Of Beans and Bread - Part 2

Before proceeding, you should check out the first part here

This was supposed to be my birthday. He uttered a few more sentences I would never ever forget, before finally wrapping it all up with, “Don’t waste your morning. Don’t ever waste your morning!”

This isn’t to sound religious or preach you up about the morning. Remember I told you my intention isn’t to psyche you up in any way, but to the goal here is to challenge you to embrace your morning and allow it to define your desired day. I know you may just be thinking your morning is when you are young, agile and full of energy, and this is right as well. Another side to this, however, is that the decision of when the morning is lies in your hands. Hence, it is subject to your perspective and interpretation.

My interpretation of morning is this: The moment you decide to live your life deliberately and take responsibility for it. It is not the breaking of a new dawn that determines your morning; on the contrary, it is the moment you decide it’s time to get out of the bed you’ve been sleeping on. Your morning is that part of your life when your body system is filled with zest and energy. There is no better time to exert such energy into productive activities. It is the most appropriate time to gather momentum and gain speed. The morning is a season of instructions and direction. And for every young person, your morning is when you should bear your yokes and gather the required energy to run your life. There are lots of things I won’t be able to disclose now about the topic of one’s morning, but I’m hoping I would be able to share them in my yet-to-be published book.

Depending on your definition of “morning”, there are a couple of things I think you should know and do in your morning.

Seek Direction Instead of Speed

A lot of companies spend the latter part and the beginning of every year defining their strategy and how they intend to win in the business arena. This is because they have realized that direction is more precious than speed. One of the key values of strategy is how resources are mobilized for the execution of actionable goals. As much as it is okay to try to hit the big wins and get to a destination quickly, the morning season of our lives shouldn’t be a time to pursue “hitting it big” or “how to ‘blow’ quickly”. Rather, it is the time to discover what, why and where; it offers you the privilege of creating a picture of where you are headed and how you intend to get there. It is deeply worrisome that there are so many folks going nowhere at top speed. They are genuinely casualties in transit─very passionate individuals who are obsessed with the desire to run the race, but they are off the track.

Avoid Distractions

We are in a world filled with distractions and it’s so sad that ours is such a distracted generation. I have always wondered how people comfortably disburse their emotional energy on e-riots in the social media space. They wear the steel of war and battle faceless humans they may never meet all their lives. It is baffling! To the one who is wise enough, it is clear that involvement in these never-ending banters is a sheer waste of resources. However, there are other subtle forms of distractions that lurk around at every point in time. One of such sources of getting distracted is what I call the interference of good things and the snare of unharmful circumstances.

Pursuing every good idea could be a set up for self-destruction. Great ideas could be the principal noose for a great destiny. You know that thought that nudges you to go for every idea that pops up in your head, that sneaky little voice that advises you to jump on trending every conversation, and that cheer leader always encouraging you that every endeavour is your mountain to conquer? When put together, they are all elements of distractions.

Your morning is a time when you are filled with zest, energy and unusual ability to crush any and every goal, but you can’t afford to be distracted and sidetracked by good things that have nothing in particular to do with your purpose. You must have heard that the enemy of the right thing is the good thing.

Learning to pay attention to that one thing that matters the most and becoming successful at it is one of the most profitable character traits you could develop. Investing your time, energy, money and relationship on that one thing that can be the big game changer in your life. No doubt, you could be multi-talented and there is no crime in exploring all the beautiful gifts embedded in you. But until you gain mastery in one and you’ve found your foot in one particular field before trying out any other aspect of your giftedness, you may just be testing the waters in different directions and claiming to explore without recording tangible success in any of your endeavours.

Consecrating your time

One of the really crucial lessons I am learning is how to consecrate my time. Yet as unrelated as it might sound, for me, that means I’d rather sleep than spend my time doing some stuff I shouldn’t do. Those things may not be entirely harmful or wrong, but if they aren’t moving me in the direction of my purpose, they are considered to be time wasters, nonetheless.

If the bell in a sanctuary is consecrated for use in the sanctuary, even if the whole town is burning and they need a bell to notify the populace of the casualty, the bell can, and must never, leave the sanctuary. It doesn’t matter the urgency, gravity or circumstance. It has been consecrated for a specific purpose; no commas, no buts, no ifs. In other words, no distraction.

Are you able to consecrate your life to the purpose for which you’ve been sent here?

Make Sacrifices

There is a mystery around laying down immediate desires, appetites and even pursuits for something of greater worth which might not present momentary achievements. The morning is a season of giving up something valuable in the present for something that worth so much later: it’s a season to pay forward the expected result for any endeavor.

There's a final part.

Solomon O. Ayodele