Do you still remember that late night in your teenage years when your mother didn’t want you to go out to that Valentine’s Day party?
Or was it a day you were denied a trip away from home? You screamed in a voice drenched with tears, “It’s my life!!!”
Maybe you were wrong to scream at your mum, or maybe you were right to have wanted to go… I wasn’t there; it is difficult to really tell who was right or wrong.
But what I can confidently tell you is this… that when you said “It’s my life!” you were absolutely right!
This life is honestly yours. You have got to choose what to do with it as quickly as possible because every day you are losing it.
Life is not about how many days you have lived; life is how many days you are left with.
It might seem as if we are living one day at a time, but in reality, we are dying one day at a time. Every sunrise we are a day closer to our final days.
You can’t change the fact that you are dying, but you can change what you are dying for.
We recycle paper, rubber, and plastic. But life can never be recycled. You have got to choose what greatness to achieve with your life because once gone it can never be found.
Many have been blessed to live long, but none has been blessed to live twice. Decide to live your best life now!
Some people live like they are Cinderellas…
They are ever waiting for a fairy godmother who will suddenly appear from the blue; wave a magic wand; turn their mice into horses, pumpkins into chariots and their filthy rags into wedding gowns.
If it is a woman, the fairy godmother is a man who should come and marry her out of her problems.
For men, the fairy godmother is an anticipated money angel who should come and give him capital to start a business…and not demand interest or even the whole money back.
In one of my books, Life Capsules for Success, I write:
“I knew no one would come to rescue me, I just had to step out somehow and make my dreams come true.”
– MOFFAT MACHINGURA | Life Capsules for Success
I dedicate that quote to all Cinderellas out there; men and women who are waiting for fairy godmothers who should come and make their dreams come true.
I just want them to know Cinderella is a fairy tale and none of us are fairies. The only thing similar between you and Cinderella is that you both have problems.
You are dissatisfied with where you are – or at least I hope so. Besides that similarity, so much else is different.
After grandma told such a story, most of us would sit below the twilight watching the stars. Hopefully smiling in anticipation for a fairy godmother to sparkle into reality. Soon it will be too late to stay outdoors, and grandma would call us off to bed.
I am sorry your grandma forgot to call you off to bed. That is why you are spending all your years sitting by the doorsteps of life – waiting for a fairy godmother that ceased to exist the very second grandma’s story ended.
This is your life, if you want anything out of it, then you have to step out and make something out of it. You are Cinderella. You are the fairy godmother. You are the magic wand. You are the glass slipper that got left behind. You are the prince that picked the slipper.
In the same way, all these characters came out of grandma’s soul; know that all these can come out of your soul too.
If you unleash all these from within you, then the life story coming out of what you do shall be as inspiring as the Cinderella story was when it came out through grandma’s lips.
Two Kinds of People
Life has two kinds of people – Chancers and Choosers.
Chancers live life as it comes. They haven’t decided what career to take; they are waiting for their school results to decide for them.
Then if they find they failed all or passed all subjects, they can’t decide what to take next; they wait for their Mum or Dad to decide for them.
They marry because everybody is getting married, or because they are expecting a baby.
Chancers don’t have a life of their own; they are just victims of circumstances. They live by chance.
To be honest, most people are life chancers, not life choosers.
They are not living through life; they are just drifting through it.
Most that happens in their lives, whether good or bad, is totally outside their control.
To them, life is a lottery, a thrown dice, sadly every day they have to miserably learn to live with the side that is up.
For that reason, they don’t have real happiness – they just have mood swings that fluctuate between high and low, melancholy and orgasm.
What do you do when life makes you feel like a tiny boat stranded at the centre of an endless ocean?
Most people do nothing. They spend their lives drifting upon the ocean, wondering what will happen next.
They are wishing one day good will come to them. And they are always anxious what if they wake up one day and find that the little good they have is blown away.
They leave life to chance.
But there are people who have chosen to happen on life rather than let life happen on them.
