilities.– Babatunde Oladele

The fear of not 'starting rightly' is what keeps many a great man and woman from fulfilling their potential. It is what also robs us of ideas and solutions that could have made the world a better place for you and me. I will say, start; if you fail, start again and improve yourself (and your process) along the way. The tortoise makes no progress unless it juts out its head. After all, the Bible says, "the end of a thing is better than the beginning thereof." – Babatunde Oladele

Life is a marathon, but some live it as if it's a 100metre dash; that is why you see some people with so much potential in their youth looking so ordinary in midlife. They have burned out. – Babatunde Oladele

A potential is what you can become. – Babatunde Oladele

The Importance of Self Development

Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound. - James Allen.

The desire to become great and a celebrity is common to all human right from the time they become conscious of self. Dale Carnegie, in his best-selling classic, describes this as the “deepest urge in human nature.”

While the majority of humankind nurse this, usually unexpressed, craving to become larger than life and be revered by fellow men, only a few individuals really choose to advance beyond desiring to pay the price required to build a great life.

The price for greatness is a disciplined and sustained investment in oneself, otherwise called personal development. Jim Rohn, a renowned business philosopher and self-development guru, once quotes his former employer and mentor to have advised him thus: “if you want to be wealthy and happy... learn to work harder on yourself than on your job.” While this may sound absurd, it is good counsel. The general practice is that most people expend their time and energy the other way round; working more and often on the job - in order to earn so much - while devoting little or no attention to improving themselves.

As normal as this may look, it is a misnomer. While it is important to be dedicated to your work and put in a good shift above the average mark, it is equally essential not to neglect the regular cultivation of your mind. Every individual who has a sense of self should have a self-development programme he or she is observing to unleash his/her potential, sharpen latent skills and bring out the champion within.

Not all of us are destined for the stage. Therefore, drawing out the champion within you does not necessarily mean that you will become a maestro with millions of followers. Your own niche may be to a few dozens of people, it doesn’t make you lesser than someone with a global fan base. The important thing is to develop yourself such that you are both useful and relevant to your world.

A personal development programme is nothing complex or far-fetched. It can be as simple as following a schedule of conscious reading, listening, speaking, and/or writing, as well as putting to practice what you are learning in the process of those exercises. It is important you are aware about your objectives for embarking on these exercises so that you can be able to track the results. You should also have a schedule for what you do, rather than merely follow your whims by doing them when you feel like it.

To Your Success!

MAXIMISING THE MOMENT: Making The Most Of Every Opportunity

What the Bible Says

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might; for there is no work, nor plan, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave where you go.– Ecclesiastes 9:10

See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.– Ephesians 5:15-17

What the Sages Say

Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo! Your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life.

It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions… no one can take it from you. It is unstealeable. And no one receives either more or less than you receive. - Jim Rohn

In the realm of time, there is no aristocracy or intellect. Genius is never rewarded by even an hour a day. And there is no punishment. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will and the supply will never be withheld from you.Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. It is impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you…

You have these twenty-four hours of daily time to live. Out of it you want to spin health, pleasure, money, contentment, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that.

Your happiness – the elusive price that you are all clutching for, my friend – depends on that. If one cannot arrange that an income of twenty-four hours shall exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one’s whole life indefinitely.

- Jim Rohn

We shall never have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.

- Arnold Bennet

Time is the most precious commodity we have. Therefore, how we manage it has the most profound effect on how our lives turn out.

- Jim Rohn

Painting The Right Picture: The Power of Vision and Focus

What is a Vision?

Vision is the ability to see what is not yet, so you can create what never was.

-Doug Firebaugh

A blind man’s world is bounded by the limits of his touch; an ignorant man’s world by the limits of his knowledge; a great man’s world by the limits of his vision.

- E. Paul Hovey

Visions and dreams are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.

- Napoleon Hill

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but has no vision.

– Helen Keller, 1880-1968, American Blind/Deaf Author and Lecturer

Aligning Goals to Your Personal Vision

do an Inventory of your skills, Abilities, Knowledge, Character Attributes/Weaknesses, and Spiritual Gifts

-      What are your God-given abilities?

-      What skills have you acquired?

-      What education do you have?

-      What are your Character strengths & weaknesses?

-      What is your Spiritual Gifting?

DrawA Life Plan

-      How does your Life Vision Statement translate into practical goals?

-      Do you have a calendar of when you will do what?

-      What tasks do you have to undertake to accomplish these goals?

-      How will you know when you have achieved your goals?

Goals must be SMART: Specific; Measurable; Achievable; Realistic; Time Limited.

A Career Plan:

-      What are your career goals?

-      Do you have a plan to advance in your career?

-      What experience do you need for advancement?

-      What education do you need for advancement?

