Life Compass E-Book

Dr. Chilungamo Khuwi

• Herausgeber: Lighted Insight Publishing House
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 180

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Living life is a journey we take to the future and for that, you need to discover your destin(y)ation. Growing up and developing as a human being is a project which needs you to be in charge of, discovering the person or tool you should develop into to fulfil your God-given purpose and visions.In this book, Dr Chilungamo Khuwi has dissected and addressed the mind puzzling questions, "Who am I or should be?" and "What I am I here on earth for or What is my purpose?".He then marries how all areas of your life must operate in relation to your purpose and visions, to function as a machine or an institution with all parts or departments firing towards a common purpose.By the time you finish reading this book, you will have a clear direction for your life. This book guarantees you to take charge of your life without the fear of midlife crisis or deathbed regrets of having missed the priorities during your time on earth. It is key to living a happy, fulfilled and impactful life.

Leseprobe

LIFE COMPASS

Keys To Discovering Your Purpose and Executing Your Life Orderly

Dr. Chilungamo Khuwi

Foreword by: Assoc. Prof. Chiwoza Bandawe (Clinical Psychologist - University of Malawi)

Lighted Insight Publishing House

Copyright © 2020 Dr. Chilungamo Khuwi

All rights reservedNo part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher, with the exemption of brief excerpts in magazine, articles, reviews etc.ISBN-13: 9789996099021Cover design by: Dr. Azariah MosiwaPrinted in Malawi

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Foreword

Introduction

Preface

Theme One:

⸙ FIRST THINGS FIRST

⸙ EVERYTHING EXISTS WITH AND FOR A PURPOSE

⸙ BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY

⸙ FRAMING YOUR LIFE

⸙ IDENTITY

⸙ WHAT IS PURPOSE?

⸙ WHY UNDERSTAND YOUR PURPOSE?

⸙ DISCOVERING YOU PURPOSE

⸙ BE PURPOSE CONSCIOUS

⸙ MISSION STATEMENT

⸙ VISION

⸙ GOALS AND GOAL SETTING

Theme Two:

⸙ SPIRITUAL DEPARTMENT

⸙ CHARACTER DEPARTMENT

⸙ LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT

⸙ EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

⸙ FINANCIAL DEPARTMENT

⸙ RELATIONSHIP DEPARTMENT

Afterword

Acknowledgement

About The Author

Foreword

You hold in your hands a life resource which, if read and applied, will guarantee you a unique, productive and joyful life. The principles outlined in this book are universal laws of life which most people are not exposed to, yet these laws are in operation all the time and determine the outcomes of our lives. Chilungamo Khuwi has systematically unpacked some of these laws to help us better manage, plan and live purposeful lives. He shares some of his own experiences in an applied and practical manner. Many have grown up and gone through the stages of life without this crucial knowledge. In many ways, you are blessed to have this knowledge come to you right now.

The adage, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail” by Benjamin Franklin comes alive in this ground-breaking book. Beginning with the core concept of identity, Chilungamo takes you on a reflective journey that forces you to pause and think along each step of the way. He then marries your identity to the concept of purpose, your life isn’t just there for fun, there is a purpose to it, and you need to understand and build your decisions around what that  is. Our lives are part of a bigger design and the book addresses spirituality and how we can connect with God through meditation. Our character defines us and determines the personality that outputs from us. This is beautifully unpacked in this book.

The book takes on a practical and applied approach addressing leadership, finances and relationships all with real examples from Chilungamo’s life. You will gain the greatest value from this book by continuously applying what you read to your own life. It is a book that will jump-start your life from living other people’s visions for you to taking back responsibility and ownership for the outcome of your life. As you read, pause and reflect. We know that reflection is an important aspect of mental wellbeing. This book promotes many aspects of your wellbeing. It is your companion for a successful and God honouring life.

St. Irenaeus is reported to have said: “The glory of God is man fully alive”. In other words, when you come fully alive, you live the purpose for which God created you, you contribute to the growth and development of humanity, then God is glorified. With this book, you are set on the course for coming fully alive, alive to your life mission, fulfilled relationships and the manifestation of the application of the universal laws of life you will be expose to. The world needs alive people. Come alive! Your time has come!

