The Audacity of God's Grace: 10 Strategies To Living Your Best Life Now (2 page)

CHAPTER ONE
SUCCESS BEGINS WITH DETERMINATION & BELIEF

“Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success.”

—David J. Schwartz

“The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own.

No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours – it is an amazing journey – and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.”

—Bob Moawad

WHAT YOU DON’T BELIEVE, YOU WON’T BECOME!

Our successfulness means our personal prosperity—the ability to live our best life now. It means having adequate resources—finances to meet our daily needs; a good car, a modest home, financial security and freedom; providing more than enough for our households, giving our children and our loved ones the best and yes—what they deserve. Our success means actualizing our set goals, living above mediocrity, winning big in life, being a person to look up to—an inspiration and mentor in community and societal affairs—a person of significance both in familial standards, commerce and industry, ministry, or social life. This is why I agree with Barbara de Angelis who once noted that: “We need to find the courage to say no to the things and people that are not serving us if we want to rediscover ourselves and live our lives with authenticity.” Therefore, our ability to lead a successful life—our best life now means that we must rediscover ourselves, live with authenticity of that-self and not trying to be someone else. We must also have access to material resources or simply put—adequate finances to meet our daily needs. It entails that we will need to take necessary risks, make mistakes and learn from them, do things that will inconvenience us at some point—walk the opposite direction of our comfort zones, and live above the fear of failure and defeat. Living our best life now requires living for Godly driven purposes and standards, working hard for what we believe, avoiding to live for small things such as mediocrity, hypocrisy and bitterness. It demands that we will not surrender to mediocrity by any means, but must keep our commitment to stand up for big things in life, winning life’s battles and living in abundance and significance. This is why the power to do lays in determination—believing in you, that yes—you can do all things through Christ’s strength.

I have not seen anyone who attains a threshold of success who failed to launch offensive against urgent, but unimportant things that yearns for their time and attention. Living your best life now means that you must live above the frustrations that the fear of the unknown and avoiding doing the uncommon brings. Ultimately, our larger goal for living our best life now is to live for significance and in abundance, freed from the noise and worries of hardship and unmet material needs.

What you don’t believe, you won’t become. There is something grand and unique that happens to you the moment you realize the super you in you, your net worth—that you are saleable, and that you can do greater and uncommon things in life. When you believe in yourself and understand your net human capital, not only will you experience new levels of favor, but you will benefit disproportionately from new found opportunities God and good people will position and deposit into your life as good things will start to happen to you and pursue you. This is why our minds and bodies need good health to enjoy life and be able to do what we need to do for God and for others on a daily continuum. After speaking one day to hundreds of graduate students who were professionals from diverse allied health workforce and other health related backgrounds who were completing their graduate or doctoral degrees, one fellow from that audience—a gentle man rushed after me as I was heading to the elevator to go over to my hotel room from the ball room. He told me that I was talking to him in that audience and asks if I could spare him a few minutes of my time. I agreed.

In a few minutes, we were comfortably seated in the hotel lobby. This energetic fellow, a graduate with dual advanced (masters degrees) in Nursing Science and Healthcare Administration narrated the story of his life. How he loved his job; his family, and his ambition of earning more and having financial freedom. Sadly, he has never accomplished the latter goal. As I sat in that hotel lobby, having spoken that day on the topic of believing in you—the power to achieve, I was tired of hearing this fellow repeat his story of failure. So I cut him short. I asked: “What have you done about achieving your dream”? His response was something common that I have repeatedly heard from folks who disbelieved in their own abilities which usually go like this: I’m working towards it.

In response I said, how many hours during the week do you spare to do something to develop yourself and your set goal apart from your current employment as a hospital administrator working 9 a.m. to 5p.m. Mondays through Friday? Again, this gentleman responded: that’s exactly what I am saying that, I’m working towards it. I work 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Friday, and I do one 12 hour registry shift most weekends to save enough money to start my dream business at some point. I have always loved to own something for myself. At that point, I spoke with authority, since he wanted my help and I needed to be honest.

I replied: You have not demonstrated much seriousness to translate your dream into reality at this point if you want me to be honest. That’s why you will also work the whole week this coming week, and work one more extra day during next weekend. Looking at how disappointedly surprised this fellow was, since I could not get it after all the explanations that yes—indeed, he has been working hard towards his goal of financial freedom, I asked: At what point did you develop the business plan of your dream business? Predictably, his response was this: I haven’t developed one yet, but am going to work on it soon. At that point, I felt like ending the meeting and just walk away. In response, I said: impressive!

“You have not reached your dream of financial success and freedom, because you self-sabotage your goal and disbelieve yourself and your internal capacity as a result of the way you think and act.”

Believing in you, the power to do and the ability to achieve starts the moment you make out time for your goal by yourself, and draw a line between what is urgent and important for your success and what is not, and plan on how to achieve them. If you fail to discipline yourself today, count your cost, and implement these things, I see you five years from now repeating the same mistakes and each time, coming short of your goals—financial freedom. After I “scolded” this over qualified fellow with two advanced degrees, to destroy the negative power of working for long hours in his “two jobs” and start making time for to achieve his dreams of financial freedom by channeling some of that energy to invest in himself, the things he intends to accomplish, how to accomplish them, and to check his available resources, strength and weaknesses, he ask me how to develop a good business plan and for some additional resources.

