setback into a comeback - richmond kwame frimpong · turning your setback into a setup for a...

TURNING YOUR SETBACK INTO A SETUP FOR A COMEBACK

Copyright © 2014 by Richmond Kwame Frimpong

ISBN :978-9988-1-9514-4

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means- electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, or other- except brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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Richmond Kwame Frimpong | iii

CONTENTS

Dedication iv Acknowledgement vIntroduction vii

Life and Setbacks 1Failure is Not Final 31The case of Biblical Joseph 41A New Paradigm 73Keys to Your Comeback 93A Call to Action 129

Personal Note 135A message to Developing Economies 137Epilogue 139Recommended Reading 141Bibliography 144Study Guide 145Notes 152About Author 156Other Books by Author 158Exit Strategy Summit 162Appendix 167

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DEDICATION

This book is lovingly dedicated to the most important people in my life:

my beautiful wife Elizabeth and our two wonderful children – Lady and Jason. You have made it possible for me to be a blessing to my generation.

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ACKNOwLEDgMENTS

“Nothing in life is ever successful without the corporate effort of many gifted people who are willing to network and submit their talent, experience, and passion for a common goal. We are the sum total of all the people we have met and learned from”

— Dr. Myles Munroe

Turning your setback into a setup for a comeback is another ‘dream come true’. I

am grateful to god for His exceeding grace which saw me through as I worked on this wonderful masterpiece. A big thank you to the team at DivineCHAIN group and Pinnacle Management Consulting, UK. To Isaac and Leslie, for the excellent cover design and well-crafted page layout respectively. My gratitude also goes to my regular viewers, listeners and

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followers across the world on TV, Radio and Social media. To all who helped in diverse ways I say god richly bless you.

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INTRODUCTION

“Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it or work around it”

— Michael Jordan

what do you do when everything you depend on for survival collapses and

suddenly come to a standstill? How do you handle the sudden loss of a dear one; friend, spouse, child, parent, guardian, or anything you cherish greatly? what do you do when you lose your job suddenly or a business deal that was almost closed comes to a halt? How about dashing your sense of hope and pride for personal accomplishment in the fires of survival?

Obstacles do not have to stop you in life. If at first you don’t succeed, don’t turn around and

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give up or sit down and cry with your eyes on what is lost, reminiscing on whose fault it was.

Life is a mix of opportunities and challenges. Almost every opportunity life presents has a challenge to significant success, and every challenge has an opportunity for same. If you can look through your challenge closely, you will notice it carries the seed of a great opportunity. In the same way, a closer look at every opportunity will reveal a hidden difficulty in its realization. This is how Norman Vincent Peale puts it; “Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don’t have any problems, you don’t get any seeds”.

The question is how do we locate the challenges in your opportunities and the opportunities in your challenges in order to turn the difficulties around for victory?

Turning your setback into a setup for a comeback will show you how to turn every challenge into an opportunity for success, and overcome any

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obstacle in your path much faster than you ever thought possible. go on and discover for yourself through the pages of this life-changing piece!

Richmond Kwame FrimpongGhana – West Africa

LIFE AND SETBACKS

01

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“The things which hurt, instruct. ”— Benjamin Franklin

Life is a mix of opportunities and challenges. Almost every opportunity life

presents has a challenge to significant success, and every challenge has an opportunity for same. If you can look through your challenge closely, you will notice it carries the seed of a great opportunity. In the same way, a closer look at every opportunity will reveal a hidden difficulty in its realization. This is how Norman Vincent Peale puts it; “Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don’t have any problems, you don’t get any seeds”.

Setbacks are things that happen in life to set you back from where you are headed. Thus anything that serves as a check to your progress is a setback.

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An ordinary Saw mill employee turned into a successful hotel chain owner

A story is told of wallace E. Johnson who was fired from his job at a saw mill during the great depression. The worst possible time for such a thing to happen at a time when almost every company was either folding up or laying off its staff. Born into a poor family in Mississippi, wallace had grown up around housing construction, thus he went into the real estate business at age 35, with a loan amount of $ 250 and after his business became the largest and most successful at the time, he joined Kemmons wilson to kick start one of the most well-known business success stories of modern times; the Holiday Inn. Together they built a chain of coast-to-coast Inns, offering comfortable accommodations for families at reasonable prices. In five years, the man had become a multi-millionaire. wallace said; “if I could locate the man who fired me,


I would sincerely thank him for what he did. At the time it happened I didn’t understand why I was fired. Later I saw that it was god’s unerring and wondrous plan to get me into the ways of His choosing”.

