Decide Upon Your Main Purpose

On The Path Of Winners

BY BAYO OGUNMUPE

Decide Upon Your Main Purpose

SUCCESSFUL people fail more often than unsuccessful people. Successful people try more things, fail, pick themselves up and try again until they succeed. Unsuccessful people try a few things, if they try at all and give-up, to go back to their normal routine. For the champion however, his purpose will give him the focus to win. The more you think of your purpose, how to achieve it, the more you activate the Law of Attraction in your life. There and then, you begin to attract the people, opportunities and the circumstances that will help you accomplish your purpose.

  A definite purpose also activates your subconscious on your behalf. Any thought, plan, or goal that you can clearly define will immediately start to be brought into reality by your subconscious. Your main purpose may be defined as the one goal that is most important to you. Usually, it is the one goal that will help you achieve more of your other goals. However, the main question you should ask yourself was: What major thing would you dare to dream if you know you could not fail? If you could be guaranteed of successfully achieving any goal, what one goal would it be? If you could write down your answer, you can achieve it. From then on, the only question remaining is: How? Your only limit is how badly you want it and how long you are willing to work for it.

  My only Nigerian hero is Wole Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature. I met him while he gave the First Daily Independent Lecture in 2002. He was the guest speaker at the event. He was very punctual which forced me to ask if he believed in African time. He answered that lateness to events is caused by poor preparation. Of course, I hailed him as the only Nigerian to win the coveted prize among 150 million people. He told me that when he started his academic career after serving apprenticeship in the theatre in Britain, he decided he wanted to make a contribution in Literature. That was his major goal. He focused on it for more than thirty years. Eventually, he was successful, the first African to be so honoured. He told me: ‘‘I was happy when it happened but it was not a surprise.” Yes, it could not have been a surprise since he applied for it.

  You want to be a billionaire. The question is whether you can provide the necessary, investing all the years required to achieve that financial goal. If you are willing to pay the price, then, there is nothing that can stop you. You must think about your goal all the time. Choosing a definite goal with your decision to concentrate single-mindedly on that purpose, overcoming all obstacles until it is achieved will change your life for the better than any other decision you ever make. Whatever your definite purpose, write it down and begin working on it from this moment on. King David of ancient Israel says: ‘‘As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he, Proverbs 23:7. That means you always act based on your beliefs and convictions about yourself. Jesus said: ‘‘According to your faith, it will be done unto you,” Matt 9:29. Here he is saying that your beliefs become your realities.

  In: Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill said, ‘‘Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, you can achieve.” You are better than you know. Programme your greatness into your subconscious. If you believe that you are destined for greatness, you will walk, talk and act as if all that is happening to you in life is part of a great plan to make you successful. That is how great people think. Also, within every difficulty is the seed of an equal or greater advantage. With this attitude you benefit from whatever happens to you. Your job is to mentally create what you want to be in life.

  The three keys to achieving your purpose are commitment, completion and closure. A firm commitment to achieving your goals puts aside all excuses. Completion as an ingredient in peak performance doing your tasks hundred per cent instead of ninety per cent. For closure, it is the difference between an open loop and a closed one. Bringing closure to an issue is absolutely essential for you to be happy engendering a sense of accomplishment. Lack of closure meaning incomplete action on an issue is a major source of dissatisfaction and failure in life. Whereas, nothing will propel you to greatness faster than developing a reputation for getting your tasks done quickly, well and on schedule. Always write your goals down. A goal without a deadline is merely a discussion. Don’t be afraid to set a deadline. If you failed to meet a deadline, set another. If you want to fastrack your career, listen to inspirational radio programmes, take additional courses of study whenever you can. These investments in knowledge will propel you unfailingly into greatness. If financial freedom is your goal, from today begin to question every single expense. As your income increases, increase the amount you save. Become a learned man by reading a book a week.

  Our champion this week is Abraham Harold Maslow, the American psychologist and philosopher best known for his self actualization theory of psychology which argued that the primary goal of psychotherapy should be the integration of the self. Maslow was born on All Fools Day April 1908. He died in 1970. He studied psychology at the University of Winsconsin and Gestalt psychology at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Then, he joined the staff of Brooklyn College in 1937. By 1951 he had become head of psychology department of Brandeis University, Massachusetts, where he remained until 1969.

  Maslow’s major works were: Motivation and Personality (1954) and Towards a Psychology of Being (I962). Maslow argued that each person has a hierarchy of needs that must be satisfied ranging from the requirements to love, esteem, and self actualization. As each need is satisfied, the next higher level dominates conscious functioning, thus people who lack food and shelter are unable to express higher needs. He believed that truly healthy people satisfied needs and were self actualizers. His papers published posthumously, were issued in 1971 as The Further Reaches of Human Nature.