THERE IS NO SUCCESS WITHOUT DISCONTENT

Bayo Ogunmupe

YOUR subconscious, the powerhouse of your intuition will carry you to any level of success you desire. But this cannot happen on its own, by chance, you have to build it, so in order to get your life to work, and take greater advantage of this resource, you have to build a channel for your creativity to flow through.

To enlarge this channel, you have to expand your consciousness. This involves expanding your ideas and beliefs by casting aside old beliefs. If you believe that the solution to your problems is outside of you, you will always look outside for solutions in order to find answers to your needs.

However, you should begin to look inside of yourself for the panacea to your problems. The outer world is a reproduction of your inner world, which is why you should look at yourself in a new way. No amount of will power or motivation will solve your problems if you look outside of yourself for answers, your frightened mind can only attract frightening experiences. This principle underlies why animals are attracted to their own kind. Your subconscious will always lead you according to your beliefs.

All you need do is to want something better than you have right now. Never settle down into self-satisfaction. There is no growth without discontent, while you may enjoy present situation, it is important that you grow from where you are!

If your life does not work the way you want it, it is because you have accepted false beliefs and values that keep you from being all that you can be. When you are stuck like that, then you should review your life and change your false values.

Waiting is a trap, why are you waiting to be happy, to be alive, to be wealthy? There will always be a reason to wait. But in life, you can only have two things: reasons or results. But reasons don't count, results are what matters in life.

The way forward is to heal yourself, you are responsible for whatever happens to you. Through the law of attraction, you attract everything that happens to you. This is a hard pill to swallow, but it is the only way you can change. Often, we insist that reality should conform to our illusion. But the starting point of success is through control. A confused mind works in the direction of poverty, sickness and lack, while straight minds work for abundance and success.

Your basic task is to develop high consciousness, such that you can create the conditions of life you desire.

You can also alter your conditions by challenging your beliefs if even your ego is threatened. Whenever you want something in your life, you must always let go of anything standing between you and your goal. In your heart, you know exactly what you want and if you would listen to your intuition, it will tell you how to accomplish it. Your mind may sell you out, but your intuition never will. Your intuition is your connection with Jehovah, the ultimate power on earth.

Learn to trust your intuition for no one could control you through it. Your intuition alone can make you what you want to be. Success is your birthright, you were born to be successful and that success requires no apology.

The way to gravitate from poverty to riches is to change your self-image. We literally act out the kind of person that we think we are! Besides no amount of will power will cause us to think another way. This mental blueprint of our self-image in turn tyrannizes our lives. But sadly, who you are and what you are is not the same. Your ego may be trying to trick you to believe your false self- image.

To attain greatness, you should neutralize your ego. The way to neutralize your ego is to love yourself unconditionally. This is possible because your ego isn't about loving yourself. And because life is consciousness, anything you assume to be true will become real in the course of time. You will experience in life whatever you are deeply convinced is so.

You cannot be wealthy if you resent wealthy people. You cannot be talented or beautiful if you hate talented and beautiful people. Whatever you resent is a statement of what you lack.

Remember, whoever you resent is you, because we are all one. The more you love and support others in their wellbeing, the more you will have everything. As you support others, you actually support yourself in having whatever you want. Being yourself is the secret of contentment.

So it is with happiness, all happiness is caused by comparison. You may feel unhappy when you compare what you have now to that of another person. The truth about happiness is that you are not what you have, you are not what you do. When you stop pleasing others by pleasing yourself, you will maintain a state of contentment and happiness. Where there is no comparison, unhappiness is impossible. Happiness exists when the mind isn't removed from itself. But your environment hinders your happiness. Beware of where you live. It could be the source of your limitations. Imitate Jesus. When the Christ found his Nazarene brethren hostile, he relocated to Capanaum. There he found succor and his ministry prospered.

