Are You a Common Christian ? (4 Minutes Read)

Don't be a COMMON CHRISTIAN. A COMMON CHRISTIAN is a Christian who, like Demas, gives no priority to the words and things of the Lord, therefore forsaken the Lord (2Tim 4:10).  A COMMON CHRISTIAN is like Judas, who will trade eternal treasures for temporal pleasures like thirty pieces of silver (Luke 22:4).  A COMMON CHRISTIAN is also like that third man in the parable of five talents, who does not know the value of the talent given to him by his master and so buries it (Matt 25:14-30).

We are not called to be a COMMON CHRISTIAN, because in the end there will be no room for the COMMON CHRISTIAN when the Lord returns. A COMMON CHRISTIAN is like a wasted vessel.

The Lord says, "He that will come after me must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me." (Luke 9:23). We are supposed to deny ourselves - appetites, reluctances, and carnalities - and follow the Lord whenever he calls us because nothing can compare in value to obeying the Lord. When it comes to denying oneself to obey the Lord, a COMMON CHRISTIAN will not do that.

The Lord says, "if you love me keep my commandments." (John 14:15). Our obedience to the Lord's commandments, especially those that are related to helping others, is a prove of our faith, love, and thanks to the Lord. It is proof that we are not a COMMON CHRISTIAN who will obey the Lord only when it is easy to do so or for immediate personal gain.

The Word of God also says "Whosoever will be a friend of the world is an enemy of God." (James 4:4). A true friend will never leave or deny his friend. Only COMMON CHRISTIAN claims to be a friend of the Lord and still be ashamed of standing for the Lord in the public. The Lord said, "whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and My words, of him, shall the Son of Man be ashamed when He shall come in His glory and in His Father’s and of the holy angels." (Luke 9:26).

We are not called to be a COMMON CHRISTIAN who will only speak for or follow the Lord only when it is acceptable or easy to do so. Rather, we are called to be true disciples, UNCOMMON CHRISTIANS, who obey the Lord at all times.

"Then said Jesus to those Jews who believed in Him, “If ye continue in My Word, then are ye My disciples indeed." John 8: 31

 

Five Most Desired Soft Skills by Employers

Soft skills are the skills that make you fit into a workplace. With these skills, you will fit in and succeed at your job place. But without the skills, you may have to move from one workplace to another, trying to fit in. Five of these skills are explained in this short article. 

1. Sociability
This is your ability to understand and relate with people. It also connotes your ability to be friendly, adapt, and share the feelings of others.

2. Self-management. 

This is your being able to understand and take control of yourself. It involves self-discovery and mastery. It also includes setting and working on your goals. It includes your ability to monitor your (work or life) progress and takes appropriate actions where needed.

3. Team membership 

This your ability to actively, cooperatively, and progressively participate as a member of a team. It means you will always contribute to your group effort. You see your group's success or failure is your own success or failure. You are not just working to succeed alone, you are working to ensure that your group members all succeed as well. You are always ready to support a group member when needed.

4. Leadership

This is your ability to see things differently and responsibly communicate what you see for others to understand. It involves being able to justify your points, persuade, and convince others to see your points. It also means you are able to devise a new way, which may be different from what others are accustomed to. It means you are able to stand alone for the course you believe.

5. Inclusive and diversity 

This means you are good at getting along with everyone - all types of people and characters. It means you work well with men and women of diverse backgrounds. You treat everybody without prejudice.

These attributes, combined with your technical skills, could set you apart and make you successful if you portray them in your workplace and life. 

3 Proven Steps to Manage your Money and Quickly Build Wealth

Poverty is the problem, but wealth is the solution. There is plenty of poverty in our world today because most people don’t know how to create wealth. This article is written for you if you are looking for ways to create genuine wealth and build a great future for yourself. 

There are three basic but proven steps to creating wealth. These include (1) Get a source of income, (2) Save part of your income (3) Invest a part of your saved income. These steps can make you rich as further explained below.

 

1. Get a source of income.

To create wealth, first, you need to have money, and to have the money you need to provide a service or sell something. This means you need a source of regular income. Once you get a regular inflow of money, then you can proceed to the next step. You can get a regular income via any of the followings;

• Get a job: Job is the work that someone does to earn an income. Depending on your education, qualifications, talents, or energy, there are different types of jobs you can get. You can work as a cleaner, salesperson, teacher, etc. 

• Involve in trading: Trading is buying and selling. To get income by trading, you can buy useful items at cheap prices and sell them at fairly high prices to make some profits. 

• Provide a service: Service is something that the society needs such as transports, fashion, teaching, etc. You can learn of any service you like, get a license for it, and get a place to provide the service for money. 

Once you have found a legal way to make money, either through a job, trading or by providing service, the next step is to gather your wealth. 