My friend Andrew Tembo would normally inspire me by saying,
“Moffat, great people don’t wait for life to happen to them, they stand up and happen on life.”
In other words, if you want to live a life that satisfies you, don’t leave that life to chance.
You are personally responsible for giving yourself the life you truly desire.
All winners are Choosers of victory. Failing to choose success is succeeding to choose failure.
You have to choose one direction among the countless directions that this endless ocean called life gives you.
Sometimes it is not that life is uncertain, but that you are just undecided on what path to take for yourself.
Yet every person with an inspirational life will tell you they are where they are because they chose to do something that makes life different.
They stopped wishing and started moving.
Even though everyone says good things come to those who wait, the truth is good things are waiting for those who come to them.
Chancers wait for what they want; but Choosers go for what they want. If you are feeling like your life is at a standstill or it’s moving in circles, then it’s most likely you are a Chancer.
A Chancer’s life has no direction and no sense of motion or progress.
The day Cinderella decided she wanted to be at the palace, dance with the Prince and be a Queen – that was the moment her life found a direction.
She didn’t like where she was, but she now knew she wasn’t there for long.
Decide success as the final destination of everything you do in life – whether it’s school, love, marriage, business, family, or health.
Don’t just walk down a path and say you will see where it will lead you. Don’t let the road decide your destination; let your destination decide your road.
Chancers desire a great life, but the problem is they think desire is all they need.
But Choosers have understood that having the life one desires takes more than individual desire – it takes individual effort!
That is why in Life Capsules for Success I say,
“If you find an easy life that you never made, it shows somebody took the pain that you didn’t take.”
– MOFFAT MACHINGURA | Life Capsules for Success
Don’t learn to throw the dice and live with the side that is up; learn to place the dice of life with the side that you can best live with already facing up.
The dice of life is in your hands, you can throw it or you can place it.
Many of my readers say I’m “one of the best writers on life improvement” – the truth is I chose to be known this way by choosing efforts that create the depth that they see in my works.
I have literally read thousands of books in my life and have exerted my best skill in writing my own – the reason being I had chosen to improve people’s lives and to do it profoundly.
On the day I was born, God placed the dice of life into my hands, I have chosen to place mine with the side I want facing up but others have simply chosen to throw theirs and live with any side that is up.
It is easier to find success and growth intentionally rather than find that accidentally.
There is a cinder and an ella in you.
You choose to live a cinder life (of failure, loss, and sorrow) or an Ella life (of victory, profit, and joy).
Your Ella identity will only come when you choose; and your Cinder identity will only leave when you choose. Ella is a Choice…
Here is the reason why accidental success is as bad as failure…
Accidental Success
The success you never chose is just as dangerous as the failure you wouldn’t dare to choose – because both are accidents.
I normally ask my life coaching clients, “If you were to win the Lotto today, where would you find yourself after ten years?”
All of them optimistically respond that they would be living in mansions and worth over two hundred million (US $200 million).
“How would you spend your money?” I ask.
Then I hear them claim they would invest all of it, some claim they would only throw a party the first day and invest the rest of the money.
After their statements of faith, I normally tell them managing accidental success is not as easy as they might think.
Read the following true story to understand more…
True Story: How Winning the Million Dollar Lotto Jackpot was Callie’s Most Fatal Life Accident
At age sixteen, Callie won almost a million dollars at the lotto jackpot.
Nine years down the line, she had spent more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars (US$250,000) on cocaine and the rest on hips enlargements and implants.
Soon after winning the lottery, she gave up her job, threw frequent flamboyant parties and spent all her money on gifts.
Today, just nine years later, all Callie has is two thousand dollars (US$ 2,000) in her account and is working as a nurse.
She has two children from her last relationship (the man who introduced her to cocaine) and another baby from a new relationship.
She says winning the lottery was the worst thing that happened to her. What should have been a blessing; to Callie it proved a curse. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk)
This story shows us that sometimes accidental success can be as dangerous as failure.