Our champion today is Robert Boyle. History remembers Boyle as the scientist who gave his name to Boyle's law -- a natural law that sets out the connection between pressure and volume in gases. His momentous discovery laid the basis for countless scientific developments that followed. But Robert Boyle was more than an able man of science. He was also a man of great faith in God and His inspired words, the Bible.

Boyle was born into a wealthy family at Lismore Castle, in Ireland in 1627. That time was a period termed "age of reason". That time was when thinkers tried to free men from the fanaticism that had enslaved the human race for centuries. Boyle's desire to learn was matched only by his intense desire to share his learning with others. Thus, he became a prolific writer. His writing influenced such great minds as Sir Isaac Newton. In 1660, Boyle was one of the founders of the Royal Society. This is a scientific institution that still exists in England.

Boyle has been described as the father of chemistry. As opposed to the Alchemists of his day who kept their findings secret, Boyle openly published all the details of his work. Further, instead of accepting, long-held myths, he championed the use of experiments to establish the facts. This way, he established that matter is composed of corpuscles, that combined in different ways to form substances.

Boyle summed up his way in his book-- The Skeptical Chymist. There he urged scientists to avoid being dogmatic. He said scientists should distinguish fact from opinion, differentiate what they knew to be true from things they thought to be true. Before he died in December 1691, Boyle, with his sister Katherine, moved to London where he devoted himself to the propagation of Protestantism.

Common Quality Of Success In History

by BAYO OGUNMUPE

A QUALITY of success in life is the courage to begin a project. The future belongs to the risk takers. Life is so perverse that the more you seek security, the less of it you have.

  But the more you seek opportunity, the more likely it is that you will achieve the security that you desire. Whenever you feel fear or anxiety, you need to bolster your courage with persistence in the face of obstacles. Then switch your attention to your goals.

  Create an exact mental picture of the person you would like to be, performing tasks the way you wish to perform. The mastery of fear and development of courage are essential requirements for success in life. One thing you must learn from world-renowned champions is that action is everything.

  If learning about success were all that took great men of yore to succeed, your success would have been guaranteed. But that isn’t so. What it takes for you to succeed is a persistent and continuous action in the direction of your ambition.   

  Another single most important ingredient of success is persistence. Persistence is self-discipline in action. Each time you persist in the face of adversity, you build up in your character, the habit of persistence. 

  You also build pride, power and self-esteem, honing you up as a radiant personality. This develops in you an iron will, a quality that will carry you into success beyond your peers.

  The history of human race is the story of the triumph of persistence. Winston Churchill is considered the greatest statesman of the 20th century. He lived a life of courage and persistence. 

  During the darkest days of World War II, when the German Airforce pounded Britain into pieces, Churchill’s resolute, bulldog tenacity kept the nation on in the face of adversity. John F. Kennedy said of his oratory that Churchill marshaled the English language and sent it into battle. 

  Later in life, after he had won the great war and was asked to address a class at his old preparatory school, Churchill stood before the assembly, saying with a strong voice: ‘‘I can summarise the lessons of my life in these words: never give in; never, never give in.”

  What Churchill found, and what you will later find in your march through prosperity, is that persistence is the one quality that guarantees your victory in life. 

  Business moguls and outstanding entrepreneurs are all characterised by indomitable willpower and unshakable courage and persistence. 

  Orison Marden, in his book, Pushing to the Front, says: “There are two essential requirements for success. The first is, ‘get-to-it-iveness’ and stick-to-it-iveness.” 

  Indeed, your greatest asset is your ability to keep at it longer than anyone else. History has demonstrated that the most notable winners have usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. 

  John Rockefeller, the richest self-made man of his days, wrote that the only quality essential to success is perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.

  Conrad Hilton, an indigent salesman, who went on to build one of the most successful hotel corporations in the world, said: “Success seems to be connected with action. Successful men keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.” 

  Thomas Edison, the greatest success in the history of invention, failed at more experiment more than any other inventor of the 20th century. 