A school dropout turned into a Successful Pastor, Educationist & Entrepreneur

In 1984, ghana (a republic in west Africa, on the gulf of guinea) was just recovering from a stinging famine that had swept the entire country the previous year. Most people were pessimistic about their lot in life. For most people, the future held nothing but memories of pain. This was not the story with one young man. It was not as if he didn’t have any challenges, having lost both parents within a year, before this period and had to quit schooling just after form five among other daunting setbacks. He had good reasons to resign but he decided to turn his setbacks into a setup for a comeback. Thus even at a tender age of 19, he had to pay rent, pay his siblings’

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school fees, in addition to electricity and water bills and virtually fend for the rest of his family all by himself.

He nurtured a dream after discovering his calling of being a pastor to the surprise of many around him. Many felt the pastoral ministry had no bright prospects particularly also because he was not known for great preaching. Neither had he received any prophetic calling. But the twenty-five year believed in his calling, and was excited about it. Looking at his life, his family background, and his level of schooling, your most probable prediction of his future would have been a failure.

However, he did not accept this as the verdict of his life. In 1984, he began a church. From a desperate beginning of a small classroom and a chain of random movements, his church today has blossomed into an ever-widening network of churches – International Central gospel Church (ICgC). He has become a noble voice on the African continent and


beyond. His pulpit churns out messages that speak to the need of developing Economies and continues to bless the world with god’s wisdom. Millions across the world tune in to his radio and TV broadcasts daily. Many have been blessed through the ministry and books of this man. Today, this generation is blessed by the ministry of this man. Even without the benefit of University education he has founded a flagship University, Central University College, which has become a significant contributor to the human resource base of his home country; ghana. The pioneering vision of Dr. Mensa Otabil continues to grow. In spite of the many setbacks he encountered, he has succeeded in turning his setback into a setup for a comeback! what excuse do you have?

A one-room loans Company turned into a world class commercial bank

The story of Kofi Amoabeng; a ghanaian entrepreneur, epitomizes the possibility of turning your setback into a setup for a

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comeback. Some few years ago only a few financial houses dared to give out loans. Many feared they would not be able to retrieve their monies. But Mr. Amoabeng dared to dream. He envisioned a world class financial institution which would solve the credit challenges of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) in Africa. Short on resources but tall on dream the former military man sowed the seed that has today become the UT group. A one room operation born in Kantamanto (a local community in ghana, west Africa) in 1997 is now a holdings company comprising a universal bank with over 25 branches in ghana, Real Estate Company, insurance company, logistics and security Services Company etc. with presence not only in ghana, but also in Nigeria, South Africa and germany.

The sponsoring brokers of UT’s Initial Public Offering to raise 23 million US dollars announced an oversubscription. The company was adjudged the best bank of the year in 2011


and earned the gold Award at the golden Jubilee Business & Financial Services awards. UT Bank earned 2nd place in the Most Respected Companies Awards organized by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Business & Financial Times newspaper. Mr. Amoabeng for 3 consecutive times has been adjudged by his peers in industry; ghana’s Most Respected CEO. It has also been named as ghana’s no. 1 indigenous company by the ghana Club 100.

Same can be said of the Chairman of Databank group, Mr. Ken Ofori-Atta. In 1990, he also started his company from one room at Kantamanto (a local community in ghana, west Africa) at a time when no bank was solely dedicated to investments, but has today transformed the investment banking sector in ghana as the leading Investment bank. Databank currently consists of Databank Brokerage Ltd, Databank Asset Management Services Ltd, Databank Corporate Finance Ltd, Databank Research, and Databank

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Securities Ltd in The gambia. It is number one in the Asset Management industry in ghana and their flagship product - EPA¢K is the first licensed mutual fund in ghana with a value of close to gH¢100m and over 55,000 investors.

Databank’s Asset Management wing has also developed the first licensed Money Market Fund in ghana, the MFund . It also houses an award winning research team which provides regular research on the ghana Stock Exchange, its listed companies, the ghanaian economy, and other relevant economic and financial matters. Databank Private Equity is spearheading the creation of four private equity Venture Capital Funds.

Databank has been involved in numerous groundbreaking transactions which have taken place on the ghana Stock Exchange including advising the ghanaian government on privatization deals, the private sale of 52% (US$21million) of the Social Security Bank (SSB), the US$25million packaged sale of


government interests in seven listed companies; the first tender offer on the ghana Stock Exchange (Enterprise Insurance Company Ltd); the US$35 million shelf offering of the HFC dollar-indexed bonds, and the first cross-border listing on the ghana Stock Exchange (Trust Bank Ltd of The gambia). It controls over 70% share of Mutual Fund market (SEC Report 2010) in ghana with Assets Under Management of approximately gH¢ 125 million.

A “chronic failure” turned into a famous President of the most powerful nation of the world

Abraham Lincoln, a famous president of the United States of America is another example of the possibility of turning your setback into a setup for a comeback. In spite of repeated failure and difficulties, he persisted in his political ambition until he was successful.

