The ART of Achievement and Fulfillment: Fundamental Principles to Overcome Obstacles and Turn Dreams into Reality! - Softcover

Mpamah, Nkem

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1452565708 ISBN 13: 9781452565705

Publisher: BalboaPress, 2013

Synopsis

Nkem Mpamah thought he was originally cut-out for endless struggle with nothing to show for his effort until he discovered that many people are languishing in similar pain and disappointment from inability to live life on their own terms. In The ART of Achievement and Fulfillment Nkem gives you the codes that will literarily take you from where you are now, to where you desire to be. Whether you re starting a new career or business, or feel overwhelmed and looking for a change; whatever that moment is for you, the principles he share in this book will transform you! In This Book You will learn: Decisions and Destiny - Proven Ways to Make Life-Changing Decisions Values and Beliefs The art of living life on Your Own Terms Step-by-Step Guide to Set and Achieve Audacious Goals Time and Life Management - The Psychology of achieving More in Less Time The Art of Influencing Others Through Transformational Leadership Focusing on these fundamentals, Nkem breaks each code down to simple understandable action items, and offers numerous tools and strategies, which you can use to live life on your own terms if you put them into practice. Success is good, and achievement brings happiness, but fulfillment is about touching lives. This book will teach you how.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The ART of Achievement and Fulfillment

The Fundamental Principles to Overcome Obstacles and Turn Dreams into Reality!By NKEM MPAMAH

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2013 Nkem Mpamah
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-6570-5

Contents

About the Author...........................................................xiiiIntroduction...............................................................xvPart 1: Decisions and Destiny..............................................1Chapter 1: Be a Good Decision Maker........................................3Chapter 2: Believe in Yourself.............................................35Chapter 3: Set Realistic Goals.............................................51Chapter 4: Focus on the Important Things...................................69Chapter 5: Discover Your Abilities.........................................87Chapter 6: Develop New Skills..............................................99Part 2: Values and Beliefs.................................................113Chapter 7: Understand Your Values and Beliefs..............................115Chapter 8: The "You" Factor................................................135Part 3: Time and Life Management...........................................155Chapter 9: The Art of Achieving More in Less Time..........................157Chapter 10: The Principles of Time and Life Management.....................171Chapter 11: How to Achieve More in Less Time...............................183Part 4: Transformational Leadership........................................201Chapter 12: Leadership and Management Explained............................203Chapter 13: The Challenges of Leadership...................................209Chapter 14: How to Become a Transformational Leader........................213

Chapter One

Be a Good Decision Maker

"At any moment, the decision you make can change the course of your life forever." – Anthony Robbins

Every human being has the innate ability to make a choice. Choices are the decisions we make every day about the things we want to be, have, or do. They can be good or bad, and to a large extent they determine our actions and successes. Decisions are important to life, and it's practically impossible for anybody or organization to survive a day without making one form of decision or another. Our choices range from the simple—what to eat or drink, the type of dress to wear—to the more complex, such as what sort of work to do.

Decision-making is self-fulfilling and can result in either the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the decision maker. A good decision resolves an issue, but a bad decision leads to making more decisions to correct the error in the earlier decision.

Whenever you make a decision and follow through with action, you'll enjoy a feeling of confidence and responsibility. You'll feel in control and satisfied with the choice you have made. These feelings help to stimulate your passion to do more and achieve more.

Many people fail in their careers, business and relationship, and others get stuck because of their inability to make quality decisions. Some have suffered many negative consequences arising from wrong decisions, while others have recorded new levels of success as a result of making good and timely decisions.

Sometimes, people wonder why they are not making significant progress in their lives. They cite examples of other people—perhaps their friends, colleagues and relatives—who are making more progress than they, yet they shy away from making decisions about moving their own lives forward. They are unaware of the principle that our individual performances and personal achievements depend on the quality of decisions we make about ourselves. This is because it's our responsibility to make decisions on how to lead our lives successfully and prosper in the things we are committed to do.