  He also perfected and was granted more patents than any other inventor of his age. 

  Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, talked about persistence in these words: “What this power is I cannot say. All I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.”   

  However, an interesting paradox in life that you need to be aware of is that you do everything to organise your life to avoid trouble, yet, despite your best efforts, you will discover that disappointment is inevitable. 

  Adversity is normal, natural and unavoidable. This is the paradox I am talking about.

  Unfortunately, we cannot grow into the kind of people capable of scaling the heights and achieving great goals, without adversity. 

  Adversity is the test you must pass on your path to accomplishing anything worthwhile. 

  Adversity has the effect of drawing out qualities in you that would have lain dormant in its absence. 

  High achievers utilise adversity for growth, while mediocre people allow difficulties to overwhelm them. 

  Another remarkable discovery is that success comes one step beyond failure.

  Our champion this week is Joseph Klemens Pilsudski, the Polish revolutionary and statesman, the first chief of state of the newly independent Poland established in November 1918.

  Pilsudski was born in December 1867 in Zulow, Poland, now in Lithuania. He studied in Kharkov, but exiled to Siberia for his socialist views. 

  He combined nationalist and socialist views in his underground newspaper, Robotnik, and founded the Polish Socialist Party. 

  In 1908, he organised a private army to free Poland from the Russian Empire. In November 1918, Pilsudski was proclaimed the Polish head of state and first Marshal of Poland. 

  He led the Polish forces to defend Warsaw in the miracle of the Vistula in 1920. 

  He enacted a new constitution in 1921, but refused to stand for election and went into retirement.

  Owing to growing disarray in parliamentary government, assisted by the Polish Socialist Party, Pilsudski became the arbiter of power in Polish politics and was named premier from 1926 to 1930, remaining minister of war from 1926 until his death in 1935. 

  A romantic revolutionary, a great soldier without formal military training, Pilsudski was a man of rare audacity and willpower. 

  He was very significant in European politics, but was poorly equipped to rule a modern state. 

  Pilsudski left Poland undeveloped economically. 

  He was buried in a crypt of Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, among Polish kings.

Thinking Habits And Lifestyles Of Winners

On The Path Of Winners

BY BAYO OGUNMUPE

Thinking Habits And Lifestyles Of Winners

THE habits and lifestyles of winners are worthy of emulation. Those who by inspiration and perspiration have become wealthy have memoirs which can help aspiring millionaires. Sadly, the mediocre do not seem to want to emulate these rich people. Instead mediocres become envious, detesting the successes and progress of the rich. Granted that the rich are often obnoxious, lousy and arrogant, this does not change the facts that they are successful.

  For example, since the victory of the President-elect, Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari, they have been criticising the former Lagos state governor, Chief Bola Tinubu for sponsoring the merger of four opposition parties to form the All Progressives Congress, the platform which carried Buhari to victory. They say we don’t even question the integrity of Tinubu who, they say has turned politics into profitable business. We say, such envious attitudes don’t exist among the rich. It isn’t your business to question Tinubu’s morals. Those are provinces of God and the Nigeria Police Force. What aspiring winners do is to concentrate on their goals, work at them and succeed in them.

  Thinking on how Tinubu made his money does not add value, riches and substance to your existence or greatness.

  Those aspiring to replicate Tinubu’s greatness should focus on the strategies and skills deployed to produce success. Being resentful of those who have what you desire will only make what you desire move even further away from you. This is a reason why many fail to achieve the wealth and riches they desire. Their resentment will continue to drive wealth away from them. Resentment creates negative emotions such as anger, envy, bitterness and spite which clutter your mind preventing creative problem solving to enter into it. When you are building your wealth, you should research on the rich. You should read biographies and visit the abode of the rich.

