The Power of a Mentor

Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom, and with all your getting, get understanding.

Wisdom is one of the most powerful forces on earth. It is the difference between failure and success; between poverty and prosperity; between defeat and victory; between stagnation and promotion.

We are discussing a vital key to wisdom, MENTORING.

King Solomon in the Bible had a remarkable dream. God told him to ask for anything he desired. Solomon asked only for wisdom. This was God’s reply; “Because your greatest desire is to help your people, and you haven’t asked for long life, but for wisdom and knowledge to properly guide my people, yes, I am giving you the wisdom and knowledge you asked for. And I am also giving you such riches, wealth and honour as no other king has ever had before you!”

You see, the wisest king in the Bible was also the wealthiest. Wisdom is powerful.

You Too Can Have Access To The Wise

Now, you may not encounter God in a dream like Solomon, but you can have access to wisdom too. One of the proverbs of King Solomon says, “He that walks with the wise will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.”

You too can receive wisdom through association with the wise. I call that Mentoring. It is also known as Coaching.

Dear friend, God has positioned mentors around you to minimize your mistakes and maximize your potential for success. Learn from them and get ready to rise to the top.

Mentors inspire us.

Mentors enhance our speed in life.

Mentors are our gates to greatness.

We are wise when we admit that there are people who know better than we do, and we learn from them.

Three Dimensions To Mentoring

1.         Parental Mentoring

Parents have the responsibility for grooming children for future success in their adult life. Our greatest heritage from our parents is wisdom, and God’s grace on their lives.

2.         Professional Mentoring

This is the acquisition of wisdom from teachers, employers, and those who have excelled in our chosen line of career.

3.         Pastoral Mentoring

This is the acquisition of the wisdom of God through our spiritual leaders. Several people in the Bible prospered through their relationships with ministers of the gospel.

Who Is Your Mentor

Now, in a mentoring relationship, the one who provides the wisdom is known as the mentor. The one who receives is known as the mentee or protégée.

Dear friend, who is your mentor? Archbishop Benson Idahosa once said; “If someone has achieved ten times what you are trying to achieve once, the person knows something you don’t know.”

Productive and Non- Productive Protégées

Some protégées are passive. They leave all the initiative to the mentor. They do not pursue their mentors. They do not ask probing questions. Such protégées do not get much out of a mentoring relationship.

Other protégées are parasites. They only want to take advantage of the mentor. They take advantage of the mentor’s name, influence and money. They do not want to pay the price for developing themselves. And just in case the mentor corrects them, they move away.

Lastly, there are protégées who are productive. They take full advantage of the mentoring relationship and carefully apply the wisdom that they derive from it.

Let me describe some qualities of productive protégées:

1.         They invest whatever it takes to maintain contact with their mentors.

2.         They respect the advice of their mentors.

3.         They freely discuss their greatest dreams with their mentors.

4.         They discuss their fears and challenges with their mentors.

5.         The sow seeds of appreciation into the lives of their mentors.

Productive protégées publicly acknowledge and honour their mentors.  Ultimately, good protégées step into the shoes of their mentors. They become mentors themselves.

Your mentor is your doorway to the future. God will lead you and connect you with those who will bring out the best in you.  Your mentor is a preview of your future.

Qualities Of An Exceptional Mentor

1.     A mentor invests time with the protégée. Communicating wisdom requires time.

2.   Exceptional mentors usually create exceptional protégées. Like begets like

3.      The exceptional mentor measures the passion of his protégée by his pursuit of the mentor. The proof of desire is pursuit. Sometimes, a protégée needs a strong desire and perseverance to get the attention of his mentor.

4.        A mentor knows precisely the path that the protégée must tread to make it to the top. He can analyse his own success and pass on the principles that helped him to the top. He can teach also from his past mistakes.

5.    A mentor is honest enough to correct the protégée even at the risk of being misunderstood and alienated by the protégée.

6.  A mentor can often identify weaknesses in the protégée that has the potential to result in a pitfall.

7.         A mentor exposes fraudulent people to his protégée. Christ warned His disciples repeatedly about the Pharisees.

8.         The exceptional mentor desires for his protégée to go further than he has gone. “He who believes me, the works that I do shall he do and greater works than these shall he do …”

9.         The exceptional mentor is not threatened by the success of his protégée. Rather, he considers it as part of his own success.

