I started this discourse on simplifying your life in my last blog. I am continuing with one major points for your consideration in this particular piece. Pay close attention.
Seek Personal Freedom & Pay the Required Price
For nearly half a century, South Sudan were in conflict with their Arab northern countrymen. The late John Garang led the South black Sudanese to resist the repression of the Arab north. As I write, the Republic of South Sudan was born on July 9, 2011 as thousands gathered in the Southern Capital of Juba to receive Africa’s 55th nation. John Garang was not on ground to experience the freedom his fought and died for, his countrymen will never forget his sacrifice for their independence.
When you fight for freedom, you face challenges and these challenges releases your potentials that you thought never existed. You discover you could plan, strategize and the realities of your organizational abilities come into the full glare of the world. In adversity, your best becomes obvious. Therefore, be thankful for every adversity you face in your march towards freedom because if well utilized, they can stand you in good stead to manage your life well.
What are your dreams and aspirations in life? Where do you see yourself headed in life? Those are your visions and they are a part of the freedom your soul longs for. What are you ready to give up to get there? There is going to be a fight and you must fight it. The truth of the matter is this: you will have few choices in the future if you do not make the necessary sacrifices and pay the needed price today. Are you looking forward to financial freedom? What are you doing to increase your streams of income in the nearest future? Do you want to rest and be at peace as a parent in the future seeing your children established and standing firm in their various vocations? Then you must brace up to purposeful parenting. Do you want a virtual queen for a wife? Then you are not going to just look well but be a king in your character and attitude. Besides knowledge and understanding in the issue of marriage, you must prepare yourself from within and be a real man.
I am appalled by the rate of purposelessness in today’s young men. Many young men at 26 – 30 years of age do not have a single clue as to where they are headed in life. Without a purpose, you are a finished person. What are you called to accomplish in life? You are not just here to complete the number of over 6.6 billion people on this planet. You are significant and important. You were crafted for a reason and a cause. Have you located it? Time ticks away every second and every day.
It is very easy to blame the government, institutions and others. But, let me assure you today that what you become is what you make of your life by yourself! What do you think about? Until your thoughts line up to a particular purpose, there will never be any accomplishment in your life. James Allen says “a man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it”. You are supposed to be a creative force. You are supposed to be somebody higher than where you are now; stronger than a bundle of wavering thoughts and fluctuating sensations.
You may just be realizing this enormous potential that lies dormant within you which has not been tapped all the while and may be asking “Please help me!” I have a word for you. A strong man cannot help a weaker unless the weaker one is willing to be helped. You must by your own deliberate and conscious efforts develop the strength which you admire in others. Only you can alter your condition and navigate your way through life for great accomplishments. That is where Barack Obama emerged from as the first Black President of the United States, overcoming personal obstacles and institutional barriers. You too can overcome your challenges and get to the topmost place in your life.
Your way of thinking must change. If you have to become free, you must first of all be free in your mind. Your mind is the clearing house where thoughts (both base and high in nature) fight to take residence. Do you remember the statement that says “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he?” When you look at your life, who do you see? As you stand before a full length mirror, who do you see reflected back to you? Do you see a weak and a discouraged person? Do you see someone worth nothing and who will not amount to anything in life? Is that who you see? If these represent who you see, then you must change your mind-set. You must change your thought patterns.
Do you really love yourself? If you do, then you will fight to be a free man in the real sense of the word. You must have what Reverend Martin Luther King Jr called rationale and healthy self-interest. A great Jewish Rabbi, the late Joshua Leibman, wrote a book some years ago entitled Peace of Mind. In that book, there is a chapter that had a title called “Love Thyself Properly”. What he says in that chapter, in substance, is that before you can love other people adequately, you have to love your own self properly. You do not need to go through life with a deep and haunting emotional conflict. Part of loving yourself very well is accepting yourself and that will set you really free.
Your rationale and healthy self-interest will drive you to focus on something in life and look forward to a period of freedom in your life when you can chose where to live, where to go for holidays with your family without restrictions placed on you for lack of finance and the means.
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