Become An Expert In Your Job

On The Path Of Winners

BY BAYO OGUNMUPE

Become An Expert In Your Job

BECOMING an expert in your job is the key to your happiness. You remember, happiness is the progressive realization of a worthy goal. Moreover, you can only pursue the goals of your happiness through your job. Which is why you have to be an expert in your job in order to attain happiness. Life is lived from the inside out. The core of your personality is your values. Your values make you what you are. Your values determine your goals. Your values determine your actions. Your values determine your beliefs. With positive values such as love, compassion and generosity, you will believe that people in your world deserve to be treated humanely sympathetically.

  Also, your beliefs determine your expectations. With positive values, you believe yourself to be a good person, and you will expect good things to happen to you. Another level of your personality determine by your expectations, is your attitude. Your attitude is a reflection of your values, beliefs and expectations. Which is why a positive mental attitude goes hand in hand with great success in every walk of life. The last level of your personality is your actions. Your actions are a reflection of your values, beliefs and expectations. This is why what you achieve in life will be determined by your inner workings.

  You are happiest when your work is congruent with your values. When you are living in alignment with your goals, you automatically become happy. Your goals must be congruent with your values in order for you to attain happiness. Be sure that as you scramble up the ladder of success, the ladder is leaning against the right wall, otherwise success may end up in regret. Many people work hard to achieve goals which at the end, they get no joy from.

  So beware, the Bible says: ‘‘What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” Matt. 16:26. Trust your intuition because self trust is the foundation of greatness. And this comes from listening to your intuition. You become great by being guided by a higher power. Living in alignment with your true values is your royal road to happiness.

  But how can you know the true values? The answer is that you always demonstrate your true values by your actions. Look at your past. What is your heart’s desire? Determine your heart’s desire. What is it deep down in you, more than anything else, you would like to be? What do you want to be famous for? In psychology, your self-esteem determines your level of happiness. Self-esteem is defined as ‘‘how much you love yourself.” Also, yourself image or the way you see yourself determines your self-esteem.

  However, the more your behavior is inconsistent with your self-image, the less you become happy. Thus, you cannot be happy while your behavior is inconsistent with your self-image. The moment your behavior is consistent with your highest ideals, yourself image improves, your self-esteem increases, and you will be happier.

  Remember, you become what you think, so think of only what you want. Be true to  yourself, for integrity is the most important value. Besides, integrity isn’t so much a value, rather, it is the value that guarantees all the other values. Which is why today you should decide to be a person of honour. As a resource person during the sensitization seminar on Islamic banking, a women told me she had decided upon her definite goal in life. I asked her what it was. She said she was going to become a millionaire the next year. Then I asked her how much she was worth now. It turned out that she was broke having been  just fired from a job. I then asked  her why she would set such a goal under her current circumstances.

  She informed me she had followed some of my goal setting recommendations in my previous columns. I had to explain to her that her goal was so unrealistic and unattainable in her present circumstances that it would only discourage her when she found herself so far away from it. So keep your feel on the ground. Be honest with yourself. Unrealistic goals end up demotivating you. By setting such goals, you are sabotaging yourself.

  Our champion this week is Robert Strange McNamara, the American whiz kid business executive, the eighth U.S. Secretary of Defence, serving under President John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Born in 1916 in San Francisco, California, McNamara was Secretary of Defence from 1961 to 1968, he revamped Pentagon operations, playing a major role in the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

  After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley in 1937, McNamara earned the MBA at Harvard Business School (1939), he later joined Harvard faculty. Disqualified by poor vision from active duty during World War II, he developed logistical systems for bomber raids and statistical systems for monitoring troops and supplies.

  After the war, McNamara was one of the whiz kids hired to revitalize the Ford Motor Company. He rose rapidly and by 1960 became the first person outside the Ford family to become President of Ford Motors. He resigned a month later to join the Kennedy administration as defence secretary. He successfully gained control of the Pentagon, altering U.S. military strategy from David Eisenhower’s ‘‘massive retaliation” to ‘‘flexible response.” McNamara initially supported the Vietnam War, later after visiting South Vietnam, he began to question the wisdom of the U.S. involvement in the war. In 1968, he left the Pentagon to become President of the World Bank. In his 13 year tenure in the World Bank he was highly regarded as an astitute administration and helper of the Third World. He retired from the World Bank in 1981 but remained active in addressing issues such as the world hunger and nuclear war. He died in Washington DC in 2009.