Dear friend, ask God to direct you to mentors whose wisdom will bring divine acceleration to your destiny. Also, remember that success without a successor is failure. Pass on what you know. I believe this will be the most exciting day so far.

It is good for you to have mentors in business, marriage, career, and ministry. They will inspire, challenge and guide you. Read their books, listen to them. Experience, they say, is the best teacher. Yet it is better and cheaper to acquire wisdom through the experience of others. I pray, that God will help you move away from those who will divide and subtract from you and bring into your life those who will multiply and add to you.

On the other hand, are you in a position to mentor others? You see, poor protégées hardly become excellent mentors. If God has lifted you, are you a mentor? Are you passing on your wisdom to someone? Are you a mentor as a parent or as a professional? Mentoring changes lives. You can multiply your success. When you help others to rise, you will not go down yourself.

-Sam Adeyemi

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The Gospel of Dreams

"Forge ahead, expand your world, widen your horizon, raise your bar, enlarge your capacity to move above circumstances"

We all call it a "dream". Whenever we nuture a potential fantasy, we term it a " dream" not considering whether it's realistic or not. When I decided to do this stuff (blogging, article writing and business consultancy and so on)  amongst other things I do because, they came as a dream. It actually became clear that a dream is an imagination, an idea, a deep consistent thought, a vision that does not lack the breath of life, feasibility, viability, practicability and sustainability. And virtually all dreams have these qualities while very little are 10 steps from where you are ... What I'm trying to point out is that, life is in stages and some reasons why some people don't even try to attempt what they say they saw(vision or dream) is that there was no step by step action plan to get to the destination(dream destination). Most visions reveal destinations but you need to figure out the map that'll be suitable and convinient for you to get there.

Honestly, I have discovered that there exists a common denominator, a similar trait responsible for catapulting people from zero to zenith,grass to grace no matter what field of endeavour one finds himself and that is, optimism, focus, commitment, hard work, a never say never spirit, and at some point homework.

A dream is like a foetus that will finally develop into a baby which is delivered at birth/maturity. For a dream to be attainable, just like a healthy baby, it needs some nutrients, " a balanced diet " that'll ensure proper growth and development. A dream always provide a potential way forward after perception. It will open the gate for you, it's now left for you to take action, step forward in faith, walk through the gate, and then, you're heading to your promise land. From time to time, just like every other thing in life, there'll be moments of reality, moments when you feel you're between the red sea and the Egyptian army, i mean a time of confusion, a time where there seem to be no option, a time where there are no indications on what to do next, where to go next and the only sign you seem to see is QUIT!, a time of exhaustion. This phase of life had caused many Havocs, it made some people make career-threatening decisions, like Steve Jobs who sold most of his stakes at Apple when he was first fired which could have made him an all-time world's richest man. I believe he was frustrated at that point... It has made some commit suicide. It's a frustrating phase of life. Sometimes, it surfaces as outright failure.A time of Cold wind. Sometimes, it's like breakdown at the edge of breakthrough. It's a time when you're left alone to decide for yourself("which way forward?"). It's a decisive stage, a stage where what you said you "saw" is being challenged. A Stage that decides whether it's a dream or a doom. This is where the boys are separated from the men, I mean where the girls are separated from the women...If you faint in times of adversity, your strength is small. The ability to scale the hurdles, conquer the obstacles to make a head way makes all the difference.You have greatness within you. You'll never know if you don't let it out. Step out in faith knowing that                                                  "It took the Lion lots of courage to be brave"

Forge ahead, expand your world, widen your horizon, raise your bar, enlarge your capacity to move above circumstances, extend your borders, break your prison, break and set records...That's the gospel of a dream!

D- Dedicate and

R- Resolute to

E- Ensure

A- Achieved

M- Mission .

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•  The Art of Gratitude
• Successful Habits
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Successful Habits

Success is the achievement of God’s set goals for your life.

Habits are those things we do consistently and almost without thinking. Though we do not decide our destiny directly, we decide on our habits. Our habits determine our character and our character determines our destiny. We can therefore say that godly habits bring about success.

Note that if you do something consistently for 21 days, it becomes a habit. If you have a bad habit, the best way to overcome it is to override it with a good habit.

