Blessed

Success

Happy Riches

Copyright © 2012 Author Name

All rights reserved.

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DEDICATION

To All Who Long For What God Has For Them

CONTENTS

	Acknowledgments	i
1	Introduction	Pg      1
1	Dreams And Visions	Pg      8
2	Business Success	Pg    22
3	Right Expectations	Pg    29
4	A Business For You	Pg    47
5	Beware The Doubting Thomas	Pg    62
6	How Not To Make Mistakes	Pg    82
7	Baby Steps To Success	Pg  100

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

Success is what most people desire in their life.  After all, who wants failure? Not everybody can succeed when it comes to winning a game or a lottery.  When it comes to a game, there might be an element of chance involved that caused the game to go the way of the winner.  Unless rigged, a lottery is pure chance.  Nobody accepts that any principles are involved nor is there any need for skill to be acquired. Finding success in life’s endeavors is another matter. There does appear to be some element of chance involved, but mostly people recognize that skills acquired are usually the reason for success in life.

Since we recognize that success is the favorable outcome of any desire, every one of us can at least experience a degree of successfulness in our lives.  Whether we experience this as often as we would like is another matter. Not everything we do turns out as well as we would like, but the mere fact we finish something we started becomes a success in itself, irrespective of whether we achieve the optimum result. For instance, when we finish reading a book that we began to read, we have achieved a level of success. More importantly, though, is whether having read the book, we have benefited from the experience and learned something that will enable us to improve our prospects of future success in respect to any endeavor we might undertake using the information written within the book’s pages.  Merely reading something for the sake of reading and not being able to utilize the information, especially if the book is nonfiction, is a tragedy in a way. Either the author has not communicated the subject well, or the reader was not really reading with a purpose.

Reading books for the sake of saying that you have read a book is a futile exercise.  Reading to enhance your knowledge about a subject can also be pointless if that information is not of a practical nature or has no practical value. While you can learn from history, not all histories are accurate. There is so much that is left to interpretation that historians are known to contradict each other. Yet people who read history often realize that human affairs repeat; hence, the dictum: history repeats itself. Realizing that human affairs repeat is not too difficult to grasp, after all, how many ancestors does a person have living; most have died off. Similarly, people have to eat, drink, be clothed, and find shelter; also most are likely to procreate, find a means to survive with an occupation of some sort, and become ill at least once in their lives before they eventually die.  The cycle is repeated throughout the generations. Without reading books, the obvious becomes evident through observation of what happens in our communities that we live.

In the midst of the obvious is that which is not so evident: the reason why some people have more success than other people. When it comes to those who enjoy the luxuries of the modern world, the ignorant put this down to the fact that those who have money get to enjoy what others are not able to do so. The not so ignorant understand that not everybody has a money tree in their backyard.  As one comedian said, “I searched every backyard in the wealthiest part of town and could not find a money tree; just tennis courts and swimming pools.” The reality is that people either have inherited money, or they have had to find a means by which to develop cash flows, so they can have money to spend on the lifestyle that they desire.

One of the problems for many people is learning the hard truths about life. Personal capital has to be developed, so one can have resources to draw upon when needed. The secret to success is still a secret because most people have no idea of what it is, yet we all possess it. The secret to success lies inside each one of us. Just ask the New Zealander Sam Ovens who started his consultancy business in his parent’s garage, then five years later had earned twenty million dollars, employing fifty people from his Manhattan office in the USA.

Read any book about self-development and you will find that there a similarity to the other ones that you have read. This is to be expected, after all, they are talking about how to become successful when applying oneself to some endeavor. While the principles of life are unchanging, the different environments in which they are applied may change. Whereas once culture required a more nuanced understanding of how to apply the principles of success, this is becoming less so, because the information revolution requires people to be speaking the same language, and having access to the same technology, if advancement is to be made. What is new?

In the Bible, we learn that there was a time that there was only one language on Earth. Now because everybody spoke the same language, we are told that the Lord God stated that nothing was impossible for humans to achieve.  The reason for this is knowledge can grow exponentially because ideas can be quickly improved upon by others working with the same language. God limited this by creating many languages, causing confusion and fear. Instead of living in peace and concentrating on developing new ideas and improving the existing technologies, not knowing what other people were thinking and saying became a major issue. Today, we are seeing the breakdown of this lack of communication due to language barriers and the lingua franca (common language) of the modern world is English. Computer code is also another form of the modern lingua franca for programmers from every part of the globe.

Communication is the most essential tool for success when it comes to accessing large portions of wealth. Ineffective communicators have less chance of harnessing the wealth that could be theirs than those who have learnt the secrets of communicating. And there are secrets to being able to communicate effectively, otherwise, if not, everybody would be effective communicators.  Always remember, what is a not a secret to you, just might be a secret to another person.  There are many secrets to be found in plain view. Those who are switched on understand them. If you are not one of the adept ones who have learned the secrets and how to apply them, then you are missing out on what could be rightfully yours.