 

2. Regularly save a part of your income

The second step in wealth creation is to gather the capital you need to create wealth. This involves a very simple but difficult habit of saving a part of your income. To do this, you will save at least 10% of every income you get every time you get it. This savings is a must and is not for you to spend or use for anything. But it is for you to keep. It is the money you KEEP TO CREATE YOUR WEALTH. It is your financial asset. Your goal is not to spend it to increase it. 

Many people are in poverty not because they don't have a regular income but because they don't save part of their income for wealth creation. 

Imagine, let's say you save $200 every month, that would be $2,400 (12X$200) in 12 months, $4,800 in 24 months.......$12,000 in 60 months etc. 

And you can always increase your monthly savings depending on your monthly income. The joy is that the more you save, the better you will feel, and the more sense of peace and happiness you will enjoy. This is because you will see your financial strength increasing each month. This is not yet your wealth, but it puts you in a position to build your wealth. Now you can go ahead to build your wealth.

 

3. Invest a part of your saved income

To build your wealth you need money, but not the money that you need for your daily life. You can only build wealth using the money you have kept for the purpose of wealth building.

So how do you build wealth? 

At times many people think they can build wealth just by working for money, whereas in fact, people can only build wealth by making money to work for them. 

 So to build your wealth, you will make part of your saved income to work for you to bring more money for you. This can be done by investing a part of your saved income in one or more of the following ways after adequate research and understanding of the potential risks and profits that may be involved.

• Lend a business owner: You can lend your money to a successful business owner and get a certain commission with your money (i.e. 10% or as determined) at the end of an agreed time. In this way, instead of leaving your money in a bank account without any interest, your money can be generating additional income for you without you doing anything. 

• Buy a share in the stock market: You can also put part of your savings to buy shares from the stock market from a successful company or funds you believe in. Usually, on a long-term basis, a share value can increase by 100 to 500%, especially if the company or fund is a successful one. 

For example, if you bought a share for $1000, and the share increased by 500% in two years.  Your money would have increased to $6000 within the two years. Meanwhile, that would not have happened if you had left your money in a bank or if you had no money to invest. In the stock market, you can buy and sell as many shares as you want at any time. 

• Buy and sell land: You can also use part of your savings to buy land near cities and sell the land in the near future when the price would have increased. The more land you buy the higher the profit you will make, and the wealthier you will become. 

• Invest in business opportunity: You can invest in a business opportunity such as agriculture production, farm produce sales, or buying and selling of any profitable commodities, which would not require too much of your personal time. You can also hire a personal assistant or manager to manage the business for you with proper record keeping and accountability. 

 

Wealth creation is possible for you. All you need to do to create wealth is to do what other people have done to create their wealth. These are the things described in this article. Although these are the basics, you can begin your journey of wealth creation from here and learn your way up from other sources. 

There are many books, websites, YouTube videos, or podcasts that are based on money management and wealth creation. You should also use them as other sources to learn more about wealth creation.

I believe you will achieve your goal of wealth creation and build a great life for yourself if you persist.

Rufus J. Akinrinlola, MSc. 

 

A question for readers:

What other way do you think or know that people can create wealth? Comment your answer below to benefit others.

#2 Success Tip: Resist Failure

Success and greatness are achievable for everyone, but failure is one thing that keeps people from succeeding and makes them ordinary in life. But when you learn to properly resist failure, you will succeed and enjoy greatness. This article is written to teach you how to resist failure to achieve success and greatness.

Understand failure

Now you need to understand what failure is and what it is not, for you to properly resist it. There are two categories to failure. First, to simply put it; failure is failing to reach your goal. But not reaching your goal itself is not a failure if you do not give up on the goal. This means it does not means you have failed if you have not reached your goal yet, you have only failed when you accept failure. It means you have failed if you have stopped doing what can make you reach your goal.

 

The second category of failure includes anything that can prevent you from reaching your goal. Mostly these are wrong habits that may include laziness, indecision, procrastination, time wastage, wrong associations, running from books, wasteful spending, ignorance, wrong role model, lack of focus, lack of passion or ambition, etc. All of these failure habits are what can prevent people from reaching their goals. They are the real failure you must avoid.

 

Hate failure

To succeed in life and enjoy greatness, you must hate failure. Hatred is powerful, it is as strong as love, and this is the reason you must confront failure with hatred. When you hate a thing, you will avoid the thing by all means. When you hate failure you will use every means to prevent it from taking over you. You will only succeed in life when you don’t allow failure to overwhelm you.

 

Avoid failure

Another way to resist failure and enjoy success is by avoiding failure from robbing you of your success and greatness. To avoid failure, you must decide that nothing will hinder you from achieving success. First, this means you will never give up if you have not yet reached your goal. Second, it also means you will eliminate or avoid every negative or failure habit from your life. You must avoid failure by all means to succeed and enjoy greatness.

