Practice Simplicity With Constant Repetition

Unhappy with his weight, Santiago decided to begin an exercise routine with a trainer at his local gym. His seriousness was evident by his diligent efforts day after day despite the soreness of his body after each workout. He expected to make great strides and was disappointed at having lost only six pounds in the first month. “These exercises are not effective,” he sometimes said to his trainer. Slowly his enthusiasm waned … he terminated his appointments with the trainer and began looking online for more complex routines. He would begin one routine only to stop it after a few weeks since his desired objective was not attained. And so it went for two years … the thrill of a new routine, its practice for a few weeks, subsequently followed by his apathy and the longing for a newer, more effective routine. He never practiced any particular routine long enough to reap its benefits.

Leaving the grocery store one morning, he saw a familiar face but could not quite remember how he knew the individual. “Long time Santiago, how have you been? We have not seen you at the gym in a while.” Santiago instantly remembered the voice of his former workout partner, Frederick, who stayed with the trainer after Santiago left. Frederick was almost unrecognizable, his face looked slimmer and his belly had lost its roundness.  Santiago stood before his old friend in complete disbelief of his remarkable progress and realized his mistake in prematurely leaving the trainer.

Regarding personal growth, the incessant desire for newer knowledge without first consistently putting to practice previously gained insights is indolence disguised as earnest longing. It is through the consistent practice of the little things that real knowledge expands, not through outwardly searching for newer books and insights. With the consistent practice of the little things, however, the right books and circumstances will emerge at the appropriate time without externally seeking them out.

Leap or Remain Bound

A bird gazes at the sky and hesitates to take flight. It is not because it does not know how to fly– it does. It is not because its wings are inoperative–they work. It is not because it is without the willpower — it is within.

The bird knows how to fly, and it has both the wings and the willpower. But its wings are inhibited, its willpower is fragile and its wings unsteady, because … deep within, the bird is not utterly convinced that the potential joys of being borne aloft this unknown airspace will outweigh the more familiar and seemingly closer pleasures of the ground.

And so the bird remains earthbound, until the moment it can summon enough courage to take that self-preservative leap on the strength of hope and faith, or remain bound forever. It must decide, for the ground is quickly collapsing beneath it.

~By Dr. Ikenna Q Ezealah

www.foundationforascent.com

In the 1890s, a clerk at a Liverpool based shipping line whose steamers had a monopoly on carrying all cargo to and from the Congo came upon a discovery that would drastically change the course of his life. The bilingual Edmund Dene Morel was often sent to Belgium to supervise the arrival and departure of the ships from Antwerp, Belgium to Boma, Congo.

While in Antwerp, he observed that only guns, chains, ammunition and articles remote from trade purposes were loaded on the ships to Congo. No commercial goods were being exchanged for the great quantities of valuable rubber and ivory which the ships brought back to Belgium . Other signs of slave labor and mass killings surfaced which prompted the twenty eight year old Morel to inform his boss. His boss not only turned a deaf ear to his complaints but promoted and reassigned him to other tasks in order to prevent his outspokenness from upsetting the King of Belgium and jeopardizing the company’s relationship with its most profitable client.

Unlike the others who were aware of the brutality of the King of Belgium’s private army (Force Publique) in the Congo, Morel spoke out vehemently and eventually quit his job in 1901. Ignoring the temptation of sacrificing  the truth within him for the material comfort of his ever growing family, the financially strained Morel turned down a bribe from the king’s representative. He, who from a materialistic point of view had nothing to gain in his crusade against the king’s atrocities in the Congo, but only a promising career at the prominent shipping company to lose, devoted the next ten years of his life to bringing to light perhaps the first wide spread massacre of the 20^th century; one which would claim the lives of millions of Congolese.

The former shipping clerk turned writer would gather detailed information of the king’s operations in the Congo and successfully make known the suffering of millions in a distant continent at the hands of a man who once convinced the western world at the Berlin Conference of 1885 that his sole interest in acquiring the Congo was merely philanthropic.

There are times in the life of every man who aspires to live nobly when his belief in his noble principles are tested to the utmost, his response in these times of trial reveal whether his belief is truly alive and has thus become conviction!