If we cannot communicate to people that we want them to pay us for our efforts, regardless of what they are, we will not get paid for what we are doing.  Every plumber expects to get paid when fixing the drainage system.  Every interior decorator expects to get paid when refurbishing someone’s premises.  Every office worker expects to get paid for attending to the paper work.  Every taxi driver expects to get paid for picking up passengers at the hotel and taking them to the airport.  Regardless of the type of employment, everyone expects to get paid in the legal currency of the day, so they can pay their bills and live the lifestyle of which they are accustomed.   But if there is a lack of communication, payment for services rendered may not be in accordance to expectations.

An observation that has been made of immigrants that they may not be able to speak the language of the country to which they have migrated, but they are quick to learn the value of money. The reason for this is money has a limited vocabulary and therefore it is easy to grasp. How hard is it to count to one hundred, after all? Since nearly every currency is based on denominations of ten, adding up and subtracting is something most people can do on their fingers. Common knowledge can be shared when dealing with currency, even though people may have difficulty speaking each other’s native language.

The principles of God are laid out in the Bible and they permeate the Universe. In particular, these principles also apply to humans and the way we relate to one another.  Moreover, these principles also apply to the habits we need to develop in order to achieve success in what we do.

 

Dreams And Visions

The Bible was written for people who lived in a world that is foreign to the modern world of computers and information technology; even foreign to an industrial world of factories and office workers.  The Bible was written for people who lived close to nature and interacted with livestock and plants, even if they knew about metallurgy and what was required to mine, refine and work metal, and how to build large buildings beyond what people today can imagine—buildings like the pyramids.  What was written in the Bible’s pages, particularly in the laws given to Moses, were truths that, when applied, would provide the Israelites with blessing and prosperity, because they would be successful in what they did.   This is reinforced in the first of the psalms, which states:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the way of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seats of scoffers, but whose delight is in the law of God.  On God’s law he meditates day and night.  He is like a tree planted by running waters that bears its fruit in season and its leaves do not wither. In all that he does he shall prosper. (Psalm 1:1-3)

The law of God primarily deals with human behavior, even if does have a religious overtone.  Human behavior can be a limiting factor in our success.  The more we understand human behavior the better the chance of our success.  In fact, a survey done on small businesses back in the 1980s discovered that the number of courses undertaken by small business owners to develop their skills determined their chances of success.  These courses included those that were industry specific, accounting, trends, marketing, customer skills and psychology. Those who thought that they did not need to educate themselves did not succeed.  Even if a small business owner did not do a short course, reading played an important part in the success of the enterprise. Unless people educate themselves, they cannot succeed. This is why those who meditate the law of God succeed.  Meditating the God’s law is an education process.

Fifty-four year old, Gerald had been an Amway distributor for about eight years.  He had a number of clients who purchased some of the products he sold, but he had never been able to build a network of distributors.  In fact, he had never been able to enroll one person as an Amway distributor.  Since success within the Amway system is dependent upon building a network of distributors, Gerald was limited in what he could achieve.  Merely selling products to customers on one’s own is not going to bring in sufficient profit to build a large turnover.  Having numerous distributors helping to do the workload of distributing product is critical for financial reward.  What business grows without a larger workforce selling product?

Gerald could not understand why he could not convince people to become distributors.  While he believed in the product and its value, Gerald’s wife did not.  Now this was a major problem, in itself.  However, the real problem was Gerald did not take it upon himself to educate himself in respect to human behavior; more particularly, what he had to do to influence other people to believe in the value of the product as he did.  Gerald’s problem was he was sold on a dream and lacked vision.

The Bible speaks about people having dreams and people having visions.  There is a major distinction between the two.  Dreams occur in the dark of the night or when one is asleep.  Besides, the fact that dreams are said to occur in the night (daydreams are the exception) a very important distinction is made between dreams and visions within the Bible.  The Bible speaks of old men dreaming dreams and young men having visions.  In other words, dreams are the realm of the old and visions are the realm of the young.  This means old people, who have dreams, do so because they had wishful thoughts when they were young that never come to fruition.  Young people have vision because they have a hope for the future.

Many people focus on the “I have a dream” speech made by the famous black preacher Martin Luther King Jr and do not realize that his dream did not come to fruition.  Martin Luther King dreamed of a society where there were no blacks in prison.  Today there are more blacks are in prison, not only in numbers but also as a percentage of the population, than there were in the days of his speech when he declared he had a dream.  Whatever dream King had was probably similar to the daydreams that many people have.  While daydreams are the exception to dreams of the night, they qualify as dreams, because they do not come to fruition.  This is not to say that people do not have prophetic dreams that do come true.  Rather we are talking about the difference between a vision and dream.