  We have discovered the negative mindset of Nigerians do inhibit the realization of their goals. Instead of planning their own greatness, they are busy regaling themselves with the myths of how Tinubu obtained contracts to build a hotel or that Mike Adenuga must personally interview every manager before he is employed by Globacom. To me, the way we think and believe sentenced most of us to poverty. The Torah says: ‘‘Speak gracious words to edify and not words that wound as words fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver,” Prov. 25: 11.

   You cannot be great without knowledge. Which is why you should engage yourself in the acquisition of knowledge rather than vendetta. If  you desire wealth you should read the biographies of wealthy people where they will tell you how to make it. The secrets of wealth are in the stories and experiences of the rich. Peter Daniels, the richest man in Australia, is reputed to have read six thousand biographies. Bill Gates, the richest man in the world is known to read and review thousands of books every year. Moreover, a study of the wealthy revealed that rich people are voracious readers. No wonder, they are successful. As an aspirant to greatness, you have no excuse when memoirs of the great abound everywhere. You don’t have to repeat the experience of failure that others have undergone. You can simply avoid the mistakes of others through reading the testimonies of others.

  A recent edition of Forbes magazine captured the accounts of a Nigerian billionaire who recently bounced back from failure. The oil company of the billionaire in question was taken over by others owing to excessive debts. The essay was able to show the strategies this  billionaire applied to enable him bounce back. This article is replete with lessons for every aspiring entrepreneur that could save him from failure. Because riches start from the mind, driven by our attitudes and mindset, if you want to excel, you must nourish your mind with knowledge. You can only be as great as your knowledge.

  Our champion this week is Sir Vidiadhar Suraj prasad Naipaul (August 1932 to 2012), the Trinidadian writer of Indian descent who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. Naipaul is well known for his pessimistic novels set in the developing world which the Swedish Academy called suppressed histories. Descending from Hindu Indians who had immigrated to Trinidad as indentured labourers, Naipaul left Trinidad to attend the University of Oxford in 1950. He subsequently settled in England. His earliest books, The Mystic Masseur, 1957, The Suffrage of Elvira, 1958, and Miduel Street, 1959 are ironic and satirical accounts of life in the Caribbean. His fourth novel A House for Mr. Biswas, 1961, was a much more important work and won him recognition. In other books, Naipaul explored the personal and collective alienation experienced in new nations struggling to integrate their native and western colonial heritages. Naipaul was knighted in 1989 and awarded the Nobel Prize in 2001.

What it’ll take Buhari to triumph

What it’ll take Buhari to triumph 

By Bayo Ogunmupe

The world has been classified into about five different economies. The largest economies are seven. They are the USA, China, Japan, Germany, France, Brazil and the United Kingdom. They are in that order but are not necessarily developed nations.

  The group of seven most developed nation are Canada, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and Italy. They are the most industrialized and they guard their fortunes jealously. The G7 summit at Schloss Elmau in the Bravarian Alps, in Germany, comes up on 7 and 8 June this year. The nations of the G7 are united by shared values. They are the pioneers in resolving major challenges of globalisation. Germany which now holds the G7 presidency and is hosting the 2015 summit, wishes to continue making active contributions to the world economy.

 The issues on the agenda of the G7 meeting are very concrete. This not only applies to the traditional summit topics of the world economy and foreign and security policy. The German hosts are conscious of the expectations of the developing countries which is why they will be focusing on the expiry of the United Nations millennium Development Goals in 2015. The G7 agenda includes support for independence of  women. This involves promoting vocational education and making entrepreneurship more interesting for women. A series of meetings at ministerial level will preceed the summit this June. The foreign ministers of the participating nations met in Lubeck in April while the energy ministers will gather at Hamburg in the beginning of May. Then, the Finance ministers will have talks in Dresden at the end of May.

