Getting The Best of Life’s Connections – Part 1

T

hat “No man is an island” is a profound statement is worth noting. It is so true that even if a man tried to be a loner or to be secluded from others and to be self sufficient, that man would not last. Somehow, the Genius Creator of the world made it in such a way that the entire ecosystem is interdependent. You cannot think of anything that survives entirely on its own. Everything on earth needs something else for it’s optimal performance. That is why connections will still be an important aspect of our lives.

Taking Connections For Granted

Frankly, connections are so inherent, so obvious, so commonplace that it is easy to take them for granted. It is easy to take for granted the nurture you get from your parents until you meet a child that is abandoned. It is easy to take for granted the recommendation of a friend that created an opening until you meet more deserving people that did not have that benefit. It is easy to take for granted things such as support, comfort, protection, advise, recommendations, and so on until they are not there.

Intention

Well, as you might have imagined, connections to other people are deemed so natural. If you look around at your connections, a larger percentage of them seem so “natural”. In other words, you didn’t go out of your way to intentionally look for them, you just found yourself in a serendipitous connection so much so that you thought it was natural. Natural connections is just one way that we make friends or partners. There is an even better way of doing it, and at the end of the day, it will seem as if you never made the intention but it just happened naturally. About five years back, I had the privilege to live and work in Ghana. Within three months of living in that Southern part of that country, I was sharing the same stage in speaking engagements with the leading public speaking figure in that country. Whereas that connection seemed natural, it actually wasn’t. How did that happen?

Build Yourself Up

Well, I read a quote a while back that I thought it was so profound. That quote explains in part how I ended up sharing the same stage with Comfort Ocran in Ghana and it all seemed so natural. I never made a phone call to ask for the opportunity. I did not even know that she would be in my neck of the woods that time. However, once I just heard in passing about her event from a colleague I worked with I expressed interest to speak and the rest as they say, is history. Here is the quote:

“If you are clear with what you want, the world responds with clarity”

– Loretta Staples

In other words, what you get off of life is a result of what you are either looking for or what you have invested in. There is an invisible push and pull force that helps people get connected. You do not get connected to people arbitrarily, neither to do people get connected to you for no reason. There is an invisible force that makes those connections to happen each day.

Starting Off

Getting clear about what you want in and off life is the starting point of having powerful connections. Before he met Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs was a little bit clear about his interests in engineering and personal computing. Before the two of them met Mark Markulla who invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in their startup, the two of them knew that they wanted to build a personal computer for the world. [ictt-tweet-inline]Connections do not happen arbitrarily, they happen in response to flow and motion. Where there is flow, there will be connections.[/ictt-tweet-inline] Let us therefore see how you can get started off in getting the best of out life’s connections.

1. Clarify Your Direction

Before Comfort Ocran came to the town I was staying in Ghana, I was already clear about what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to inspire people through my speaking and my writing. I wanted to help people uncover what matters to them. I wanted people to live a life of intentionality to such an extent that it leaves a “signature” behind. I was clear about what I wanted. The Bible then says, “Deep calls to deep”. This means that men and women of like passions will always attract. There is absolutely no way that I could have gained that connection to Comfort Ocran if I did not know what I wanted to do with my life.

2. Be Passionate About What You Care About

I was passionate about empowering the youth at that time. I still am. When I saw the advertisement about Comfort Ocran, I went into an overdrive of passionate expression about my beliefs in the hearing of a friend of mine who was connected to the organizing team that brought Comfort to town. [ictt-tweet-inline]Your passion, because of its contagious nature, will almost always create powerful connections that will help further your purpose. [/ictt-tweet-inline]People respond to purpose with action and one of the ways they act is to connect you so that the passion can be fanned aflame. It is one thing to be clear about what you want, and it is quite another to be passionate and show passion for it. People always want to connect passion.

3. Be Excited About Where You Are Going

The best answer to the question, “Tell us about yourself” is not about your name, where you come from, what schools you attended and what scores you got. Those are trivial matters as compared to your excitement about what you are passionate about now and where you intend to be in life. I must have mentioned to a friend of mine that I would one day do the same things that Comfort Ocran was doing. I was so sure about it, as if it was my calling. This made it so easy and straight forward for them to connect me.

Just like we articulated in a previous post, the genesis of you getting the best out of your connections is to start with yourself first. Who are you? What do you want out of this life? What are you passionate about? Your connections will help you in the answers to these questions. Without that clarity, your connections will be of less value in your life.