WHAT IS SUCCESS?

Shana Lewobitz once said:

“When we talk about a “successful” person, we’re typically talking about someone who’s got billions in their bank account, someone who’s authored multiple bestsellers, or maybe someone who’s in charge of an entire nation. But if you ask people who fit the conventional definition of a successful individual, many will tell you that those achievements aren’t what make them feel accomplished”.

The term Success has various definitions depending on the need of the individual or organization that defines it. This is how I define success:

Success is not what you have materialistically (and that includes power, status and resources), but rather, success is who you are with or without a thing.

HERE ARE MY SUCCESS TIPS

1. BELIEF: Believe and trust God, have a personal relationship with God directly not through any other channel; human or institutional. Do the will of God. Belong to a fellowship, it doesn’t have to be an organized church, you just need a fellowship every weekend. Your children will need to grow within this cycle. It is okay to believe there is a God as opposed to believing there is none. You don’t need a religion for salvation, you need Jesus Christ. While you a physical being, you are equally a spiritual being and you can only succeed in life if your spiritual life is aligned right.
2. FOCUS: Stay focused amidst all attention consumers and distraction. We live in a world filled with what I call attention consumers. We are in a junction where every direction proves to get you to where you are going. But always remember that in life, there are many routes, detours and dead-ends as well. So focus on the highway, shortcuts might get you there but will not keep you there. It is okay to multi-task but always ensure all the tasks are scoring in one goal. You were not created to be and do everything. Expertise, professionalize and narrow your scope. You cannot be a jack of all trades. Just because you can does not necessarily mean you are purposed to do that. Joy, happiness and fulfilment will only come to those who are focused unto what they were created to do. Find it.
3. CONTROL: Exercise self-control in speech (know what to say, to who, when and how), diet (eat right at all costs), thought (your mind is server room, deny access) and body. Self-control is nothing but self-denial. Learn to deny yourself. Deny yourself temporary pleasure for future safety. It is okay to have fun but always evaluate how much fun and taste costs. Be in charge of the affairs in your life. Your physical body needs regular exercises, please do not abuse it. You don’t have to drive or board a taxi, if you are not in a hurry, please walk, run or ride a bicycle to the workplace.
4. CONNECTIONS: Connect to useful people. To do this, you will need to disconnect from dysfunctional family members, friends, religious members, OBs and OGs, and whoever isn’t going where you are going or actually not helping you to get there. There are two kinds of people around you:

• THOSE WHO LOVE YOU (GOOD ATTITUDE). ABAKWAGALA
• THOSE WHO WOULD LOVE YOU TO… (GOODWILL) ABAKWAGALIZA.

Those who love you give you whatever you want and tell you what you want to hear. They don’t hurt your feelings, they praise you and encourage you even when they know you would have done better. They buy expensive gifts, spend on you at all costs.

Those who would love you to criticize you all the time, they always look for what is missing on what you celebrate as success. They always tell you, you are not where you are supposed to be. They don’t spend on you. The least they can do is lend money to be paid back. They want you to own it yourself. They don’t drive you in their cars, they instead teach you how to drive, and afterwards, take their cars. They blame you more at the workplace more than they blame strangers. They push you harder and squeeze every effort in you. To me, these are the people everyone who will succeed in life needs.

5. INTEGRITY: Speak the truth regardless the cost. If you cannot say the truth and say it as it is, then do not say a thing. Rich people in the world are looking for someone they can trust. We all need truthful people to deal with, so be the trustworthy person you need. Don’t just say the truth, but also do the truth. There is nothing as powerful as truth. Even the greatest force in the world known as LOVE needs to be true.

Always walk the talk and then talk the walk. Do what you said you will do. If you tell someone that you intimately love them, then make it official and marry them. Don’t communicate marriage while you mean sex and fun. Don’t stay with people together in an unclear relationship. If you can’t marry them, tell them. If you love that guy or lady, then marry him or her, don’t give an excuse of money. Just take the candidate to your parents and then go to court and officialize the thing. There is no time.

If you will have kids, please have them now. Do not assume you will ever prepare and plan for them thoroughly. It is risky for you to start pregnancy business at 30 years and beyond. What am telling you is stop procrastinating. Always deliver upon your word. My current director is the most efficient person I have ever met. When this man says he is going to do something, he does that exactly.  Be truthful, your reputation and integrity thrive and survive on that.

