Menu: Achieving Sustainable Success

Starter:

All of us share value from who we are and where we are from. I am a Christian so this is my Christian perspective.I do hope it speaks to you

Main Course:

So you have the job you wanted, that corner office, you have closed that deal and one day you sit back swing your chair to look out the window and the question pops in your head..”now what?”

And you decide it is time to address that gnawing feeling you have been walking around with lately….”now what?”

We spend our days chasing deadlines,meeting goals, ticking off things, writing down our dreams and many times we miss the moment. We miss the lesson; and we miss the joy of living because we are focused on the wrong thing.

Matthew 6:33: “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” is a scripture but also a song we used to sing when I was in school and yes you might think I have lost focus but stay with me a while and you will see where this is headed.

Our focus at the beginning of a task or ambition will determine our level of satisfaction at the end of it. The question has never been whether you will succeed or not. It has always been whether you will be satisfied and fulfilled at the end or not. We in the rat race know that every goal achieved births like seven more challenging goals. The Bible says “it is like chasing the wind” (Ecclesiastes 2:11).

What I am looking for is having fun where I am at at any one point in my life. And I can only achieve that by responding to the challenge in that Scripture. So what does this mean?

Solomon wrote in Proverbs 14:12 that “there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” and then we have, “O LORD, I know the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps” (Jeremiah 10:23). And I identify that death to that hollow feeling at the end of so much work that seems to nullify one’s every effort.

As we address this quandary let us go back to the beginning. Where and why this statement from Jesus?

Jesus was addressing the common questions each of us faces in order to survive (Matthew 6:25-34). How am I going to meet my basic human needs?

And in His response he points instead to the fact that our physical needs are actually but a reflection of our deeper and more impact spiritual need. He talked about how the birds in the are and flowers in the field still manage to get their needs met without a hustle…meaning this should not be our focus…our calling is higher than the next promotion or the next trip abroad. Our calling is to His Kingdom and how can we interpret this?

  1. Putting others first
  2. Justice for the underling
  3. Growing and nurturing the next generation
  4. Mentoring
  5. Finishing well

Dessert:

In the end, it is our investment in others that we can take to the grave. It is our influence of our environment for good that we can truly boast about and the only way we can achieve this is making it our overall goal in all we do. This should be our checklist for success. Has it changed a life, is someone better for it? And as we try to meet that challenge we shall slowly realize that we need a source….and that Source is God. In our humanity our goodness petters out like any other natural resource. Organisations have realized the value of investing in people through Corporate Social Responsibility and are now calling it sustainable development. They may argue it out nine different ways but the truth is true satisfaction in any endeavor comes only when that endeavor changes lives for the better. In the end even what you do with the proceeds matters.

This is harder to effect than to speak about…but since we are looking for fulfilling success we needed to return to basics.

Scroll to Top