 

Learn from failure

Another way to resist failure is to learn from it. Failure can be a blessing when you learn from it. Failure is a signal that something is wrong. When you fail to reach a goal or get an expected result after making an effort, it is a signal that something in your effort was not done right. If you can locate that wrong thing and correct it, you would not fail again, and you will have expected results. Everybody fails, but only people who learn from failure can overcome their failure. To overcome failure, to succeed and be great in life, you must learn from your failure and the failures of other people.

 

Don’t repeat failure

To succeed and become great in life you must not repeat failures. You must discover the reasons why you and people fail and avoid the reasons in your life. You must ask yourself “why did that happen?” whenever you fail, and you must learn from the story of people who have failed or succeed in life and avoid the mistakes.

 

Success and greatness are achievable for you when you learn to resist failure; understand it, hate it, avoid it, learn from it, and never repeat it.

 

Rufus J. Akinrinlola, MSc.

 

Question for Readers: what other ways can you resist failure?

#1 Success Tip: Think Greatness

Greatness starts from within

Everything starts from the mind: be it success or failure. It is the thoughts in your mind now that will determine what you will do next and how you will do it. And definitely, it is what you do and how you do it that will determine whether you will succeed in life.

You must first think greatness to experience it

You must first think of greatness in your mind before you can experience greatness in your life. As an example to understand this, if you look up, your face will face up, and when you face down, your face will face down. So if you want your face to stay up you must look up, and if you want your face to face down, you will look down. It's impossible to look down and expect your face to face up. In this same way, you must first think of greatness in your mind before you can experience it in your life. Your current status does not count; what counts is the direction in which you set your mind.

You can have all you need if you think so

You may be financially poor now, but you can have all the money you need later if you decide it in your mind. Even though you may be jobless at the moment, your story can change if you can begin to think about how to get a job. Every great person you see today did not start great. Most great people you see today start their greatness from zero-level before they got to where they are today. It's okay to be at a zero level. What is not okay is to think you are okay with that level.  

The secret to greatness is thinking greatness

This is the secret of greatness; thinking greatness. Once you start to think about becoming great, your mind will begin to give you various suggestions about how to become great. It will give you many ideas that you can work upon. It can show you some specific steps you should take or not take, or reveal to you the “Dos and Don’ts” you need to bring success and greatness into your life. For example, your mind can suggest to you the person you need to talk to or stopped talking with. It can suggest to you to change your location, get a new job, learn a new trade, engage in a new business, read a certain book, develop a certain habit, etc. Once you have these thoughts of greatness, all you need to do to experience greatness is to start working on each idea until you realize them one by one.

 

This is how you can become great and how you will remain great in life. Don't think small, but think greatness; think success and prosperity and you will experience it.

Rufus J. Akinrinlola, MSc

Three great reasons you should start using your gift

Do you know why the sun shines? Do you know why the stars bright, and why the eagle flies? There is only one answer to these questions is, and that is "they all use their gifts."

Your gift is your talent or special skill - it is a special ability that you have, which you find easy to use. You may be gifted in writing, teaching, speaking, singing, sport, etc., when you identify your gift,  do not abandon it, instead, nurture and use it every time. Three reasons why you must not jeopardize your gifts are explained below:

1. Success is sure. When you continue to use your gift, it will bring success into your life. This is because your gift will make you become unique in life. It will also make you become what God has created you to be, and it is only your gift that can make you occupy your unique space in life. No one can take your place when you know how to use your gift very well.

2. Easier life. Life will be much easier when you use your gift. But life can be very hard for you if you abandon your gift. This is because instead of doing what you can do naturally, you will be struggling to do what is naturally difficult for you to do. It is like when you are trying to do another man's work - which you are not trained to do -, that would be more difficult to do compared to when you do your own work that you naturally have the talent to do.

3. Inner joy and happiness. Using your gift can give you inner joy and external happiness. You will always find joy any time you use your gift. This is because the impression or push to use your gift is an internal force and any time you yield to that internal force you will get joy. The more you use the inner push to achieve success, the more joy and happiness you will get. This is the same for all talented people. They get joy from what they do because they do what they like. The more they do it, the happier they become.

Once you can identify your gift, don't jeopardize it. If your gift is doing music,  please go and start music anyhow.  If you are a sports person, go and join a sports team. If your gift is in academics, please pursue further education learning, and if you are good at teaching, start a training or learning center and use that gift to impact others. Whatever you think is your gift, go and start using it for something good now. Do not abandon your gift! Use it and you would see yourself enjoying success, an easier life, and continuous happiness. 

