SCALING THE WALLS OF LIFE – Part 3

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By Anthony Obeng Afrane

Anthony Obeng Afrane

Precious ones, many thanks for your attention once again. We are about to take off with another edition of the ” Scaling the Walls of Life” series. Fasten your seat belts and fly with me.

There have always been two major groups of people since the dawn of the human race – those who are moved, and those who move. Those who make an impact are the ones motivated by the desire to achieve. Friend, I want to share with you another deep secret of life – if you want to succeed, you have to move; you have to hunger for success, and stop persistently focusing on limitations. There is only one limiting roadblock to success – and that is the set of barriers we set up in our own minds.

The bitter truth is that no one can enter the Promised Land without having appetite for “grapes”. The reason why the first generation of the [ads1]Nation of Israel could not enter the Promised Land was that they did not have an appetite for the grapes found in the Promised Land. According to the Bible the first batch of spies who were sent to the land reported that the land was inhabited with giants and that in their own eyes, they looked like grasshoppers. So, you see, they spent time looking at the limitations, and they missed the appetite.

On the contrary, the generation that entered the Promised Land were so hungry and thirsty for success that they didn’t see the giants, but saw a land flowing with milk and honey; their appetite was so huge that they took some grapes home as evidence of their claim. Kikikikikikiki, I’m sure they did justice to some of the grapes before sending the rest home.

Two achievers that I admire so much are Ross Perot and Asa Chandler. Ross Perot, was a salesman with IBM in Texas in the US. His annual commission was more than the annual salary of the chairman of the Board; it became embarrassing to IBM’s management that a lowly salesman should earn more than their Board Chairman, so they slammed down a ceiling of $250,000 on the maximum allowable commission for any salesman to earn in a year. Perot earned his quota by the end of January! He was going to be idle for eleven months, and it was certain he wasn’t going to work for free. So he quit, and started Electronic Data Services. By 1972, he was earning $16.5 million each year and was worth $645 million.

Asa Chandler was a drug clerk in Georgia in the US. He gave his life savings of a paltry $500 to a doctor to prepare a formula for a syrup. Asa Chandler transformed his $500 investment into a soft drink that came to be named Coca-Cola.

As much as I believe you have been fired up by these examples, one thing you have to guide against is associating with people who criticize unconstructively and discourage unnecessarily. Avoid such people else they will kill your dream. I had a friend some years back; he is the type who would almost always discourage you on any issue you discussed with him. I remember once complaining to him that I had headache, and can you imagine his response? He reminded me of someone who died after complaining of headache. He was full of negativity, and hehehehehe, I dropped him one time like a yam.

According to the Bible, Sanballat and Tobiah discouraged the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. If Nehemiah had listened to them, the walls would not have been rebuilt. Hear what Tobiah said in Nehemiah 4:3, “What they are building – even a fox climbing up on it would break down their wall of stones.” Folks, watch out for the Sanballats and the Tobiahs in your life; they are your “frienemies” – drop them as fast as possible.

Never allow anything to come between you and your dreams, things could be tough and rough as you move on in life, but soldier on to the end. Never give up even if you fail many times, after all, it took Edison more than 1,000 attempts before he discovered how to make an incandescent light bulb. In other words, he failed a whopping 999 times before being successful.

It was reported that soon after Edison revealed his earth-shattering invention, a French reporter asked, “Mr. Edison, how did it feel to fail 999 times?” As the story goes, Thomas Edison just smiled and replied, “Young man, I have not failed 999 times. I have simply found 999 ways how not to create a light bulb.” In other words, Thomas Edison learned from his mistakes, and refused to be discouraged by those botched experiments. Most people would have given up much earlier.

There is a true story about a miner who quit mining after he spent an entire day drilling for gold. He found a little at first, but couldn’t discover anymore so he sold his equipment to a “junk” man who decided to seek expert advice from a mining engineer and discovered that the miner was drilling only 3 feet away from where the millions were! The “junk” man took home millions upon millions while the poor miner who drilled the entire day missed the gold by only 3 feet.

Dear one, you may have hit the wall in life’s endeavour, and want to give up. Please don’t think of quitting now because you are at the brink of a gold mine.