ON THE SUCCESS ROAD...

NEVER TRADE RESULTS WITH EXCUSES

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot… and missed. I have failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Michael Jordan

John Mason puts it powerfully when he writes, ‘don’t spend half your life telling what you are going to do and the other half explaining why you didn’t do it.’ I think this is great. I great reason for why we fail is our inventive capacity with excuses. We don’t like admitting that the reason for our failure is our refusal to look at alternatives, to see the big picture or simply, to be response-able. When you use excuses, you give up your power to change and improve. You can fall down many times, but you won’t be a failure until you say that someone else pushed you. Above all, believing in God assures you of being forgiven and of energy called Grace to lift you up. Most importantly through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, one can shape up and start again. Remember, Holiness is not in never sinning but in rising up every time we fall. Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. Stop playing the blame game, nobody wins this game by the way, and start living your life to the full.

Failures are experts at making excuses. There are always enough excuses available if you are weak enough to use them. However, there is no excuse for being full of excuses! When you make a mistake and then you make an excuse for it, you have made two mistakes. You wasted time and creative energies when thinking up excuses. Instead, get up and work, think big ideas that you’ll be proud off. An excuse is a foundation upon which one builds a house of failure. Most failures are people who are professional at giving excuses for why they failed and that they are not to blame. Challenges are not problems until you see them so. See in every difficulty, the fire that purifies gold. Follow the ant philosophy; if you find a block on your path, try going around it, under it, over it but don’t you give up. No excuse will ever support you purpose in life. The person who really wants to do something finds a way, the others find an excuse. Failures say that success is luck, the successful say that it is focus plus daily improvement over time. Choose where you belong and block those excuses. When excuses come, say, ‘Excuse me please, I’ve got to pass!!

LIVE YOUR DREAM!

John Mason, founder and president of Insight International, a minister, an inspirational Speaker and the author of several books, wrote Imitation is Limitation, one his most wonderful books. This book is timeless. The points he has reminded us are so important and if anybody decided to work on those points, he or she would become a world class human being. He reminds us of the need to realize that we are God’s original masterpiece, each in our own way and that imitating anybody else or trying so hard to be accepted by everybody is an injustice to ourselves and to God. Imitation is limitation. I shall try to share with you some of the major ideas that he has shared in that book over the next few days.

IF YOU ARE NOT YOU, THEN WHO ARE YOU GOING TO BE?

“Wood may remain ten years in the water, but it will never become a crocodile!” Powerful point from a Congolese proverb. I could not but be taken up by that beautiful proverb in the book. In short you are who you are. Julius Hare is also quoted in the book as saying that, ‘Be what {or better still, who} you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.’ We all want to grow and shine and be successful but we forget to brand our selves. We can only become better by first accepting ourselves, with our weaknesses and strengths and then growing from there. That is the launch pad.

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Carl Rogers. Great point. I can’t change until I love that image in the mirror. I can only get stagnant and wasted. I add that what most matters in life is not what others think about you but what you think about yourself. You are not the sum total of other people’s opinion of you. You are who you decide to be. Reconnect with your life giver and let Him tell you for what you were created. You are here on purpose and for a purpose. Powerful words from John Mason. Andre Gide says in the book that, ‘It is better to be hated for what you are than be loved for what you are not.’ How many of us fall into the trap of being pleasers in order to be accepted and liked. We play to the audience but we cry at the privacy of our rooms. ‘Until you make peace with who you are, you will never be content with what you have.’ The words of Doris Mortman. You can be a King in slum or a slave in a palace.

I liked this point. “The person who walks in someone else’s tracks never leaves his/her own footprints!!” Think of that for a moment. Are you living your own dreams or the dreams of your friends, peers, parents or society at large? Why do you do what you do? Why are you who you have chosen to be? And by the way, did you actually choose to be and do what you are doing and being right now or is it a result of someone too timid to live465 his or her own life? John Mason reminds us that the opposite of courage is not fear but conformity. Being everyone else except yourself.

I found the words of Leo Buscaglia inspiring and I will leave them with you, “The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don’t let them put you in that position.”

So be original and not a copy. You are God’s original masterpiece. But you’ve got to believe it. I can’t do that for you. Don’t be an atheist of your own awesomeness.

THE FUNERAL CEREMONY..

Celebrating the Life of the Mother of The Youth Chaplain