By Dele Olujide (Guest columnist )

Our’s has become a make believe world in which we invest a significant amount of time and energy attempting to force our realities to align with our thoughts or imaginations.  We now live in a world where a large segment of the population believes that whatever can be visualized can be actualized.

In other words, if you can think it, you can make it happen.  What however seems lost in this process of evolution into visionary beings is that there is something deeply spiritual about the ability to channel your innate energy towards the achievement of your goals.

Stop to think about it.  If self-actualization only required the adoption of a positive outlook, most of the world’s seven billion inhabitants would be successful according to established standards.  We could, in that context, change our lives if we could change our thoughts.  But this is very rarely the case.

The truth, as most visionaries eventually find out, is that the ability to transform a vision into tangible success is dependent not only on our innate abilities, but on the favorable alignment of the forces that regulate our existence to make room for us to succeed in life.

Taken in proper context, dreaming is most certainly a great phenomenon.   The human mind is a very productive zone of our consciousness.  Think of it as a factory where a large variety of virtual products, good and bad, are created, often out of nothing.  One of the most divinely beautiful attributes of the human mind is that it is as secure as the host or “owner” chooses to make it.

That is why we are well advised by the greatest sage that ever lived, biblical king Solomon, to guard our hearts “with all diligence” because it is the source of “the issues of life”.  At the mind level of consciousness, you literally create and control your own space.  And in the seclusions of your mind, deep within your innermost recesses, you could create the most pristine and lofty dreams with little or no interference.

As the images form, they attain potential and, once energized, are progressively translated into tangible opportunities. And that, I believe, is why success can just as easily alight on a hitherto unsuccessful individual once the thought processes are properly aligned and energized.  Success is not a respecter of personalities and every human being has the potential to make success their reality.

The first step to greatness is an appreciation of the fact that the concept of success and failure is largely relative.  Greatness in and of itself is a time-dependent comparison of one’s estate or situation to another’s.  Many potential heroes remain unsung simply because they failed to emerge and attain their full potential.

They benchmarked themselves against the wrong cluster of stars.  It has been proven that if your environment and/or peers do not challenge you to attain more lofty heights, you would gravitate into your Comfort Zone and remain there.  Very little incentive for attainment is on offer in any individual’s Comfort Zone.

Stagnation by default in an increasingly dynamic world will eventually lead to retrogression.  Permit me to illustrate with the real life experience of someone I had the privilege of counseling a few years back.  This individual had obviously gravitated into a dark place in  his life where, though he could be described as a successful individual, he really was not making ends meet.

Many things fell short and he was constantly having to supplement what was, at most, a modest lifestyle.  His mantra for success at the time was based on the wrong premise and he, unconsciously, lowered the success threshold and therefore succumbed to lower standards.  And though he had regressed into a state of defeat, he still carried on as if all was well.

His greatest enemy and Achilles’ heel was his own mind in a state of denial.  He limited his own potential, albeit unconsciously, by constraining his reality with the wrong parameters.  Putting it in simple language, he placed a limit on “success” and it took two years of counseling to awaken his mind to the fresh images required to feed his consciousness and produce the game changer.

The mind is a therapeutic source of regenerative solutions and it produces the foundation for required change when it is most required.  But it will take a conscious desire for change to reactivate a mind that has relapsed into a permanent daydream.

If you ever feel like you are spinning your wheels and need some traction, your process of recovery must start with the simple realization that you can make your own reality.  Beyond that, you must remain steadfastly sure that room will be made available in the realm of the unseen for you.  There is a niche out there specially dimensioned for you.  I could add one more thing for your benefit, seeing as I cannot claim never to have taken a wrong turn in life nor made wrong decisions.

When your are walking the walk of life, all you can wish and pray for is to know the right thing to do at the right time and depend on your experiences and the Divine to guide you in your choices.  Hindsight is always 20-20 vision and the quality of a decision is only clear after all the facts and the outcome are established, often not before.

When the errors of our ways are revealed, we must bounce back with a zeal that will serve us well on the rest of our journey.  Lessons learnt must remain burnt into our psyche and help to focus our energy daily.  Never again allow your mind to shift into neutral gear.  Keep dreaming and making your own reality.
Published with the permission of author: Dele Olujide.