Read an Excerpt
Live Your Potential and Let Your Faith Lead You to Success
By JoAnn Youngblood King Balboa Press
Copyright © 2015 JoAnn Youngblood King
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5043-2902-6
CHAPTER 1
How to Develop Your Faith and Yourself
There is a Buddhist term, Honnin-myo which means from this moment on. It expresses the concept that every moment is a new beginning.
No matter what has gone on in your life up to this moment, if you are ready to be successful, now is the time to make a fresh start. This moment, as you start to read this book, is your new beginning.
What you will learn about faith and its power now will help you obliterate those things from your past that are holding you back from having the life of your dreams.
You have the potential inside of you to have the type of life to which you aspire. You may not be aware of that, or be confident of that, or trust that. Your potential may be chained to the cement blocks of your doubts. But it is there, ready to be activated.
To be successful, all you really need is to have the faith to simply get started.
Will mistakes happen? Will obstacles stand in your path?
Possibly.
However, remember that mistakes and obstacles only come to help you grow. It doesn't matter how many times you try something; you can always start over again.
And the time that you have the faith that it will work, it will.
The world is full of people who became amazing success stories because they had the faith in themselves to keep trying.
Nelson Mandela spent most of his life in jail fighting the injustice of the apartheid system. He never stopped fighting and finally saw his goal realized. Henry Ford went broke five times before he founded the amazingly successful Ford Motor Company.
R. H. Macy, a man who often talked about the impact of faith in his life, had seven failed businesses before he succeeded spectacularly with his store in New York City.
The story of being successful is about having the faith to "start from now" and try again.
Do you have that faith?
This book will guide you to develop it and use it to pull out the goals and dreams inside of you and make them a reality.
The important thing to realize is that you come to this moment primed for success. The ability and the drive is within you; you just haven't extracted it yet.
Believing, trusting and having faith will bring it out and make it happen.
Start from now.
The beginning of the process is developing your faith. The middle is learning how to use that faith to bring out your own personal best to make the essential decisions and life choices that will lead to your success. The happy ending is your achievement of success and your acceptance of it as the way you wish to lead your life.
Let us talk first about the development of your faith.
We are all born with faith. Faith is the belief that the parent who cradles us in their arms will not drop us. It makes us stop crying and snuggle in, feeling warm and safe. Gradually, this sense of trust and faith grows stronger. As a toddler, we will jump into a swimming pool into the arms of our parent or care-giver, trusting they will catch us and keep us from drowning.
Faith is a simple concept when we are young. We believe in those around us and we believe in a force greater than ourselves to guide us.
As an adult, our faith is shaped by our experiences. Even people who proclaim they have no faith actually do have it; they just don't recognize it for what it is.
For instance, one person believes that they will have wonderful eyesight because they eat carrots every day. The fact that they have maintained 20/20 vision all of their life confirms and strengthens their faith in this fact. Because of their experience, they have developed faith in the benefit of eating carrots.
This is a very simple example of how we develop our faith.
When you believe in and trust in something so strongly, it develops into knowing. There is a certain peacefulness and calmness in knowing what you know.
Faith is a very powerful quality, and the single most powerful quality to help you achieve success.
When you grow up and embrace life's disappointments and disillusions, you grow wary of faith. You challenge yourself that faith has no place within your logical thinking.
We need to re-develop our faith if we are to grow and succeed to the best of our potential.
One of the best ways to start doing this is to start again to believe in the goodness of the universe in general and the people whose lives touch ours in particular. We cannot let the bad things that have happened to us destroy our faith in the potential for good things to happen.
Our world is full of natural beauty and rich resources that sustain us. The miracle of sowing seeds to grow our food is a visible expression of our faith in this universe. So is believing that the air we need to breathe will continue to be there for us, that the sun will warm us, and the rain will nourish our fields and help us produce a harvest to sustain us.