Another dream people major on is that of the boy Joseph, who had two dreams and become a powerful man in Egypt, second only to Pharaoh. What people do not realize when using Joseph as their hero is that when his brothers and father went to Egypt, they stayed there and, not only did their children and grandchildren become slaves to the Egyptians, so did Joseph’s children.  Joseph did not have a vision, but a dream that lead him into slavery. Joseph’s ascent from prison to become grand vizier of Egypt may have been spectacular, but this was an act of divine intervention, and not because the man was actually pursing a vision (even if there were admirable qualities about the man that brought about his personal success).

When young people set out on their life’s journey, having a vision is very important, whereas a dream is like something that has no hope of coming to pass.  Dreaming about what might be is not the same as having a vision and pursuing it until it comes to pass.  The terminology may seem a small point, because people are told to write down their dreams and then pursue them.  But in doing so, they are actually turning what are dreams into a vision for their future. 

The difference is a matter of intention.  Without having intention to do something, nothing is accomplished. If a person has no intention, they will dream about what they might like to do, they will not go to the trouble of writing down their desires and committing to see them accomplished.  Those that do write down their vision of what they hope to accomplish and set their hearts to seeing them brought to fruition have a much greater chance of success than those who do not.  True, some individuals are very fortunate and their hopes arrive unexpectedly. But what person becomes an overnight success without having developed the skill set to meet the requirements of those who make the person a star?  No singer suddenly becomes a hit overnight without having spent years learning how to sing.  Every musician, every actor, and every other person who discovers success in the entertainment industry, has to acquire the appropriate skills before they are even given consideration. Schools do not exist because people do not have to learn to acquire skills.  Schools exist because people need to acquire the relevant skills. Likewise, success in the business world, regardless of the type of business, does not come without the required skills.

The problem Gerald had was that he merely had a dream that he thought one day would come to pass.  He did not realize that he needed to go through a process of personal development that gave him the appropriate skill set for what he desired to do.  Just having a dream is insufficient to move mountains, one requires faith, but faith without works is dead.  As part of the works process that comes with the application of faith, acquiring the appropriate knowledge and skill sets to perform the required tasks that lead to success are paramount.  Failure to acquire the required skills causes people to become frustrated, envious, depressed, and bitter; whereby they experience a number of other emotive states associated with anger, fear and hatred; not to mention, attitudes associated with meanness, impatience and an unforgiving heart.  And negative attitudes are telegraphed ahead of us, even though we may not know it.

A person’s reputation always goes ahead of the person.  If you have a reputation for being a positive, considerate, caring person, your reputation will go before you.  People will be predisposed to receiving you into their company and introducing you to their friends. However, this is not the case if they perceive that you are going to cause them some discomfort and given them reasons to wish they were doing something else rather than having to put up with yourself.

Igor was in the insurance business.  He was an educated person who could talk about many subjects and had a good memory. What Igor could not understand was how he was barely making a living while other agents were making ten times the amount that he made.  The top agent not only made more than ten times Igor did, but seemed to do it so with ease. Igor was downhearted by this fact, especially the week he came in with only one policy and this agent had twenty new policies written up. After that, he resigned from the company and left the industry, frustrated, envious, angry and depressed.  Igor not only began to doubt himself, but claimed that all sales people had to be charlatans and crooks.  What Igor did not recognize was he himself was his own worst enemy.  Igor needed to get the log out of his own eye to see clearly how to take the speck out of the eyes of other people.

The difficulty for Igor was he was trained as a child to believe that he was superior to other people because he had a good memory and was a good student.  Igor become a white collar public servant and considered himself to be superior (in his opinion) to the lesser educated blue collar workers.  Igor’s problem may have been his attitude to people, but the reality is his problem stemmed from his upbringing and a major transformation was required if he were to be successful as a salesman.  Merely being a public servant, who works in an office and does not encounter the general public, is a far cry from interacting at a personal level with people whom you do not know.  In an office environment, there may be interpersonal issues, but these are not going to affect your income.

As a sales person, you need to convey to the people that your product is going to benefit them or they will not buy it from you.  This is difficult to do if the appropriate interpersonal skills are not part of your nature.  The only people who buy a product from a person with poor interpersonal skills are those who had already decided to purchase beforehand; although, people exhibiting rude, ignorant behavior have been known to lose sales that went to someone else instead; just because of their inconsiderate manner.

