How To Develop Your Winning Streak

On The Path Of Winners

BY BAYO OGUNMUPE

How To Develop Your Winning Streak

TO cultivate a winning streak, you must believe while others are doubting; plan while others are playing, decide while others are delaying and prepare while others are daydreaming. Also, you must begin while others are procrastinating, work while others are wishing, save while others are wasting. Moreover, you must always listen to others, smile while others are frowning and persist while others are quitting.

  To win in life requires three things, one: you must start your goal. That seems obvious, but many of us are stuck in the starting blocks, waiting for something to propel us into action. What has God equipped and called you to do? Step out and announce yourself for action, and He will empower you. Two, you must give your goal, your all. Athletes in the Olympics don’t save their efforts for their final drive. They concentrate on nailing every single run, increasing their chances for a gold medal. Don’t settle for mediocrity at any stage of your life. Three, you must never quit for winners don’t quit while quitters never win. Paul said: ‘‘Run in such a way as to get the prize,” Cor. 9:24.

  Commitment is a willingness to do whatever it takes to win. It is a promise to yourself from which you cannot back down. There is a difference between interest and commitment. When you are interested, you do it only when it is convenient. But when you are committed, you accept no excuses, only results. Only you can decide whether the rewards are worth the effort. You cannot live on junk food and have a healthy body. Commitment means paying your dues and disregarding your critics. Difficulties will always tempt you to believe your critics are right such that following a course of action to an end will always require courage. The scripture says: ‘‘Rise up, take courage and do it,” Ezra 10:4.

  There is an invisible reservoir of abundance that is tapped when you obey God’s laws. The Torah says, ‘‘The blessing of the Lord makes rich and adds no sorrow,” Pro. 10:22. Jehovah’s ability to bless you does not depend on what’s happening to the economy. When you obey Him, He will ‘‘Open the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing, there will not be room enough to receive. And He will rebuke the devourer for your sakes,” Mal 3: 10-11.

  Sometimes, when you achieve what you are striving for, you find they are not very fulfilling. But as you look back, you realize that your greatest joy was not in the goal you achieved but in the growth you experienced on the way. The Japanese Nobel prize winning chemist, Koichi Tanaka describes this phenomenon and how it came about during the pursuit of his dream. As he worked on how to create ions with lasers, he says, ‘‘I failed for months before I succeeded in making an ion. I continued despite failures because I enjoyed the journey. It was fun, that fun enabled me to persist.” That persistence helped him to win the Nobel prize. We don’t have such people here because, as a former colony, we are used to being led and fed. You too have the potential to discover many wonderful things like Tanaka. For me, writing these columns has taken me out of my comfort zone. It has elevated my thinking and raised my self esteem. It has given me confidence and confirmed my sense of purpose. My pursuit of my dream has become so enticing, that I now ask myself: ‘‘Did I make the dream or the dream made me?” when your mind accepts a new idea it is forever changed. Once stretched, your mind takes on a new shape and never goes back to its original form. When that happens, you experienced true fulfillment. When you dream, you become ageless.

  Our champion this week is Patrice Lumumba, the African nationalist leader and first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was prime minister between June and September of 1960. He was born in July 1925 at Onalua, the Belgian Congo. He was a member of a small Batetela tribe which later became significant in his later political life. His two rivals, Moise Tshombe, who led the breakaway Katanga Province and Joseph Kasavubu who later became the nation’s president. Both came from large, powerful tribes from which they derived their support, giving their political movements a regional character. In contrast, Lumumba’s party emphasized its all-Congo nature. After education in Protestant schools, Lumumba went to work in Port Empain where he became a trade unionist. Then he became a columnist in a Congolese newspaper. Later he founded the Congolese National Movement, the first nationwide political party. In an eventual election, Lumumba scored a sweeping victory, becoming premier in June 1960. Then Katanga broke away, but Joseph Mobutu, later known as Mobutu Sese Seko, seized power as a colonel in the Congolese army. Mobutu later reached a working agreement with Kasavubu. Seeking to travel out of the Congo, Kasavubu forces captured Lumumba in December 1960, on January 17, 1961 he was delivered to the Katanga secessionist regime where he was murdered. His death caused a scandal throughout Africa and he retrospectively became Congo’s national hero.