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It is story time. They were brushed, showered and tucked in for another wintery night. As I tuned out the light, the call came. “Dad: Will you tell us a bedtime story”?I obliged the fantasy for a hundredth time

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I had a sneaky feeling my two elder daughters knew most of my stories were made-up, make-belief; but they loved them the same. The legend of brave animals, wise men

and charming natural earth forms. The mountains and val-leys, streams, lakes and oceans, rabbits, hares, wild lions, hyenas, beings, boys, girls, demons and angels. Stories never complete without sing-alongs. Wisdom, fame, beauty, for-tune, character, defeats, ecstasy and glory are the themes. I have never seen my four daughters full of joyful glee as at their story time, just before sleep ushers them to the world of dreams. Our stories become us, they form the velvety can-vas for our hopes and pursuits. The dream. The anticipation. The process. The fulfilment.

I don’t need to explain much of this, we all sleep and wake with the dream. That moment we strive 10000 hours for. That purpose we patiently burn everything for. We work hard before-while-after growing up, ostensibly to get our lives to a point. We fight everyday not to live a life that of-fers no value, and end up without consequence. While many continue to chase the dream, their childhood fantasy, the grown-up ideal; less and less people arrive there. It seems to many that, their hopes and dreams are a mirage, and fulfil-ment is a ruse. This cannot be true. I know that when ev-eryone oscillates in their calling, fulfilment is possible. This e-book hopes to ask the HOW question:

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How Will You Know?

Fulfilment has been defined as:

1. The achievement of something desired, promised, or predicted. “winning the championship was the fulfilment of a childhood dream” ~ Google

2. Fulfilment is a feeling of satisfaction that you get from doing or achieving something, especially something useful. ~ Collins Dictionary

How will you know you have had impact? Is it the billion-dollar mark, the skyscraper in the city centre after your name or how many global shows you have headlined? People have had it all and lost meaning.

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Here are five Quick principles

that will draw you close to that sense of being

fulfilled.

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Living a life of balance brings all the elements of your life into sync. You will feel the most fulfilled when you learn to bring harmony between the extremes of the

curves life hurls at you. You need this mythical sense of bal-ance. Dream-chasers are hardly extremists, they negotiate. They win some, they agree to let some go. This is a princi-ple of nature: There is no night without day, or dry season without the harmattan. There is no winter without spring or thundering storms without eerie quietness. If the elements of the universe sustain themselves by balance so also will every human being. You will get your sense of completeness

The Myth of Balance

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from things adding up: from the contrast of pain and joy, hunger and feast, abasing and abounding.

I have come to learn how fulfilment can be spread across a wide spectrum. People who see their lives in segments will draw energy from things going well across many fronts. If my financial, family, spiritual, social, business, professional and mental well-being are good, then I am great. This is the reason some may agonise over labour without incentive or climbing daily without the summit in sight, or even exercise without health as the result. People seek conviction in the eyes of those who claim to be people of faith and are disap-pointed when there is trite. When Justice is delayed, this can be equated to justice denied. The world of balance cannot handle friendship without companionship or dreams without actualisation. This myth is real. Balance centres you.

People who see their lives in segments will draw energy from things going well across many fronts.

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Everyday some people lose their awe. Their dreams fade away. They stop staring at the magic. As life happens and disappointments set in people frit away

at the seams of their dreams. Because of how hard it was the last time, I struggle to believe I can do it now. When you are curious, your whole world is full of light. Every difficulty be-comes a challenge you must crush. Every mountain ahead of you becomes a hiking expedition you are preparing to take. You see every river like Moses saw the red sea, rather than thinking of how the current challenge is your nemesis, you

The Power of Curiosity

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imagine what could happen if you could paddle your way, kick your way, scream your way or fight your way through it.

Curiosity is like inner pluck; it is like fuel that burns. You want to know how things connect, you want to find out where the boundaries are, you want to learn why people say it cannot be done. A truly curious person is not just happy that other people are dreaming it. They want to be the ones doing it too. If you ever want magic or miracle, if you want new relevance and the world shift on tectonic steroids, you must change, evolve, alter, morph, journey. Only the curious wait on the knowledge bank where the creator daily endows His creation with the magic dust that makes the difference between the successful and the failures of the world.

Cultivate your curiosity, fuel it by looking at those who never achieve it, but also by feeling comfortable with curious seek-ers, those who ask questions, who disrupt, who change the status quo, who build and deliver excellent results as a way of life. Curiosity will task you but it is worth it.

Only the curious wait on the knowledge bank where the creator daily endows

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The world does not revolve around you or around it-self. The earth revolves around the sun. The light of the sun is shared across all the planets in our galaxy.

This is how the sun became profound: By what it does for others. It cannot be different for you; you are significant by your sacrifice for others.

Life makes sense when it is shared. You will find fulfilment when you live for more than yourself. A dream is great if it does not have only you in the centre. We have heard from the ideologies of Machiavelli and read the Art of War. We

Living Beyond Yourself

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have people of brawns and egotistic despots who burn the empire and sit on the cans in companies, in Churches and in Nations. Africa tops the world with its crude despots and tin gods. Those sorts of people may have autocratic choke-holds, but they are never fulfilled. They will need to protect what they build, they never inspire anyone who knows them closely. To be truly impactful is to carry others along. The world is open for fresh leaders who do not have innocent blood on their hands, who inspire their followers and hope from a deeper place to bring meaning into what they run. As the African proverb goes:

“… If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

To build anything of impact, you need to think about your community, your city, your nation. Consider those with or without privilege, people who cannot pay you back: and live for them. Those who solve bigger problems, are worthy of greater honour. They will find some fulfilment because they dared for more.

