On the Path of Winners By Bayo Ogunmupe Take Charge Of Your Life

On the Path of Winners

By Bayo Ogunmupe

Take Charge Of Your Life

Taking charge of your life begins from setting worthwhile goals. Today, more people fear change.

  One of the benefits of setting goals is that goals enable you to control the direction of change in your life. Goals enable you to ensure that the changes in your life are largely self-determined and self-directed. Goals enable you instill meaning and purpose into whatsoever you do.

  You have probably heard it said that the average person uses only 10 per cent of his abilities. According to a research conducted by America’s Standford University, only two percent of a person’s mental ability is used in his lifetime. The remainder just sits there dormant in his body. Happily, anything that you want long enough and hard enough, you can ultimately achieve. The great oil magnate, Haroldson Lafayette Hunt once said that success required two things only. First, you must know exactly what you want. Most people don’t know what they want from life. Second, you must determine the price that you will pay to achieve it and then get busy paying that price.

  Moreover, life is akin to service in a cafeteria rather than in a restaurant. In a restaurant, you eat the meal before paying the bill. But in a buffer at a cafeteria, you serve yourself and pay in full before you enjoy the meal. People make the mistake of thinking that they will pay the price after they have gained success. The elevator of success is out of order, but the stairs are always open. Fortune favours the workaholic, for he prays the most who works hardest.

  The Greek philosopher, Aristotle observed that the ultimate purpose of human action is the achievement of personal happiness. Each action aims at increasing your happiness. And setting goals, working towards achieving them is the key to happiness in life. The greatest enemies of happiness are negative emotions. Negativity holds you back, tire you out, and takes the joy out of your life. If you want to be truly happy and successful, you must free yourself from negative emotions. The negativities are fear, self pity, envy, jealousy, inferiority complex and ultimately anger.

  Once you eliminate these negative factors from your thinking, your negative emotions stop. The positive emotions of love, peace, humility, joy and enthusiasm flow in to replace them and your life changes for the best. Never justify or make excuses with your current position in life. You were sleepwalking before but you are now awake with goals for a better life. Rise above the opinion of others, no one else is responsible for your situation. Take responsibility for your plight.

  In a study done in the United States in the 1990s, researchers found that people who ranked in the top three per cent in every field had a special attitude that sets them apart from the others. It was this, they viewed themselves as self employed throughout their careers no matter who signed their paycheques. They saw themselves responsible for their companies as if they owned them personally, you should do the same.

  So from this moment on, see yourself as the chief executive of your own personal services corporation. See yourself as being in complete charge of your life and career. Remind yourself you are where you are and what you are because of what you have done or failed to do. You are the ultimate architect of your own destiny. As the president of your own personal services corporation, you are responsible for everything you do and their results. Take responsibility for the consequences of your actions. If you are not earning an adequate income now, set earning a better salary as your goal, make a plan to gain more money, and get busy doing what you need to do to earn a fabulous salary.

  A large body of psychological literature revolves around the Locus of Control theory. In centuries of research, psychologists found that your locus of control determines your happiness or lack of it. People with an internal locus of control feel that they are in complete control of their lives. They feel strong, confident and powerful. They are generally optimistic and positive. They feel terrific about themselves and are in charge of their lives. On the other hand, people with an external locus of control feel controlled by forces, by their bosses, their marriage and by their clan, which is why they are pessimistic, superstitious, fearful and negative. The good news is that the amount of responsibility for your life that you take, the greater control of your life you have. The more responsibility you accept, the happier and more confident you become. The starting point of your success is for you to realize that you have unlimited power to be, have or do anything you really want in life if you simply want it badly enough and are willing to work long enough to achieve it.

  Our champion this week is the American founder of a multi-billion dollar oil business who promoted his conservative political views on his own radio programme, Haroldson Lafayette Hunt. Born in Ramsey, Illinois in February 1889, Hunt speculated in cotton properties until 1920. With a $50 loan, he went to Arkansas and began trading in oil leases, buying and selling simultaneously so that he made money without spending any. In 1930, when oil was struck at east Texas, Hunt made a $30,000 down-payment on Dad Joiner’s 4000 acres promising to bring more later, that tract of land proved to be the richest oil field in the United States at that era.

  Hunt continued to make shrewd investments in oil through his Hunt Oil Company founded in 1936. His most successful venture was his discovery and exploration of vast oil deposits in Libya in the 1960s. With his immense wealth from oil, Hunt invested in publishing, cosmetics and health food products. By the time of his death in November 1974, his fortune totaled three billion dollars, with an income of more than one million dollars a week. Then Hunt became best known for his ultraconservative political viewpoint. He founded his own foundation called Facts Forum, which produced radio and television programmes of anticommunist propaganda. The foundation also distributed books by Senator Joseph McCarthy, a notorious anticommunist campaigner. By 1958, his foundation renamed Life Line distributed a daily 15 minutes radio programme carried by more than 400 stations.

  However, Hunt put much of his assets in trusts for the families of his two wives. By 1985, the failed silver deal by two of his sons: Bunker Hunt and Herbert Hunt and their slumping oil and sugar business had reduced the family’s wealth by one-third.