Every human being has different habits that shape their characters differently. But to be a successful person, there are certain habits you need to develop. Without them success will only be a mirage.

I want to share some of these habits with you.

Meditation: Meditation means to roll over in thought. When you meditate, you align all your senses to focuse on a particular thing, which could be an idea or a word or even a picture. If you are too busy to think, then you are too busy to succeed. Set aside a time, daily or at least weekly, that you will meditate on the word of God.

Prayer: People who succeed supernaturally make it a habit to pray. Hearing from God guarantees total life success. It is better to talk to God about our challenges than complain about them. Pray with faith and thanksgiving in your heart.

Responsibility: This is your ability to respond to different situations. It is not what happens to us that hurt or affect us; it is the way we choose to respond to situations. You can choose not to blame anybody or any circumstance for your present predicament and you will find yourself making decisions and taking actions that will lead you to success. Act rather than react.

Self- improvement: How you daily improve on yourself is what makes you outstanding. Take out time to listen to tapes and read. Statistics show that if you read for one hour daily in your area of specialty for 2 to 3 years, you become an authority. In 5 years you will be among the top 5%, in 10 years, you will be among the top 1%.

Positive talk: Successful people will correct the language of one who speaks negatively. Death and life are in the power of the tongue; talk life! Positive talk puts your mind to work; you will never be stranded because you will always be able to figure a way out.

The Seed principle: It is also called the law of cause and effect. The harvest of today are the results of seeds planted yesterday, there is no cause without an effect. Everyone with a seed has a guaranteed future with God. The death of a seed is the burial of a forest.

Persistence: This is the attitude of not giving up until you achieve the desired results. Persistence wears out your challenges. To persist means to continue doing something in spite of difficulty or opposition. Everybody desires to succeed but unfortunately not everybody does. Not because they cannot, but because they did not persist or persevere.

Action orientation: Nothing moves until you move it. Fear causes you to delay action but action delayed is destiny denied, destiny denied is the devil’s delight. You destiny will not be denied.

Planning: Planning is thinking ahead. When preparation meets opportunity, success is achieved. Planning helps you to solve problems up front. Planning makes you see ahead and when you see ahead, you can win ahead.

Service: You need to be passionate about what to give rather than what to get. When you are out just to get, you may fail, but when you share of yourself, you multiply. Serve others with you gifts. Even if you are not paid for it at first, continue serving and at the end of the day you will surely be rewarded.

-Sam Adeyemi

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Living the life of your Dreams

Life is designed for progression and not stagnation. One of the greatest discoveries you will make in life is this: as you change and improve, things and people will change and improve around you.

As these changes begin to occur, I want you to note that no matter what you want to achieve, your position does not count as much as your disposition. A positive disposition will ultimately guarantee a favourable position.

Let me share a personal experience with you. After I completed my NYSC, I thought getting a good job would be automatic. But like many others, I had to sit at home for over a year.

Throughout that period, I made up my mind that I was not going to worry about my unemployed status though I had not gotten a job for over a year. I said to myself; “I am not going to be unemployed forever, I am taking this as a brief holiday.” I went to my pastor and said, “I am offering to work as a volunteer.”

The moment I broke free from that mindset of not being employed, somebody came to church on a Sunday and said, “I heard that they need a Civil Engineer on this particular site.” I thought, could it be so easy? I applied for the job and two of us were called for an interview. They needed somebody with three years experience, but I was freshly out of school, while the other candidate had the experience. I could not answer most of the questions they asked me because I had not worked practically on a site before. The panel told me, “Mr. Adeyemi, you have not been able to answer our questions satisfactorily. You don’t have the experience that we need.”

I had read then of the power of attitude, so instantly I spoke to them, “Gentlemen, I appreciate what you have said. It is true that I do not have the experience. But as you can see from my results and from the way I am speaking that I am very intelligent. If you give me this job, I will catch up very fast. I am sure I will be able to deliver what you want within the next few months.”

They thanked me and said they would get in touch. Eventually, a few days later, the person who introduced the job to me said they decided to employ the other person. I said it was okay. Then, he came back after a few days and said, “They said they are not employing the other person anymore, they are employing you. The job is now yours.” I got the job. You know what got the job for me? Attitude! I was positive. I raised their expectation. They knew that if they gave me the job, I would perform well because I believed that I was going to perform well.