6. HELP: Never give an excuse not to help. Helping means doing something regardless of its kind or size as long as it is working towards the betterment of the situation. You might not solve the whole problem of an individual, but do all you can, whenever you can and wherever you can. When you have something, share it with those who are in lack. Don’t just help people, but make people. Helping people is assisting them in their course (whether that course is right or wrong), making people is redirecting them from what caused their misery to what works right.
7. WORK: Work extra tasks and beyond goals. Don’t be like everyone who is celebrating the goal, be the one who is celebrating another target goal set and perhaps achieved beyond the common one. And always work smart. You don’t need a miracle if there is an existing functioning formula. You need to work and work right. God wants to bless the works of your hands not the prayers (words of your mouth) since you are not a preacher. Sstop talking to God more than you walk with him.
8. IDENTITY: Don’t compete or even compare yourself with anyone but compliment. You are alone in the universe. No one looks like you and no one is you. So be referred to rather than referring to others. You are not better than anyone and no one is better than you. Relax. It is okay to look at others and learn a few things, but do not be anyone’s duplicate. You are original, not a copy. The first law of success is: KNOW THYSELF. Stop doing things because other are doing exactly that. You have a different DNA, and you were created for a different purpose.
9. MONEY: If you are not rich (and by rich I mean a person who has money they do not want and/or need), then do not save money, please invest your money. Buy assets, sponsor people in school, sponsor some Masters and PHDs, and start foundations. Don’t save money, money was never created to be saved, it is a means of transaction. Invest money and save property. Buy something with those papers we call money. A small chicken has a net worth greater than 1 million shillings in the wallet of someone in a discotheque or in a bar. And as you hold money, I want you to remember that the greatest temptation with money is in two words: I CAN. Don’t fall for this, don’t do things just because you can, do the things you ought to be doing.
10. EDUCATION: Try to learn and unlearn every day. Add and drop. Educate yourself, learn from your failed friends and learn from your successful friends. Look around and get bitter that you are lagging behind everyone else including those you advised. Be a river of knowledge that flows and not a stagnant pool of information. Upgrade every time. I am not telling you to acquire more academic papers, but to have a constant expansion of skills through learning and increasing knowledge. Because in this world, as life changes the need to adapt both professionally and personally is as real as the changes themselves.
11. HOPE: You should know when to give up and let go but don’t despair, don’t lose hope. Always position yourself and have hope like the single ladies in Pastor Bugembe’s (Single Pastor) church who hope they might one day be the pastor’s choice for a wife. Have hope. I am telling you there I nothing as powerful as HOPE. As I speak now, am in my home studio and I have hope that someone out there will listen to this presentation and share. My friend Dale Acher said this about Hope:

“Hope is the belief that circumstances will get better. It’s not a wish for things to get better — it’s the actual belief, the knowledge that things will get better, no matter how big or small. It’s the belief that at age 55, after a disaster where you’ve lost your home, car and possessions — everything material, that you still have your health and family, and that you can and you will start over.”

It is okay to give-up, but just don’t lose hope. The modern word for Hope is ATTITUDE. I hope you know what it is.

12. RISK: If it is a risk, don’t calculate, just risk and take it (It is a risk remember?) It is a risk not a plan and preparation. Learn the importance of making decisions. Don’t fear to be wrong, you are not perfect. In life, what matters are not answers but serious questions. Always ask the experts in the field, but the testimonies of the laity are also worth listening to and it is up to you to consider them or not.
13. PUBLIC RELATIONS: Relate with people and the easiest way to relate with them is to make sure they feel they matter and you need them. Praise them, they want what you want which is ACCEPTANCE. Please give them that. People are selfish, so let them win or make sure they don’t feel like they lost. It is okay to fight if you only follow these three simple rules of a fight:

• DO NOT HURT YOURSELF
• DO NOT HURT OTHERS
• DO NOT HURT PROPERTY

(I Learnt those rules at the university). Trust me, if any of the above is hurt, then it wasn’t a fight but a Vandalization. Your public image is very important, defend it to death after all when it dies you die with it.

14. TIME: Time is important, Time is important. Don’t just keep it, use it. You are not here forever. So use your time right. Today you are young, tomorrow you will be old. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 3 that: there is time for everything. However, we misunderstand the Bible when we think that our youthful days are for us to be luxurious instead considering them to be days of preparing for the coming difficult days. As I speak now, we are 50% of the year, I don’t want to ask you; how far? I just want to ask you: NOW WHAT? Its now, not then, but Now. Real time is NOW the rest is hypothetical and fantasy.

Finally; if you have a child like I do and/or you are a parent like me, teach that kid the danger in food, the importance of books and the crucial aspect of GOD. (I have just shared what my mum taught me as a kid). So to me SUCCESS is about FOOD, BOOKS and GOD.

God bless you, I invoke Truth, Reason, and Faith

Am Pr I.T.WHITE

The Gospel Hawker