Some 22 Facts about Your Life Purpose

1. It is the key to your greatness
2. It is not determined by your past or present location
3. It has nothing to do with your family background or standing in the society
4. It may have nothing to do with your present career or the job you are doing now
5. It helps you to set your priorities in life and identify what is really important and what isn’t
6. It helps you to apportion and make use of time more productively
7. God will require an account of stewardship from you on what you do with it
8. It takes an accountability system to continually live and fulfil it maximally
9. It is what you will do with joy and look forward to doing everyday
10. It will bring you great contentment in life and give you a sense of fulfilment
11. It helps you to identify your destiny partners: e.g. who to marry, who to be friendly with, who to go into business with, who to hire as workers, who to submit to etc
12. In the field of your purpose, you are a king and a celebrity
13. It is in the Word of God
14. It takes God and His resources to fulfil it
15. You are not really successful if you are not fulfilling or living it
16. It guides you to make the right choices and decisions in life
17. It is not something you learn in school, seminars, workshops, or conferences
18. It has been in/with you all along, merely awaiting discovery
19. You might have been fulfilling it without knowing
20. You don’t have to leave your present job or career to start fulfilling it
21. You can make a career out of it
22. It can be commercialised to fetch you money and make you very rich

Principles for Overcoming Failure

1. Do not let fear control you

2. Check your attitudes

3. Do not make excuses

4. Never let failure get inside you

5. Change yourself

6. Learn from your mistakes

7. Let go of the past

8. Never give up

10 Reasons Why People Fail

1. Holding on to the past

 2. Fear

3. Negative Attitudes

4. Poor People Skills

5. Lack of Focus

6. Sin and Compromise

7. Excuses (Focusing on Who instead of Why)

8. Non-Adaptability to Change

9. Lack of Plan

10. Giving Up Too Soon 

10 Simple Ways to Know You are in the Job You are Naturally Cut out for

Dear friends,

I found myself in the meditation mode not long ago and the object of my rumination was why some people seem to derive so much fun in their jobs – bubbling in their productivity therein – while some only do the required rounds, watch the clock and tick the day.

I know this is a much-discussed issue in the career industry worldwide, with various postulations and sophisticated theories. So, I was under no illusion that I was going to come up with a groundbreaking solution that would land me a Nobel Prize for solving a nagging human problem. However, the Pilot of my flight of consciousness was not discouraged, but kept on conducting me to a point where I was able to capture some bits on what usually separates an excited worker from a placid one.

The distinguishing factor is interest – borne out of the natural configuration of each individual. It is a fact that we are not all wired the same way; even identical twins may not have identical emotional sparks. Therefore, individual interest plays an important role in job gratification, which in turn results in productivity. That does not discountenance some external or psychological variables that may facilitate or hinder job performance, such as remuneration, work environment, and self-esteem, to mention a few.

So, on the fulcrum of interest only, I came up with the following 10 submissions that will help an individual to ascertain what kind of job s/he is naturally cut out for, and if s/he is presently engaged in one. I’m not sure the list below can be described as authoritative, neither is it exhaustive; so, I’ll welcome inputs from you guys.

Ok, now to the titbits: how do you identify the job you are naturally cut out for or ascertain the one you are doing now is it?

1.    You will enjoy doing what you do, and it won’t be a drag or drudgery to you.

2.    Time will not be “of essence”, and you will not be watching it, since you can start whenever you like and end whenever you like. I agree that this one may be a hard pill for the apostles of structure to swallow. But, check it out in the lives of those who are all fired up about their job.

3.    You flow seamlessly into the work, with minimal or no friction anytime, any day, and in most places. You also hands off your work with a teeny feeling of reluctance, but a soothing sense of accomplishing something.

4.    You are doing something by which people generally hail you or associate you whenever they see you or thoughts of you pop up on their mind.

5.    Money is not a major consideration for doing what you are doing. Although it is a necessity of life and a viable motivation factor, your primary drive is derived from your sheer involvement in and satisfaction with what you are doing.

6.    You want to learn all you can about the vocation, or certain aspects of it where you feel you can still be better.

7.    You want to make everyone who comes into contact with you an artisan in the vocation. You want to teach them, help them, guide them, and/or instruct them on how to do it. And you will be willing to do all these, even at no fee.

8.    You want to passionately defend, justify, or clarify certain notions about the vocation, or its operational aspects, that you feel is wrongly bandied or misconstrued by people.

9.    You are agitated when you see people who are similarly engaged doing the same work the way it ought not be done, either by underperforming, under-delivering, or not conforming to certain norms and standards pertaining to it.

10. You eagerly look forward to getting up from bed every day you have to work to get on the task or an assignment you have in hand. And you won’t mind sleeping late engaged in what you are doing. In the event you are busy doing something else, you are not so excited and you can’t wait to be done with it to get back to your love vocation.

Like I mentioned, this list is neither authoritative nor exhaustive. You may be presently engaged in the job you are naturally cut out for and not find yourself in any of the above bits. We will like to learn your own slant to this.

Cheers!