Unlike me, in cases like this, when I reach this level of discussion with a client or “stranger” I would have asked him to follow up with me and pay for consulting fees, but something deep within me—the grace of God at work asked me to wave that protocol for this over qualified gentleman who has been trapped for far too long. Willingly, I shared some few ideas with him, recommend him some great books to read, and gave him some other assignments right in that hotel lobby. We ended the discussion. He was very grateful and thanked me excessively as we each parted. I did not receive an email or a call from this gentleman as he promised until one year later. And guess what, after my meeting with this fellow where I respectfully challenged and denounced everything he had been taught to do to rise to the top and achieve financial freedom, he told me that from that hotel lobby that day, he did a soul searching of his life and all the mistakes he inescapably have repeated. Right there, he agreed that yes—he has the power within him, to do greater things with his life, earn more, and do better than he ever has done. Beginning from that point onwards, he decided to draw a line between what was urgent and important in his life and what was not and settled on a strategy to authenticate his dream and life goals. What followed is that he quit his weekend 12 hour registry job, disciplined himself by caving out time to develop his million dollar ideas that have been dormant for years. He decided to stop self-sabotaging his dream of financial freedom and to develop himself as well. He also made extensive use of the resources and books I recommended him in order to investigate success as well as following up on the contacts I provided him with, and these contacts helped him immediately to developed good business plan for his limited liability company which was duly registered in less than three months from the time I met with him at the hotel lobby.

The business that was born out of that discussion placed this gentleman to earn extra cash—a six figure income by the time he called me almost 24 months later. Jokingly, after he had shared the good news of his unexpected financial breakthrough, I asked: How is your 9a.m. to 5 p.m. administrative job you said you love the other time coming along? He responded: when I realized I actually made a six figure income from my business by investing handsomely to develop myself and my life goals, I saw that I have been wasting much of my life and my potentials in that nursing unit for so many years. So, few months ago, I quit my full time job. I believe strongly in my own abilities. I said to myself, if I could make this much by quitting my weekend job, I am potentially looking at being a millionaire by this time next year. My advice to you as you read on is this: If you must be a person of great significance to this society, by all means plan not to retire working from the cubicles no matter the pay package. Shine with all that you are created to be.

It Could Happen To You

While everyone’s success story may not turn out to be exactly like the fellow in our story above, majority of you who might have the opportunity of reading this book are nothing different like this fellow. You may not need two advanced degrees; a master of business administration, or other advanced degrees to become extremely successful and live your best life now. If you are one of the very few in our world with a population of 7 billion who is favored to read this book, you are over qualified to out-earn this gentleman in our story if you are determined to believe and do something about your ability to earn more by implementing what you will learn from this book. Your ability to reach financial freedom may elude you in life if you only work 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. or 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. whichever you prefer, and retire at age 65! It was Stephen Covey who stated that: “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” If your goal is to live your best life now, you must learn to schedule your life priorities.

If you are continuing to think the way you do and disbelieve your potentials by doubting yourself—your own abilities to do uncommon things, you will never experience immense success and become relevant to solving humanity’s many problems before your time expire. You cannot continue to believe, act, or do things the way you have always done it and expect to get a different result at any point in your life. What I want to assure you is this: If you think victory, you will not fail. If you can believe within yourself that yes—you deserve any or all of these things described above, then, it means that you are interested to live your best life now. It proves that you want to enjoy your everyday life, living for great things, accomplishing greater goals and success and having access to life necessities. But how can you do these without the tools to grant you the power to do! By having access to this book, you have invested into a life-long stock opportunity that will prepare you and provide you with limitless dividends of personal and holistic prosperity. For this reason, I encourage you to identify your priorities.

The intelligence to select this book means that you are set to join others who are living their best life now. If doing these things, achieving success and living in happiness is what you have always wanted for yourself, your children, or your household and loved ones, then you need to disbelieve and deactivate what I describe as the Programmatic Doubting System [PDS] the enemy, your past experiences, friends with small minds, and the noise of “you can’t win big” the society has installed in your mind. The reason is this: You are never too old to dream new dreams or to achieve new heights of success. What you need to achieve what you have always wanted out of your life is to believe that yes—the audacity of God’s grace can grant you the ability to think successfully and eat the good fruits of the land. If you believe that God’s audacious grace has the power and can push you to finish rich and help you to achieve everything you set your mind to accomplish, so long as you believe and live in the will of God, you will do. But hello—it takes more than a wishful thinking; it lies in the power to do. The power to do is what I describe as determination!

You cannot defeat life struggles, poverty, poor or bad choices, sinful behaviors, failure, setback, and most sicknesses due to poor health choices or poor health infrastructure; lack of financial flow, or overcome life obstacles if you are not determined to. On the path to life greater successes lays many odds, mistakes, limitations, negative circumstances, and user-friendly individuals and people with small minds. You can never win big and be a person of great significance if you are not determined. If you think victory, you will always succeed, for success begins with determination. And guess what? What you don’t believe, you wouldn’t become. The 21
st
chapter of the gospel of Matthew (21:22 NIV) confirmed that: “if you believe, [i.e. if you have the faith of God] you will get anything you ask for in prayer.”