Your life is entirely in your hands

“They themselves are makers of themselves,” wrote author James Allen many years ago. That is the kind of power a human being possesses. “You will be what you will to be,” he further wrote. Everything you have been, everything you are now and everything you can become is up to you. Your life is like a video game and you have the remote control in your hands. Your success, or lack of it, is entirely up to you.

Jesus Himself taught this truth many centuries ago. “The Kingdom is in your heart,” He taught his disciples. Proverbs 23:7 also teaches that: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he .” Get that?

“Is” here means your current circumstances – your inner character (morality or immorality) – and your outer manifestation (health, poverty, wealth, dependence and so on). Your current circumstance, therefore, is not what influences you; that is simply a revelation of yourself, because as you think, so are you and as you continue to think, so do you remain. In short, you are where you are today because of what you have been thinking.

When temptation, tragedy or misfortune are visited on you, it is your thinking that will determine how you live with your condition. One lame man will crawl to the marketplace to beg for alms, while another without hands will learn to write and paint with his toes. Two women will be coerced to sleep with their boss for a promotion; one will go for it and the other will quit her job in self-respect.

Two men will be retrenched from their jobs; one will shut himself in his house in agony until his children have nothing to eat, are sent away from school for lack of fees and the landlord kicks him out of the house. The other will take up any available menial job or start a food kiosk as he waits for the job that befits him. Two neighbours will be displaced  from their farms following tribal clashes; one will live in a tent in an IDP camp and forever wait for the government to come to his rescue, while the other will live in the camp only momentarily and then move on. The moment he receives the first assistance from friends, family, well-wishers or the government, he abandons his tent and buys a sack of potatoes, which he takes to the market to sell. This becomes the beginning of a successful business and he never wears the title of “IDP” again.

Quoting from James Allen again: “A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak, abject and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts.” By thoughts, the writer did not mean daydreaming. Majority of people dismiss such teachings arguing that they have been thinking big but have nothing to show for it. Thinking alone will not get you out of the IDP camp.

You have to use what corporate organisations call ‘strategic thinking’ to get you out. This is thinking geared towards action, and actually taking the required steps to actualise your ideas. Do not imagine yourself graduating with a Master’s degree and holding a big party surrounded by happy villagers who celebrate your achievement in song and dance if you don’t enroll in college. Many people are miserable not because they have nothing, but because they are never satisfied with what they have. A man who is able to take care of his family, educate his children, save a little and give a little back to society should not call himself poor. You don’t have to be a millionaire to feel rich.

Do not wish to become the President of Kenya when you are not even involved in leadership at any level and not taking required measures to ensure you achieve this goal, for example, getting a university education. People who think big but do not work towards acquiring requisite qualifications usually get involved in criminal activities like drug dealing and robberies to achieve their goal – money and fame. These are men who run carjacking cartels but will tell their wives and children that they are in the lucrative vehicle importation business to cover up for their ill-gotten wealth.

So, when you contemplate on the kind of responsibility God has placed in your hands, you will want to abandon your lethargy and helplessness and do something positive with your life . Sometimes I think many people will go to Hell not because they broke one or all of the Ten Commandments, but because they buried their talent, which the Master gave to them.

Your talent is your MIND. God gave it to you so that you can control your life, shape it and direct it to greatness. If you have a mind, which you don’t use, how different are you from one who has no mind? Use your talent. Think. If you are reading this and it hits you that you have not been doing all you could to live a decent life, make up your mind to begin now.