We spoke of the importance of evaluating all our activities. It is one the most important steps to success. The following step should be formation and facilitating all the handicaps in our way. Evaluation should include the goals as well as the method and time of achieving it.
Don’t underestimate your role comparing it with others’. You may think that your work is valueless; however it may lead to a great achievement steeped in history.
A story retails that during The American War of Independence, Luke was a weak young man with a crippled leg. He wished he could have joined his army and helped his country to achieve independence. He felt that his work, apprentice of a blacksmith, is useless. He also questioned the importance of his life in general. During his engulfing thoughts, a group of soldiers passed by asking him to make a horseshoe .Luke agreed as he had done his job many times before. He made a perfect horseshoe for Colonel Warner who thanked him saying that the service he offered them equaled that of 10 soldiers. On the same day, Colonel Warner achieved victory in The Battle of Bennington. Luke participated in achieving that victory. If it weren’t for his little help, the colonel wouldn’t have won the battle.
Dear reader, don’t assess your success or failure comparing yourself with others; try to assess your performance itself. You may compare your present-self to your past one; your progress, retreat and the positive matters you stopped doing. Consider the success of others as a sort of your personal motivation to work harder. The trivial tasks in your point of view are the basics of achieving the greatest missions. The secret of success lays in commitment, hard working and the ability to correct your mistakes. A wise man once said, ” The only thing achieved in life without effort is failure”.
It is noteworthy to mention the main pillars of success: “faith and trust” in your goals and efforts. If you don’t have faith in what you do, you won’t overcome the obstacles you may face. Faith would also lead to commitment no matter how hard your circumstances are. The greatest persons in the world had met different obstacles and had thousands of reasons to stop trying; nevertheless they never gave up or retreat. Shakespeare says that you should toil till the last breath in your life and never give up. Faith will be the motivating power toward success through using your potential to face the hard times in your life. Dr. Robert Scholer in his book “Power of Ideas” says that you have to exert all your efforts to start small and think big. You have to overcome all the obstacles.
To be continued
General Bishop
Head of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural Center