It is a graceful transition to move our faith from the universe to the people in it. The more people I meet in my coaching business, the more amazed I become at the goodness and talent most people possess. Getting to know them reaffirms my faith in human nature daily. I have faith that despite the occasional bad things that people do, the bulk of individuals mean no ill to their fellow man and are merely struggling to make the most of their own potential.
Developing faith in our world and its people are the easy parts. Developing faith in yourself is the difficult challenge. It will take a process starting from today that will take you down a road of learning to understand your potential, to control your worry and anxiety, to believe in your capabilities and to find the courage to take the actions to succeed.
I have noticed that people who have strong faith are not easily swayed by any negativity or obstacles that come their way.
This is why having strong faith is so important when striving to have a successful life.
To be truly successful, developing faith is not enough on its own. You must also live your life in a manner that shows proof of your faith. You must let your faith guide your actions.
Having faith without using it to guide your actions is a wasted resource.
You need to act on your faith. You need to let it inspire your actions. What you will discover is that taking these actions is much easier once you have faith. The two are tightly inter-woven.
Faith is associated with believing in and trusting an unseen force in the universe which governs everything. While this force has been called many names by different religions and philosophies, what is constant is that faith is best expressed as part of your own personal experience and connection with that force.
Think about what you believe in. Even on your darkest day, there is someone or somebody or something that still sparks your faith. Cling to that and prepare to summon it on your road to success that lies ahead.
Something to think about:
Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. And lo, no one was there.
- Anonymous
Faith is daring the soul to go beyond what the eyes can see.
- William Newton Clark
Something to do
Set aside time today to begin a faith journal. Think about the universe around you and write down some things that you believe to be true about it. What parts of your world do you have faith in? Think about your family, your children and your friends and consider your faith in them. Look deeper now, deeper than your world and your close circle of people moving through it. Do you believe in a higher overall power? Can you find a source from which you can be empowered?
Finally, think about yourself. What do you know for sure about yourself and your abilities and potential? What do you have faith in? List these qualities in yourself that you know you can summon as you need them.
CHAPTER 2
Do Your Actions Reflect Your Faith?
We now know that simply having faith is not enough to succeed.
We need to live our faith by taking actions.
The encouraging aspect of faith is that once you develop it, it will inspire your actions and make them easier to accomplish.
It will also help you pull from yourself the ingredients to succeed.
Living my faith always makes me think about a television commercial I used to see many years ago.
The commercial referred to fresh ingredients that good cooks would use if they were making spaghetti sauce from scratch. The company used the commercial to assure viewers that even if this sauce came packaged in a jar, it was as vital and tasty as one which was made from scratch.
When clients talk to me about what they want to achieve and how they are going to overcome obstacles, I find myself reminding them that just like the fresh ingredients, their potential for success is in them.
Their faith will guide them to the actions they need to take to achieve their goals.
I know from personal experience that through faith you will be able to summon the strength and skill needed to live the life of your dreams.
I am so grateful to have supportive people around me who help me keep my faith and stay focused on my goals and dreams. They keep reminding me when I stumble that the potential is in there and then I find the strength to bring out what I need to overcome whatever struggle I am facing.
I am also able to contrast the difference it makes between having faith and not having it. This is how I would illustrate that.
Many years ago I saw a woman walking down the street with her daughter. Just as they were passing by me, I heard the little girl say: "Mommy, where are we going?"
The woman replied: "Be quiet and just be happy you're going somewhere!"
When I heard this, I thought that this is probably one of the reasons why some people walk about aimlessly, without knowing where they are headed in life, or not even striving to do something that makes their lives better.
When the people we have faith in don't encourage us to understand our destination and reach it, it is difficult for us to trust our own internal compass.
Lack of faith in our abilities from the people close to us also eats away at our faith in ourselves.
When I was about 14 years old, my older brother asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said "I want to be a statistician."
He said: "Oh, you're not going to be able to do that."
I never even questioned why he thought that. I just started thinking of something else I could do.
