CAN YOU SURPASS YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS?

Success is not for those who are weak, it is for those with lion hearts. It is difficult to achieve set goals and even more difficult to sustain them. To surpass your achievement is, therefore, a herculean task. Anybody that has achieved any level of success in life will tell you how much hard work, determination, endurance, concentration and various forms of deprivation they had gone through to achieve it. Yet achievements have to be continuously surpassed to sustain success.

Yesterday’s achievements become stale in the light of today’s reality. If we rest on our achievements, soon we’ll realize we’re no longer relevant in the scheme of things. To be truly successful is to constantly surpass our achievements. The question then is how do we surpass our previous achievements so that we can sustain our success and remain relevant in our industry and community?

When we achieve a set of goals, we feel a sense of relief, accomplishment, enthusiasm and confidence. These are great feelings that help us in our success journey. However, these feelings feed on continuous achievements. Once we don’t achieve new goals, we starve them and they begin to wither. As this happens other debilitating feelings begin to set in. fear, insecurity and discouragement begin to prey on us.

We, therefore, must feed the positive feelings that help us on our success journey, especially enthusiasm and confidence. The way to do it is to make sure, no matter how small, that we are setting and achieving new goals. So, have you achieved a set of goals? Add new ones to them. Raise the stake. Set new standards. Decide to improve the package. Win more clients. Determine to achieve higher grades. Just add new achievable goals.

To surpass our achievements requires new skills. We cannot rely only on the skills we previously use. To surpass is to do it better. To do it better we need new tools. To use new tools we need new skills. Continuous self-development becomes a key aspect of our lives. It is usual for us to budget monthly for food, drink, cloth and other mundane needs of our lives. But only few of us include books, seminars and conferences in this budget.

We don’t have a reading culture. And when we read, we read gossip magazines and novels. We hardly attend seminars and conferences except the ones organized or paid for by our organizations. We don’t subscribe to our professional journals and hardly understand the new trend in our industry. If we want to be relevant in our industry and community, we must continuously develop ourselves.

Self-development will help us to acquire new skills and methods of operations. It will help us understand and take a stand on new developments and trends in our industry and community. To do this, we must cultivate a reading culture, reading materials that educate and build our capacity. At every waking hour, we must have a book that is teaching us something. Pay for and attend professional seminars and conferences. And put whatever you learn in such forums into practice. Go for higher formal education, not for the purpose of adding new certificates, though it could be of help, but in equipping yourself for greater responsibility. You want to surpass your achievements? Develop yourself continuously!

Sometimes all we need to surpass our achievements is to present the same thing in a different way. Creativity is an essential ingredient of success. Creativity is the ability to imagine different forms and hue. It is the ability to see the same situation in different light. Creativity is ‘seeing’ beyond what you see. Seeing differently what things could be. Not accepting things only as they are but seeking how they could be.

The most splendid achievement of all is the constant striving to surpass yourself and to be worthy of your own approval – Denis Waitley

Creativity is based on the use of our imagination. A lot of people think they do not have creative ability. Yet they exhibit creativity every day. Most of the time we perceive the aroma of food and we conclude that the food is tasty. This is the work of our imagination. The sense of taste has nothing to do with the sense of smell. Curry and thyme smells good but are tasteless! Everybody has the ability to imagine things but only few people use it intentionally and purposefully. Artists of various genres use their imagination purposefully. Scientist must use a lot of imagination to understand a lot of the concept they research into. In fact, great scientists are known to be great musicians, painters and sculptors.

Everybody can be creative. A businessman can be creative. An administrator, teacher, parent, politician and whoever can be creative. All we need to do is to intentionally imagine things differently from what they are. Set aside time to be alone or disconnect yourself from the world around you in a comfortable place and direct your thought towards a particular object or issue. Write your thought down no matter how foolish they might seem. You will be surprised how differently you’ll see things. Practice creativity in your daily endeavors and you’ll surpass your achievements.

Man is hardly an isolated system. We are affected, influenced and inspired by our environment and the people around us. To some extend our environment and the people we associate with determines our values, focus, inspiration and standards. Your present achievement level is partly based on the type and level of influence you’re receiving from your environment and close associates.

If you must surpass your present achievement level, you must open yourself to greater and better influence. Locate yourself in better environment and associate with people with greater vision, value, inspiration and achievements. As you see these people live at this higher level of achievements, it inspires you to do more. And if some of these higher achievers are leaders, they will invest in you and give you the necessary push you need to get ahead. You must include as part of your associates people that are higher in achievement than you. Don’t be a local champion!

Surpassing your achievements might be a Herculean task but as you begin to practice these principles, you’ll discover that you've grown so much that the hard task has become easy for you. Remember if success is easy everybody will be successful. Roll up your sleeve and let the work begin! 

SOARING HIGH                                                                                                                                        

1. What you look at consistently you grow into. If you must grow, you must be filled with what you want to grow into. Your senses, your mind and your heart must be filled with the image of who you want to become. Stay focused on those who are soaring high and you will continually be upwardly mobile. “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” 2 Corinthians 3: 18.                                                                               

2. Understand that you are totally dependent on God in your success journey. Don’t allow any level of achievements cut you off from your spiritual growth. There is a great tendency that your achievements will preoccupy you with legitimate activity which can cause you to pay less attention to your fellowship with God. If you allow this to happen, you have just cut off your real source of power for soaring high. Make your spiritual growth the underlying factor for surpassing your achievements. “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase, so then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth but God that giveth the increase.” 1Corinthians 3: 6, 7.                                                                                          

3. Practice generosity. You must think in terms of giving more than receiving more. When your desire to soar high is motivated by the desire to give more, spiritual and moral forces are released to empower you. Motivation to increase through greed eventually destroys and does not bring the positive feelings required to sustain success. As you meditate on surpassing your achievements, think in terms of what you can give more. “There is that scattereth, and yet  increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.” Proverbs 11: 24.