What do you believe? What you believe is what you will become.

There are more personal experiences that you can learn from and I want to share them with you. All you may need at this point in your life is that little push that will give you an extra edge; you can leverage on things no one may be willing to share with you in this environment. But I am determined to inspire and motivate you to achieve success. I have already started doing this in the lives of many people on my coaching programme. It would also interest you to know that they are moving from one level of success to another.

-Sam Adeyemi

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Striving for Excellence In a World of Uncertainties

Striving for excellence in a world of Uncertainties

Attaining a position of relevance and significance in life is a universal desire. Everybody wants to succeed. Everybody wants to identify with only with successful men and achievers. No one ever desire to fail. Men who are success-driven in all endeavors are usually challenging and their lifestyles are very contagious. We hold them in high esteem not because of big ideas but their rare determination to go the extra mile with passion and excellence.

 Israel Disraeli (1834), a British literary historian and father of Benjamin Disraeli, a successful statesman affirms "...it is a wretched state to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us". 

Charles Swindoll had a strong distaste for mediocrity and average. He asserts, " Long enough have we settled for less than our best and convinced that achieving one's full potential is a goal worth striving for, that excellence is worth pursuing even if the most yawn and fewer sneer."

To strive is to put in an effort. Striving for excellence is therefore a diligent attempt to attain excellence. In a world filled with uncertainties, excellence is attained by being dogged and committed to one's course come what may. Though the endowments are divine, the nursing and building is human. This means much of the work lies in your ability to pay the price that success requires.

It is of importance to be committed to the desire for excellence. Let nothing deter you from your pathway towards this Nobel goal. Excellence commences with God, condenses in the individual and is consummated upon his environment: human, material, physical, spiritual, etc.

To attain excellence therefore, you must start by:

1. Recognizing the truth of excellence: It's hard work.  There is no success no matter the form that was gotten on the platter of convenience. 

2. Relocating from your present position: Faithfully make an honest evaluation of your present state, forgetting your past failures and freely remove the domain of fear,hesitation and pessimism to forcefully plunge into the realm of faith, hope and optimism.

3. Resolving to Stand Out: The desire to set a mark that'll make you remembered must be burning everyday, every time. The desire to stand out at all cost despite all odds is the fueling force that will determine the extent to which you'll reach. No matter how beautiful,skillful and compacted a car is, the fuel determines the extent to which it can reach. So Likewise, on the highway of success, your desire to succeed is your fuel which determines the extent to which you can go.

Steps:

According to Sir J. Reynolds, "Excellence is never granted a man, but as reward if labour". It however does not stop at that. Your place in the ladder of excellence is also a function of choices and decisions made petsonally or otherwise in the course of your life.

1. FIX A PURPOSE: Every achievement today starts in the mind of some men as a dream. A goal is a dream with a deadline. With goals, you are able to concentrate your effort and pungently direct your powers in a direction that will reward you with academic excellence beyond your wildest expectations.

B. Follow a Plan: A goal without a plan is well prepared for journey into an unknown country with neither guards nor roadmaps. Plans give directions to goals and focus to purpose. Plan to detail; make a 24 hour time table; include time for study, sleeping, cooking, laundry, rest, etc.

C. Faithful Pursuit: Idleness kills. It destroys. Get busy! Lay your hand in something. You either burn the midnight candle or fade into obscurity.

D. Full Persuasion: Forcing your way through to excellence remains the only option for a dogged person. " Never admit failure until you've made your last attempt. Never make your last attempt until you've succeeded "-Dr.E.L.Kramer

CONCLUSION:

Excellence is the royal road to satisfaction. Joy, and peace of mind. Never give up! In a world of uncertainty, you desire fuels the whole process! Yes you can!

KEY POINTS:

1. Everybody wants to succeed but not many are ready to face the task it requires.

2. In a world of uncertainty, your decision to succeed is as important as your desire. Desire with no action is like starting up a car and the accelerator is broken or damaged, you'll go nowhere. Committed action is required.

3. Resolve to Stand Out

4. Get busy. " Idleness is the dead sea that swallows all virtue." - Benjamin Franklin

5. Excellence begats Satisfaction.

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