Dr Chiwoza Bandawe,

Clinical Psychologist, University of Malawi

Introduction

"And he said to them, "Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."Luke 12:15

“There is one quality one must possess to win, and that is the definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants and the burning desire to achieve it.”Napoleon Hill

When you wake up every day, you are always walking around and doing all sorts of things. As you walk around, you walk into the future as you leave the present into the past. You get tired, you rest and sleep ready to continue your walk to the future when you wake up again. Therefore, living your life is a journey to the future, and you are the vehicle that carries yourself on the journey to your future.

Your life (who you are as a human being) is a development project. Just like every other development project, your life should have an end picture (blueprint) which you are aiming for. Because life is a journey to the future, it means there should be a destination (destiny) you are locked on. To get to that destination, your life should be developed into a proper vehicle (the end picture or tool) that is fit to carry out the needed assignments and go through the challenges along the way.

Having that in mind, that vehicle should be made with the right materials, with the right characteristics, and having the right shape to be on the road to your destination. In other words, you need to develop into a person (the vehicle or tool), with the right features, that is fit to take you to your destiny.

For you to decide the kind of vehicle (person) needed to take you to your destination you first should know what that destination is. The destination determines the means, the design and characteristics of the materials to be used in building that vehicle according to the challenges anticipated along the journey to your destiny.

I’ve come to realize that most people’s lives lack direction primarily due to ignorance of their destination. People don't know what they should be chasing, or what they should be building on, therefore they don’t know or recognize the resources they need to build their lives with and how to use them. Most people are not intentional about their lives in the way they make their decisions because they don’t have a right basis when it comes to decision making.

Life was or is meant to be simple and straight forward only we understand what it should be about. Do you agree with that? There is a way how life is ideally meant to be lived. There are essential pillars that make up a healthy and fulfilled life which everyone must observe and follow.

There is a way how life is meant to be built from the ground up. A lot of times we live unfulfilled empty lives. We define our lives by the things that can be lost or taken away from us. Once removed our foundations become shaky. We needed to focus on things that establish us and help us handle the external forces that come from pursuing secondary things. The hidden secret which most people don’t realize is that once you get to understand and master the primary things first, it becomes easier to gain secondary things.

You are not the things you possess, accumulate or do outside of your body. You are everything intangible that is within you – purpose, knowledge, character, and spirituality and belief system. Life boils down to who you are and what you carry within you wherever you go.

Life is a personal journey which is completely tailored to you. There is no reason for you to compare yourself to anyone else because you are building different things. As much as you may compete with others for resources and opportunities, you can never and should never compare your structure to anyone. You don’t do what others are doing that you shouldn’t be doing just to get applauded.

What is right for them usually is not right for you since you have different purposes. The vision and the goals you have in life should be tailored to your purpose.

Your life needs a purpose, a vision, goal setting, resources to build that vision into reality and make it effective, network with other purposes and visions around you to have a greater impact on the world.

If indeed your life as a human being is a project what’s your blueprint? Now that you know that life is a journey to the future, and you are serious to get to your destination, can you afford to continue without a LIFE COMPASS? Have you gotten yours already? Have you figured it out?

Let’s be together as I will be unfolding where I believe people could be missing it in life, why people have a midlife crisis and why they regret on their deathbed. I believe they regret because of misplaced priorities, and all because they lack a LIFE COMPASS.

This book will help you realize where, why and how you should spend your time, mind, energy and resources as you pursue a happy, successful, productive, fulfilling and meaningful life that you will never regret to have lived.

Preface

This is the first book in the Growth and Development Series. These books are aimed at building you from the ground up with the hopes of attaining a meaning and successful life. I believe life should be developed in stages. I believe life should be governed by the principles of life. Every building needs a foundation, and every foundation needs structure. What about you?

