Redefine Success

We’ve all been there. We thought about what to do, maybe even took a class or took steps in a certain direction, only to find that the plans we thought were possible weren’t going to happen or would take too long. Much like a GPS, life recalculated you, took you in a different direction—to a different destination. Whether it’s from the good, the bad, or the ugly—if you were redirected because of a good decision such as taking care of family or realigning your life with God, or because of a bad (ugly) decision such as hurt, pain, or desperation—all is not lost; God still has placed a calling in you— A desire that doesn’t make sense, but God says: I’ve placed that as part of your calling. It may be a desire on the inside of you to start a business.

There are certain people who think that if you desire to own a business to achieve a certain level of success, you are doing something wrong. These people are called haters. Haters don’t want you to have a passionate drive toward good success because they think you should be doing something else with your time, attention, and money.

Haters can also be disguised as “worried for you.” Their worry is hate because it’s intended to direct you away from what you are doing with your time, attention, and money in pursuit of good success. At the end of the day, living like that means you are living by someone else’s desires. The Bible says each one has his own gift from God. Business owner Uebert Angel Jr. says, “Those that say it can't be done should get out of the way of those that are doing it. Don’t hate, take notes.”

In order to live independently of someone else’s desires, we first need to redefine what success looks like for us. The Bible says, “This book shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein.” Then the Bible states the effect: “For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” This means that as a result of meditating (plotting your success) day and night, you will make your own way prosperous and have good success, which will ultimately benefit a whole lot of people.

So as the head and founder of Bethel School of Business, I want you to go, take out your notebook, and write down: What does “good success” look like to me? Then I want you to leave (abandon) every thought and write down what “good success” looks like for you.

And after that, go read.