FEMI TAIWO: BELIEF – THE STARTING POINT OF ACHIEVEMENT (III)

STRATEGY WITH FEMI TAIWO ON MONDAY

Oluwafemi Michael Taiwo, PhD

Michael is a first class chemical engineering graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, and a PhD holder in same discipline from the University of Arkansas, United States.

This mini-series on belief is a product of some questions I asked myself about ten years ago. I will share two of those questions in this concluding part with an eye on the implications for us.

First, can you succeed without belief? Yes, you can, through luck. Last year, I wrote extensively on that fickle goddess of fortune – luck. Lady Luck doesn’t care whether you are a believer or a skeptic; she visits when she wishes… and leaves when she wants. This is why she is an undependable factor of success. Belief is the foundation of all achievement; the bedrock of sustainable success.

Second, what births belief? That is, how can I believe? The answer to this question changed my life. I know two ways that belief comes about: Examples and Intercourse.

I will illustrate Examples by way of a familiar example (pun intendedJ). When David killed Goliath, it opened people’s eyes to the vulnerability of giants. Before David came on the scene, we read of no giant slayers, after the David/Goliath event, there was not one or two but at least three recorded instances of other people slaying giants. What happened? David’s example birthed belief in others. Even today, thousands of years later, people still read that story and believe against impossible odds. Little wonder that David and Goliath have become a metaphor in the English language.

Your choices birth belief in others. When you attain greatness, you grant others the permission to become great as well. By being the best you, you spread belief. Your light becomes a guide to countless others. I screamed so hard my lungs hurt the first time this revelation dawned on me. The way I can reproduce myself is to be the best me, to blaze trails, to pioneer, to champion, to win. I want to live my life so that anyone anywhere in the world can look at me and say “If Michael can do that, I sure can!” If that is the only legacy I leave behind, my life would have been truly well lived.

This is also why I read a lot. When you read, you expand your horizon. You learn of people who have defied the odds, who soldiered on in the face of impossibilities and their lives begin to give you belief in spite of the fact that they lived at a different period and place.

Now to the second way belief is generated: Intercourse. Ok, more specifically, intercourse with the Divine. This is the realm of the supernatural. When you still your soul, you enter a serene plane where time stops and space is infinite, you soar, you see what you can become and believe it. You bring back that belief to the here and now and begin to flesh out the end you have seen. I call it a Divine Intercourse because meditation, the practice of quieting your soul so that it sees what truly matters, is like going up to visit the King in His inner bedchamber. A seed is planted and belief is born.