Resonance

Tag: greatness

  • Vessel of Honour: Becoming Great in the Authenticity of your Design

    Becoming successful is an undying trend in the 21st century. This is because of the realization that virtually anybody can become successful. Unlike in past centuries, your success is not primarily dependent on the status of your family, level of education and other social privileges that put a select few at a ridiculously high advantage. This is good news. Anyone can become successful.

    However, climbing the ladder of success has become a systematic approach, a mathematical formula, a scientific method. One needs to have something, do something in a certain way, act like a certain kind of person. We seem to have made a god out of the standard for attaining success that people legit think they have to lose themselves to attain it.

    What if I told you that the only way you can be great in your unique way is by simply being your authentic self? If you have to be like someone to be great, you will only be an inferior copy of the person. You have unlimited potential to be the greatest version of yourself. Don’t waste it trying to be a duplicate of another person. Nonetheless, you may have some discrepancies that make you feel less of a conqueror;

    Maybe you’re dumb

    Samson got tied up 3 times by Delilah, who desperately wanted to know the secret of Samson’s strength. Ei so Samson couldn’t figure out that this girl wanted to destroy him? After 3 attempts? Don’t tell me he was blinded by love. Being in love is different from being stupid. Samson had both, yet God used him so mightily. He was blinded by his own lust for a forbidden woman. Nevertheless, how God used Samson is unique and very different from every other Bible character.

    Maybe you’re weird

    If you’re like me, you probably do some weird shit regularly that leaves people wondering if what they just witnessed was real. You even surprise yourself. Even you yourself cannot figure yourself out, how much more others? Indubitably, that cannot be compared to the weirdest guy of all time; John the Baptist.

    He ate locust and wild honey as food, wore camel’s hair and leather belt (Matt 3:4), a kind of fashion that still hasn’t come into style, and lived in the wilderness. Yet, he was so great that “all of Israel went out to meet him”. He was that weird preacher’s kid, coming from a highly religious background. However, when his parents’ friends – the Pharisees – came to be baptized, he called them a brood of vipers. I’m only hoping his parents weren’t so ashamed of him.

    Maybe you’re not qualified

    Sometimes we disqualify our ownselves. Jeremiah thought he was too young. Yet, one of the best kings in Israel’s history was Josiah. He was only 8 when he became king. You think you’re ugly – bad teeth formation, disproportioned nose, unattractive countenance – so you so shy away from public speaking. You think you’re uglier than Abraham Lincoln without a beard? Lincoln had a bone disease that made him so ugly that a little girl told her to grow a beard when he was running for Senate.

    You need to understand that you don’t need to be perfect to be great. Study all the greats in history and you’ll be amazed by their weird shortcomings. That’s why I love the Bible. None of the characters are photoshopped. Moses was a murderer. David was an adulterer. Noah was an alcoholic. Yet, their greatness was unique. Noah was the only righteous man on earth in his time. Moses was the meekest man on earth in his time. David was the man after God’s own heart.

    This is a trustworthy saying; God doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called. Greatness lies within the authenticity of your design. Nowhere else. So relax yourself in the Potter’s hand. Let Him make you a unique vessel, a masterpiece fashioned beforehand for greatness. Be yourself. You’re great just the way you are.

  • Stubborn For More: How to Channel your Energy to do Greater Things

    Our bodies were fashioned to protect us. Instinctively, all we do is towards survival. We eat, drink, sleep, walk, talk and go about our daily lives basically as a means of survival. However, there is little to no satisfaction in doing the usual stuff all the time. This is because we are more than our physiological makeup and deep within us, we want a challenge.

    The best of us never comes out without a challenge. Thus, we begin to desire greater things; greater things our brains register as a “threat” since it could ruin our survival. Our survival is our comfort zone and stepping out of our comfort zone is risky and a threat. Nonetheless, we are excited to push beyond our limits when we actually do. The more risk we take, the more excited we become.

    For instance, our fear of falling may not allow us to jump off a moving plane. When we finally do, there’s nothing compared to that kind of excitement. However, in a light of taking good risks, some of us will never jump off that plane. Never! The question now becomes, how do you break free from your comfort zone and survival mode and jump head-on into the unknown?

    Persistence is key


    Water has a very high surface tension. This is why some insects with low body mass can settle on the surface of water. In fact, that explains why some objects float on water. As humans, we can float on water if we relax our body mass on the water body. Our legs would hang and our arms would shield, keeping our torso afloat. Nonetheless, with a slight persistent application of pressure on the water body, we could swim deeper. The happy and sad part about persistence is that it is more difficult at the beginning. Good riddance. This means the beginning is the more difficult part. It also means when you become persistent in an area you shouldn’t – like drinking alcohol – since you have broken the “surface tension”, it become easier the next time to “dive deeper”. Persistence comes in two folds and that leads me to the next issue;

    Consistency over Intensity

    Consistency and Intensity are important ingredients in their own rights. As humans, we soon realize that there is no such thing as inconsistency. You’re either consistent or consistently inconsistent. Since you get to choose your pattern of consistency, why not stick to the ideal? Before you can be consistent for real, you need to understand how it doesn’t relate to intensity. Many of what we practice as consistency is intensity in disguise. Consistency is doing great things in little ways. Intensity is doing little things in great ways.