To build anything of impact, you need to think about your community, your city, your nation.

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We all have them, those leviathans that drag us down to abyss. That horrible habit that fills our world with shame and inadequacy. The

anger problem, the porno habit, the sexual addiction, the manipulative tendency, the anger, the wickedness of our mien. You could explain it away, but you know how further away from your dream this slides you. There was a legend of a great warrior for his people, Samson. He had a covenant with God to keep his hair unshaved, never to touch wine or contaminate himself with impurities. He was greatly talent-ed with power and could waste whole enemy armies. Yet he

Everyone Has A Demon

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had one demon. Delilah, she was the literal death of him, as she nudged him until his hair was shorn and his oath of power broken. He was not deceived; he was incarcerated by the demons of seduction he could not conquer. When attraction of things lovely to have in balance become overwhelming, we fall to demons. The allure and addiction for lucre, luxury, money, drugs, alcohol, fame may be the better of us. These spirits drown the best of us. Kings as well as paupers have been trapped. The man or woman who can fulfil their pur-pose must embrace the reality that these demons exist. Those who defeat their demons will fulfil their life’s quest.

We all know a young promising footballer who could not make the team, because they love sleep too much. We may have met a music star designate by talent, by voice, by a long shot over peers and pride was their undoing, as no one could touch their dripping toxic soul. They could have been much more, but their demons had the best of them. Such is the story of politicians, leaders, businessmen, models, musi-cians, artisans and designers with great talent whose char-acter was inadequate to sustain their rise and high-crafts-manship.

When attraction of things lovely to have in balance become overwhelming, we fall to demons.

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Your life will find fulfilment when it is shared. The Grant and Gluek study by Harvard on 724 persons over 75 years is the widest research in this regard.

Grant study followed 456 poor Boston men, while the Gluek study followed 268 male graduates of Harvard classes of 1939-1944. This research by several generation of academ-ics, carefully analysed blood samples, carried out brain scans, and reviewed self-surveys, making periodic in-person contacts with these men to extract findings.

According to the Director of the Harvard Study for Adult

Nurturing Great Relationships

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Development Robert Waldinger, this study’s hallmark points to one main inference: that above all others”

“The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier.Period.”

When people have loving relationships from friends and family their reason for pursuing a purpose changes. Their motivation goes up; time will fail us to document how many kids pursued and clinched success because they knew their sacrificial Mom or toiling Dad was rooting, watching and waiting for them to succeed. How many local and national sports teams, business, advocacy, music stars and entre-preneurial effort are predicated on the foundation that their whole constituency draws value from their wins. Fulfilment is the offshoot of the relationships that ascribe value and makes the effort to rise above mediocrity worth it.

When people have loving relationships from friends and family their reason for pursuing a purpose changes.

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Dan Coburn, a former Superior Court Justice and Public De-fender in New Jersey has this to say about teenage crime:

“This new wrote horde from hell kills, maims, and terrorizes merely to become known, or for no reason at all. These teens have no fear of dying and no concept of living.”

When families and relationships fall apart, along with the disintegration is the essence for fulfilment. The why of all human engagements is value, a function of who it serves. In Nigeria, we see the rise of antagonists of all kinds. People disenfranchised, they cannot participate in their local econo-my, they are ostracised from social circles. Their hurt multi-plies through society. We must not agree with everyone, but the dignity to honour their positions will create the harmony society badly requires. Do not go it alone. Your nation can use some healing.

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More Than Crushing Your

Goals

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Live centred. Live in balance, take in the best and the worst of the world. Evil exists but don’t only bemoan evil, remember to celebrate good days. This is the

balance. Keep your wonder; be intrigued, stay wide-eyed, laugh out loud. Be fascinated, find out why things are the way they are and how you can move them. Renew yourself every day, learn something new. This is the key to keeping the Déjà vu feeling at bay. Live for more than yourself, serve people. Your value is in the sum of those you have served. Greatness is not about sitting atop all others while the earth grinds to a halt. It is about letting things flow, circulation, distribution, sharing produces the air that is elixir for life.

We live in times when people indulge their wildest fancies, and dark demons seize our old and young. Fulfilment is all about being here and adding the most meaning to the peo-ple in your world. To do this is to conquer demons, it is to

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corral and chain habits, it is to refuse to bow to vices. The power to say No to wasting demons will distinguish those who run their course from those who cannot. You don’t have to go this route alone; God creates balance and gives the power to each open life everyday if you permit, believe and follow. You have heard motivational speakers talk about going for your dreams for yourself. “Do it for yourself, love yourself, serve yourself”. While I understand how destructive self-loathing can be, selfishness is much worse. It is histori-cally proven that crushing your goals for yourself alone, does not satisfy any more than doing nothing at all.

© 2018 Moses Ida-Michaels

Live The More fulfilling Life

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