NO MORE EXCUSE! SUCCESS BEYOND RESTRICTION

The slothful man says, there is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets- Proverbs 22 vs. 13

Excuses are the feet of failure.

 Failure rides on excuse. Before you start celebrating the reasons why you are not making it, read this below

Helen Keller was not born blind and deaf; it was not until she was 19 months old that she contracted an illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain", which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness did not last for a particularly long time, but it left her deaf and blind.

What can a blind and deaf little girl do with her life? It looks as if it was a closed case.

Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author. She is remembered as an advocate for people with disabilities amid numerous other causes. Keller wrote a total of 12 published books and several articles. On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the United States' highest two civilian honors.^[22] In 1965 she was elected to the National Women's Hall of Fame at the New York World's Fair. Your disabilities are not the reason you are not making it. It is YOUR EXCUSE.

Stop saying life is not fair. It is the language of failures. It is a sign of mediocrity. It is the consolation of losers. You can have your own fair share of life if you will make demand on it. Someone said “life will not give you what you deserve but life will give you what you demand.” Nobody is against you. You are responsible for the event of your life. Stop celebrating reasons why things can’t be done and start thinking how it can be done. Think twice before you give in to your celebrated excuses of not making it. If your life is going great, it is your choice and if it is also going otherwise, it is your decision. Helen Keller also had reasons why she can’t make it like some of us but she refused to accept her handicap. I heard somebody saying, “School dropout is not life drop out”. They won’t just let success pass them by. I beg you today to challenge that excuse of your life that is holding you in failure.

Let look at the mind-sets of winners. If they can’t solve the problem, they manage it, if they can’t manage it, they exploit their problems. Remember what one of the greatest minds in life said” if you can’t fly run, if you can’t run walk and if you can’t walk crawl by all means keep moving.  That is, NO EXCUSE

……………………To be continued

Changing lives by changing peoples’ perspective

 

GENERAL TIME WATERS 

2. UNCONTROLLED TV

Wealthy people have big libraries, not big TVs.

Most of us have spent the better part of our time watching TV. We spent hours upon hours on that black box in front of us called TV without being productive. We keep on flipping channel upon channel and we keep on becoming less productive by the day. Excessive TVs is one of the factors in the world that wastes peoples’ time. There are times we need to cut down on TVs. In fact sometime we need to shut it down so as to achieve something in life. Some of us are so used to TVs that you can literally tell all the programmes they have in the day and their time when we are not a reporter. One of the things I have noticed that is really clamping down the time of the youth is what they called “Seasoned films”. You see film that has season one to nine. Have you ever wonder how many hours it takes to watch one season talk less of finishing it to season 8. If only part of the time is invested positively in developing a skill or learning an art that will be more productive to us. We could have gone farther than where we are today. We don’t need to look down on ourselves but that is the reality. Am I saying we should not watch TV? No but not at the expense of what we need to do. Watching of TV should be moderate. Let me give you a shocker. Bill Gate was interviewed; he said I have no TV cable running over my house. That is why he is successful and the whole world is watching him. I heard one man of God saying, those who make news do not watch news. Where is the time? Listen except you want to be a quack somewhere in your village, you need your time to become what you want to be in life. If you really want to be somebody in life, invest your time.

Here is what is discovered in the US concerning watching of TV by James Delrojo

The average American watches television for over four hours per day. That's 4 hours per day of sitting around like a vegetable, not using your brain and not doing anything to actually enhance your life.

Television watching has greatly reduced the amount of reading that people doing. Yet one of the biggest differences between people who have a successful, happy life compared to those who don't is that the successful, happy people read a lot more that those who are unsuccessful or unhappy.

I was looking for the attitude of successful people towards watching television and the second discovery I found out about watching TV is shocking.

Successful people don’t watch TV. They don’t fill their brains with junk, but use the time productively. 

“American children and adolescents spend 22 – 28 hours per week viewing television, more than any other activity except sleeping. By the age of 70, they will have spent 7 – 10 years of their life watching TV” 

The Kaiser Family Foundation 

What do you remember from a night’s watching TV? Do you want to waste 7 -10 years of your life doing something you don’t remember? 

Wealthy people have big libraries, not big TVs. Who do you want to be like? Your mind is an amazing instrument, picking up information from all the input sources. Do you want to fill it with Idol, Desperate Housewives/other trashy drama? 