Decision-making is a way of life. It affects human existence and is important in determining how successful you can be. Good decisions shape our lives; they bring happiness, fulfillment, and a sense of endorsement of our self-esteem.

Your ability to solve your own problems and the problems of those around you depends very much on your determination to make quality decisions and follow through on them. This is why most employers prefer to work with employees with great decision-making capabilities. It increases productivity and leads to the promotion of such employees.

When I was younger, I thought I needed to attain a certain age and position before I could make significant decisions. As I began to grow up, I discovered that decision-making is a part of everyday life, regardless of age or class. In the early years of my childhood, my parents made most of my decisions for me. They decided on the appropriate time for me to start school and what friends to play with. Being poor, my parents chose the college I attended, selecting a vocational school with an affordable tuition rather than a more expensive secondary school. Their intention was for me to study typing and shorthand; I would guess that they were molding me towards secretarial work.

A few years prior to the completion of my vocational studies, my parents made another decision and enrolled me in a Christian preparatory class, after which I was baptized.

Until I matured and became responsible for myself, that was the pattern of my life. In retrospect I would say that most of my parents' decisions made a positive impact on my life. I love my parents and have never questioned their judgment, save once—when I wanted to get married. Guess what? As usual, my father wanted to choose a wife for me. As much as I loved and respected my parents, I disagreed with them on this and it took much communication, explanation, and assertiveness on my part for my father to concede that it was up to me to make the decision about whom I should marry.

Being my hero, although not educated, my father is endowed with natural wisdom, foresight, and the ability to communicate and lead very effectively. As I write this book, my father is about ninety-one years old, still strong, and going to the farm without any form of support.

I'm grateful to say that my father helped to mold my life by the right choices he made on my behalf during my early years. But it frightens me now to think of what my life would have become if those decisions were made wrongly. This experience taught me two lessons:

Lesson One: Decisions can be imposed on you without your consent.

Lesson Two: If you don't make a decision to lead your life in a particular way, Lesson One will go into effect and someone else will make decisions on your behalf.

Many people struggle because they follow other people's decisions. They do not have a goal for their lives and are not executing any action plan towards achieving the things they desire. They thoughtlessly put their lives at risk by placing themselves in the hands of others.

This in itself is a decision—and a bad one.

Quality decisions are critical to the well being of both individuals and organizations. They go a long way in determining the survival of those individuals or organizations in times of competition. It's a paradigm that shifts the course of life and destiny. A person's ability to decide on one thing will usually lead to several fundamental outcomes that will invariably alter the thoughts, behavior, and performance of that person. In most cases, the decision of one person affects and alters the lives of the people around him or her, including family members, community, and colleagues at work. Decision-making shapes the future. For example, the decision to marry ultimately alters the lives of couples and imposes on them the responsibility to live together as husband and wife for the rest of their lives. By this choice, both parties become accountable to one another. Not only has their choice to marry bestowed personal and joint responsibilities on them, but on their friends and families.

Decisions emerge from a deep desire to accomplish a goal, and your goal can be anything that you consider most important for you to achieve within a given time frame. Your ability to make the right decisions daily will reinforce your determination to perform tasks, achieve goals, and become fulfilled. Your life will grow each time you make a decision, no matter how small it might be, and take action towards achieving your goal.

Your life decisions are the gateway to your destiny.

Decision-Making Defined

There are two critical elements to decision-making: risk and uncertainty.

Risk is the real possibility of negative consequences. Uncertainty refers to doubt, fear, and worry that something good or bad might happen. Uncertainty occurs when there is a choice to make between two or more alternatives. It's the state of having little or no information to predict a future outcome correctly. Uncertainty leads to the magnification of risk.

Decision-making is the process of identifying and choosing from more than one alternative action based on the values and preferences of the decision maker. The decision-making process presupposes the existence of alternative options to be considered. Usually, the challenge of the decision-maker is to identify and select the outcome with the highest likelihood of success that's the best fit for the desired goal.

