To be honest, not all that can be quantified or counted is all that is needed as ingredients for success. You cannot measure a hunch. Neither can you measure passion.

Since so much has been written about success, I am willing to bet that for the most part, what determines success is mostly the invisible…the intangible and the Spiritual.

I am yet to meet or read about a successful person who was unspiritual (read did not believe in anything).

There are two major ingredients if you will be personally successful and satisfied to the degree that you will impact not just this generation, but also the next and the next.

First, You Must Be Called:

This is as woo woo as it gets. To be called simply means to be ordained or set apart for something specific. Now, being called does not mean that you must accept the call. You could as well reject the call. Most successful people always have this innate knowledge that something or someone somewhere has ‘marked’ them to do the extra-ordinary. They know that they are meant for something bigger and better.

I keep feeling this disquiet in my heart about my life. Who I am, where I am at, what I have done, where I have been and what I am meant to be. Frankly, as late as today morning, I know that there is a disconnect between what I am showing up as in this world and what I was meant to really be and to do. I know for a fact that I am called.

The beautiful part of this being called business is that everybody, including the madman out there in the streets is called!! No one alive is useless. I repeat, there is no one in the face of the earth who has been given breath for no other reason than to be counted in life. You too are called.

 Then, You Must Be ‘Separated’.

Michael Jordan

Michael Jackson

Michael Schumacher

Michael Owen….

Apart from a name, they all have one thing in common. They were/are known for one Major Thing. You can easily say that they have been ‘separated’. There are a million things that either of these guys could have done. But each of them chose and stuck to just one. One can easily argue that they ‘heard the call’, they answered the ‘call’, and they separated themselves for the call.

Michael Jackson did not hang around football stadiums. He was mostly found in studios and concerts. Michael Jordan did not hang around bars and orchestras. He was mostly found in the gymn and in the basketball court…save for that brief moment that he was in a baseball pitch and made no impact.

Separation requires discipline. This is where very many visionaries get disillusioned. Most visionaries are so bogged down with eking a living that they are no longer separate. The writer must write daily, the speaker must inspire weekly, the singer bust be in studio each week, if not each day.

She was my contemporary back in Nairobi. Both of us sensed (and still do) the urge to ‘coach people’. She got started and so did I. She started writing about success and life…then one day along the line, she got ‘separated’ and started writing and instructing about courtship, dating and marriage. Ngina Otiende is so much separated that I take her advice and apply it in my own marriage. That is what separation does.

 The Biggest Mistake

One of the biggest mistakes made in spiritual circles is for people waiting for ‘the audible voice of God’ to instruct them to do something. Some guys are even waiting for the audible voice of God to tell them whom to marry (controversial, I know). A beautiful story in the Bible is of four guys carrying their paralyzed guy up a roof, razing it off and lowering him to Jesus for healing.

What if they waited for God to instruct them? God does the calling; you do the separation together with him.

Ok. I know that there must be balance. You do not just do things outside of ‘God’s guidance’, neither do you keep sitting there waiting for him to ‘speak’.

Can you sing?

Can you write?

Can you pray?

Can you inspire?

Do you love working with photos?

Do you love chatting and giving people advice on line?

Then why don’t you separate yourself? What are you waiting for?