By the time you spend 8 hours every day sleeping. It means when you are 60 years, you would have slept for 20 years and watch TV for like 6 years of your life. What then remain of you? You are not a time bomb that will explode anytime. You are here on Earth to make impact. It is time for us to adjust the use of our time.

 Oluwaseyi Olawusi
changing lives by changing peoples' perspective


You can check our previous writings if you want to get the whole series of my time is my life.

MY TIME IS MY LIFE-PART 6

GENERAL TIME WASTER

It is very important for you to know that as you plan your time for the day, their will be distractions and things that want to waste your time. You have to guard yourself against this. This is the rule; anything that is not part of your daily plan must not be given serious consideration except it is coming form your boss. Other things apart from your boss can wait till evening or your plan them against the next day.

1. EXCESSIVE SLEEP.

Do not love sleep or you will grow poor; stay awake and you will have food to spare-Proverbs 20 vs. 13

"There will be sleeping enough in the grave."~ Benjamin Franklin

 Don’t blame me if I start with this. I don’t mean to insult anyone or to ridicule anybody but the truth of the matter is that the truth must be told. Some of us has slept away hour destines. Most of us have sold our destinies to excessive sleep. Most of us spends one third of our time on bed. The time we need to have invested in our lives and become somebody in life is wasted on the altar of sleep. Sleep is good but when it is excess it is destructive. You wonder why some people got more done with their lives while others can not. It is because the former has successfully cut down on number of hours he uses to sleep while the other has not. Listen, it takes time to become something in life. In reading through some autobiographies and biographies, I have discovered that successful people sleep less while unsuccessful people sleep more. We need to sacrifice some of the time we use to sleep and do something positive. Some people wonder why he is talking like this. If you use eight (8) hours everyday to sleep, by the time you are sixty (60) years of age you have spent twenty (20) years of your life on bed. It is quite funny but it is real. If you can cut down on the number of hours you use to sleep everyday and invest it in your life, in no time you will see how much you would have achieved. Am I saying we should not sleep? No it has to be moderate. Let look at the attitude of some successful people to sleep.

Thomas Edison

The great scientist remarked that he slept less than 5 hours a night.

"Most people overeat 100 percent, and oversleep 100 percent, because they like it. That extra 100 percent makes them unhealthy and inefficient. The person who sleeps eight or ten hours a night is never fully asleep and never fully awake - they have only different degrees of doze through the twenty-four hours."~ Thomas Edison

Benjamin Franklin

Sleep is something that is natural, but has the potential for being misused. In Franklin’s day, industriousness and hard work were extremely important human virtues. Edison adopted Franklin’s philosophy as well, and in both cases, it was important for them to model their behavior in a way that suggested that they didn’t sleep very much. To them, it meant that they were diligent and demanding in their lives, and never lazy in any way. Franklin allocated only 4 hours of sleep per night.

Instead of criticizing them for how they sleep, it is important for us to check at our sleeping habits. Is my sleeping habit deterring me from succeeding or not? Most of these men discovered that it takes time to make it in life that is why some of them have to cut down on the number of hours they used to sleep. 

In summary, Great People sleep less?

Changing lives by changing people perspective 

Oluwaseyi Olawusi

MY TIME IS MY LIFE-PART 5

MY TIME IS MY LIFE-PART 5

In continuation,

How can I get maximum return from my day?

 2. Divide your daily time plan into major and minor

Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It is very important for you to be able to separate what is urgent from what is important. Start working on your major task early in the day. Some minor things can wait and even be delegated. One of the secrets of the successful people is that they get the major work done by themselves and delegate the minor ones. For you to be able to manage your time well you need to know the act of leverage. Leverage means doing more with less. Stephen Covey the author of seven habits for highly effective people described this as “doing first thing first” .You have to know that you can not do all things. Prioritize your work in the order of their importance. It is advisable to work on things based on the order of their importance. Don’t focus all your energy in things that others can do for you.  When you get the major done, you have achieved a lot.

In my findings, I have discovered that one of the reasons why many people failed is that they get their lives busy doing the wrong thing.  Imagine somebody gets to office in the morning and the first task he performed was to spend 1-2 hrs with his friend to discuss yesterday’s football match. Yes, there is a need to discuss the match but that is minor, it can wait till lunch time or closing hour.

Imagine someone in higher institution that focuses his attention on electives courses and failed to major in core courses; you don’t need anyone to tell you that such candidate is doomed to fail. It is also applicable in life. If your energy is wasted on things that matter least, you can be sure that you can’t go far in life.