An outline of numerous defeats he encountered;

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l Failed in Business in 1831l Defeated for legislature in 1832l Experienced a second failure in business in

1833l Suffered nervous breakdown in 1836l Defeated for Speaker in 1838l Defeated for Elector in 1840l Defeated for Congress in 1843l Defeated for Congress in 1848l Defeated for Senate in 1855l Defeated for Vice-President in 1856l Defeated for Senate in 1858l Finally elected President in 1860

A supposed “dummy” turned into one of the best Pediatric Neurosurgeons the World has ever produced

In 1987 Dr. Ben Carson made medical history as the first man to successfully separate Siamese twins who were joined at the head. what many do not know is that at a point in his life, some of his colleagues in school called him a


“dummy” because he was at the bottom of his class by the fifth grade. In one of Dr. Carson’s TV interview, he mentioned he was raised by a hard-working African-American single mother who dropped out of school in the third grade and married at the age of thirteen. Ben grew under very challenging circumstances and thus developed a violent and uncontrollable temper and performed poorly at school.

The mother of Ben; Mrs. Sonya Carson had faith in the potential of her children and believed in their potential. She believed they were special thus was determined not to allow them to become products of their circumstance. In her determination to do this she sharply curtailed her two boys’ (Ben and his brother) access to television and refused to let them go outside to play until they had finished their homework each day. She also required them to read two library books a week and give her written reports on their reading even though, with her own poor education, she could barely

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read what they had written.

Subsequently each day after school the boys had to go to library and bring back their written reports to their mother. She would act like she was checking their work to make sure they had done everything right even though she did not have the education to appreciate everything they had done. Due to this daily routine, Carson got so interested in reading that he devoted all his time to his newfound hobby. He read everything he could lay his hands on. This was the turning point in his life. Reading enabled him to see the world in a different light. He saw the different lifestyles people had and how they were able to make a difference in the world.

In time he moved from the bottom of his class to the top. His hunger for knowledge took hold of him and he began to read voraciously on all subjects. He decided to become a physician, and learned to control his violent temper that threatened his future. After graduating from


high school, he continued to Yale University where he earned a degree in Psychology. From Yale he went to the medical school of the University of Michigan, where his interest shifted from Psychiatry to Neurosurgery. His excellent hand eye coordination and three-dimensional reasoning skills made him a superior surgeon. After medical school he became a neurosurgery resident at the world-famous John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

At the age of 32, he became the hospital’s Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery. who says you cannot turn your setback into a setup for a comeback?

The adventures of Steve Jobs - The Commencement address delivered on June 12, 2005.

In his commencement address delivered on June 12, 2005; Steve Jobs shares his story on how he turned his setback into a setup for a comeback. This is a reported prepared text

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of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption.

She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I


popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers.

She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending

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all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.

Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every


label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical; artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography.

If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer

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would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion


company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I

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even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT; another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the


heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was an awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.

You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t

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settle. My third story is about death. When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”

And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.


There is no reason not to follow your heart. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer.

I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived with that diagnosis all day.

Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines,

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put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now. This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die.

Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday


not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras.

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It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Thank you all very much.

It is now clear and evident from the above examples on “life and Setbacks”, that setbacks in themselves are not meant to kill but to


strengthen and make giants out of dwarfs.

write down 5 Clear Lessons each from the examples of Steve Jobs, Ken Ofori-Atta, & Kofi Amoabeng

Lessons from Steve Jobs:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Lessons from Ken Ofori-Atta:

1.

2.

3.

4.

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5.

Lessons from Kofi Amoabeng:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

FAILURE IS NOT FINAL

02


“Failure is never the end unless you allow it. ”

— Komla Dumor

Failure is a temporary setback, not a residence. Failure is a detour, not a dead-

end street. Failure is a learning experience, not a person. Like success, failure is a growth process, not a status. Don’t settle in your mistakes. Correct them and move forward, because failure is never final.

I once read a story by Dr. Robert H. Schuller, the founder of the Crystal Cathedral, and it captures the real essence of the above referenced chapter title.

In that story Dr. Schuller recounts a wild and wanton wind which invaded, without invitation, a peaceful nest where a family of innocent seeds lived one day. This wicked breeze kidnapped one defenseless little kernel and carried it away, until tired and bored with

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a whole adventure, it flung the helpless thing away.

And so the single seed fell onto a strange and alien shore, alone and lost, it rolled across a concrete sidewalk until it was stopped by a dry crack in the barren cement. Now, an innocent, unknowing, unfriendly heel of a leather boot stepped on that seed, wedging it deep in the crevice. It was trapped. Alone. An orphan seed clamped tightly in a deep, dark canyon. Helpless. Hopeless.

