On The
Path Of Winners
BY BAYO
OGUNMUPE
Planning
That Lifts Beyond Mediocrity
WITHOUT a
plan in place, your life is mired in poverty. To escape, I urge three steps to
financial freedom. One, ascertain your location at each period of your life.
You cannot grow in success without first finding out your present position. You
need to know where you are to plot and navigate to your expected destination.
There are a few ways to access money. Generally, these are through inheritance,
income from businesses and gains from salaried work.
If you don't know
where you are going, you won’t know when you get there. Determining your
destination before commencing your journey is the best way to plan your life.
Without focus you leave your life to chance.
Two, you must choose
your vehicle to travel your life in. The vehicle you choose determines how fast
you get to your destination. However, investing in yourself via self-education,
being updated and relevant is vital to your security and cash flow. Time is
vital in matters of making wealth, because time waits for no one. Time is money
and time wasted equals money wasted. Which is why you should acquire discipline
in order to avoid being overtaken by Parkinson’s Law. This law has remained
true in our lives from time immemorial. This law keeps us poor if not evaded.
Parkinson’s Law states that: a man’s expenses will always rise to meet his
income and make him stay the same station in life.
What the law simply
means is that no matter the extra income you earn, you will always increase
your expenses to fit into your income; which makes it impossible for your gains
to reflect on your net worth. Since God wants you to have different vehicles of
wealth creation, you should use your strategies to create multiple streams of
income in order to become rich.
Then discover your
primary and dominant stream of income. As you operate within your dominant
source of income either as a paid employee or as a career business owner. Use
your financial intelligence and investment mindset to develop other streams by
diversifying yourself.
You start with your
main stream, ending up with at least three other vehicles of wealth creation
such as advertising, consultancy, networking and franchising. Consolidate each
stream and keep expanding and you become a force to be reckoned with in
Nigeria. But mind your worldview, for success without a successor is tantamount
to failure. For we now have many selfish believers who are prosperous without
inheritors. ‘‘But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is He that
giveth thee power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He
sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day,” Deut. 8:18.
The primary reason
for prospering his people is to empower them to establish His Kingdom.
Enlightening the world on Jehovah’s kingdom is very expensive, and that is the
primary reason why God prospers people. Then, after you are prosperous, what
next? The next thing is posterity, leaving a legacy behind you for the
succeeding generation of descendants. Your descendants will then fulfill the
purpose for which God prospered you. God only prospers you for the purpose of
building His Kingdom.
To leave a befitting
legacy is the reason why you should develop the posterity mindset. Posterity
thinking isn’t natural to us.
Our parents,
teachers and leaders didn’t know it. They taught us to live for today. They
could not give us what they don’t have, which is why we must make conscious
effort to personally develop posterity mentality. God empowers people to become
wealthy so that His Kingdom can be established. Be a posterity thinker in order
to gain Jehovah’s blessing so as to propagate. God’s Kingdom since Jehovah is a
generational God, He expects us also to be generational minded. ‘‘A good man
leaves an inheritance to his children’s children. But the wealth of the sinner
is stored up for the righteous,” Proverbs 13:22. So let your legacy be at least
two generations compliant. Two generations after you must enjoy what your
existence established. Otherwise, you have not fulfilled the perfect plan of
God through maximizing your opportunities.
Our champion this
week is Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States
(1865-1869) who succeeded President Abraham Lincoln on his assassination in the
closing months of the American civil war (1861-1865). His lenience toward the
South during Reconstruction embittered the Republicans in Congress, leading to
his political downfall. Johnson lacked formal education but his homespun
lifestyles were assets, which built him a political base in Tennessee.
Born in December
1808 in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S., he moved with his parents to Tennessee
in 1826. Johnson organized a party that elected him first as alderman and then
mayor of Greeneville. During his eight years in city administration, he found a
natural home in the states’ rights Democratic Party of President Andrew
Jackson. He emerged their raucous spokesman. He was elected member of the US
House of Representatives for 10 years as their representative (1843-53). He then
served as governor of Tennessee (1853-57).
Elected U.S. senator
in 1856, he adhered to the dominant Democratic views favouring lower tariffs
and opposing anti-slavery agitation. In 1860, however, he broke with the
Democratic Party after Lincoln’s election as president. He opposed Southern
secession. When Tennessee seceded in June 1861, he refused to join them,
remaining in his post and loyal to the union. In recognition of his loyalty to
the States, Lincoln appointed him military governor of Tennessee in 1862 by
then liberated by the Union army.
To broaden the base
of the Republican Party Lincoln nominated Johnson for vice president on his
successful re-election ticket of 1864. Thrust unexpectedly into the presidency
in April 1865, he was faced with reconstruction of the Confederate states.
Congressional Republicans who favoured severe measures toward the defeated
South were disappointed by Johnson’s programmes. Then, Congress voted articles
of impeachment against the President. The move failed by one vote short of
two-thirds majority. But Johnson’s usefulness as a leader was over and he was
not nominated for re-election. However, in 1875, he was elected senator from
Tennessee shortly before he died in July of the same year.s
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