When the Bible speaks of love being patient and kind, not envious or boastful, not arrogant nor rude, does not insist on its own way, is not irritable nor resentful and does not rejoice in other people’s misfortunes, but instead bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things, this is not something that is reserved solely for religious communities in a convent or a monastery.  Making love a part of one’s expression towards other people is to our advantage and reaps rewards that cannot be underestimated.  People respond to love.  Even hardened individuals who have no idea what love may be have been known to be affected by acts of love.  Just because people do not recognize love when expressed towards them in ways that they do not understand, does not mean the love need not be shown.  Love is more than something that exists between a mother and her child. Love is the means by which we win people and influence communities for the betterment of humankind; nevertheless, love needs to be expressed to individuals in such a manner that they will respond.  Just because a person believes he or she now loves people and no longer wants to be alienated from the rest of the community, this does not mean that everybody necessarily wants to love that person.  Love requires reciprocation and not everybody responds in the same way to the same signals.  The language of love is different to everybody, even those raised in the same household.  Much depends upon how a person was raised and interacted with the different individuals within their social environment.  A single child grows up in a different social environment to one who has older and younger brothers and sisters.

When we read the Bible, we discover there is more written between its covers that can help us than we might think; but because the Scriptures are predominately concerned with the plan and purpose of God, which concerns the salvation of people from a life of futility, in having been born to die, because of sin, many of the key truths for personal success are not as evident as they are in a book that highlights them and discusses everyone in some depth.  For many Bible students it if foreign to focus on being truthful, honorable, righteous, pure, expressing kindness, being gracious, seeking excellence and acknowledging only praiseworthy speech and actions in other people.  In fact, far too many people who preach about what is written in the Bible focus on the negative side of life.  Most Bible students focus on understanding doctrinal issues rather than personality issues and tend to claim victim hood rather the victory to live a life of truth by being honorable, righteous and pure. The general claim among Christians is nobody is perfect just forgiven.  This claim never being perfect is made by people who do not want to address their sins.  They overlook the fact that Jesus said to a woman caught in adultery that she was to go and sin no more.  If this was not possible, why would Lord Jesus issue such an instruction?

Sin is essentially a decision that is made to do evil; that is, to violate another person’s rights.  Now if what we sow, we reap, then why would anyone want to sow evil into another person’s life?  How much better it is to sow good ideas into the lives of the people we meet.  The way we treat other people is the way we will be treated, except if that person is a saint.  But looking for saints to ill treat is like looking for a rain drop after it has landed on parched soil in searing heat.  How we treat other people is essential to achieving any degree of success in any endeavor that we undertake that requires us to gain the favor of those we meet.  Individual athletes may not have to be pleasant to other people to succeed in their endeavors as participants in events that require only themselves to perform, but in sports where teams are involved, a lack of interpersonal skills exhibited by team members can be very damaging to the success of a team.

Whatever we set out to do, interpersonal skills are going to be the key to our ultimate success in life, regardless of whether we are seeking a career in a particular company or industry that has nothing to with sales.  Without knowing how to please other people or, at least, not be an offensive person given to being curt, rude, and making unwarranted claims or being a fault finder, whatever success that we might have that would improve our self-esteem socially, will be elusive.  Instead of confidence in our abilities, we will become uncertain of ourselves at the very times we need to be sure, so others will have confidence in us.  Gaining the trust of others is what success is really about.  Once this is done, then we will have no difficulties in achieving our vision for life and accomplishing the goals that form the steps on the way to our main objective.

When Jesus said that He is the way, the truth and the life, he could have been speaking about love being discovered because we have placed our faith in the hope that it exists.  Once we discover that love embraces everything that is good, right and true, we begin to realize that our many shortcomings are fixable and what may have seen unachievable can realistically be attained if we take the right approach to life and focus of becoming creative rather than a thief. 

Creativity, of course, is merely taking other people’s ideas and gaining sufficient knowledge about a subject, so we can apply the insights gained in situations that are new to us or express them in ways that are different.  Songs are evidence of this change in delivery, though the same ideas being presented.  The common element of being human has not changed since Adam and Eve were created, the different ways in which love and mystery, sorrow and death, longing and purpose are expressed through song testify to this.  Each generation brings a new dimension to the songwriter’s sheet and the musician’s instruments, and as does language change over time, so do the style of songs people sing—even if the heart of the message is the same.

Niches can be a viable avenue for success. But unless people are able to market themselves effectively within these niches sufficiently to capture a significant portion of the market, they are will be found wanting.  Those who manage to achieve that success that others long for, have done so, because they have learned to be flexible and adapt to changing needs within their customer base.  Life is dynamic. This is reflected in people’s changing requirements.

Most importantly, whatever you do, you need to have passion.  Without a genuine desire to share the benefits of what you have, convincing other people is not so easy to do.  If you are passionate about what you love doing, you will find that your enthusiasm may dim a little some days, but your desire will always rise to share with other people what you have found to be beneficial, so that they too may benefit.

Without vision and a reason that goes beyond merely having money to burn, the success in life for which we yearn can be impossible to find.  What far too many people overlook is money becomes but a means by which we are able to achieve our greater goals; although the true capital is always resident in the knowledge, skill and moral fiber that we possess.  This includes our ability to interact with people at a personal level that invites more interaction.