Then it happened. Deep within the heart of that seed there stirred a strange, mystic, miraculous life force that challenged death, the sidewalk, and the whole world! The heart of the captured kernel cried out, “I shall live and not die!”

when the first gentle drop of morning mist oozed into that cracked in the cement, this small seed welcomed and absorbed the friendly moisture. Little wisps of dust, moved by a gentle breeze, slipped into the crack to


blanket the struggling seed, which cried out once more, “I shall take root and grow!”

Softly, silently it sent out microscopic hairy roots that discovered hidden caves the tender tendrils found more moisture, more powdery nourishment, until this wayfaring seed, swollen with determination, broke wide open and burst forth with new life. And on a bright sunny morning a little blade of grass opened out of the crack of the sidewalk, smiled at the sun, laughed at the rain, waved at the wind, and proudly declared, “Here I am world! I made it against impossible odds! And you can too!

Now the lesson here is that, if this seed could make it in the face of all the daunting setbacks described above, then how much more you? You may have been dumped in a barren wasteland in any area of your life, wallowing in failure, depressed and lost all hope after trying several times. Your life seems stuck, and your dreams washed up. Your future looms before you a dismal enemy instead of a potential




success. The good news is that, failure is never final until you say so. Look closely through that failure and you will see an opportunity for a turnaround into greatness.

If Franklin Roosevelt, a former President of the United States who suffered Polio at 39 and became disabled, overcame that difficulty, became the governor of New York and 11 years later was elected President of the United States of America, then what excuse do you have to give up? If Helen Keller, a deaf and blind became a celebrated public speaker, author, lecturer, political activist and champion of the less privileged, then what excuse do we have?

If Komla Dumor, the former ace broadcaster and news presenter for Focus on Africa at the British Broadcasting Corporation(BBC) overcame his failure at the medical school in his fourth year to start all over again with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Psychology, and later began his journalism career in ghana


as a traffic reporter from the back of a motor scooter with a mobile phone, then what excuse can we give to the finality of our setback today? Failure is never final, until you say so!

Lionel Messi, was diagnosed at age 11 as having a growth hormone deficiency. Doctors feared that he would not grow tall enough to be able to play professional football at the highest level. Yet instead of wallowing in self-pity and seeing himself as deficient because of his setback, he defied the odds, and consistently built on his dribbling and playing skills and today is known in football as ‘the new Maradona’ and rated as one of the most gifted footballers of his generation. Failure is never final until YOU say so.

Oscar Pistorious of South Africa, also born without the fibula in his legs turned his setback into a set up for a comeback to become a world record holder in his category for the 100, 200 and 400 meters sprints. In September 2008, Olympic games in Beijing, Oscar became the




first Paralympian to win gold in all 3 events, and today he is celebrated as “the fastest thing on no legs”. If you can see yourself as unique and not disadvantaged, if you can surround yourself with hope and not hopelessness, if you can stand up and be outstanding, then failure will only be seen as a setup for a comeback, and not a setback for a fallback.

Food for thought: Don’t Quit

when things go wrong as they sometimes willwhen the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,when the funds are low and the debts are high,And you want to smile but you have to sigh:Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.Life is queer with its twists and turnsAs every one of us some time learns;And many a failure turns aboutwhen he might have won had he struck it out.Don’t give up though the pace seems slow-You may succeed with another blow. Success is a failure turned inside out


The silver tint of the clouds no doubt.And you are near when success seems far,So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit-It’s when things seem worse that you mustn’t quit!

– Anon.


THE CASE OF BIBLICAL JOSEPH

03


“Deep inside you lives an impossible thought. A dream longing to come true. There’s a mission residing in you, put there by your heavenly Father. Success consists of getting up just one time more than you fall down. ”

— John Mason

The story of Joseph is a great case study of how a young man turned all setbacks at every stage of his life into great comebacks. Come with me to Chapter 37 – 41 of genesis;

1 And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan.

2 These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives: and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report.

the caSe oF bibLicaL JoSeph



3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.

4 And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.

5 And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more.

6 And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed:

7 For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf.

8 And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words.


9 And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.

10 And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, what is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?

11 And his brethren envied him; but his father observed the saying.

12 And his brethren went to feed their father’s flock in Shechem.

13 And Israel said unto Joseph, Do not thy brethren feed the flock in Shechem? Come, and I will send thee unto them. And he said to him, here am I.




14 And he said to him, go, I pray thee, see whether it be well with thy brethren, and well with the flocks; and bring me word again. So he sent him out of the vale of Hebron, and he came to Shechem.

15 And a certain man found him, and, behold, he was wandering in the field: and the man asked him, saying, what seekest thou?