Three characters of a fake leader

Fake leaders are bad leaders. Actually, they are not leaders, they are killers, and following them may ruin a whole life. In this article, I will expound on three attributes of fake leaders. 

1. Self-serving

Fake leaders are out to serve themselves, not to serve others. They may show or claim they want to serve people, but it's a lie. They are out to gather people to serve themselves. They will gather as many people as possible to achieve their own personal selfish goals, even to the detriment of the people that follow them. 

It's not difficult to identify a fake leader of this kind, just by looking at their followers you will recognize them. Usually, a person that follows a self-service-fake leader usually remains a follower forever. This is because the fake leader will not allow them to grow up to become like them or achieve their own personal goals. He will continue to make them look inferior to himself, and if they try to stop following him, he would get mad at them. He's an exploiter!

2. Pride 

Fake leaders will want their followers to respect them but would not respect their followers. They see their followers as properties, dependants, or instruments they can use and dump once they achieved their goals. They will not see them as assets, partners, networks, colleagues, or team mates that are mutually beneficial to them, or trainees that can grow up to become great in life. At every opportunity, a fake leader will make his follower look inferior to himself, by always making them look small and irrelevant. They will never listen to their followers' plea, comments, or suggestions. They will always take all credit for the team's success and blame their followers when things get bad. 

3. Lack of care 

Fake leaders don't care. They don't care about their followers, about their life, future, potential, family, health, or financial issues. They only care about their own business, personal ambition, and properties. They can send a follower to do the most dangerous and unrealistic task. And if the follower fails to accomplish the task, the fake leader will get mad at him or her. The leader will not be understanding, and will not ask how he or she can be of help to the follower. When their follower has a problem, leaders will abandon the follower without trying to look for a way to support or figure out things for him or her. 

Fake leaders are bad leaders, they are not worth following. they don't have a vision or passion to help others. Their vision is to accumulate things and only build empires for themselves. They are prideful, and will not care for their followers. Following them may ruin your destiny. Stay away from them and look for a true (good) leader to follow. 

This Is Rufus

#This #is #Rufus

#If #Rufus #Can #do #it

This is Rufus. He became an orphan at age 3, as he grew up to find out about it that later.

Growing up, Rufus lived with an aunt, uncle, and two brothers, successively.

As a boy Rufus worked as a job man in brick layering, weed cutting, sand packing, brick loading, plank loading, firewood hauling, bamboo cutting, rock gathering and breaking, and bread hawking jobs, to make money.

Today, Rufus is a Ph.D. Student at the University of Tennessee. His determination to become somebody in life makes him believe his background should not be an excuse for failing to succeed in life. 

If Rufus can do it, anyone can do it.

I am Rufus, and I will be available for job positions by this time next year!

Three reasons why you need to start a relationship with God.

Spirituality

In my previous post, I identify spirituality or Godliness as one of the three pillars for building a well-balanced life. Here I want to explain what is spirituality and some three benefits of spirituality. I use the word spirituality in this article to mean Godliness. 

1. Spirituality means having a strong connection or relationship with God. This means getting in contact with the Almighty God and allowing His Spirit to gain access and control in your life. In life, you either on your own, in connection with God, or with Satan. 

2. Spirituality also means knowing and living according to God's commandments. In other words, a spiritual man is a man that knows God's words and does God's words. He does not walk by what everybody else thinks, says, or does. He only walks according to God's principles, not according to man's dictation, and God's principle is the only perfect principle for humans.

3. Spirituality also means believing and trusting in God for your life. This means depending on God for your protection, favor, and success. You do this by always praying to God to keep you safe from all evil, and you always depend on God for wisdom, strength, resources, and relationships that will bring prosperity.

Benefits

1. One benefit of spirituality is that it gives you peace and rest of mind. Since you have put all your worries and anxieties on God, you will have no worries and you will not be afraid. When others, who are not spiritual, are afraid of many uncertainties, you are not afraid because you know that God is watching over you to keep and prosper you. Also, because you walk by God's commandments, you are naturally kept from the consequences of breaking morals and established laws.

2. Another benefit of spirituality is that spirituality gives you happiness for many reasons. You will be happy and joyful for enjoying God's protection, wisdom, guidance, progressive life, good relationships, favor, and many other reasons. 

3. Spirituality gives you the ability to love and serve others. As a spiritual or Godly person, you will become a blessing to others, because the spirit of God in you will make you want to love and serve other people. You will want to share what you have with the needy in your neighborhood, and among friends and family. You will also want to share the goodness and love of God with everybody around you, making you a positive social influencer. 

Again, spirituality is a strong pillar in building a well-balanced life. In the midst of troubles, while others are shaking and falling, those who have a strong connection with God will be strong and will never fall because God will hold unto them. These people enjoy unspeakable peace of mind, joy and happiness, steady progress, and they are positive social influencers. 

