Knowing Your Place

"The chief executive who knows his strengths and weaknesses as a leader is likely to be far more effective than the one who remains blind to them." ~John Adair Finding your calling or your purpose in life, is discovered at different times for most people. Some discover it early on in life while others find their paths in the latter years of their lives for what ever the case maybe. The positive in it all is that, they discovered their strong points in life, the things that they are passionate about and turned them into success while others have turned their weak points into strength in order to obtain a more self fulfilling life. Many people on the other hand,never meet success because they constantly put up road blocks or allow others to tell them that they aren't capable of doing things or simply don't listen to their gut when they have a feeling about an idea that could be brilliant.For some odd reason,as humans we often struggle with confronting the fear of responsibility which causes us to put things off, in hopes that it will buy us more time to figure things out. In actuality, it doesn't buy you more time, it makes things a little tougher because you are allowing things to pile up instead of moving one step closer to your vision. Once you begin to confront the responsibility that comes along with achieving success, you will immediately see how the world conforms to your vision and you will begin to reap the rewards and benefits of living a self fulfilling life. As for myself, I have been in this situation due to lack of motive or whatever excuse I might have made during the time period when I was stuck in a rut, so I can tell you that I am guilty of it as well.The thing that has helped not only myself and other successful people move forward towards a more successful life is to attack the things that they are passionate about. For the most part, they have learned how to tap into what they are good at(strength) while acknowledging what they are weak at. In this chapter, I want to share with you some examples so that you can tackle the responsibility that comes along with success to help you get moving forward toward living that rewarding and self fulfilling life. A key component that plays a very large part of that is Law Number Four, "Knowing Your Strengths and Weaknesses." Once you are able to identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses, this will lead you to accepting responsibility for your purpose in life.Your passion.The thing that gives you that nervous excitement that doesn't allow you to sleep but three to four hours at night.Once you fairly assess or discover your strengths and weaknesses watch how your energy and confidence change and the positive environment that you create surrounding yourself. ASSESS YOUR STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESS Not confronting responsibility is one of the things that causes us to put things off when trying to reach success. Instead of living in the moment and doing the things that we should be doing in order to move us into the right direction, we allow things to pile up hoping to tackle them in the future. This could be in large part because we are not aware of our Strengths and Weaknesses or simply lack passion for whatever it is that we are doing at the present moment. Understand that we all have greatness within us and a purpose to serve out in life.When you take the time out to pay attention and assess your strengths and weaknesses you are to able to find a lane or path for success that's best suited for you.That's the unique thing about living in this world, is that we are all different in many ways.Maybe your strength is public speaking,or in sales,or better yet interpreting the law. Anything is possible, you just have to find the lane that best fits what you bring to this world. As I stated above, some people discover their strengths at a very young age while others discover them in the latter years of life.So toss out the idea that it might be too late or the idea that you might not be old enough to achieve success.No matter the situation, discover what it is that serves as a strength to you and then work on it and move one step closer to the self fulfilling life that was meant for you. Take 28 year old Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg who became a billionaire by the age of 23 years old for his creation of the worlds largest social networking platform for example. Zuckerberg a New York native, took up writing soft ware programs in middle school as a hobby. He begin with BASIC(Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code)and was taught by his father and a tutor. Later on, he would study computer science and psychology at Harvard University. In his sophomore year of college he would write the program which would become the face plate for what we all know now as Facebook in his dorm room. Shortly after, he took the program to other campuses with the help of friends and then moved to Palo, Alto California and the rest is history. He is currently the youngest billionaire in the world. Mark Zuckerberg's passion started as just a hobby. The key is that he paid attention to what he was good at and continued to develop it until he amassed the type of success that he sought after for his vision. Often we get so caught up in what others are doing that we miss our calling or we continue to put things off for another day. In the meantime we are taking a step backwards in terms of meeting and living a more successful and self fulfilling life. Don't take a step back, thrust forward and meet responsibility head on to be able to enjoy the life that is meant for you. MAKE IT HAPPEN ATTITUDE “Some people want it to happen,some wish it would happen,and others make it happen.” ~ Michael Jordan If you want to live a successful and self fulfilling life, you can't sit back and expect for things to magically happen or expect that someone will do the work for you. You have to put forth the effort and there is no way around it at all. Too often, we seek the approval of our peers to gain validation of what would be successful instead of listening to your gut feeling and putting forth the effort in order to obtain success. There are no guarantees when it comes to success so you can't expect someone else to do the work for you nor can you afford to wait for someone's approval. In fact, some of the world's most successful people have been rejected or even turned down the first time that they attempted to create a lane or path for their success. So don't wait for someone else, make it happen yourself. People respect hard work and integrity,thats what will ultimately open up the door for success. WOODLAWN POST An example of my own that I can share with you is when I decided to start up Woodlawn Post.Prior to my arrival to Sweden,I taught journalism at my former high school, Detroit East Catholic and became very passionate about expressing myself through writing. Like Mark Zuckerberg, I started out with Woodlawn Post just as a hobby, writing about all the places that I visited around the world and topics that I found interesting and even some topics that weren't of my interest. I knew my career would dwindle down at some point, So I began looking into something that I could do along with others who were passionate about delivering the news from an Urban perspective.So I immediately shared the vision with my brother Adrian and good friend and mentor Fred Drains back in 2008.I was mesmerized by the connection of the urban community after attending several concerts in the Stockholm area with American artist such as Rick Ross, Jay-Z and Joe to name a few. It embarked on me how the urban community began to grow worldwide.It just needed a platform that would consistently speak for it around the globe. The conversation that I with Tom Welsh proved to be helpful as he pointed this out prior to my arrival to Europe.