Dear Destiny Friends,
The only thing you owe yourself in this life is setting standards and striving to raise the bar of the standards you have set.” – Abdulakeem Sodeeq SULYMAN
Permit me to write to you in another dimension this week. You may be wondering what I mean by another dimension. Another dimension I am referring to is because in this article, I will be shifting from the topic revolving around success, which I have concentrated on for the past few weeks. Thus, I crave your indulgence in traveling through this path with me on making your momentary success counts and leveraging it to change your status in life.
There is a point I am fond of making – everyone is a candidate of greatness. But why is it that just a few of us attained greatness? The secret to this question is the title of today’s article – Elevating Your Game. This is because in any situation in life, be it in studentship, relationship or leadership, it is a natural principle that we would be required to do beyond what takes us to the level we currently are. The ability to discern this principle is the major game-changer in the lives of great people.
Someone once said, “Life consists of many gears, we may later find out that most of us have many gears unused.” What does the sayer of this wise words mean? The sayer was trying to reveal to us that we are blessed with enormous potential; latent talents, unidentified intelligence and underutilized capacities! We cannot get to the next phase of life if we have not deciphered the messages our current situation is passing to us, if we have not carved meanings out of life.
As a progressive mind, you must have known that every new thing you attempt to do and eventually did is an investment to yourself, a value-addition exercise, undertaken to bridge the gap between who you are and who you have the potential to be. It is quite unfortunate that some people give up too early on life simply because what they wanted has not manifested. What people who did that have forgotten is that life is a journey; the need to make the journey adventurous and worthwhile gives birth to redefining how you want the journey to unfold anytime you reach a milestone.
Life is filled with twists and turns and one of the things I have learned from the direct narratives of great people, either through my interactions with them or reading their biographies, is the principle of striving to make the days ahead of us better than our previous days. What do I mean by this? Great people always elevate their games. They designed some parameters for themselves to measure how they are progressing in life and determining if they are reaching their goals.
Truth be told, my dear reader: You cannot claim to be fully alive if you cannot look yourself in the eye and clarify where you are on the ladder of greatness! You should be able to tell yourself if you are bad, poor, fair, good, better, best, excellent or perfect – though, perfection cannot be claimed by anyone, it is only attributed to those who have harnessed their ingenuities to change the world!
It is not possible for me to become the prolific writer that I am today if I didn’t elevate my game. I was told that I didn’t fit to survive – let alone thrive – in the intellectually challenging system of the United States, but I rose beyond that limit. One of my dear mentors that groomed me for the world of writing, Dr Yomi Garnett, was underappreciated in the country of his birth; but because he switched the gears, elevated his games, he is one of the world’s most celebrated ghost writers alive!
To round it off, dear reader: Today, I am imploring you to ask yourself what you need to do differently; ask yourself what you need to do beyond what you are doing currently. Life’s best outcomes culminated from asking questions about what we have the capability to do but not yet done. That’s why somebody reasoned that “An unexamined life is not worth living.” And I will add to it that cultivating the habit of questioning yourself about your life, your standards and values, will set you apart and challenge you to elevate your game.
Henry Ukazu writes from New York. He works with the New York City Department of Correction as the Legal Coordinator. He’s the founder of Gloemi. He’s a Transformative Human Capacity and Mindset coach. He is also a public speaker, youth advocate, creative writer and author of Design Your Destiny Design Your and Unleash Your Destiny . He can be reached via info@gloemi.com