16 And he said, I seek my brethren: tell me, I pray thee, where they feed their flocks.

17 And the man said, They are departed hence; for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. And Joseph went after his brethren, and found them in Dothan.

18 And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him.

19 And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh.


20 Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams.

21 And Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands; and said, Let us not kill him.

22 And Reuben said unto them, Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit that is in the wilderness, and lay no hand upon him; that he might rid him out of their hands, to deliver him to his father again.

23 And it came to pass, when Joseph was come unto his brethren, that they stript Joseph out of his coat, his coat of many colours that was on him;

24 And they took him, and cast him into a pit: and the pit was empty, there was no water in it.

25 And they sat down to eat bread: and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold, a company of Ishmeelites came from gilead




with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt.

26 And Judah said unto his brethren, what profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal his blood?

27 Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmeelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother and our flesh. And his brethren were content.

28 Then there passed by Midianites merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought Joseph into Egypt.

29 And Reuben returned unto the pit; and, behold, Joseph was not in the pit; and he rent his clothes.

30 And he returned unto his brethren, and said, The child is not; and I, whither shall I go?


31 And they took Joseph’s coat, and killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the coat in the blood;

32 And they sent the coat of many colours, and they brought it to their father; and said, This have we found: know now whether it be thy son’s coat or no.

33 And he knew it, and said, It is my son’s coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces.

34 And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days.

35 And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.

36 And the Midianites sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh’s, and captain of the guard.




Chapter 39 of Genesis

1 And Joseph was brought down to Egypt; and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him of the hands of the Ishmeelites, which had brought him down thither.

2 And the LORD was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian.

3 And his master saw that the LORD was with him, and that the LORD made all that he did to prosper in his hand.

4 And Joseph found grace in his sight, and he served him: and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand.

5 And it came to pass from the time that he had made him overseer in his house, and over all that he had, that the LORD blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; and the blessing of the LORD was upon all that he


had in the house, and in the field.

6 And he left all that he had in Joseph’s hand; and he knew not ought he had, save the bread which he did eat. And Joseph was a goodly person, and well favoured.

7 And it came to pass after these things, that his master’s wife cast her eyes upon Joseph; and she said, Lie with me.

8 But he refused, and said unto his master’s wife, Behold, my master wotteth not what is with me in the house, and he hath committed all that he hath to my hand;

9 There is none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou art his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against god?

10 And it came to pass, as she spake to Joseph day by day, that he hearkened not unto her, to lie by her, or to be with her.




11 And it came to pass about this time, that Joseph went into the house to do his business; and there was none of the men of the house there within.

12 And she caught him by his garment, saying, Lie with me: and he left his garment in her hand, and fled, and got him out.

13 And it came to pass, when she saw that he had left his garment in her hand, and was fled forth,

14 That she called unto the men of her house, and spake unto them, saying, See, he hath brought in an Hebrew unto us to mock us; he came in unto me to lie with me, and I cried with a loud voice:

15 And it came to pass, when he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried, that he left his garment with me, and fled, and got him out.

16 And she laid up his garment by her, until his lord came home.


17 And she spake unto him according to these words, saying, The Hebrew servant, which thou hast brought unto us, came in unto me to mock me:

18 And it came to pass, as I lifted up my voice and cried, that he left his garment with me, and fled out.

19 And it came to pass, when his master heard the words of his wife, which she spake unto him, saying, After this manner did thy servant to me; that his wrath was kindled.

20 And Joseph’s master took him, and put him into the prison, a place where the king’s prisoners were bound: and he was there in the prison.

21 But the LORD was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison.

22 And the keeper of the prison committed to Joseph’s hand all the prisoners that were in the




prison; and whatsoever they did there, he was the doer of it.

23 The keeper of the prison looked not to anything that was under his hand; because the LORD was with him, and that which he did, the LORD made it to prosper.

From the above, it can be said that Joseph was the eleventh of twelve sons. He was his father’s favorite, even though he was nearly the youngest. Secondly, he used to report his brothers to his father anytime they weren’t doing their work properly with the sheep. The mistake Joseph made which brought in his setback was telling his older brothers, he could be in charge of them one day. Some of his brothers thus wanted to kill him, but the eldest (Reuben) prevented them from doing that. So when Reuben wasn’t around, the others sold him into slavery.

Joseph ended up in Egypt working in the house of the captain of the guard; Potiphar. Because


of his excellent leadership and administrative skills, Joseph quickly rose through the ranks, and before long he was in charge of the entire household. He was making the best of a bad situation, but then things got worse. The wife of his master tried to persuade him to sleep with her, when he refused she accused him ( Joseph) of making advances to her and got Potiphar to throw Joseph into Prison.


