Taking control: How do you know that you believe in yourself?

Believing in self is an inborn empowering value, which was destroyed through socialization from birth and limited your ability to discover and identify given talents. This was done when your parents prohibited you and instilled fear when you undertook daring stances in your attempt to discover your environment.

Guiding principles to check whether you believe in yourself!

You may think this is not an issue in your life; nonetheless I encourage you to keep an open mind and walk with me to check and verify that you do believe in yourself:

1.   What is your relationship with yourself?

Your answer should show whether you are a positive person who accept self as is.  It also should enable you to identify your personal goals and challenges in meeting them.  The thinking process should recall moments when you stopped from pursuing that which you believed in, because you judged yourself as being over-zealous. You probably closed the door which could be leading to you ideal future.  The antidote for such an attitude is identifying successful people and learning from them.  You must also take a break when you need one.  Learn to listen to your body and nurture it instead of stressing it.

   

2.   Seek optimum lifestyle – Adopt good habits!

Because you have identified your strengths and weaknesses, you must adjust your goals to be achievable. Often people fail to achieve anything because first, they have not identified given talents and build their goals on them. Please note that you have something good, which you are able to do with ease and is meant to sustain you in this life.  Start with discovering what your physical body needs; do the basic.  What emotional issues are you battling with? Are you a happy person? If you harbor anger; deal with it! Seek professional help; anger drive away people and you need people to take upward economic mobility! It would also help if you could recognize yourself in others.  For example, there is someone you know who has a good voice and speaks well and use that gift to swear and sing at local shabin. There is also someone who likes ports, who did not finish college but is a millionaire because is a professional soccer star!  Do not put yourself down and make sure that you listen to criticism objectively.  Do not procrastinate in finding solution to your challenges; it helps to find a mentor who could walk with you to your success!

  

3.   Build a better you!

After finding answers on who you are, make conscious decision to build a better you! This means you identified how your behavior is less than ideal and sometimes could recall your childhood environment.  It is time to engage in shaping yourself according to you and not blame your parents for both inherited and acquired behavior.  Here you must be guided by positive attitude to yourself; love yourself unconditionally! Take care of yourself; grooming is very important to support your self-confidence building decisions. Do things that challenges your mind; there is a life-changing sense of achievement when you get on top of your mountain.  Note your insecurities and ensure that they do not become anchors.  If they curtail your progress towards your goals, seek help! This means you remove excuses so that you maintain your forward momentum.

You are taking control of your life when you do not dwell in anything that could hinder your efforts towards a better life.  It could be that you are a genius trapped in socialization and other societal norms and belief systems that created fear in you.  Step out of the box; life is what you make of it!

Taking control: Teachable attitude will read success in failures

Teachable attitude is one that sees and feels the truth behind own thoughts, words and actions and have a high sense of smell to detect when these are fishy.  All great inventions are results of persevering and teachable attitude in which each failure revealed a key to success.

Do you have a teachable attitude?

If you want to build a leader in you, you must learn to develop a teachable attitude for your greatest teacher is your inner voice and then all people you interact with outside the classroom.  First, your inner voice will rebuke and disprove your arrogant, judgmental, delusional and jealous thoughts; learn to comply for this is your in-build mechanism that seeks nothing but the best for you! Secondly, learn to recognize the motivation behind your thoughts, words and actions.  If you are out developing teachable attitude, you will identify non-positive motives behind your destructive behaviors.  Remember pride come before the fall!  In other words the moment your ego succeeds to blind you to the truth, you are not open to learn from your failures.  You have succumbed to unconsciousness in which you operate on auto-pilot mode and you have lost one of the spiritual monitoring devices that set you apart from the animal kingdom.

 Are you capable of seeing the true score in your self evaluation?

Following your decision to evaluation your successes or lack thereof; you need to engage in your spiritual self, for only then will you not intentionally overlook your failures or white-wash your procrastinations with excuses.   Here are key pointers on issues of health, wealth and relationships:

1.   Health: Why have you not reached your optimum health even though you have information and other necessary resources? Do you have accurate knowledge to know whether you are on track or you are on a queue for lifestyle diseases? If you intent to live beyond seventy, you need to get interested in yourself! For example do you know that if you have not been regular with dentist you are running a risk of gums diseases which lead to stoke and heart conditions? Update yourself on holistic wellness!

2.   Wealth: Have you determine when you will retire? If you have not, it could be that you do not have a goal for starters.  Secondly, you have not decided whether what you are doing is ushering you into perceived destiny! If you cannot answer these questions, do not despair! At least you are becoming aware that you have not charted your life for financial success! Wishful thinking will not get you anywhere; switch off your television, cell phone, remove your key on your front door and get busy!  You need to know what it is that you need money for and will satisfy your needs and wants in this life! It is not only a thinking exercise; it is a life changing writing of goals and strategies.  If you already have a plan, is the current strategy effective? Self-evaluation exercise is essential for revealing mistakes that derailed you from your plans and give you an opportunity to take remedial actions.

3.   Relationships: We are social beings and anything you are busy with will have very little impact if it is for you only! Without people you care for in your life, you will have very little motivation to get up in the morning to pursue your chosen career, seek promotion, or start a new business!  When you are young you tend to think you can make it alone at the risk of not learning to life with other people! As you age, the moment of truth sets in; you will experience the need to have someone who is not your servant, who could commune with you and rub your back without paying for that service. The Creator had a purpose for populating planet earth!