I am able to tell you this because this is my personal experience. Even though my biological parents passed away when I was just 3 years old, among the major reasons why I have been able to come this far was that I started my relationship with God as a little boy when I was 11 years old, and this is what has been keeping me going stronger. 

So, start or recommit yourself to your spiritual journey today, by moving closer to God, learn about Him, and walk (trust) in Him. 

Why you need a mentor and how my story can benefit your career.

Mentorship is receiving timely guidance and counsel from an experienced person in an area of life or career. When the right mentorship is missing, people become a victim of negative societal or peer pressure. In other words, when people are not in the hands of deliberate mentors they will fall into the hands of wrong mentors who will indoctrinate them with wrong mindsets that could lead them in the wrong direction and destination.

I was thinking about this lately. I thought most of the troubles people battle with today would never be if people have good mentors to train them.

Growing up as a younger person I had the opportunity of being guided by many great people who mentored me. And except for their mentorships, I would have probably ended up in the wrong direction, being misguided by peer pressures and societal influences. 

The first person that mentored me was my late Brother Wilson Olatunbosun Akinrinlola. You may have read in my previous articles that he was the person that taught me how to read and write. He was also the person that first told me what it means to be a Local Champion. Do you know what that means? A local champion is a person who is superior only in the midst of local unskilled people. Once he or she gets outside in the midst of skilled and excellent people he or she becomes inferior because he or she is only superior to illiterate and unskillful people in the local environment. 

Brother Wilson explained to me why I was feeling great about being the best student in my class in my local hometown grammar school. He thereafter transferred me to a better grammar school in my state capital city, where indeed I met a lot of students who were more excellent and superior to me. It was there that I was exposed to quality education and first learned about the possibility of going overseas for further education.

Another mentorship I received from Brother Wilson was after I completed secondary school. That time I thought that settling for a temporary job or getting recruited into the Navy will suffice for me, but Brother Wilson told me that pursuing higher education will be better than both options in the long run.

I was also privileged to be mentored by another person as an undergraduate student. That person was a professor, Dr. Tony, who has a great heart for his students. One day Dr. Tony told me, "Rufus, with your Second Class Upper degree, you can get anywhere and any height in the world that you wish to get". Before he said that, I was being discouraged, thinking that since I failed to graduate with a First Class degree it would be difficult for me to achieve my career goals. Later on, Dr. Tony, told me what I needed to do to apply for a scholarship to enter a graduate school in the United States. And here I am today,  8 years later, a Ph.D. student in a high-ranked university in the United States. 

Any time I think back on these things, it reechoes to me that every person needs a mentor. And this takes us back to the picture posted with this article. That was six years ago, as the president of my community development society group - PEER EDUCATOR TRAINERS - I was speaking to some teenagers in Ilorin, Kwara State Nigeria about the need and how to protect their future. I was telling them is better to avoid premarital sex so they could focus on building the future they desire for themselves. 

The truth about mentorship is this, everybody needs a mentor regardless of our age or achievement. There is always someone who can show us what we need or needn't do to avoid a regretful end but takes us to a rejoiceful destination.

Getting the right motivation

Any time it comes to getting the most informative and dependable motivation, go for a motivational worker, not a motivational speaker. Only listen to motivational speakers if they have experience working in the same field or area that you need motivation. Except you are ready to swallow more or lesser than you can chew, only listen to motivational workers that speak from their work experience, who personally understand the challenges and opportunities of the work, not professional motivational speakers that know the subjects through books. 

Thinking through this topic, I see that a large percentage of motivations that come from motivational speakers - especially individuals coming from different fields of career - can be misleading. This is mostly because most would either exaggerate or belittle the context of the situations being discussed.

Imagine a professional public speaker telling a bricklayer, carpenter, or a farmer that he shouldn't rest when he's tired, but rather he should rest only when's he has completed his job. If they listen to that kind of motivation, they might not live to come to work another day.

Similarly, there are some clergymen that will tell you that all you need to succeed in life is the word of God. Hmm, that may be true if your success is a kind of manner that will fall from heaven, or if you are also a clergyman. But to succeed in another profession in life, you need adequate training and knowledge of your work - not Bible knowledge. Now, I know there's a place for asking God for wisdom and divine knowledge about your chosen profession. But more importantly, I think you need training and mentorship by the people in your area of career focus. 

If you are in Business, you need to know how business works! If you are a scientist, you need to know what it takes to carry out groundbreaking research, and if you are a student, you need an adequate understanding of what is expected of you in school. Stop listening to people that will mislead you. Go to the right source for the training you need. Go to the people who have done or doing what you want to do.