There is absolutely no decision without uncertainty. Important decisions are often complex in nature and have a high degree of uncertainty. Most decisions are made in an uncertain situation, bringing us to the challenge of uncertainty in decision making. The process of decision-making ideally requires that you reduce the level of uncertainty sufficiently to allow reasonable choices to be made from the alternative options available.

Uncertainty increases when complete knowledge of the information required for making a decision is not available. So part of your responsibility is to gain sufficient knowledge-based information to reduce the level of uncertainty, rather than eliminating it completely. If all the information and knowledge required to produce an outcome were known and available, there would be no need for decision-making. Perhaps there would be a set of step-by-step instructions or a standard rule to be followed to achieve outcomes.

Uncertainty increases risk. In decision-making, risk can occur when the desired outcome is limited by the number of uncertainties inherent in the outcome's objective. This considerable degree of uncertainty might produce negative effects that are contrary to what was expected, leading to loss, setbacks, and other undesirable results. Let me explain:

Let's say that you make a decision to resign your job to become an Internet entrepreneur. You know nothing about Internet business operations, so you decide to employ an operations manager. Six months down the line, your operations manager resigns. The resignation of the operations manager puts your business at risk. While you as the decision maker had identified the need to engage the services of experienced personnel to offset your own lack of knowledge in that area, you did not have the information required to consider the possibility of outsourcing the task rather than employing. This risk would cause a setback until another set of decisions are made to put it right.

Personal values play an important role in the decisions we make. It's commonly believed that members of certain groups or professions—for example, doctors, musicians, and accountants—have a common characteristic behaviour, style, or manner of doing things. This may be true. However, it's important to understand that every behaviour, decision, or style is unique and very much depends on the personal values of each individual. Put together two entrepreneurs who are in similar businesses and ask them to make a decision on the same issue, and you'll be surprised that each entrepreneur will come up with a different decision. The reason is that each of them has different personal values.

A value determines the way we behave and influences the choices we make. People tend to make decisions based on their values and what drives their lives. For example, if you're an entrepreneur or employee and you have put a high priority on your family, this value could lead you to decide to work from home, ask your employers if you can work family-friendly hours, or develop other work strategies to put your family first. As long as you do this, you're constantly motivated and consistently producing at your maximum capacity.

Understanding your values will help you to make life-transforming decisions. This is because everything you do as a human being revolves around protecting your individual values and your sense of personal worth. When you understand your values, you're compelled to organize your thoughts and actions to do only the things you're good at and that matter the most to you. This will effectively help to shape your destiny.

One of Murphy's Laws says, "Before you can do anything, you have to do something else first." In order for you to be successful in decision- making, you must first plan and organize yourself. Decision-making involves planning and organizing your thoughts to ensure effective and optimum results. Decisions made in a rush usually result in negative consequences or risks. Planning is the first step; it involves taking time to think through what you want to achieve, how you want to achieve it, and a time frame in which to attain your goal. The reason that some decisions fail or lead to high risk is a lack of planning.

Some people are mentally lazy. They lack the drive and patience to obtain the basic information they need to decide on important aspects of their lives. This attitude leads to setbacks and frustration.

Decisions should be made that meet both the need of the moment and your future purpose. In other words, every decision-making process must consciously evolve to provide a solution at the appropriate time. It would merely be a waste of effort and a worthless exercise to make a decision today about an event that took place yesterday.

Let me illustrate: Assume that you want to buy a laptop computer and the only available brand is called Nkem. You will not have any need to decide on brand because your choices are limited—there is only one brand available. However, you'll need to carefully decide if you can afford the price of the laptop at this stage, or should wait a little longer and purchase it in the future. Whatever choice you make, you must be courageous enough to accept the consequences that come with it.

Let's also assume that you have saved the money for the laptop and decided to buy it immediately. Two months later, you discover that the price of the same laptop increased by twenty-five percent.

Suppose you did not buy the laptop immediately, and as you waited and worked hard to save the money to buy it at a future date, the price went up by twenty-five percent. What would you do?

There are three important lessons you can learn from this laptop scenario that I will discuss below. Every decision you make, no matter how small, has within it the following three elements.

