How To Improve Yourself In The Next 3-5 Years

It is absolutely human of us to want instant success, instant gratification, instant happiness and instant wealth. But on the other hand, it becomes another torment just thinking about what we are facing right now in comparison to our expectation of instant goodness of life. We feel that this deal is too good to be true after trying some things that are out of our comfort zone and expecting some good reward out of it.

When building your 20 one bedroomed apartment, it will take you 6-9 months depending on the factors of architecture and financing for its completion and maybe on the 9^th month with favorability swinging your side, you may get tenants filling all your 20 units. But wait, for you to enjoy rent, you have a loan to pay and remember the bank granting you a loan gave you a grace-period which is interest accrued and you must pay as an additional cost to your loan. It may take you, let say 3-5 years to complete paying the loan but is worth it? Yes, it is.

As patient as a certain landlord paying his loan for 20 units apartments so we ought to be patient to build ourselves in which your rewards will be experienced in 3 to 5 years to come according to your life purpose.  Let’s glide into the 7 take home points that you can bank on.

1.   Go the extra mile- Don’t ask permission to give more and better service to your family, your employer, your friends, your neighbors or even your enemies, just do it. Get into the habit of doing extra and in a special way and mark excellence. We should expect excellent things so we must contribute to excellence by going the extra mile.

2.   See value in people- Treat people with value, which instinctively means value yourself, then you will be able to value others and the value will return to you. In short, be human to all regardless of race, tribe and creed.

3.   Invest in yourself – You can never be better than who you are today without reading, studying and learning. It doesn’t mean you need a Ph.D. in what you do but to identify what is your purpose, then with the curiosity of a child start to ask the right questions to what you can do to achieve your purpose. You can enroll courses related to your purpose, attending seminars or just buy books which is the most inexpensive form of education- Someone spends the time to write them in order to add value to our lives (an investment made to you if you only choose to read these books)

4.   See value in what you do- with a purpose in hand, you will understand what you are doing is important. It may be your job, your salary, your loans/debts and your assets. Your job may be employment or your own business. You value it so that you can concentrate on bringing the value of excellence and we know that excellent things are surely rewardable. Your salary for the employed is the main source to build up your own financial dynasty for your family. Your loans and debts play a big role in bringing your vision of success much faster than your savings can do within the reason of investment not spending.  Your assets are the fruits originating from your job, your salary, your savings, your investment loans and your sole efforts of going the extra mile.

5.   See value in failure- There are many things we understand outside the arena of failure but we get something new something profound in our failure if we choose to look at it that way. Failure is not in a real sense permanent but a temporary defeat. It has a time limit in that it has a beginning and an ending. Like Robert Kiyosaki puts it Being broke is temporary, but poverty is eternal. Poverty is looking at failure like it is permanent – we are not learning, we are hopeless, we are resentful of other people’s progress and we loathe ourselves. That is poverty – burying your one talent in the earth and blaming everybody for your fear of failure. Failure being temporary is a guide with a universal language showing you the wrong way so that you can look further to the right road to your purpose.

6.   Try something new – It’s insane to do the same thing over and over again and expecting different results as well stated by Albert Einstein. Deliberately, go the extra mile to do something new but we must be clear about this. We must first learn about it, study it and practice it to achieve mastery and produce excellent quality from our service.

7.   Retire early – “I never resign until I die” (our African Politician mindset) should not be existing in our minds, our hearts or our purpose. Retire early means working hard with the purpose of being financially independent. It is earning from our inner resources without necessarily working because you have but because you want to.

8.   Bonus- Carry heavy- We should seek not to meet our daily needs, our monthly needs but our semi-annual needs and annual needs. We ought to focus on how to afford to live our lives unchanged at the face of unemployment or financial disaster that may occur in our lives. It is not about you and your family. Seek to be more productive, financially free, more generous, more supportive, more intelligent, more creative and more and more. Carry heavy means to build yourself to more dependable, reliable, loyal, positive and more faithful to meet your family, your friends, your neighbor and your enemies. Have something you in your pocket at all times- financial threshold in your wallet that can assist you or your fellow man’s needs.

Invest in yourself

This blog is dedicated to improve you into a better you. I am suggesting that your first and most primary step in achieving any worthwhile accomplishments is to establish your primary goal. What is your primary goal in life? Have you given thought to it, do you wish your life to be better than what you are in now? Or do you want to continue bearing the consequences of accepting circumstances by not getting into action.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:18. Goals are invisible to the world but they are real if you want them to be.

