Principles I’m sharing have worked for me the past 35 years. Sharing them with you feels as though it is my obligation. Hopefully, someone reading this column will decide to take steps to reprogram their thinking to create a better life.
This article is written to help readers understand the necessity of pursuing knowledge. You who want to become more professionally competent, more confident, and you who want to be more likely to succeed at whatever it is you’ve set your hand to do now or after retirement. Finally, you want to become a specialist.
What is your specialized field? As you continue your professional education, training, or tutelage, some of you need to evaluate yourselves by taking a close look at your exact stock of general knowledge. How are you operating in your day-to-day activities, an element essential for the proper functions of life? We must pay attention, we’ve got to read directions, we must read instructions and we must get complete details before purchasing tickets and other big-ticket items.
Let me give you an example. It may seem simple to you, but it is a true story.
There is a lady who was a writer for a newspaper in Texas. She was a volunteer, but she didn’t care, continuing to write about health issues, in particular. She wrote about how to care for your health when you have heart disease. Friends and family tried to convince her to quit, since everyone else was getting paid, and she wasn’t. The woman felt certain that her writing ability was a gift from God. She enjoyed helping others, and money wasn’t important.
After writing more than 12 years, a corporate executive read her column about how to live a better life to prevent heart disease, and she got a contract working for that company, making more than a half-million dollars each year. This is a true story.
It shows how she followed her desire to share her specialized knowledge to write; she had gotten her master’s degree in journalism and she felt really good about her work. It paid off!
The point of this story is to remind you all to learn your skill, and be sure to enjoy doing it. Les Brown taught us to “enjoy doing what you do so well, that you’re willing to do it for free!”
This story may not sound like something you would do, but in changing the course of your life, your unpreparedness could be just as devastating. The word reminds us in the scripture according to Hosea. It says, “My people perish from the lack of knowledge.”
True knowledge means not only learning details of the path God has put in your life, it also means you must always show love, one for another. Never act as if you know so much that you feel you’re better than others. Continue to learn for the rest of your life, and remain humble!
Paul himself had profound knowledge of the scriptures, but he understood that intellectual knowledge on its own is meaningless. Worse, it can be a dangerous source of pride that prevents discovery of a much deeper form of knowledge: Love. “Knowledge puffs up, love builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1). Puffed-up knowledge also shuts out vast realms of mystery.
As you continue to live your life, keep gaining knowledge, become the best at what you do, it’s called specialized knowledge, it works.
Finally, only choose to invest your time and training in doing something you really enjoy doing, whether you get paid or not. In Proverbs 18:16, it says, “A man’s gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men.”
Visit the website of Lyndia Grant at www.lyndiagrantshow.com, send comments to lyndiagrant@gmail.com, or call 240-602-6295.