I'm sure the intention of the little girl's mother and my brother was not to stop us from moving forward with our dreams and goals. However, messages such as these get filed right into our subconscious mind
As children, we may not have had so much control over what we saw or heard growing up. However, as adults, we definitely have control over what we choose to take in.
What you put into your mind has an effect on your whole life. It impacts your perspective on things and your faith in the world around you, and ultimately, your faith in yourself.
Watching the news can often cause you to worry and keep you in a constant state of fear. Also, being around certain people can keep you in a negative frame of mind.
If you find yourself in the presence of anything that may not be helping to move you to a higher level of success, do what you can to remove yourself.
I'm not suggesting that you stop watching the news altogether and I am aware that you may not be able to avoid some naysayers. I'm simply saying to be mindful of how you are choosing to react to or hold on to the information you are receiving.
Faith is fuelled by positivity. That is not limited to just your efforts to speak positively about life, about others, and about yourself. It is equally important for you to seek out positive and uplifting messages and let them into your mind on a regular basis.
One reason I've been able to accomplish many goals is my consistent desire to look for the positive in life. I listen to lectures and read voraciously all the literature about self-improvement and being a success. I know that to a large extent what goes into our minds is what comes out.
I have a second reason for exuding positivity. Because of the nature of the business I chose, as a success coach I want to be fuelled with positivity and be able to apply those positive messages to help others achieve success. Helping others to succeed is my passion.
Positive messages touch your soul and elevate your spirit. They make you smile, infuse you with energy, and spur you to take action to achieve success.
Focusing on and seeking out positive messages will also make it easier for you to view in a better way any obstacles that may arise. For example, I'm sure there have been times in your life when you were told "no," perhaps from a potential client. Hearing the word "no," doesn't mean never, it just simply means "no."
For that client, at that time, they were not interested. For every person not interested in what you have to offer, there is someone who is interested. There are millions of messages, so make sure you are listening to and applying the positive ones.
It is important to listen to all the messages and sort through what you believe.
You can only do that when you have a firm grasp on what you do believe.
What do you stand for?
Knowing what faith and beliefs are deep inside of you help people to better grasp who you are and decide if they want to help you or not. Always remember, it's not what you say, it's how you live your life that speaks volumes.
There are many people who try to convince others to do what they say or to believe what they believe. It's important for you to know that the real way to convince someone of something is to show them with your actions.
Your actions really, really do speak louder than your words. Take a look at your faith and ask yourself: Am I showing proof of my faith through my daily actions?
Think about all the spiritual, business and political leaders of the world who announce what they believe in and then, by their actions, destroy all of their own credibility.
Think of others who inspire us for decades by putting into action the faith they talk about. Those are the people you believe.
As an entrepreneur, you may decide to find a mentor to help you achieve the successful life you desire.
Would you rather have a mentor who tells you what you should do or a mentor who shows you with his or her own life how you can accomplish your goals?
It would be in your best interest to find someone who is walking the talk instead of just talking the talk.
I've heard parents say to their children: "Do what I say, not what I do."
Regardless of that request, most of the time children end up doing what their parents do instead of listening to what they say to do.
If you find yourself complaining about the way someone else is living their life, instead of complaining, focus on you. Make sure that you are doing your best to be a good example. Don't talk about it, be about it.
Being a great example to others is one of the greatest gifts you can give them and exemplifies what it is like to live with faith.
Be the example of your faith. Be the example of your values. Be the example of what you would like to see in others. You can make a bigger impact on the lives of others when you lead by example.
Something to think about:
Faith is a bird that feels dawn breaking and sings while it is still dark.
- Rabindranath Tagore
Faith does not make things easy – it makes them possible.
- Anonymous
Something to do:
From this moment, start taking action towards your dreams and goals. Make two fresh new action steps this week towards your success.
There are people in need of the services you offer. Think about how your actions and how you present yourself will help to convince them you are the real deal, that you live the faith you have in yourself and them.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Live Your Potential and Let Your Faith Lead You to Success by JoAnn Youngblood King. Copyright © 2015 JoAnn Youngblood King. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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