Goal 1. is to establish that you are a human, a fascinating creator walking the face of this Earth. Sometimes, we find ourselves being belittled by other people, circumstances, troubles, mistakes, accidents or fear. We think that we don’t deserve the good things in life. We think that we are worth LESS - inconsequential and yet we are not. God don't create a nobody but he create a somebody with a purpose.

I will give you my list of motivational quotes from great people that will establish that you are the most important person in this world.

1. Everyone has many talents for surmounting his special problems - Napoleon Hill
2. Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit - Napoleon Hill
3. What the mind of a man conceive and believe, the mind of a man can achieve- Napoleon Hill.
4. Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world – Lucille Ball
5. Treat yourself with love and respect and you will attract people who show love and respect - The Secret.
6. You were born rich and your abundance is contained in your thoughts, so be good to yourself, choose magnificent ideas and cease permitting your physical world to control your thinking - Bob Proctor

With that, take a pen and notebook and write an elaborate primary goal that you want to become, you want to have and do. Carry that note pad, write a goal card and print it and stick it on your office desk and in your bed-room where you can remind yourself to re-read it. Carrying your note pad, your goal card or better yet write it on your smart phone or tab so that you can re-read to remind yourself about your precious desirable to be achieved.

So set your goal right now. It is the goal 1 towards to your realisation of abundance.

As we discussed about writing down your primary goal in life. If there was some difficulty, I would like to refer to the five quotes in the Goal 1 note which emphasizes that you are the most valuable in this world and actually you were born rich with talents that need your time to explore them.

When writing your goal, you must the what, the when, the how and the why of your primary goal.

Have one goal not multiple goals that will confuse and reduce your concentration and persistence towards the most important goal.

Time limit should be at least five years to achieve that definite purpose I am calling the primary goal.

Afterwards, remind yourself on it on daily basis with increased frequency of reading it as many times as possible. Print it on paper, stick it on your closet so that you can see it when you wake up and going to sleep. Have it on your phone WPS app or any note taking app and read it as often as possible.

Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things -Colossians 3:2 The Earthly things are ordinary things that we go through everyday. It is the monotony, the mediocrity and the predictable but things above are your dreams, your vision, your hope, your desires, your goals, your mission and your purpose. They are above the monotony, above the average and above the predictable results of our comfort zone.

If you don’t know how to write your definite purpose, then take time to read the book, Think and grow rich by Napoleon Hill and cultivate a reading culture as an investment to yourself.

LEADERSHIP VERSUS MANAGEMENT

Greetings to you all, I have been working in a bank where you meet different kinds of people from different backgrounds. I am talking about work in Kenya. I know people face challenges when they are searching for jobs here in Kenya where unemployment rate is about 40%. But it is more challenging when it comes to getting and protecting yourself from loosing your job. The questions you will be asking yourself are " How will I pay my bills, how will I feed my family and many other energy-sucking questions.

The job environment has proven to be more difficult than even doing your business. The only thing that baffles the minds of people is what business can be best suited for me. People do not like taking risks to doing business. Small scale businessmen/ladies just begin doing business without doing any feasibility study and some of them do get successful in their business.

So moving over the heart of the matter, leadership and management are two fundamental elements doing in anything. May it be in family, place of work, community, to your friends e.t.c. Leadership is shown on when you make a decision on what directly or indirectly concern you with consideration that you will achieve positive results/ aspirations. This means that for one to become a leader he or she must believe in him/herself in what he/she thinks is right. A leader has a dream and when he/ she dreams,he/ she wants to live dream in his/ her mind and is driven to express and reveal this feeling that he/ she gets to the whole world.

Management is the tricky part of our dreams and aspirations. This in my understanding is the careful planing and implementing of goals, mission and vision of  our dreams and aspirations. A manager controls the resources within his reach and make use of the resources to give the appropriate or better results regarding our expectations towards our dreams and aspiration.

You may wonder why I am talking about leadership and management. This is a touch subject whereby people may have failed in one way or the other on attaining and maintaining these two key elements of success and achievements in our live experiences.

I would like to end this discussion with reflection on the two where consideration must taken on dealing with people. People are emotional beings and require motivation and encouragement on what they do. A leader gives motivational speech to his team/ public and people look at him/ her as the voice of reason on achieving the impossible while the manager thinks on focuses the implementing procedures and policies on achieving the goals. The two work together to achieve the best that God has given you.

Everyone is a manager and a leader on his/ her capacity and capabilities. Look high, you are the best gift to mankind that God has provide us with. Strive the best in all your doing (and I don't mean doing not so moral deeds).