Callie is a girl who found success by chance, not by choice.
It was an accidental success.
It was like falling on a slippery floor in the middle of a public shopping mall, or being hit by an overspeeding drunken driver while you know you are walking on the right side of the road.
To Callie, success was a fatal accident. It pounded her onto the floor. It fractured her somewhere.
Only she was too excited to notice where exactly. And that excitement was actually a type of accident-trauma.
Accidents Cause Trauma
There are many times that a passenger vehicle suddenly crashes and the driver escapes and flees deep into the forest.
He leaves the bleeding passengers to their own fate.
Yet this is not because he never watched enough Supermen, X-Men or Ben10 movies to wish he too could be a superhero to someone too.
He flees because the sudden bloodshed and loss of lives that stand in front of his eyes leave him too traumatized to be a hero.
Sometimes after weeks of isolation and starvation in the forest, native dwellers of the forest find this runaway driver and rescue him.
They realize they will have to capture him and nurse his mind otherwise he might just turn into a beast in that thick forest.
After months, or years, this runaway driver who was found by forest dwellers finally finds himself.
The trauma caused by the accident starts to clear away. Gradually, he begins to recall and tell his past in clips of episodes.
The story might be continuously interrupted by sudden outbursts, deep groans and eardrum-shattering screams “Noooooo! What did I do?”
“Leave him alone for a while,” the elders of the forest tribes might advise, “he is coming back to himself, and perhaps someday he will be able to tell us his life story.”
The point is… Accidents cause trauma. Whether it is a traffic accident or a success accident, accidents cause trauma.
Imagine if a fairy godmother had suddenly picked Cinderella with her magic wand and thrown her into the palace.
Do you think upon opening her eyes Cinderella would run to dance with the Prince? NO!
She would be so shocked by the sudden shift of things that she would run back home.
Here is a true-life story of a man whose name shall herein be called Peter for the sake of privacy.
Peter found accidental success and it traumatized him.
True Story: Peter’s Success Accident
Since childhood, everyone knew Peter as a comedian and actor.
When it came to school, Peter was a dismal failure. He never seemed to take any school curricular activity seriously.
The only thing he could be serious about was joking. Peter was a serious humorist.
Of course, Peter never thought comedy would give him success someday. He only became serious with it because it was the only thing that he felt he could successfully do.
It didn’t take long for Peter to become a TV star. He was running and directing a TV Comedy Show of his own.
To his amazement, he was suddenly being paid far higher than his smartest classmates…
What do you do when after having gone to bed with a flat wallet you wake up to unexpectedly find yourself with a fat bank account?
That is exactly how success came to Peter – it caught him by surprise.
And like any other accident may do, Peter’s accidental success traumatized him. It made him uncomfortable with many things, including himself.
For example, he realized he could NOT be satisfied with one wife…
He stopped budgeting – he found it absolutely unnecessary since his career promised he would never be broke another single day of his life.
He started drinking only in upper-class bars and vowed he only drank foreign whiskeys and wines.
He held full parties every week and made his everyday half a party.
He did all this NOT because it’s what he had always dreamt of, rather it was because success found him faster than his mind could process what to do with it.
Years down the line, Peter’s popularity began to dwindle. His type of humor had become popular and obsolete, and the generation whose armpits he had made money tickling was now dying out.
The upcoming generation had absolutely a different taste for humor. Briefly said – Peter went out of business.
The money streams dried up. The music and the parties stopped.
The foreign whiskeys again became too far to import, and the upper-class bars became too high to even reach their doorknobs.
Peter the prince had again become Peter the pauper – a rags-to-riches story that ends in rags.
Recently, Peter’s house was accidentally devoured in a fire. Since he had never insured it, he failed to recover it.
All that remains in his name on this planet, by the age of sixty plus, are a few pants and a pair of bathroom slippers.
The only thing that those who meet him give him is pity.
Everyone he passes by is left wondering… “But Why?”
