5 Ways To Be More Effective in Life.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on 5th October 2020 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy and competence.

The Story

It was 8 in the morning. The northeastern wind blew in vengeance against skins and every surface it could vent its anger on. Traders, employees and entrepreneurs went about their day’s job with enthusiasm while the hazy wind danced in the air with the light-weight paper crafts the children littered the street with. It was 10 days to Christmas and the schools were on holiday. Suddenly, a girl appeared. She was 5 feet 2 inches wearing a multicoloured T-shirt on blue shorts furiously hugging a baby pink-coloured helmet with her left arm. The sun lost its radiance to the glow of her dark skin as she stood in anticipation of what her effort would amount to, today. Beside her pink trainers, standing on two spiky round legs is a 7-day-old bicycle she got on her birthday.

It was her fifth day of trial. On the second, the ground callously bruised her left cheek. Hence, she got herself a helmet. She quickly checked the bicycle to ensure it had no fault as she made an effort to sit and pedal down the almost lonely juxtaposed street. Her effort for the fifth day felt futile to her as she couldn’t see an obvious improvement in her skill. Her thought was clouded by the number of times she fell; about thirty from the first day. Regardless, she kept the routine until two days before Christmas when she could fearlessly and effectively ride the bicycle.

The level of your effectiveness in life is the product of repetition in applying the right principles. In being effective at your skill or passion, you will need to discover, understand and apply the principles that sponsor effectiveness. These principles or attitudes, help discipline you to attain effectiveness lest you will keep struggling. The 10-year-old showed us two of these attitudes. We saw how she used these monumental attitudes to arrive at effectiveness two days before Christmas. 

What the young girl faced, is exactly what happens to every person once he aims at effectiveness; several storms well up to limit you and make your goal seem impossible. The discovery of the right principles helps you get to your goal regardless of the limitations that arise. 

Let’s take a brief glance at some of the principles.

1. Trim Your Task.

When you feel you need to do everything that has to be done, you might likely lose out on what needs to be done because you were caught up doing what you could have easily delegated. Trim your task by delegating some tasks that you don’t necessarily have to do. This way,  you save more time to attain mastery of your passion. 

2. Plan

When you constantly engage yourself in the habit of planning, even if you have multiple potentials, you will attain effectiveness at each of them when you apply the principle of planning to your life. You become more effective at your skills,  talents, profession, passion,  etc when you plan right. 

3. Acquire knowledge And The Right Attitude

The book of Second Peter 1: 5-6 stresses the need to acquire not just knowledge but other attributes that can help you attain effectiveness. 

“For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness.

These qualities have the potency to earn you favour from men and God which can ease the process of your growth. 

4. Resilience

According to Merriam-Webster thesaurus, “Resilience is the ability to withstand or adjust to challenges.” This is the attitude that prevented the young girl from giving up. It also helped her try one more time, those moments she fell to the ground.  This is what anyone who desires effectiveness/mastery at a skill needs.

Regardless of how challenging it is, resilience will have you head over heels trying one more time. This also goes for affirmations, when you affirm a positive statement to yourself and still find yourself faulty in that area of your life, resilience will have you the next minute reaffirming to yourself.

5 Consistency 

For thirteen days, we saw how the young girl kept practising to attain mastery. Now that is what we call consistency. Resilience cannot be effective without consistency. The two are intertwined. When you apply consistency to your journey to mastery in all you do, no one can limit how far you can go. Consistently affirming a positive statement to yourself brings you to the reality of that statement.

“Effectiveness” is intentional and to attain it; discovering, understanding and applying the necessary and right principles cannot be done without. Hence, let’s resolve to develop these attitudes by affirming some positive realities to help us attain effectiveness.

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