Learning transcends the grave and is fun when you have teachable attitude. Remember that there is something which only you would do it so differently that you will change someone’s life when you share it! You take control of your life when you learn to empower others to experience fruitful life in health, wealth and relationships!  

Taking control: Evaluate progress on your personal development!

Apart from biological development, it is expected that you upgrade your knowledge content in order to continue to explore and utilize available resources for your needs and pleasure. It is your personal responsibility therefore to identify given talents and continue to improve your skill until you depart from this life.

What is your current content?

It is possible that you have never really assessed your content against what you want in life and the actual level of relevant knowledge and skill required to achieve your goals. So, taking control of your life denotes honest assessment of who you are, what you want and how you will achieve it. Consider the following steps:

1.   Who you are and your goals: It could be that you are a student and undecided about your given talent.  It is important to seek career guidance so that you become focus as you progress to higher learning.  It could be that you have just graduated and are seeking a long-term relationship. To find ideal person requires an update on who you have become as an adult.  From infancy to date you have been socialized by your parents, schools, the church and other social institutions and therefore have shifted emotionally, socially and spiritually. Or you are happily married and want to update yourself with 21^st century parenting skills. The latter is the most ignored of all functional literacy; yet is fundamental in reducing societal ills. 

2.   Identify the gaps:  This is another important self-evaluation exercise which you need to engage in before you undertake life-changing decisions. For example, it could be that you enjoyed the false victory because you won the court-case against your wife, yet you know the truth that you contributed to the divorce. Identifying the gaps denotes seeking the inner peace or its absence.  Do you know that your inner self could haunt you and render your false victory an emotional burden which will steal your joy and peace?  Without these pillars and seed of positive growth, you are a destroyed man, without a meaningful future!

Reviewed plans for your personal development.

Now that you have identified your personal development gaps, you need clear plans and strategies that will enable you to reach your goals:

1.   Do you have a zeal for an improved life? This question is relevant to your current position and seeks to challenge you to determine the level of your motivation to exert yourself for a change.  Remember that you reap what you sow!

2.   Include yourself in resolving the root of the problem!  Immature people exclude themselves in identifying the contributing factors to the problem and therefore miss the mark in moving forward. Identifying your own blemishes is empowering yourself to change the soiled nappy so to speak, instead of adding a powder or adding a fresh one without cleaning the bottom first!  The problem will continue and growth will not be sustainable.

3.   Shout for help! Are you equipped to handle your mess? Be honest and seek professional help.  It is amazing that we all accept physical illness but are reluctant to notice our emotional instability and hurts!

Assessing your progress on personal growth is very important! It enables you to stop blaming delays or failures on others.  You take control of your life when you see your contribution in things that happen in your life – good or bad! You are the only one who knows the truth about your current challenges and therefore knows whether you are capable of making desirable changes with or without professional help! The truth will make you free!

Taking control: Checking on your process of transformation!

Transformation in this context denotes conscious effort to explore and discover attributes of your holistic self – spirit, soul and body. This important activity takes place in your heart – the spiritual domain – and is devoid of egoistic tendencies that willfully overlooks blemishes.  The idea is to pick your strong points and build your future and note your weaknesses so that you will handle situations that may bring them to the light. 

Holistic transformation starts with knowing the truths: That your parents focused on the physical growth and developing your mind.  Very few of us could claim that our parents specifically brought the spirituality to the first position of priority.  This is why the spiritual power is almost weird and brings so much confusion to many people.  The norm is that this subject is addressed in spiritual institutions and visited once every seven days.  When you think of transformation, you are correcting the order of importance.  You are a spirit being with a soul –mind will and emotions – living in a body.

At spiritual realm you are very intelligent and require very little external source to understand your spiritual environment.  This is so because your spirit is a realm at which you are connected to your Creator whom you came from and whose nature is love and is all knowing.  Your spiritual self is where you experience true peace and the joy of connecting with nature; thus enabling you to understand why you are an authority over all the creation.  At this realm you understand why there is only one law of love which is meant to enable you to stay connected to the higher source for you to carry out your mandate of dominion over all the creation. 

The ideal part is when you start your college education: It is the first time you are exclusively managing yourself without daily parental monitoring.  Before you lose your head, let this article be an awakening bell that calls your attention to address issues of your spirituality.   Seek counsel about mankind and his collective role in this life; then find your part.  Ask yourself, why am I here? You will need an introductory learning regarding the nine spiritual gifts: The gift of wisdom, knowledge, faith, healings, miraculous powers, prophecy, discerning of spirits, different tongues and interpretation of tongues.   Every person has one or several of these and they are keys to finding your comfort and fulfillment.

It is prudent to seek your spiritual ministry as mentioned in the Bible, Ephesians 4:11 and referred to as five-fold ministry: Apostles, those who are send into the world and visionaries who plant churches globally. They have capacity to act on all of the ministries that follows. Secondly, prophets who monitor and address issues that are not in line with the will of the Creator. Thirdly evangelists, who continue the ministry of Jesus, and speak out the word of God with signs and wonders.  Fourthly the shepherds; the pastors who readily address our spiritual needs. Lastly the teachers of the word of God, who unpack spiritual information and assist us to make sense of the purpose of God’s salvation.  Lastly, there are ministries of helps which offers time and professional assistance in order for a church to minister to the congregation.  This is a starting point when you have decided to serve in the spiritual institution of your choice.

Checking your transformation progress is systematically going through all these and establishing the category you fall under and then engaging in hands-on spiritual journey.  This is what taking control of your life is; stepping out of your comfort zone to seek your own purpose of life.