1. Sensitivity of time. The advent of information technology has dramatically increased the speed at which decisions can be made. This is a direct result of the huge resource of relevant information that can be accessed anywhere with Internet devices.

Notwithstanding the Internet, decision makers are encouraged to make their minds up quickly and to take advantage of opportunities as they come. I have discovered that there are great hidden opportunities in the most seemingly challenging situations human beings face. No wonder Napoleon Hill said, "Opportunity? Often it comes in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat." In the laptop example, the decision to take opportunity to buy the computer immediately led to a saving of twenty-five percent. This brings happiness and satisfaction and encourages you to continue to make better quality and timely decisions.

2. Sacrificial pain. The natural implication of making choices is to unconsciously make a sacrifice; there is no choice without a sacrifice. Some of the choices we make in life initially result in pains and temporal setbacks; these are both known consequences that are often associated with decision-making. When you make a decision, there is always a possibility that something might not go as you have planned. This does not necessarily mean that your decision was bad, particularly if you made a conscious effort to choose the alternatives that you believed to be best at the time.

Decision outcomes occur in phases and almost always cause some initial pain. Your ability to stay focused and calm will help you learn from the consequences. When as a result of your decision you seem to be moving in a negative direction, your responsibility will be to steer back to the right course. It's like driving a car; you don't allow the wind to dictate your direction. When the consequences of our decisions begin to appear, we are required to evaluate them in line with our end goal and make further decisions to put them into proper perspective.

3. Risk. A risk is something that can bring about pain, loss, or a setback. The consequence of your decisions sometimes results in a loss situation. In the above illustration, the decision maker suffered the risk of having to pay more for the laptop due to his inability to act quickly.

Delays can be dangerous to decisions. They are sometimes responsible for negative consequences. There are many ways in which delay can occur in a decision-making process. One of these ways is through rivalry. This comes to play when a party responsible for providing certain relevant information is deliberately uncooperative, a situation that can occur in an office or on a team project.

Once I worked for a fairly large organization in which I was responsible for accounting for the entire company's fixed assets. One of my tasks was to liaise on a monthly basis with the procurement department to obtain all original invoices related to fixed assets acquired during the month. These invoices served as supporting documents for the accounting treatment of the assets.

This was by far one of the most irritating tasks I ever performed. The process was supposed to be very simple: go to the procurement officer responsible for fixed assets and obtain invoices for the new asset (say a computer) purchased during the month, period. But it was not as easy as you might think. Sometimes I would be kept on hold for nearly another month until I could escalate the procedure through my supervisor. This process delayed deadlines and sometimes resulted in fines and penalties for late returns. Delay is detrimental to decision and increases the probability of risk.

Also, delay can occur as a result of procrastination. This is one of the biggest problems in decision-making. It's a subtle way of putting off important tasks (including decisions) to a later time. The major cause of procrastination is anxiety, apprehension caused by fear or guilt.

The Effect of Decision Making

Decision-making is powerful in bringing dreams, goals and aspirations into reality. When you make a decision, it impacts the lives of people around you, including spouses, children, families, businesses, colleagues, and the community in which you live and work. It's your responsibility to take reasonable steps to ensure that your decision does not frustrate the people around you. This means that your decisions must be ethical; they should not be made in the context of selfishness, or with a view to receive personal gains.

Decisions impact your performances and achievements. Some people believe that it's the responsibility of other people to improve their lives. They blame the government, their husbands, wives, managers, and parents for their misfortunes. When you make a decision to improve your life, you're invariably taking control over your performance and achievement. This puts you in the position of leadership and gives you the authority to do whatever is ethically necessary to ensure that you achieve the expected results. Being in control of your personal achievement takes away blame, complaint, and the feeling of frustration, even if your outcome is different from your expectation. Rather than complaining, you're inspired to dig deeper to find other options you could explore to improve your result.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The ART of Achievement and Fulfillmentby NKEM MPAMAH Copyright © 2013 by Nkem Mpamah. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: BalboaPress
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1452565708
• ISBN 13: 9781452565705
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264