If you want to be a writer, listen to, and learn from writers. If you want to succeed as a politician, go and join politics and study towards that line. To be a motivational speaker, listen to motivational speakers, and to be a pastor join a church leadership and get training that will turn you into a successful preacher.

It's nice to be a strong Bible student as a Christian, to enable you to understand the spiritual approach to life challenges,  but after that, except you are planning to be a gospel minister,  please spend more of your time on the career you have chosen in life - that's your own call in life. And if you think your call is to be a preacher or life coach, please spend more time with people in that line. Stop wasting your time, hanging around a building you will never enter. Focus on your own direction and move towards your own destination.

Let me say it again. When it comes to getting instructions and motivations regarding your profession, seek them from people who have walked or walking in the same pathway you are. Don't let the people who have never been in your shoe tell you how to wear it, except you are ready to play try and error with your life.

Here is the bottom line, the summary of my thoughts. Be selective and careful when it comes to listening to motivational speakers or even some so-called pastors. Only listen to people that speak from personal experiences that are related to your direction or potential direction. A wrong motivation can make you live lesser than your potential. It can also make you break your backbone. But right counsel will direct you in the pathway that will lead you to a destination that is best for you. 

I don't think you will get the best from a professional motivational speaker, a clergyman, or any individual teaching you what you need to do to succeed in a field they have never practiced or trained for. It would be like getting a random person to read a coaching material and coach a football team to succeed. 

Winning with words

Your words are powerful. The words you speak or hear can either empower you or weaken you. They can either heal you or injure you. In fact, depending on how you use your words, your words may kill or save your life. There are two ways I can explain this to you, using the natural and spiritual knowledge. I will explain both ways in the following passages.

Natural knowledge

Good words. 

Think about this! The words you speak to yourself or others speak to you can make you feel good or bad about yourself.  When you hear good words like thank you, good job, well done,  excellent job, you are smart, awesome, handsome or beautiful, or cute, etc. about yourself, this will make you fill great about yourself. Throughout that day or any time you think about those words, your head will 'swell' and you will probably secretly smile to yourself. This would go along way to affect everything you do that day. Because it would generate a sense of happiness within you that would make you approach everything with a sense of worthiness and self-esteem. This will make you want to do more of what you are doing excellently, and thus make you more successful. 

Bad words 

However, if for one reason or the other you or somebody said to you these words - foolish person, stupid, ugly,  dullard, worthless, failure, poor, etc., this would probably destroy your happiness that day or any time you remembers those words. Especially, if you continue to think about those words, you might begin to believe they are actually true for you. That would make you feel bad. You may become sad and feel worthless. Unconsciously, your face may become frowned and your look becomes sadly and unfriendly. This could make you lose your excitement and interest in the things you are doing at that time. It may even make you postpone important activities or tasks until a later time. It could result in making you doing things poorly, and affect your end results badly, leading to failure. 

These two scenarios demonstrate how words can naturally make you successful (win) or lose in life. Now I will explain how words can affect your life using spiritual- biblically - knowledge. 

Spiritual knowledge

According to the spiritual knowledge revealed in the Bible, the spoken words are a spirit. The words we speak have life. They are a living entity, that can give or take life. This was shown in several places in the Bible

The Lord Jesus Christ said: 

                "It is the Spirit Who gives life [He is the Life-giver]; the flesh conveys no benefit whatever [there is no profit in it]. The words (truths) that I have been speaking to you are spirit and life".

                 John 6:63 AMPC

Hmm,...the words I have been speaking to you are SPIRIT and LIFE. Here, Jesus Christ is saying His words are spirits, and that they have life and can give life. Jesus Christ proved this to be true several times in the Bible when He spoke His words to heal the sick and used His words to affect many things including humans, fish, ocean, trees, death, etc. 

Just as it was true for the Lord Jesus Christ, I believe the words of every man or woman also have life. Your words and my words are spirits. They have life and can give life. In another place in the bible, the Word says;

                "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him                       from the dead, thou shalt be saved."

                  Romans 10:9

This means it is not enough to believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is Lord, you have to say it out with your mouth for you to be saved. 

In some other places, the Bible says:

                "The words you say will either acquit you or condemn you." 

                Matthew 12:37 NLT

                

                "It’s not what goes into your mouth that defiles you; you are defiled by the words that come out of your mouth."

                Matthew 15:11 NLT

                "If you want to enjoy life and see many happy days, keep your tongue from speaking evil and your lips from telling                    lies." 1 Peter 3:10 NLT

                ".........let the weak say, “I am strong.”
                Joel 3:10 KJV

All these Bible passages point to the fact that your words and my words are spirits and have life, and depending on what we say or hear, our words can save or destroy life. 

