Full of wisdom, real life experiences and proven strategies of success in key areas of life, Welcome to Greatness is captivating, challenging and compelling. The passionate urgency in which the account is told will provoke your thoughts, ravish your heart and stir your soul.

It is bound to make you think deeply, act passionately and grow steadily.

Welcome to Greatness

Balboa Press

Contents

Foreword........................................ixPreface.........................................xiiiIntroduction....................................xviiPhase 1: Self-Discovery.........................11. Inception....................................32. Inconvenient Truth...........................203. Absolute Power...............................354. Life of Purpose..............................45Phase 2: Self-Awareness.........................575. Acute Imperative.............................596. Rule of Engagement...........................727. Band of Encouragers..........................868. Outbreak.....................................1009. Empty Vessel.................................112Phase 3: Self-Actualization.....................12110. Fifth Element...............................12311. Greatness at Work...........................13812. Power of Integrity..........................14613. Return to Love..............................15614. Life to the Fullest.........................166Afterword.......................................181Acknowledgement.................................183About the Author................................185

Chapter One

~ Williams James

Everything has a beginning, including our mindset. How we think, see, hear, feel and talk is a combination of our upbringing, genetics, environment, and our level of exposure, education and experience. Chief amongst these are our upbringing and childhood experiences, for these are the most instrumental aspects in the shaping of our mindsets. Inception is a tale of the beginning, a journey back into the past to better understand the present and clearly see the future. As we begin our journey en route to fulfillment, it is absolutely crucial to understand why we think, see, hear, feel and talk the way we do. It is this understanding that will enable us to identify why we are where we are in every aspect of our lives.

As soon as I was able to grasp it, I thought about it, said it, watched it or did it. Be it vulgarism of all sorts, theft of anything that may not have even been worth the while, or promiscuity with those who were weak-willed like I was, I engaged in many self-gratifying and despicable act at the expense of other people in order to nurture my ego. With a very strong focus on myself, and myself only, I cared less about what the right thing to do was and more about what I wanted to do. Even though people were consistently bruised by my aggressive attempts to get what I wanted and constantly injured by my neediness to be praised, I thought I was not that bad as long as no one else's life was literally at stake.

I was so full of myself and so steeped in my atrocities that the cries of my conscience were numbed by my nonchalance to the pain I caused other people, by my arrogance in every situation, and by my ignorance about what really mattered most in life. I pursued money and material possessions fervently; what I wanted, I got at all costs. Despite having attended church regularly until my teenage years, I cared less about godly principles and societal laws. I did not hesitate to walk over anybody in my attempt to satisfy my insatiable desires, in my efforts to nurture my tumultuous ego.

Looking back in my life prior to the beginning of my journey en route to fulfillment, and looking around me today, any one would wonder what happened to some of us in our childhood to make us become so hardened at heart, so fearful and so insecure; to make us become completely deaf to the cries of our consciences and so selfishly focused on ourselves to the extent that those around us are consistently bruised by our nonchalance, arrogance, ignorance. How did we gradually get transformed from human beings that were created in the image and likeness of God to pitiable creatures that live in such obvious contradiction to the image and likeness of God who created us?

How did I gradually get transformed from a church boy to a fraudster, from a kid who everyone loved to a youth who the law despised, from a teenager who was made to skip a high school grade due to higher level of intelligence to a university dropout? How could I have completely disregarded the godly values that were imbibed in me as a child to become a pitiable person that the world longed to do without? How could I have walked myself into the bottomless pit that I found myself over a decade ago prior to summoning the courage to embark on my personal journey en route to fulfillment?

You may have also looked around you and wondered how loving people gradually become haters of many; how action-oriented people gradually become irritating whiners; how kind people suddenly become so wicked, and how family-oriented people selfishly give up their families for promiscuity, drugs and parties. Years into my journey, I realized that while most of us may be shocked by where we find ourselves in life, we have been heading in that direction all the while. Where you are today, right here, right now–whether in your personality, leadership, marriage, parenting, spirituality, relationships, health and wellness, academics, career, finances and business–is a direct result of your psychological makeup; the way you think, the choices you made, the mindset you foster. Someone else may have created an unfortunate path for you to follow as a child, but you led yourself to where you are today as an adult.

Regardless of whatever transpired in our upbringing to create fear, hate, doubt, greed and selfishness in us, there is still love in abundance with us. We may have been programmed by incapable parents to only think of ourselves, the urge to love and serve one another remains alive within us. Nothing that was done to us can extinguish the innate desire to overcome the past and aim for a fulfilling future. The fact that many refuse to begin their journey en route to fulfillment does not mean that they are not being reminded by the consciences every now and then. I was.

In my journey en route to fulfillment, I have learnt that until we begin to claim full responsibility for our decisions and actions, and even for our reactions to the hurtful behaviours of other people, we will never be at peace. Blaming our unfortunate situations and negative feelings on other people and basing our action and inaction on whether other people fulfill their responsibilities or not are the immature attitudes that separate children from adults. We are where we are in life today because we walked ourselves there, because we neither paid attention to the warning signs along the highway of life nor humbly accepted the advice which we were graciously offered by those who cared, those who may have even put their friendship on the line to wake us up from our spiritual slumber. We do not fall into trouble; we often see it ahead of us and yet walk right into it anyway, and then claim to have fallen into it.

In my journey en route to fulfillment, I have learnt that the most ferocious battles to have ever been fought were neither of the two world wars nor the wars that ravished Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq....