I dedicate this post to 4 A.M. There is also a Melanie Fiona song called 4 A.M. A legend has it that its about also the time when the spirit hovers most to sanctify the things that keep us awake at that time.
I watched Kobe Bryant a few days ago when he was on stage accepting the ‘Icon Award’. He was addressing fellow athletes. He said :
“We’re not on this stage just because of talent or ability,” Bryant said…
“We’re up here because of 4 A.M...We’re up here because we had a dream and let nothing stand in our way. We planned and stayed prepared. If anything tried to bring us down, we used it to make us stronger.”
I’ve come to realize that it does matter when you wake up everyday. It does matter how prepared you are. This quote is not saying everyone should get up at 4 A.M. It’s metaphoric. I love this quote, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln. I love this alliteration, “Proper planning Plus Preparation Prevents Poor Performance”. My question to you is, what do you do when you wake up daily?
The first step to a great day and week is to spend a few minutes planning and meditating on it. I wrote a few days about meditating, now go one step and add planning with it. Think of your goals, and while at it, take a deep breath, just relax in your own soul and personal epiphany, and attempt dwelling fully and only in the present. The Budhists and the writer Eckhart Tolle, in his meditative book of spiritual enlightenment calls it The Power of Now.
Planning helps you leverage on the power of now for the things you want to tomorrow. Being in the present will help you dwell better in His Presence, Our unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worries — all forms of fear — are caused by TOO MUCH EMPHASIS IN THE FUTURE and not enough PRESENCE in the PRESENT. And on the other hand, guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non forgiveness are caused by TOO MUCH PAST, AND NOT ENOUGH PRESENT.
It doesn’t matter what happens in the past or what will happen in the future, what should matter to you is that you can change a lot of things now. This is the power of now, a vehicle for planning.
I meet people everyday, but I’m yet to meet anyone who intentionally planned to fail, they only just failed to plan and that was the planning to fail. In the words of Larry Winger, “Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy, or stupid. Those things are what happen when you don’t have a plan.” A goal without a plan is just a wish, and it takes as much energy to wish as to plan.
In the words of Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric , he says that “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, infect others with it until they relentlessly drive it to completion’. So I dedicate this post to 4AM, to the things that keeps us awake. I dedicate this to my dreams, my goals and my team. But dreams don’t work until we do. And it starts with a plan because Proper planning Plus Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. #4AM
Eizu, ©Hexavia!
Strategy. Business StartUps and Corporate Restructuring Consulting
T: 08035202891
Uwaoma Eizu is the lead strategist at Hexavia! He is a graduate of Mathematics with two MBAs and over a decade of experience working with startups and big businesses. His core is in building startups and in corporate restructuring. He is also a certified member of the Nigerian Institute of Management, Institute of Strategic Management of Nigeria and the Project Management Institute, USA. By the side, he writes weekly for the BusinessDay newspaper.
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