Breathless: Master this one Virtue and Create Wowing Value Always

“If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods”

—Ralf Waldo Emerson

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Quick Read Summary

• A lot of thought, hard work, talent mining and time are part of the ingredients of wowing value
• If you can create that “wowing” value, it does not matter where you are, people will find you
• The degree to which I consistently notice my breathe (while exerting myself) will determine the amounts of moments that I will leave the world breathless, blessing them with my gift, calling, talent and purpose.

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“That moment took my breathe away…” You might have used those words before, or you might have heard or read them when someone else used them. Something that leaves us “breathless” is something of world class, something out of this world. Let me ask a question: Can you remember the last time when you were left breathless? What was happening?

I am willing to bet that probably you were watching a performance, or a film, or maybe you were reading a thriller, or maybe watching a speech being delivered. Whatever the case, your “breathe being taken away” is a wonderful experience that inspires us one way or another.

However, those moments did not come by fluke. To execute a performance that numbs the senses, makes people forget in a moment where they are and transports them to the performance itself, a lot of hard work, talent mining and time has been put into it. And when you can mount that “breathless” performance, the whole world will find you…and pay you to make them “breathless”

Behind the Scenes

Before he breaks the records at the Olympics, you find him in obscurity literally “running out of breathe” while in training. It is not fun running out of breathe. The very reason why many people do not do physical exercises is not that the body is numb and pained…but that during the exercises, our breathing is belabored, hard and very uncomfortable. It is called training. A quote attributed to David Oyedepo says,

“The quality of training is what ultimately determines the degree of triumph. Training leaves for the trained the traits of excellence and character that enhance the overall accomplishment of the task”

Breathe and Comfort

Training is not fun…and that is why I pity very many organizations that have reduced their budgets for training and replaced them with “having fun”. You pay thousands for drinks and allocate a meager hundred for the “facilitator”. You want breathe and comfort. You do not want to lose breathe in training. In the end, the performance of your employees is not breathless…and yet that is what the world is looking for today.

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Breathing is such an interesting thing. It is subconscious. You seldom force yourself to breath. You seldom think about your next breathe. You just breath! Sometimes you do not even realize that you are breathing! Yet that is the very essence of life. You stop breathing, you will notice…and others will notice too!

A Slave Never Leaves a Legacy

But that is the paradox. When we start giving attention to our “breathe”, that is when we start the path of creating “breathless” experiences. If you are noticing your breathing patterns in physical exercises, it means that you are moving outside of the comfort zone. The very next breathe is important to you. You have, in that moment flipped the narrative. You are not the slave to your body anymore…the body is your slave. You determine what it does.

If your healthy body dictates what time to wake up, what to eat or not, and how to show up in life today, you are a slave to it.

One thing about a slave is that they never prosper, they never leave a legacy behind worth of note.

The most interesting thing about life is that many people want to show that they have the power and muscle to accede to all the requests of the body and soul (all manner of material requests). Many people look at such people and wish they had their lives. These are slaves. Things have them, they do not have things!

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“I keep my body under control and make it my slave, so I won’t lose out after telling the good news to others”.

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However, the people that we quote a lot, those that inspire us a lot are those that have flipped the narrative, those that have the discipline to “put the body under”, so that in the end, they can give life those breathless moments that they were created to give.

I have quoted this man so many times and I will not hesitate to quote him again. Listen to this:

“I keep my body under control and make it my slave, so I won’t lose out after telling the good news to others”.

—Paul the Apostle (1 Cor 9:27)

The degree to which I consistently notice my breathe (while exerting myself) will determine the amounts of moments that I will leave the world breathless, blessing them with my gift, calling, talent and purpose. And in the end, what else matters? I was born for such stuff. How about you?@