stick with the PROCESS!

After the launch of our maiden edition of Effectual Magazine, I felt invincible like I was able to do anything.  It seemed that all the pain and toil and planning had paid off and nothing was ever going to go wrong again!

This feeling lasted exactly three weeks because; something happened that I hadn’t thought about.  Immediately after the launch people were calling from all kinds of places to request for the magazine.  The least number of copies they asked for was twenty.  By the tenth day, practically all the copies were out of our hands, and I said to myself we have arrived!

You can imagine my dismay when three weeks later they started to return the magazines, most of them the exact number of copies they collected!  We started to receive reports like, people said it was too expensive; people don’t know the magazine so will rather spend their monies on what they already knew! And even excuses as ridiculous as (and this was from churches) ‘the Pastor’s wife also wants to publish a magazine, and so would not allow for what might be a competition to her own mag, that is yet to be published, to be sold in the church! Waoh! I felt I should pack up the office and go back home.

We had invested so much money and it seemed we were never going to be able to sell the mags!  To make matters worse, my staff was beaten even before we started! As soon as the mags were returned, they started to look for new jobs because; to them it meant that the business was going to collapse soon.

I know if you are trying to live your dream you must have your own version of this story!  And I also know that some of us have given up or are at the verge of giving up because of this snag.

The truth is that moments like this will definitely happen in the course of living your dreams, sooner than you expected actually! 

But let me tell you what is on the flip side, as it happened to me!  After going around discouraged for a while it dawned on me, that I must keep going!  I realized that the only thing that I can do now is find a creative way of marketing the mag and keep doing what I was doing!  I resorted to ensuring that my content remained great and I sent out as many complimentary copies as I could.  Today three years later!  I can say that our market share is increasing by the day.  There is still so much we have not captured, but we are a long way from where we started.

If you will persevere and understand that dreams are for the long haul and never short term, then you will find the will to remain where you are and get going until you hit gold. 

I heard a story long time ago of a man who was contracted to break a rock into pieces with a hammer, and he was at it for months, it seemed to him that he had only been able to chip at the rock in bits so after eight grueling months, he gives up and abandons the work.  A day later a little boy comes playing around the rock and kept kicking his ball against it, by the sixth kick, the rock breaks in two and oil starts to gush out. 

The owner of the rock gives the boy a percent of the proceeds because he broke the rock open.  The truth was that all the while the man was hammering at the rock it was giving way from inside out.  He gave up too soon and so lost his reward.

If you will persevere and stick with the dream, you will reap the reward that lies within it.  Remember, God will not call you to non-profitable work.  Remember, it may seem hard, but if you stick it out, your day will come… nevertheless.

Love you lots,

SistaB

Take Ownership!

 

Hi there, It’s great to connect here again.  On the last post I talked about getting a car, and how the picture in my mind determined which car I settled for in the end. 

I’d like to bring to your notice something about the post that you might not have noticed, and that is the fact that even though the car had not been bought yet, at the point the events narrated in that story were unfolding, I kept referring to it as ‘my car’.  Why did I keep referring to a car that I was yet to buy or pay for as my car?

The answer is the subject of today’s post, which is taking ownership of that which I had seen in my mind.  Once you have been able to clarify in your mind, the picture of the future that you desire, the next step will be to begin to own it and affirm that ownership.  By the time I knew what brand of car, model and options I wanted, I began to tell my friends, whenever our conversations drifted to cars, what my car looked like.

It became impossible to persuade me that any other car was better than the one I wanted.  I kept referring to it as my car, and I just kept affirming the fact that it was the car I was going to get.  The issue wasn’t just bragging around about a picture I had seen, instead it was getting my mind to believe what it was that I wanted and the more I affirmed it, the more possible it became to me.

Now there have been other times when I saw a picture of something I should be doing, especially where ideas are concerned and the more I claimed ownership and talked about it, the clearer the process became to me.  The future is dependent on the choices that we make on a daily basis, and when a picture forms in my mind, I choose to make it mine and the more I think about it, and accept responsibility for it (which is what ownership is about) the easier it becomes to work the process.

The more I claimed the car as mine, the more I realized that it was going to be paid for, and that I will also have to take care of it, by the time I got it and all that.

Taking ownership of a picture before manifestation provides you with the time to think the working process through and take responsibility for it.  So rather than refer to that idea as just that business idea refer to it by your brand name, and see how it feels.

Another reason why ownership is key is the feeling of having achieved your dream, even before you start to work it out. There is a euphoria that hits you when you can own an idea or picture enough to see yourself when it has been concluded.

Till next time, I know February is on the roll and it seems that you are been left behind, remember it is not of him that wills or of him who runs; it is the Lord who shows mercy.  If you begin to do your bit now, you will make it… nevertheless.

Love you lots

Sistar B