1 And it came to pass after these things, that the butler of the king of Egypt and his baker had offended their lord the king of Egypt.

2 And Pharaoh was wroth against two of his officers, against the chief of the butlers, and against the chief of the bakers.

3 And he put them in ward in the house of the captain of the guard, into the prison, the place where Joseph was bound.




4 And the captain of the guard charged Joseph with them, and he served them: and they continued a season in ward.

5 And they dreamed a dream both of them, each man his dream in one night, each man according to the interpretation of his dream, the butler and the baker of the king of Egypt, which were bound in the prison.

6 And Joseph came in unto them in the morning, and looked upon them, and, behold, they were sad.

7 And he asked Pharaoh’s officers that were with him in the ward of his lord’s house, saying, wherefore look ye so sadly to day?

8 And they said unto him, we have dreamed a dream, and there is no interpreter of it. And Joseph said unto them, Do not interpretations belong to god? tell me them, I pray you.

9 And the chief butler told his dream to Joseph, and said to him, In my dream, behold, a vine was before me;


10 And in the vine were three branches: and it was as though it budded, and her blossoms shot forth; and the clusters thereof brought forth ripe grapes:

11 And Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand: and I took the grapes, and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup, and I gave the cup into Pharaoh’s hand.

12 And Joseph said unto him, This is the interpretation of it: The three branches are three days:

13 Yet within three days shall Pharaoh lift up thine head, and restore thee unto thy place: and thou shalt deliver Pharaoh’s cup into his hand, after the former manner when thou wast his butler.

14 But think on me when it shall be well with thee, and shew kindness, I pray thee, unto me, and make mention of me unto Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house:

15 For indeed I was stolen away out of the land




of the Hebrews: and here also have I done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon.

16 when the chief baker saw that the interpretation was good, he said unto Joseph, I also was in my dream, and, behold, I had three white baskets on my head:

17 And in the uppermost basket there was of all manner of bakemeats for Pharaoh; and the birds did eat them out of the basket upon my head.

18 And Joseph answered and said, This is the interpretation thereof: The three baskets are three days:

19 Yet within three days shall Pharaoh lift up thy head from off thee, and shall hang thee on a tree; and the birds shall eat thy flesh from off thee.

20 And it came to pass the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, that he made a feast unto


all his servants: and he lifted up the head of the chief butler and of the chief baker among his servants.

21 And he restored the chief butler unto his butlership again; and he gave the cup into Pharaoh’s hand:

22 But he hanged the chief baker: as Joseph had interpreted to them.

23 Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him.


41 And it came to pass at the end of two full years that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river.

2 And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well favoured kine and fatfleshed; and they fed in a meadow.

3 And, behold, seven other kine came up




after them out of the river, ill favoured and leanfleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river.

4 And the ill favoured and leanfleshed kine did eat up the seven well favoured and fat kine. So Pharaoh awoke.

5 And he slept and dreamed the second time: and, behold, seven ears of corn came up upon one stalk, rank and good.

6 And, behold, seven thin ears and blasted with the east wind sprung up after them.

7 And the seven thin ears devoured the seven rank and full ears. And Pharaoh awoke, and, behold, it was a dream.

8 And it came to pass in the morning that his spirit was troubled; and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt, and all the wise men thereof: and Pharaoh told them his dream; but there was none that could interpret them unto Pharaoh.


9 Then spake the chief butler unto Pharaoh, saying, I do remember my faults this day:

10 Pharaoh was wroth with his servants, and put me in ward in the captain of the guard’s house, both me and the chief baker:

11 And we dreamed a dream in one night, I and he; we dreamed each man according to the interpretation of his dream.

12 And there was there with us a young man, an Hebrew, servant to the captain of the guard; and we told him, and he interpreted to us our dreams; to each man according to his dream he did interpret.

13 And it came to pass, as he interpreted to us, so it was; me he restored unto mine office, and him he hanged.

14 Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they brought him hastily out of the dungeon: and he shaved himself, and changed his raiment, and came in unto Pharaoh.




15 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and there is none that can interpret it: and I have heard say of thee, that thou canst understand a dream to interpret it.

16 And Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, It is not in me: god shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace.

17 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, In my dream, behold, I stood upon the bank of the river:

18 And, behold, there came up out of the river seven kine, fatfleshed and well favoured; and they fed in a meadow:

19 And, behold, seven other kine came up after them, poor and very ill favoured and leanfleshed, such as I never saw in all the land of Egypt for badness:

20 And the lean and the ill favoured kine did eat up the first seven fat kine:

21 And when they had eaten them up, it could not be known that they had eaten them; but


they were still ill favoured, as at the beginning. So I awoke.