How will I know what matter most or least? You know that by checking returns or reward each activity will bring for you. You can also know it by looking at their long time prospective

With respect to faithful workers in the civil service, one of the reasons why most of them worked and retired like that without impact is because most of them don’t really put down their time. They spent the chunk of time chatting with their co-workers and did all manners during office hour. I remember the words of Jesus Christ that said, he that is not faithful in another man’s business, who will commit to him his own. I am speaking to you if you are working under an organization or you are a government worker, you need to give your best to that organization for them to move to the next level. They may not notice you but God who is the lifter of men will notice you in due time. There is one stupid adage we heard over time when we were growing up; they said government work is not the work you do and sweat over. That is why most of them remained a mediocre. Start your day by working on important things in your life. Don’t spend most of your time working on unimportant things in life. You can even delegate most of the minor work or things and get yourself busy with the important. In life, we do more by doing less. The more things you have to do, the divided your attention will be and the less you achieve. 

Changing lives by changing people perspective

Oluwaseyi Olawusi

Tomorrow we shall be talking on GENERAL TIME WASTER

MY TIME IS MY LIFE -PART 4

How can I get maximum return from my day?

1. Plan your day.

For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned.”

Your first task everyday is to plan what you are going to do in the day. Never go out in a day without a solid plan of action on how you are going to invest your time. This is how to effectively manage your life. It so unfortunate that more than 70% of people don’t plan their day. They live the day as it comes. That is the beginning of failure. They just live the day as it appears. You need a list of what you want to achieve daily. We call it a daily plan or task. That creates your goal for the day so that you will not misdirect your energy. Someone said, if you don’t have a goal, you will live like a goat (wondering around achieving nothing). Your large part of the day must be dedicated to doing things that move you closer to your goals in life. Save your time and energy by having a daily plan. Plan your day as if you are going somewhere. . Look at someone’s thought, “A day not planned is a day wasted”. That is why some people get some things done more than others. I have discovered that there are things successful people do that keep them succeeding that failures are not doing. This is simply one of them. Success is no accident. You can’t just stumble into success or you wake up and see yourself succeeding except in your dream. Someone said “The only place where success comes before work is only in the dictionary”. Success is prepared for. It does not just happen. Our goal is to know what successful people are doing that is giving them results and master them so as to become one. I believe strongly the words of Zig Ziglar that says “any dummy can succeed if he knows how”. 

Let us look at Benjamin Franklin thought on daily plan:

In Franklin’s autobiography, he explains his quest (tongue-in-cheek) for moral perfection. In his principles for order, Franklin offered appropriate activities for each hour of the day

 I remember a story I read sometime ago.  A rich man asked a consultant to give him an insight on how he can be more productive in life. The consultant looked at the rich man and said before you leave your house everyday has a list of things you want to achieve in the day and prioritize them. The rich man answered and said if I  try it and it  help me a great deal I am going to send you a cheque. They both agreed. Less than two weeks, the rich man sent the consultant a big cheque and thanks his for improving his overall performance in life. That is simply the rule. I can imagine someone saying is it that cheap. I have observed that it is the mosquitoes of life that bite not the elephant. It is those small details that we refused to give attention to that destroy us. Read Songs of Solomon 2 vs. 15.

Changing lives by changing peoples' perspective

Oluwaseyi Olawusi

My Time is My Life -PART 3

My Time Is My Life -Part 3

"Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."-Benjamin Franklin

 One of the factors that can make your day to be more productive in life is to be an early riser. Most of the successful people in life always rise up early in life to get the major job of the day done. Most successful people took advantage of the coolness of the day by rising up early to plan their day and get important work done. In the early hours of any day, you can get fresh ideas. Your brain is cool and can think excellently well. Your mind is void of distraction. The best time to plan your day is in the early hours of the day. I know the best time to think in the day is the early hours of the day because at that moment your mind is fresh. Even bible recorded that God always come down in the cool of the day to have fellowship with Adam (Genesis 3 vs. 8). I think inspiration is available in the early hours of the day. Creativity is best at that moment. There is a stillness that goes with reading at the early hours of the day. Take advantage of it.