The reason is clear though. Peter received a success he never chose.
It was an accidental success that traumatized his logic.
That is why he never thought of investing, starting a business, or even opening a savings account.
He is an example of a person who never dreamt himself rich or famous. His success was never a choice; it was merely a twist of fate.
His behavior that you deem as foolishness was simply the wandering of a body whose mind had run bereft of reason.
Succeed by choice rather than by accident. Decide where you want to end up in life, and prepare your heart and soul to stay there when you get there.
That preparation can never be made by a person who has abandoned success to twists of fate.
The success you never chose is just as dangerous as the failure you wouldn’t dare to choose…
Finding it or Bumping into it?
If success came despite your choice, then it can leave despite your choice. The same goes for love.
The love that came despite your choice will leave despite your choice…
When Love is an Accident…
There is that strong feeling many call “love.” It holds you so strongly that you believe it will last forever.
Give it some months (sometimes just weeks) like water down the stream, it flows away. You start asking yourself, “What really had I seen in this person?”
With that strong feeling gone, her “high pitched tone” begins to sound like a squeaky voice. His once “deep voice” begins to be interpreted as a horsy voice.
When that strong feeling goes, you begin to smell the odor behind their sprayed perfume, to be irritated by the habits that you earlier tolerated and to see the real skin hidden beneath the shield of cosmetic face-powder and eyeshadows.
You begin to notice how one eye has been smaller than the other, or how the nose was too big for its face.
With that strong feeling gone, face to face you now stare into each other’s eyes… It is no longer like it used to be!
Some try sex and some try a wedding. Some try separation, hoping that’s the way to bring the love feeling back since distance makes the heart grow fonder. (But sometimes out of sight can be also out of mind).
Some try divorce or an affair – what they really want is to find someone else who can give them that strong feeling back.
Sometimes they find someone else, but the cycle only begins again because soon enough the feeling abandons them.
These are the days in which looking for love is like chasing the wind – you hustle so hard to find something that you know you can’t keep.
The problem is we don’t know there are two kinds of love – there is love that we feel and there is a love that we choose.
Like I write in my other book How I Kissed Heartbreak Goodbye, the love that will last is not the love that you felt, but the love that you decided.
The fact is you never decided to have that feeling – it was the feeling that decided to have you. If it came despite your choice then it can leave despite your choice.
There is strong love and deep love. Strong is the love that you feel but deep is the love that you decide.
Strong love is made of liquid passions flowing up and down your bloodstream.
It is merely a chemical reaction caused by fluctuations of hormones.
But deep love is a faculty of a thoughtful mind.
It is the commitment you make to be with someone for life, after you have clearly noticed their strengths, weaknesses and all the perfections in their imperfections.
Strong love is a feeling; it will wash away even when you still need it. Deep love is a decision that lasts as long as you don’t decide otherwise.
This is why it is said “real love is what begins when the feeling of love goes away.”
If I love you because I feel like it, instead of loving you because I decided to – then I don’t love you at all. It is my emotions that love you.
Leaving your love up to your emotions is just the same as leaving your life to chance. It is gambling your heart, and gambling your life.
In my book How I Kissed Heartbreak Goodbye, I wrote more on the difference between love and the feeling of love. For now, let me only say…
“Take your heart off the gambling table. Pack your bags and evacuate the Las Vegas of Love!”
Don’t marry for a feeling because love is more than a feeling.
Whatever comes by chance can leave by chance!
Live by Choice
Studies show that inherited wealth hardly makes it to the third generation.
That shows Adam and Eve were not the only ones born in a paradise only to lose it.
There is extra caution that we must keep for anything that comes to us by chance.
Today decide that you want to be a millionaire or billionaire. Decide that you want to get married to the person you love and that you want that love to last forever.
You think you don’t have the power to make your dreams come true, it’s because you don’t understand there is a special power that only comes to us when we strongly decide to have something in our lives.
Continue to Next Chapter…