    Consistency is about the long-term. Intensity is about the short-term. No one can be consistently intensive without being intensively consistent from the start. It’s not brushing your teeth for 2 hours non-stop that will make a difference. It’s brushing it for just 2 minutes twice for about 2 years. If you focus on intensity as a beginner, you’ll break down even before the real journey begins. Long-term consistency will always triumph short-term intensity. Sadly, in the world of quick fix, consistency looks like a thing for losers.

    Just remind yourself that short-term intensity does not equal long-term results. If you get injured, if you burn out, or if you stop, all the progress up to that point does little good. The LONG-TERM success is what you’re after. Consistency is the vehicle that will help you achieve those long-term results.

    The “No Matter What” mindset

    If you’ve been around for long, you’d realize that there is always something. Something always comes up. Ironically, we think we don’t have time to do the things we deem important to us. Yet we all know that if something is important to you, you’ll make time for it. We wait forever for the right time to start when the actual reason we’ve not started is because what we want to do is really not a priority to us. On paper, it’s a priority. In practice, nothing shows that it is.

    There is a need to make firm decisions. Making decisions is the easy part. Standing by the decisions you made is the main deal. Are you going to make the main thing the main thing? Are you going to stick to plan when irrelevant matters arise? Trust me, almost everyone knows the right thing to do. Those who make the difference are those who take action and stick to it till it bears fruit.

    All things are difficult before they become easy. We get better with time. It doesn’t change the fact that it gets hard sometimes. If only you can be stubborn. Be unrelenting. Not intensely. You may break down. Practice makes perfect. Consistently, every dream becomes a reality. Are you going to keep on keeping on no matter what?

  • Dare to Dream Again: Being an Instrument for Generational Greatness

    Growing up, Alice was an epitome of a “dare to dream” persona. She wanted to try everything, be everything she could be and basically be great. Alice wanted to sing with the angels when she heard the church choir on a Sunday morning. She wanted to be an architect when she observed the Art Nouveau of building façades that evoked feelings of awe and beauty. Alice even wanted to be a philanthropist so she could help the needy in society. She never understood why people blinded their eyes to beggars on the streets.

    Nothing hindered her dreams. She wanted to be so great. She dreamed freely and fully, but as she grew her reality of the world began to fade. Her reality wasn’t all flowery and colourful, it was full of dreads and limitations. With time, she had lost her sense of positive imagination. She never dared to dream anymore. It was never the right time to make a life-changing decision. She never lost sight of any obstacle, any hindrance, any existing problem that blocked an open door in her life.

    Alice now saw people who were positive as childish, ignorant and blind-sighted. She believed that it was more matured to consider both sides in every situation but the negativity bias of the human mind made her weigh the possible negative outcomes more without realizing. Motivational speakers were unrealistic to her and even absurd most of the time.


    With time, she no longer believed in the supernatural or the miraculous. Too logical and “metrics-minded” to play the card of luck or grace. Until she walked herself into a quarter-life crisis. Now she desperately needed something life-changing. Eager but too depressed to take action. She knew all the decisions to make but lacked the drive. She was drained. Consistently. She now doesn’t see herself as a “generational-anything”.

    You may not realize but perhaps, you may be living life like Alice did and walking right into Alice’s pit. What is your excuse? You see all those logical meaningful reasons you make up when someone pictures you as the greatest there will ever be? They are excuses. Nothing but excuses. People who changed history greatly were “normal” people, like you and me. So what is your excuse?

    You don’t need to be “special” to be great but it does take something special to realize you’re great: the audacity to dream in spite of the current realities

    Daniel Good

    To become great, realize you’re great. You’re born great. Greatness is within you. Greatness is not a mountain to be climbed or a medal to be won. Before great people climbed that mountain, won that race or left a legacy, they already believed they were great. Not everyone who believes in themselves becomes great but there’s no one who became great without believing in themselves. Therefore, greatness is not an attainment. It’s self-actualization.

    Sometimes as older people, we kill the dreams of younger people. We don’t want them to be too hopeful or keep their hopes high. They want to be the greatest there has ever been. Instead of riding on their hopes to aim high ourselves, we cloud their mindset with our negativity-bias reality. Just because we’ve seen more of how the world works doesn’t mean we’re right to do that. Do you even believe that “nothing is impossible” anymore?


    Do you want to dare yourself to dream like a child again? In the last days, the Bible says that old men will dream dreams. Maybe that’s you. Your mindset is “old”. Your way of going about things is “old”. You’re still stuck in the past of how things work and how things are supposed to be. Lack of initiative, no innovation but it’s not too late for you. It is time to blow your mind. Bombard your mindset with impossibilities made possible. There and then will see the spark of greatness ignite in you.

    I love you ❤️