This is what I found out about some CEOs of a large corporation. Most executives get up early. This trait was common to 17 CEOs surveyed by Jim Citrin at Yahoo! Finance a few years ago. And it's a trait we expect from CEOs. They are go-getters who want to start the day before their peers and competitors, who want to work long hours and have enough time for their personal live too.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is known for getting up and sending out company emails at 4:30 in the morning, according to Gawker's Ryan Tate. By 5 AM he can be found in the gym. And he works late too, priding himself on being the first in the office and the last out.

Former Peugeot GM Jean-Martin Folz. Now headed to the board of Eutelsat Communications, the former head of Peugeot was said to catch the 4 a.m. train from Dijon to Paris, and would finish up a briefing paper within minutes of arriving to his office at 7 a.m.

New Jersey Nets CEO Brett Yormark The youngest CEO in the NBA told Selling Power that he gets up at 3:30 in the morning in order to get to the office by 4:30. From there, he works out and sends motivational emails to his team. He takes it easy on the weekends, arriving at the office by 7 a.m. instead

Let me give you three examples of people that took advantage of rising up early.

Firstly our Lord Jesus: Mark 1 vs. 35. Secondly, I read that at every 4 am in the morning the former late president of United State of America, Abraham Lincoln was always up on his feet. That is why he went to become one of the best US presidents. Lastly, during the life time of the richest man in Nigeria before, Chief M.K.O. Abiola, he was always up on his feet between 2am-5am every morning to plan his days and overseeing his business empire.

It is no magic that these people are quite successful because most of them did what an average man or commoner will not do. I have often said there is nothing mystical about success. In my own term, success is simply a matter of habit. What you do determines where you end period. If you want to know where you will end simply check what you do. There is nothing like god of luck helping anyone to succeed. If a black man will do what a white man did and became successful, in no time he will succeed no matter what is against him. Listen people may be against you but the most important thing is for you not to be against yourself. I heard one man of God speaking that “you only need your vote to make your life counts”

Changing lives by changing peoples’ perspective

Oluwaseyi Olawusi 

Check out our blog tommorow for the continuation

My Time is My Life -Part 2

 My Time is My Life-Part 2

Recently I read the biography of Michael Jordan, it was amazing. His success came majorly by investment of his time positively. He practiced the act of throwing ball five hundred times (500) every morning before he leaves for school. Who will ever say that is a life of luck? You will quite agree with me that there are some skills you developed on your job through investment of your time. Most scientists and inventors will tell you that their inventions or discoveries came by simply staying put on their job. They invested long hours upon hours on their jobs. There is no cheap brake or shortcut to lasting success. I read about Isaac Newton that he was so engrossed in his job that sometime he forgot to eat breakfast.  It is time for us to stop crying that we don’t have anything and to start using what will have. You have all you need and you need all you have to become whosoever you wanted to be in life.

Instead of blaming government, people or situation for where you are it is better for you to start accounting for the use of your time. It is easier to shift the blame but difficult to fix the problem.

There is no escape. Someone said” if you refuse to pay now (invest your time), you will pay in the future”. Those who pay now play later but those who play now will pay in the future. While you still have the time, it is time to begin to invest it before it is too late. There are things that are too late for us. May it not be too late for us?

TIME MANAGEMNT GOLDEN RULE

“Yesterday is a canceled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have - so spend it wisely”

I have discovered the golden rule in time management and this is it. If you can control the daily use of your time then you have master your future. If you invest positively in everyday of your life, you have secured your future. Your everyday is important because that is what constitutes your future. It was Mike Murdock that said” the secret of our future is in our daily routine”. Your focus should be how am I using my day? Am I investing my time daily in my goals and plans? It is quite unfortunate that most of us invest our time daily in things that has nothing to do with our ultimate goal in life. That is a tragedy.  My focus is in my day and my day is my life. Don’t let it go. Neglect of time leads to a life of failure. If you will really take care of today, tomorrow will take care of itself. You don’t need any prophet to tell you where you will end just check the way you use your time. Ephesians 5 vs 16 say redeeming the time because the days are evil. As someone going somewhere you have to be able to account for the daily use of your time. You are not a mirage that will disappear someday. You are somebody that is created to make an impact. Sit up. It is time for us to go back to the drawing board and draw plans on how we are going to be investing our time daily towards our goals and purpose in life. Please whatever you want to do that will bring you closer to your dream start doing them today and now. Never push over or procrastinate because you may not get the time to do it again. There is no better time to do what is right except now. The number one enemy of time management is procrastination. You need to fight this as if you are fighting for life