Train

Your talent will help you to be identified, winning requires training. Ask any professional athlete in any field what happens behind the scenes. While fans enjoy the game, players bleed in training. What is true of sports, is true of any professional field. You’ll never master any game without intense training. If you want to win, study winners in your discipline of interest.

Live a disciplined life. Professional athletes don’t eat junk and get addicted to drugs and alcohol. You can’t indulge with every affair of this life and compete effectively in your race. Training is no fun. But athletes focus on the prize. And no matter how gifted you may be, winning requires coaching and teamwork. Who is your coach? Who are your teammates?

A coach helps you set and achieve your targets. A coach keeps you on your toes. A coach monitors your progress. A coach encourages you when the going gets tough. One is too small a number to achieve greatness. Your team creates the synergy needed to keep the momentum. Your team helps you to handle failure. To see failure as lessons learned. To live to fight another day.

Your team also helps you to handle success. Not to be overly consumed by small wins and lose sight of the journey ahead. We must never confuse winning the battle and winning the war. This life is an open battlefield. You’ll deal with one battle after another. Battle-lines have been drawn against your health, relations, finances and life. Let me share with you words of wisdom written by Paul the Great.

“Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win!?All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize.?So, I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing.?I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified - 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 (NLT).”?

DR. K. N. JACOB?