MORTALITY-MOTIVATION TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS

Do you know what mortality means? Do you realize at all that you have limited time to live? These questions came to me from my father-now of blessed memory- during my idle years. Now, twenty years after, I look back and thank God that my father had asked me those questions at that time. Reason? They have influenced my decision to change my ways and become who I am today.

Before those thought-provoking, life-changing questions came, life to me was just life. What it really meant, I didn't care. I lived everyday without a purpose. No direction. I couldn't have cared anyway because I had my family to take care of all my needs. Life was meant to be enjoyed. And that I was just going to do and do to the fullest. So, hearing people talk about setting goals and achieving them made me nothing but sick.

Mortality wasn't all totally a strange word to me. But the thought of it was dreadful. "Man ought to just break down in despair at the realization that he would have to die someday". But shouldn't the fact of mortality rather motivate him to achieve his goals? Yes, it should. The fact that a man has limited time to live doesn't mean he should stop living while still alive. Or why did he come into the world in the first place?

We are all in the world for different assignments. These assignments are our purposes and they form the essence of our existence. We are in the world to live our purposes. And no purposes can be achieved without goals because goals are the road maps that guide us as we take life on. The fact of mortality - man's ability to die- should therefore spur him into setting goals and charge after them in a dogged manner, till they are achieved.

No man exists without having dreams. We all have different things we aspire to attain, so that our lives will not just be in vain. My father's questions brought me back to my senses, making me sit down and ask myself what exactly I wanted to do with my life. What do I want to achieve in the limited time that I have to live? A lot, to my surprise! I discovered , all of a sudden that, for years, lurking somewhere deep in my heart has been a dream to excel in life. But if this dream was to come true, I knew I had a lot of grounds to cover, for all those wasted years. So, setting my goals and pursuing them with vigor not only became important but also very urgent. I had to start doing immediately many things that I had left undone over the years. This was a decision I took twenty years ago. And now that I have completed my University education, gained some years of working experience, got married and so on, I am considering quitting my job to start my own dream business.

Achieving one's goals starts with a decision - a decision to a meaning of one's life. This requires a clarification of one's dreams. And once such dreams are determined, goals should be set and followed to the letter, regardless of whatever distractions. Mortality and the fact that one has limited time to live should always be seen as a source of motivation to achieve one's set goals.

BY Olayinka Adebayo, CEO Successscript Ltd (www.successscript.blogspot.com)