The Gateway to Personal Transformation Unleash Yourself E-Book

Chidozie Charles Nnaji

• Herausgeber: Europa Edizioni
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

People are creatures of habit and, as such, they like to act in the same way. No matter how much they wish for any kind of change to happen, they keep on the same path, not swerving from the vicious cycle of their mistakes. Then, how can people be sure to achieve new, happy results? The answer is simple: by changing approach. With this in mind, The Gateway To Personal Transformation, through a direct and engaging prose, aims to provide guiding principles that people can adopt in their everyday lives to become the best versions of themselves.

Chidozie Charles Nnaji is a pastor, a counsellor and a professor of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nigeria. He obtained his first degree in Department of Civil Engineering and his M.Eng and Ph.D in Water Resources and Environmental Engineering from the University of Nigeria in 2007 and 2011 respectively. He is also the current Editor-in-Chief of the prestigious Nigerian Journal of Technology. The Gateway to Personal Transformation is his first non-scholarly publication which was completed within fifteen days. Prior to this book, he published approximately eighty journal articles and penned numerous inspirational quotes, which are also slated for publication. He is married to Nnenna Favour Nnaji, and they have four kids.

Leseprobe

Chidozie C. Nnaji

The Gateway To Personal Transformation:

Unleash Yourself

© 2023 Europe Books| London

www.europebooks.co.uk | [email protected]

ISBN       9791220145633

First edition: December 2023

The Gateway To Personal Transformation:

Unleash Yourself

WARNING

This Book Can Change Your Life!

To all seekers of truth and those who have a burning desire for positive transformational change.

Introduction

Jane had been awake for three hours battling with a mathematics assignment she was given at school. She was very good at mathematics. So, as soon as she got back from school and dispensed with her domestic chores, she settled down to the assignment. Her target was to retain her distinction in mathematics and other science subjects. The questions were familiar and she had imagined that she would spend half an hour, at the most, to get the job done. After all, she had spent the entire holiday devouring the mathematics textbook for the current term. And, indeed, when the term started, she was already prepared for the examination. She answered all the questions asked by the mathematics teacher and even became a sort of assistant to her. This particular evening, she set off her task with absolute confidence. She quickly solved the first four questions and crosschecked with the answers given in the textbook. They were all correct! Then, she quickly finished the last one and did not think there was any need to crosscheck the answer this time. But being a stickler for perfection, she decided to check. She could not believe her eyes - her answer was wrong! She sunk into the chair flustered. Next, she crosschecked her solution again and again. Everything was in order - the signs, the change of subject, the cross multiplication. She even tried to manipulate the solution to arrive at the answer, but it wouldn't work. She tore off that page she had been using which was now looking very rough and untidy. She turned a fresh page and started all over again, but the answer was still the same. By now, she was getting frustrated and depressed. Her self-confidence evaporated and she began to feel disappointed in herself. The question was simple. There was nothing ambiguous in it, yet the answer kept eluding her. Suddenly, it dawned on her - she had been using the wrong method all the while. Hence, she quickly changed her method and in five minutes, the answer popped up: !

The story I just told does not refer to any particular person. It is rather the experience of nearly everybody who took science and mathematics courses in school. It happened to me often while I was in school. By extension, it is also the common experience of every student of life. We keep doing things the same way and hope for different results. We labour and toil, but the result does not turn up right, because our methods have been wrong all the while. If you don't change your approach, you will never get it right in life. In this book, I will show you what you need to change so that your life can take a new turn.      

Preface

Having spent thousands of hours interacting with and counselling people as a pastor and a university professor, I have come to one realization: people want to change but they don't want it badly enough. A personal transformation cannot happen in a vacuum or abstraction. For a person to experience the change they want, they must be willing to take decisive and practical steps to change their attitude and approach to life. Change is progressive and requires consistency, persistence, and patience. If you don't have or acquire these virtues, change will always elude you. Growth happens as we make those little adjustments, one at a time, which are required to make us better human beings. This book brings you tangible and simple principles that you can adopt to become that person you so badly want to be. It is quite simple but there are no shortcuts. When you change who you are, your circumstances will respond accordingly, and your world will change for the better.

Chapter One

UNDERSTANDING WHO YOU ARE

Self-discovery is the doorway to a purposeful life

Who Really Are You?