As you can see, words can naturally affect you positively (good words) or negatively (bad words),  and spiritual knowledge shows that words are spirits and they are able to give or take life. In fact, every man is at the mercy of the words he speaks or hears.

Therefore to win with words, you must engage yourself only in hearing and speaking positive and encouraging words. You must ensure that the words that enter you or come out of your mouth to yourself and others are words that make people win. So the rule is, "speak positive words or don't speak at all." 

3 tips for having a well-balanced life

A well-balanced life is a life that is based on the right priorities. A person is living a well-balanced life if such a person has found and committed him/herself to only the things that matter most in life. In this video, I share the three most important areas of life you can focus on to have a well-balanced life. It is not enough to only focus on only one of these areas, it takes the three areas to enjoy a balanced life. Click READ MORE below to watch the video!

The first pillar in building a well-balanced life

A well-balanced life is a life that is based on the right priorities. This happens when someone commits him or herself to only the things that matter most in life. It also occurs when a person takes responsibility for every area of his/her life. I call these areas of life pillars.

In my opinion, the three most important pillars to build a balanced life include yourself, knowledge of God, and your relationships. Any person built upon these three pillars will enjoy well-balanced life. In this article I write on "develop and maintain) yourself" as the first pillar in building a well-balanced life. 

Yourself 

The most important entity in your life is yourself. To become anything in life you need to first stay alive. Also, to build a balanced life, you must build your self up with some 'pure stones', comprising of health, talents, skills, and education, which are needed to build a strong pillar for a successful and well-balanced life. 

1. Health. 

It's very important to first know your health status and do everything to improve your health. You cannot do anything if your health is bad. So you must do everything that is needed to stay healthy. This may include living a clean life, eating well, eating balanced diets, fruits and vegetables, doing regular exercise, and avoid bad eating and drinking habits including smoking cigarettes and drinking too much alcoholics. Aslo visit medical clinics regularly for medical checkups to ensure that your health is on point. Maintaining your health will enable you to enjoy every other areas of your life 

2. Talents. 

Your talents are your gifts, your natural abilities. These may be natural abilities to sing or compose songs, write poems. Your talent may be public speaking, running or any other sporting event. Whatever it is that is your talent, identify, develop, master, and use it everywhere any time you find the opportunity. Never forget or abandon your talent. Package your talent and let people know about it everywhere. Doing this will help bring the talent to those that will appreciate it and as well pay for it, and make you useful in that area. This can contribute to a well-balanced life.

3. Skills. 

Skill is the ability to do something very well. Your skills are the things or works you can do very well. There are many kinds of skills that are needed to succeed in life. To get the best out of life it is important to identify your skills, develop them and more skills, and engage your skills in a way that will better your world and bring financial rewards or good recognition to you. This will make you feel fulfilled in the areas that you exercise them.

4. Educations. 

Knowledge is power and education is how to get it. Life is a dangerous zone for those who don't know what to do (to have a successful life). To build a successful and balanced life, you need relevant knowledge that will contribute to your personal, family and work life. To do this you need education. There are many ways to obtain educations, but broadly there are three forms of education. There are formal, non-formal, and informal educations. 

• Formal education. This is the education you obtain in schools. It is the kind of education you obtain from primary school to the university level. It is meant to provide you with the knowledge that will empower you to become an expert in an area of life, such as medicine, government, agriculture, administration, accounting, etc. Usually, you will receive a certificate or degree after completing formal education. Obtaining and using such education will contribute to your fulfillment and building a balanced life.

• Non-formal education. This is the education you obtain outside schools but structured to make you a professional in an area of life. It may be a form of training you obtain from professionals or experts in any area of life. It is similar to formal education in that it can make you become an expert in an area of life, but it is different because it is obtained outside school settings. Examples may school learning fashion designing, fishing, agriculture, trading, metal works, woodworks, etc. from professionals. 

• Informal or life education. This is the education you receive from life experience. It is a self or automatic education that you get from home and the community. This form of education is also known as unconscious eduction because it mainly comprises of the things you learn from life experiences, which you did not necessarily plan for. It is the most powerful and permanent form. It trains you on how to use other forms of education. Without informal education, other education may be wrongly utilized. 

To build a balanced life, you must continue to educate yourself using any of these forms of education, and apply the lessons to your life - family, work, and society. Combining sound education with great talents, skills, and physical health will make a great pillar in building a well-balanced life.

My first encounter with God's power

My first encounter with God happened when I was about 11 years old, when I was in darkness, not knowing who I was and what the future holds for me.

As a child I grew up to find out that I have no parents. What I was told was that my parents passed two (dad) and three (mom) years after my birth. And from then on I had been living with my parents' relatives, from one house to another. The home I was when I was about 11 was my second foster home, I think. The person that I was living with was my great uncle - my father's elder brother. I called him 'Bami' (my father). He was a very old man and spent most time in the village-town due to his farm work. So I had to live with him in the village instead of our hometown.