22 And I saw in my dream, and, behold, seven ears came up in one stalk, full and good:

23 And, behold, seven ears, withered, thin, and blasted with the east wind, sprung up after them:

24 And the thin ears devoured the seven good ears: and I told this unto the magicians; but there was none that could declare it to me.

25 And Joseph said unto Pharaoh, The dream of Pharaoh is one: god hath shewed Pharaoh what he is about to do.

26 The seven good kine are seven years; and the seven good ears are seven years: the dream is one.

27 And the seven thin and ill favoured kine that came up after them are seven years; and the seven empty ears blasted with the east wind shall be seven years of famine.




28 This is the thing which I have spoken unto Pharaoh: what god is about to do he sheweth unto Pharaoh.

29 Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt:

30 And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt; and the famine shall consume the land;

31 And the plenty shall not be known in the land by reason of that famine following; for it shall be very grievous.

32 And for that the dream was doubled unto Pharaoh twice; it is because the thing is established by god, and god will shortly bring it to pass.

33 Now therefore let Pharaoh look out a man discreet and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt.


34 Let Pharaoh do this, and let him appoint officers over the land, and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven plenteous years.

35 And let them gather all the food of those good years that come, and lay up corn under the hand of Pharaoh, and let them keep food in the cities.

36 And that food shall be for store to the land against the seven years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt; that the land perish not through the famine.

37 And the thing was good in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of all his servants.

38 And Pharaoh said unto his servants, Can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of god is?

39 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Forasmuch as god hath shewed thee all this; there is none so discreet and wise as thou art:




40 Thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled: only in the throne will I be greater than thou.

41 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt.

42 And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put it upon Joseph’s hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck;

43 And he made him to ride in the second chariot which he had; and they cried before him, Bow the knee: and he made him ruler over all the land of Egypt.

44 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I am Pharaoh, and without thee shall no man lift up his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt.

45 And Pharaoh called Joseph’s name Zaphnathpaaneah; and he gave him to wife Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On. And Joseph went out over all the land of


Egypt.

46 And Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh, and went throughout all the land of Egypt.

47 And in the seven plenteous years the earth brought forth by handfuls.

48 And he gathered up all the food of the seven years, which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities: the food of the field, which was round about every city, laid he up in the same.

49 And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left numbering; for it was without number.

50 And unto Joseph were born two sons before the years of famine came, which Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On bare unto him.




51 And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: For god, said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house.

52 And the name of the second called he Ephraim: For god hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.

53 And the seven years of plenteousness, that was in the land of Egypt, were ended.

54 And the seven years of dearth began to come, according as Joseph had said: and the dearth was in all lands; but in all the land of Egypt there was bread.

55 And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread: and Pharaoh said unto all the Egyptians, go unto Joseph; what he saith to you, do.

56 And the famine was over all the face of the earth: and Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the Egyptians; and the famine waxed sore in the land of Egypt.


57 And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn; because that the famine was so sore in all lands.

Slavery to Prison

At that point Joseph was in a really difficult position. He was living in a foreign land as a slave in prison. But again, he made the best of a tough situation – turned his setback into a setup for a comeback - the warden of the prison put Joseph in charge of all prisoners and the prison’s daily activities. One day the Chief Butler of the Pharaoh who was in Prison with Joseph had a dream and Joseph interpreted it to mean his release. when it happened according to Joseph’s interpretation, he told the Chief Butler on his way off of the dungeon, “when all go well with you, remember me and show me kindness”, mention me to Pharaoh and get me out of this prison. For I was forcibly carried off from the land of the Hebrews, and even




here I have done nothing to deserve being put in a dungeon.

Joseph had hope a few days later when the official was returned to court and the good graces of the monarch. He expected any minute to receive word that Pharaoh was setting him free. But he waited and waited, two years passed before the cupbearer remembered Joseph, and he did so only because Pharaoh wanted someone to interpret his dreams.

In the end, Joseph was able to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams. And because the Hebrew boy showed such wisdom, Pharaoh put Joseph in charge of the entire kingdom. As a result of Joseph’s leadership, planning, and system of food storage, when famine struck the Middle East seven years later, many thousands of people who otherwise would have died were able to survive, including Joseph’s own family. His brothers traveled to Egypt for relief from the famine - twenty years after selling him ( Joseph) into slavery - they discovered that


their brother Joseph was not only alive, but second in command of the most powerful kingdom in the world.

Few people would welcome the adversity of thirteen years in bondage as a slave and prisoner. But from the above scripture reading, Joseph never gave up hope and never lost his perspective. Neither did he neither hold any grudge against his brothers nor fight them. He told them, “You intended to harm me, but god intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” He found the “plus” in his negative experiences, and bothered not to look at the setback.