So many people live the way they do because of a lack of basic understanding of who they are and what their purpose on earth is. Even in the deepest recess of their consciousness, they do not think or feel any different from other living things such as animals and trees. They just exist – floating in the direction of the most prevailing force and influences in their lives. Even though there are many philosophies and myths about the origin of man, this book is not about philosophies or traditions and, as a consequence, it has no place for arguments for or against Darwinism and evolution. It is about enduring and life-changing TRUTH! This book will not argue with anyone because that is not the purpose. The tragedy of arguments is that winning them does not guarantee anything other than an over-bloated sense of intellectual superiority. So in answering the question of who you are, I will have to go to the WORD of God (The Holy Bible) for insight. Even if you don’t believe in the Bible, you should listen to it because it makes a lot of common and spiritual sense. Now, before we continue, here are a few things you should know about the Bible:

“A total of 5 billion copies of the bible have been sold as at 2021, compared to 800 million and 120 million copies of the Quran and the Book of Mormon respectively. The British and Foreign Bible Society put the copies of the Bible sold at between 5 and 7 billion”. [1]

And to think that at a time in history, the Bible was nearly exterminated; this is beyond amazing! So now, you see why it’s important to refer to the Bible. Genesis 1:27 says:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them”.[2]

In Genesis 2:27, the Bible says:

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul”.[3]

Wow! This is something science will never teach you because it defies logic and goes beyond the realm of science. This is of a higher order – what the great evangelist Paul Yonggi Cho referred to as the fourth dimension. You don’t stumble into this staggering information by studying books or by exercising your imagination. This only comes by divine revelation through the Eternal Spirit. I don’t know if you have just realized that you are a divine masterpiece orchestrated by the foreknowledge and foreordination of the Godhead. What I am saying is that you are no accident – you were conceived, designed and manufactured by God himself. And he did not just make you in the image of some nondescript entity in space; He made you like himself. King David was so overwhelmed by the contemplation of this replication of God in mankind      that he exulted “I am fearfully and wonderfully made”. This is a fact you need to internalize and digest. You need to meditate on it until it comes alive to your spirit.

The human body is the most complex machine. Scientists believe that the human brain is faster than any supercomputer. If the entire DNA in the human body were stretched out, it would add up to a total length of sixteen billion kilometres – a distance that is about a hundred and ten times the distance from the Earth to the sun. Can you now see the stuff you are made of? You are loaded with divine energy and potential, and you must not let anyone rob you of the divine opportunity to make your life count. It is a gross disservice to oneself to pass through life without generating some positive disturbances around you. You are a piece of God, and you carry about inexhaustible possibilities. There at the graveyard lie unimaginable but unutilized potentials. I hope that you will not look back from eternity only to realize that you wasted all the talents you were supposed to trade with. For this reason, I urge you to get up from your ashes of slothfulness and begin to unleash yourself. Now, let me sound a note of warning! You cannot just change your world overnight after decades of indolence, inactivity and bad choices; but you can begin from today to perceive and do things differently. And I am sure that, in due course, you will reap if you do not faint. Galatians 6:9 has a comforting word for you:

“So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessings if we do not give up”.

The Folly Of Laxity

Most people trudge through life without giving any serious thought to their existence on the planet. It is either they don't care or they are too busy living life without knowing the reason for living. While some men have made great impacts in the short time allotted to them on this side of eternity, many (the majority of men, in fact) barely scratch the surface of purpose. They are just like spectators viewing a boring soccer game and do not care about who wins or who loses. I consider that a terrible way to live and a sheer waste of the enormous energy bequeathed to them by the creator. I have seen energetic and intelligent young men waste away like worms, consumed by indolence, inactivity and inaction. They have entered into a tacit covenant with laziness and procrastination – always dreaming of a faraway fantasy island where everything will be just perfect. It is not that people like this are lacking in talent or gifts, but they have been defeated in their minds. You may know one or two able-bodied, good-looking and talented young men who feel so inadequate and incapable. They are full of muscles; their bones are strong and they are perfectly healthy but they have managed to convince themselves that nothing good can come out of them. And so, they putter around waiting for the expiration of their tenancy on earth. I consider this a colossal misfortune! You may be shocked to know that there is a very simple name for this type of disposition. Yes, you guessed right - it is called laziness, slothfulness or indolence. The Cambridge dictionary defines indolence as “the state of showing no real interest or effort”.[4] Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “love of ease and a dislike of movement or activity”.[5] Man was never created to be idle or lazy. God cannot create you with 206 bones, about a hundred billion neurons and over six hundred muscles just for you to idle away. Genesis 2:15 states that:

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it”. [6]

“Then the Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden to cultivate and keep it”. [7]

The sloth is an animal that is true to its name. It spends most of its time hanging from tree branches and moves only when absolutely necessary. And, what’s more? It sleeps for a total of twenty hours per day! Some people are just like that.

God Gave Man Dominion

God created all that you see in the natural world today and handed them over to mankind for administration. Man is the crown of God’s creation. Man was so highly rated by God that he made him the landlord of the whole earth. Immediately after creation, God left man totally in charge because he was not in doubt of the abilities he had concentrated in man. Don’t let your brain misread the word “man” to mean Adam. By “man” I am actually referring to you. In Genesis 1:28, the Bible says:

“And God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground”. [8]