WE all have only one life to live and we must resolve to make the best of it. We cannot afford to just pass through history but we must make history. We must stamp our indelible prints on the sands of time. We must live a life that stands out and a life that really counts. One major way to make our lives count is to positively influence as many lives as possible through the proper utilization of our God-given capacities.

Each one of us has a God given capacity to excel in one area or the other and it is our gift to this world to ensure we use that capacity to influence lives. Capacity means the ability or power to do something and this can be a gift, talent, experience, exposure, special skill etc.

Many times, we think we have nothing to offer but this is not true. No human being is useless. The problem with many people is that of wrong perspective of what they have.  If we have a wrong perspective of what we have we shoot ourselves in the foot and thereby we become handicapped to make any appreciable impact with our lives. There is so much negativity and pessimism that we are more inclined to underrate what we have and undermine our ability and potential than properly evaluating and maximizing what we have. Whatever we have that can do something is a potential that can influence lives. Nothing is insignificant or worthless.

There are many “capacities” that we tend to undermine but which many people have used to influence lives and made a fortune from. We have seen people use the art of speaking to influence people – talk of talk show hosts, motivational speakers etc. We have seen people make a career of comedy. People have influenced lives through painting, writing, decorating etc. The real issue is placing a proper value on what we have. If we do not value what we have we will not develop it and we will not be able to influence lives with it.

To make meaningful contribution to our society and to make our lives count can only be achieved by discharging certain responsibilities. It will demand discipline and hard work. Whatever we have is usually in the “raw material” state and it has to go through the process of refining to make it more valuable. The process of transforming raw material to a finished product demands hard work, planning and vision and if we are not ready to pay the price to transform what we have from raw materials to a finished and refined state we will live below our potential and our lives will not stand out.

To make our lives stand out we need to find out exactly what capacity we have. This must not be a subject of speculation or guesswork. We must have an exact and correct answer to “what do I have that can be used to influence lives?”  If we don’t know what we have we will grope in the dark and stand the risk of gambling with our lives. When we don’t know what we have we are trying to produce a product without the essential raw materials. What we have must be what we have a passion for. It must be something we enjoy doing. It must be something we love spending time doing without getting bored. It must be something that we love to work on and spend time to know how to use it better. It must be something that when we see other people using it we feel challenged and provoked to use ours too. The question to answer is “what aptitude do you have that can be developed to equip you to make a diference with your life”.

To be continued next week.

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