Greatness cannot be achieved by tracking the steps of great men or women. If you follow in someone else’s steps, your personal success will only reflect the accomplishments of the one whose footprints you choose to follow. You will simply become a carbon copy of a great original. Following a person with impressive qualities, which you may personally desire to emulate, does not guarantee greatness, but it can help you recognize it. Eventually, the person who follows the trail of a prominent person will one day have to veer off and blaze his or her own trail.
I have learned a great deal during my years under the tutelage of great men, and one valuable lesson was that you cannot trace the steps of a great mentor and follow them to their end because at the conclusion of their course, you will only discover their destiny—not your own. Here is a simpler way to understand my point; you are the rocket ship going into orbit and the booster engine is attached to you. The booster is designed to help you get into space until you can fire up your own engine, detach yourself from the booster so that you can continue your mission and fulfill your purpose. The power exemplified in the booster engine is the years of experience and enormous knowledge and wisdom acquired over the years. Great leaders and mentors want nothing more than to pass on their wealth of knowledge and help propel others to achieve more in their lifetime than the mentor may have accomplished in his.
Understanding this example can be the difference between you wasting energy or preserving it. You see, the booster engine is attached so that the rocket ship can conserve as much energy as possible because its mission will be quite arduous. A father, mentor, or pastor, is the booster engine whose sole purpose is to help you excel. It is presumed that you respect the presence and recognize the magnitude and enormity of the mentor’s wisdom and knowledge. If not, you will never fully adhere to the instructions that can help you with your personal life construction.
Invest your time in people who will give the greatest return.
–John Maxwell
Wise and successful people are in such demand that a protégé should always consider their time as precious and highly valuable. Most people that are young in knowledge and experience (which does not mean that these people are necessarily young in age) but rather people who think that successful people have nothing else to do but listen to a bumbling idiot voice his or her knowledge about nothing. My solemn recommendation, for people seeking wise counsel from someone who is successful, is ask your question, shut up, and pay attention while you are in the presence of greatness. Words from the lips of a wise man or woman are like pillars that can support your next level.
To desire greatness is a lofty thought not a bad one. Usually, people who have achieved greatness did not ask for it, nor did they actually realize that they have obtained it. Great leaders are great givers, and unless you are willing to tax your time, energy and resources, you simply will want the title of greatness at other people’s expense.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Vince Lombardi are two people I would love to talk to if they were alive today. I realize one was a preacher and the other was a football coach, however, the vastness of their knowledge concerning winning was extraordinary. Developing Strategies to win at anything and executing that strategy is pertinent to winning in life. These two men were from different ends of the spectrum but so very much alike. Both of them believed in the power of people working as one; they both believed in using drastic measures to achieve their goal; and they both gave their lives to what they believed. These two extraordinary men never separated what they did in life, apart from their life. You are what you do, and what you do speaks volume as to who you are.
See You At the Top!
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