Anyone who tries telling you that giving them $29.95 to buy this system or that book or this software or bow three times toward Des Moines needs to happen before you can start being a success and excel is lying to you.
Take what you have and create what you want.
This is fact, even if they have a guy with an Australian accent sticking his nose into the camera and challenging, “But wait!” Especially then. You have everything within you that you need to bend the next 11.8 months to your will. Take what you have and use it to create what you want.
Here are three things you can change to make this year your groove.
- The Way You’re THINKING
The second you decide you’re going to excel, you are a success. Your thinking changes. When your thinking changes, the rest of you does, too. Success sets in when you decide you’ve been as you are long enough, that whatever ‘this’ is, it’s over – and you’re ready to replace it with something better.
Success is a mindset, a vision of who you want to be and what you want to do. Everything starts in your mind. Your mind – yeah, yours! – has about 100 billion neurons. A typical neuron fires from 5 to 50 times a second; and each neuron can form thousands of links with other neurons, giving the average human brain well over 100 trillion synapses.
The more often a particular neuron transmits your thoughts about anything, the stronger that connection becomes. You’ve heard that what you think, you are? It’s a fact.
2. The Direction You’re LOOKING
All the things you desire, that you’re needing and seeking will follow. It will. Toss all your preoccupation with money, professional recognition and fame into the nearest recycle bin and put the top down. Be ruthlessly faithful to your vision. Excellence calls for your best. Daily, choose to give it, whether by yourself or in a crowd. Unless immoral or illegal, God gave it to you, and equipped you with the instincts and abilities to make it happen. Be strong and stubborn as you focus on it.
3. Your Reaction To What’s HAPPENING
Every challenge you face will empower and strengthen you if you let it. Taken together, they will give you maturity, insight, discernment and wisdom. That’s what ‘those guys’ mean when they say weird things like, “Oh, I LOVE challenges!” I’ve yet to meet anyone who wants an existence of nothing but obstacles and challenges. In themselves, they’re rough, hard- and sharp-edged. They hurt, wound and leave one’s spirit battered and lacerated, sometimes to the point we don’t know how or what to pray.
It’s not the thing itself ‘those guys’ invite; it’s the result of adding that thing to their own decision to use it to better themselves. As The Message puts Romans 8:26-28, “Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer our of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.” Turn toward the inevitable detours and challenges with resolve, dignity, grace and a lot of grit. They come to everyone who tries. What you do with them either builds or erodes your character.
As Sir Winston Churchill once remarked, “Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.” Want to be a success? Change your thinking, where you’re looking, and how you respond to every life challenge and watch what happens.
© D. Dean Boone, January 2017