  Poor leadership prevented us from qualifying for membership of such summits. Even, the BRICS countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa could not suffer our membership, though we have both the population and the oil resources. It is only the MINT group that could accommodate us. That group consists of Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey. The travails of clueless leadership now thrust only on Muhammadu Buhari the onerous task of revamping the Nigerian economy and creating integrity and transparency images for Nigeria. Those nations classified above have been so classified due to their technological advancement. They have been industrialized by their leaders. Thereby they possess a high degree of economic clout occasioned by their technological capacity.

 Thus, those nations have come to wield such immense influence and respect among the comity of nations. This means industrialization is the backbone of economic development of any nation. The aspiration by Nigeria to be among the 20 top economies in the world by 2020 so as to transform Nigeria from an agrarian society to an industrial country should be pursued vigorously. Economists like Prof. Adedoyin Soyibo of the Ibadan school of economics have avowed the possibility of Nigeria attaining a development miracle in ten years, given transparent leadership. Though, this looks impossible at the moment with 170 million Nigerians depending mainly on oil. Besides, unemployment is rising yearly with many school leavers being unable to get jobs.

Moreover, other problems such as falling standard of education, weak institutions, weak information, communication Technological (ICT) capacity and leadership failure abound to keep us stymied. But in spite of these problems, Nigeria’s expectations are very high for the President elect Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari to solve. But we must realize that these problems have persisted for long that all of us must work very hard to solve them. With the rebasing of the Nigerian economy, our Gross Domestic Product in 2014. Nigeria ranked the 26^th largest economy in the world. We have a GDP $454 billion. This made our economy bigger than those of South Africa, Denmark, Malaysia and Singapore. Certainly, the rebasing was politically motivated in order for Goodluck Jonathan to gain cheap popularity. Because the level of poverty in Nigeria does not reflect a comparable statutory prosperity. On the quality of life Nigeria cannot compare favourably with Singapore for example.

 According to the UNDP Human Development Index report of 2014, the standard of living, life expectancy, literacy, education and quality of life show that Nigeria ranks 175^th while Singapore ranks 34^th out of 185 countries so measured. Nigeria is rated as a low human development nation while Singapore is rated as a high human development country. The UNDP further reports that Nigeria isn’t a country recording any remarkable progress in its human development index as against claims by Jonathan’s advisers that Nigeria’s economy is robust and resilient. According to UNDP, life expectancy in Nigeria is 52 years while 68 per cent of Nigerians live with one dollar a day. For Singapore, it ranked second after Switzerland in the world’s top ten economies in 2014.

In fact, like most African states, Nigeria’s economy is inert since most of our foreign reserves is spent to buy foreign goods and technologies. Much has also been frittered away on such trite issues as constitutional amendments, National Conference and the Transformation Agenda. What it will take Buhari to triumph, therefore is to prune the cost of governance, keep electricity privatized, privatise the refineries and set up a national full employment programme, to keep every Nigerian working. Indeed, the most urgent duty of Alhaji Buhari is to restore electrical power to its optimum capacity. This he can do by installing a board of experts with power to invite and pay foreign power generating companies. There is yet another option, let the federal government buy 30 per cent equity in every state institution privatized. Through the 30 per cent they can send spies into those institutions to observe what is going on there. For the past 30 years, Nigerians have imbibed corruption as a habit. The best way to rid Nigeria of corruption is to privatise every department or agency of government wherever possible. Like Adedoyin Soyibo said in his book: “Images: Prologue to Africa’s Development and Economic Renaissance,” let us adopt the emulation strategy of following the way that saw development in the advanced industrial societies of the West. Soyibo went on to say that what Nigeria needsis trade not aid. This is imperative when we consider the level of trade in the world. In Africa, trade among states is only 12 per cent. Whereas in Asia it is 48 per cent, in North America it is 47 per cent while in Europe it is 70 per cent. Let Buhari increase trade between Africans such we become the industrial hub of the continent. To privatise NNPC, let us look to how other OPEC members are managing their oil companies. All Buhari needs to do is to imitate and invite other nations for assistance. All things are possible to him that believeth.