The first twenty years of my life had me spiralling. I had no sense of real direction. My mentor Dr Cornelius Huwa came in and helped me to see life in a new light. This shaped me (and continues to) and set up the necessary building blocks for an intentional and purposeful life. I have since seen the rise and build of my life all-round and sustainably.

In this series, I will share with you the principles of greatness. It doesn’t matter where you are or how broken your life is. To start with keen consistent diligence is key. Thorough knowledge of the right principles and adherence to proper guidance, we can all become successful, fulfilled and influential. The difference between successful and unsuccessful people is in whether they do or don’t according to the knowledge or exposure they have or lack thereof.

This series is not exactly about how to do specific practices per se but rather about principles that should help to bring your life into perspective and balance so that you operate as one machine going in one direction. It’s about showing you how to bring the world around you in subjection to your purpose as you influence the world around you through that purpose.

Theme One:

Basic Areas of Life

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Matthews 6:33

“Put first things first and second things are thrown in. Put second things first and you lose both first and second things.” – C.S Lewis

⸙ FIRST THINGS FIRST

Chapter One

Every person’s life is made up of primary and secondary things. Primary things are what makeup who you are and why you do certain things (motives or intents). That which is secondary is birthed from the primary; the things that you do and how you do them.

The entirety of your being (all that encompasses you) often dictates the ingredients of the primary. In other words, you are the primary! It is everything about you. They are the substance or the particles that make up who you are, your essence. These are things that define you and can’t be separated from you. Such things include identity, spirituality, purpose, and character. Though the primary things are the essence of who you are, the positive aspects do not always come automatically. Though they are within reach they are things which we normally should be conscious and intentional about if we want to develop them. Good character doesn’t come just like that, one needs to deliberately develop just as discovering one’s purpose, learning, spirituality and leadership. All these need efforts though they are part of who we are.

As mentioned before, secondary things are things that you do and how you do them. Things like finance, career, friendships, marriage, etc. are all secondary things because they are not directly part of who you are.

Let me break it to you that personality, just as habits, is part of secondary things because they are not who you are but rather emanate from who you are. Who you are, determines how you behave or the way you do certain things? You can never fake who you truly are. You can, however, fake how you behave. Even though you can fool people about who you are through your personality, you know who you are (your intentions) at the core. People have resorted to quick-fix their lives through developing personality traits to convince people or win people over, the dos and don’ts, ‘how-tos, etc.

There is a basic structure of life, a minimum composition of areas which every human being should be good at to have a functional life. This is where you need to start building your life from, and this same principle applies to businesses, institutions and machines. This basic structure enables things to deliver on their minimum expectations. The rest of the things are there for extra value, to beautify or to spice up things one way or another. For example, paint on a car is not mainly applied for the car performance rather the outlook and prevention of rust which adds more beauty, durability of the wood hence value to be sold at a higher price..

Every primary thing in your life is an essential need because it’s the foundation or forms the skeleton for your life. If primary things are not in place then your success, if you manage to attain it at all, is temporary. Among the secondary things, there are also essential areas that even though they are outside of us, we still need to master them for effective living.

Primary things are things that you should seek out to work on first and foremost. They have great bearing on your secondary things. It’s easy to attain secondary things when you have primary things figured out but very hard to work on primary things when you have secondary things. Though not impossible, it can be quite the challenge to work on primary areas which have survived years of misinformed ideas when the secondary structures (relationships, money management) have already been erected. Some secondary structures are built from the wrong premise. Though hard, it is not impossible.

People are busy focusing on secondary things that are not essential such as career, possession of material things, etc, which just add extra value, without first sorting out the essential needs of life. Value is added to something that’s already there. It’s like having a beautiful car hood without an engine and you are busy perfecting it. You can’t drive it no matter how beautiful you make it. You need to have something operational which you should add value to; you need to have the basics of your life going before you think of jumping into certain things in life. Because of such disorder, people end up living chaotic lives and wonder why their lives are all over the place and nothing to show for their efforts over time.

The same thing goes to organizations and businesses which need basic or essential things in place for them to run effectively and last, the rest are just additional elements. Things like purpose, mission, essential workers or departments, core values and governing principles, funding are essential to the business.