The village-town is one of the various farm settlements (camp) where people from our hometown do their farm work. Most people live there, working from Monday to Friday or on monthly basis and then spend their weekends in the hometown city for relaxation and enjoyment. Those who have nowhere else to go would stay in the village-town all through week days or several months before visiting hometown. I was always there most days of the years. I only visited hometown with Bami whenever he was visiting for a long time and there was no one I could stay with in the village before he returns to the village.

Most times, there were always enough food available in the village. But the numbers of my clothes were few. I would wear whatever clothes and shoes were provided and slept on leaf mat or plastic sheets meant for drying cacao. There was no luxuries, no birthdays, and no toys. But sometimes I do get gifts from people when I run errand for them. Though I was enrolled in a Village School at the back of my foster home, I didn't understand anything being taught there, and I always got the last position in my class. I couldn't recite ABC. I couldn't read or write nor understood any simple arithmetic, even though I was over 11 years old. Moreover, no one was really there to care about my performance in school. Bami was too old to undergo the stress of homeschooling me. 

However, when I was a little bit above 11 years old God showed up and changed my life. He came through my (now late) brother Wilson Akinrinlola to take me from the village-town (Omilifon Camp) to our hometown (Odode Idanre) and enrolled me into a better Primary School. There I was enrolled into Pry 3, instead of Pry 6, because I couldn't read or write - not even able spell out my own name. Afterwards, my brother would come to my foster home every evening to teach me how to read and write. He would teach me the Yoruba Alphabets and show me how to form syllables, to pronounce simple letter words. He did that almost every evening for many days.

Coincidentally it was during this period that I happened to come to know about God - about His ability and willingness to give wisdom and understanding to people that ask Him. And I remember one day, I prayed to God asking Him to Give me knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. I told Him to make me The Head and not The Tail, that I too want to be known for excellence among my peers. And God heard me and answered my prayers requests that day. 

Not too long from that day, I was able to read and understand everything I was taught, both at home and in school. It appeared to me that my eyes were just opened. I understood things clearly and could remember whatever we were taught in schools, even without having to read my notes. I can learn anything and do them excellently. I became very good that I became the best student in my class and got First Position starting from that term. And by the time we got to Pry 4 I was selected by our class teacher to replace our Class Captain, who was removed from office for stealing another student's item. Some of my duty was to maintain order in class and collect homework from my class mates for submission to our class teacher and vice versa. I maintained my status as the best student and Class Captain till my final year in Primary school, and also served as the School Senior Prefect Boy (Senior Boy) in the final year. Truly, my status was changed from being The Tail to become The Head as I requested from God. 

This experience - how God used people (especially my late brother) to change my life and grant my prayers request, giving me knowledge, wisdom, and understanding - was the beginning of my journey and encounter with God. It was the first encounter that changed my life forever, and it was over 20 years ago! But there are still many more encounters I have had with God that is left to be written another day, hopefully. 

My hope is that this story will inspire faith in your heart to put you trust in God through Jesus Christ, His Son! May God bless  you!

Be a role model

One of the proven ways people become great in life is by living a life of a role model early in life. To be a role model means you are the kind of person that other people like to look up to because they respect the way you do what you do, and they want to learn from you.

One unique attribute of a role model is that they set standards and values by which they live their life. To be a role model means you do not just do things anyhow. It means you do things the way they are meant to be done. You do the right things in the right way - excellently. It also means you do not live by chance, you live by choice- you set your standards! If you check the story of every great person you know around you, you would find out that these attributes are part of their daily lifestyle. What's your daily lifestyle? 

I once ready about Ben Carson, who became the youngest Chief Pediatric Neurosurgeon in the United States at the age of 33. This man was also the first neurosurgeon that successfully separated conjoined twins joined at the back of the head, and also the person to first perform a successful operation on an unborn baby inside its mother's womb. And this person is still alive today, serving in the United States government as a senator.

Among other things, one fundamental secret of his success is traceable to a routine lifestyle he developed while he was a teenager. As a young boy, he was instructed by his mother to read and write a report on two library books per week. First the exercise was boring and seemed to be impossible to achieve, but later through this exercise he became addicted to reading, after he soon found out that his grade began to improve in school. And he later became one of the top graders in his class. It was this good reading habit that made him one of the greatest scientists and doctors that ever practiced in the United States. 

This is just one example, but I know there are many more people in the world who became a great personality because of the great standards they set for themselves as they grow through life. I hope people like these and the example I shared here will inspire you to set great standards for yourself and start to live a different lifestyle, so that you too could begin your journey to become a great standard in life - a great role model.

Dr. Ben Carsonn