I believe every individual should be good at these essential areas no matter who they are, what they do or don’t, whether single or married, white or black; these basic areas are cross-cutting. Remember essential doesn’t only mean primary areas but all primary areas are automatically essential. These essential areas in a human life include purpose, vision, mission, identity, character, spirituality, leadership, finance and relationship. We are involved in all these areas one way or another, both at individual and group level.

Let me order these things according to their importance in the structure: the purpose is the why to your life (or why something exists). Spirituality, Moral Fortitude (good character) and personal leadership are the foundation by which you stand (or fall). Money making and relationship management are but the supporting pillars that ensure sturdiness and form.

⸙ EVERYTHING EXISTS WITH AND FOR A PURPOSE

Chapter Two

“The greatest tragedy in life is not death, but life without a purpose.” Dr Myles Munroe

In the “Purpose Driven Life” book by Rick Warren, he posed a question that says, “What on Earth am I here for?” This might sound very basic but really what are you here on earth for? Most of the time, we think we have it all figured out but when we lie back on our beds, close our eyes and search deep within ourselves, we realize that perhaps we have not figured it out yet. But once you truly find your core purpose on this earth then I believe you have taken the first step to your fulfilment and executing your life orderly as one machine to the future with a guarantee of no regrets.

Even though a car may have different parts, and each one serving its purpose, when you put them and their purposes together you have a much bigger machine – the car. If you look around, you will realize that there is something common about life, from the smallest organism to the biggest of galaxies; everything is interlinked with each one performing a certain purpose (and in the end all serving a greater purpose).

Look at the world: animals need oxygen and food from plants, and we breathe out carbon dioxide and animal wastes are used by the plants for food. Bees feed on pollen to make honey that humans and other animals feed on, yet they help with pollination of flowers in the process which produces seeds in plants.

Your body is a system of systems. Each system has its purpose or function which it serves to other systems and self in the body and affects the function of other systems within the same body. Together they form you and all your function and abilities as a human being that affects your surroundings. Take note that these systems, in your body, are also made up of organs that also have their unique purpose or function to their respective systems.

We have the respiratory system (breathing; oxygen uptake into the body and carbon dioxide release – Nose, trachea (windpipe) and lungs), cardiovascular system (Food, oxygen, immunity supply, chemical waste transportation from to the whole body - heart, blood and blood vessels), Gastrointestinal system (Nutrition - month, oesophagus, stomach and intestines), neurology (Command and action centre; Sensation and reaction - Brain, spinal cord and nerves), Genito-urinary system (Controls water, salts and chemical levels in the body - Kidneys, ureters, bladder, urethra) among others.

All these depend on each other for function and effectiveness. No system can function long enough without oxygen, food, proper levels of water, salts and chemicals, and without proper control to do so. Though they are unique in their functions, they are affected by the function of the other.

The heart pumps blood that carries oxygen and food to the bones and muscles and in turn, the muscles and bones support and protect the heart and other delicate organs and carry the whole body to places. The brain tells the body what to do and how to do it and the rest of the body follows the orders. It’s not the brain that executes, all it does is to receive data from the rest of the organs, process it and send back commands for the rest of the systems in the body to act upon.

Let me take you to another angle, look at organizations, businesses and governments. These are all systems made up of departments or sections and each one serves its purpose and they operate as one machine when their effects are brought together. Usually, you find individuals within departments serving their specific purposes or roles. If one individual is not doing their job right, then the department is usually affected.

A dysfunctional marketing, production or sales department sinks the whole business machine. Each of those business departments even though performing a different task yet have a greater effect on the overall performance of the other and the whole institution.

From all these examples, you will realize that at every level there is a system made up of different parts and systems whose purpose or function aids in the function of the other. Together all of them they have even a greater purpose or function. This is how life is or should be at every level including you as an individual or us as a society. Everything that exists has a purpose to meet by design and I believe behind the creation there is an awesome Designer who thought it wise to put interconnected systems that aid each other for sustenance and greater effect upon our societies, nations, continents and whole earth.