Learning from the Personal traits of Joseph

l Patiencel Excellent Leadership & Administrative

skillsl god fearingl Diligencel wisdom




l Disciplinel Personal Integrityl Perseverance

A NEw PARADIgM

04


“Two men looked from Prison bars, one saw mud, the other saw stars. ”

— Anon

The word paradigm comes from a greek word “paradeigma” which means a

standard, perspective, or a way of looking at something. According to Albert Einstein “the significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them”. The way we think determines the choices we make, the choices we make determine our actions or inactions. Our actions or inactions determine our daily routine, and our daily routine determines how successful we become. A change of thinking thus changes our decisions. A change of decision changes our behaviour, and a change in behaviour changes our life from a setback position to a comeback position. Take a look at the drawing below which I first came across

a new paRadigm



in Steven Covey’s book; 7 habits of highly effective people.

An Old Woman or A Young Woman?


According to Covey, he also encountered this many years ago at the Harvard business school. In this famous ambiguous picture, it is possible to see a young woman, an old woman or both. It is a drawing and if you examine it critically in detail it will probably be rather hard to decide what all of the different components represent in each of the interpretations; nose, hat, feather, ear, etc. But your mind may impose its own interpretations on the drawing based on the paradigm with which you view this drawing.

Same can be said of this picture below which I came across on the internet. Depending on your paradigm, you may either see “an old woman facing an old man” or “a woman carrying a load on the head facing a man playing a guitar”.

a new paRadigm



From the above two scenarios, you realize that paradigms are a major determinant of thought patterns, attitude and behavior. Thus a wrong paradigm can result in a wrong attitude and a wrong attitude will translate into a wrong behavior.

In effect turning your setback into a setup for a comeback will have to begin from your

What do you see?


paradigm on what setbacks are and how to treat setbacks for significant success in life. In other words, it is how you see your setback that matter and not the setbacks in itself.

In the David and goliath story in the Bible, David’s brothers chose not to do anything about the obstacle before them, but David did. what was the difference? The way each viewed the problem. The brothers saw goliath and thought he was too big to kill, but David saw the same obstacle and thought it was too big to miss. Paradigms make all the difference. I remember another paradigm experience in a story Steven Covey told of himself one Sunday morning on a subway in New York;

People were sitting quietly –some reading newspapers, some lost in thought, some resting with their eyes closed. It was a calm, peaceful scene. Then suddenly, a man and his children entered the subway car. The children were so loud and rambunctious that instantly the whole climate changed.

a new paRadigm



The man sat down next to me and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to the situation. The children were yelling back and forth, throwing things, even grabbing people’s papers. It was very disturbing. And yet, the man sitting next to me did nothing.

It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe that he could be so insensitive as to let his children run wild like that and do nothing about it, taking no responsibility at all. It was easy to see that everyone else on the subway felt irritated, too. So finally, with what I felt was unusual patience and restraint, I turned to him and said, “Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t control them a little more.”

The man lifted his gaze as if to come to a consciousness of the situation for the first time and said softly, “Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother


died about an hour ago. I don’t know what to think, and I guess they don’t know how to handle it either”.

Can you imagine what I felt at that moment? My paradigm shifted. Suddenly I saw things differently, and because I saw differently, I thought differently, I felt differently, I behaved differently. My irritation vanished. I didn’t have to worry about controlling my attitude or behavior; my heart was filled with the man’s pain> feelings of sympathy and companion flowed freely. “Your wife just died? Oh, I’m so sorry! Can you tell me about it? What can I do to help?” Everything changed in an instant.

From the above new paradigm experience, we can clearly ascertain that paradigms matter in shaping our attitude. So what new paradigms must we have then in turning our failures into successes and our obstacles into victories?

a new paRadigm



See setbacks as enablers for success

It is very easy to see setbacks, obstacles or challenges in life as evil, shy away from them and blame either circumstances or other people for the setbacks we encounter in life instead of taking responsibility for them and learning from them. In the words of John Mason, “if you find a path with no obstacles, it is most likely a path that doesn’t lead anywhere important. To get to the Promised Land, you’ll have to navigate your way through the wilderness”.

Joseph, in the bible would never have become the manager of Potiphar’s house if he was not sold into slavery. Neither could he have become a prime minister if he had not been thrown into prison. All the setbacks Joseph encountered in his “4Ps experience – Pit, Potiphar’s house, Prison & Prime Minister” became enablers for the next level at every stage of his life; from the Pit, to Potiphar’s house, from Potiphar’s house to Prison, and from Prison to Prime minister. If we can also see failure with a different


mindset or paradigm, success will never elude us. If we can see the setup for a comeback in our setback, failure will be an enabler, so that the opposition you face today can be turned into a new position. So friends, let’s not see the glass as half empty. Let’s choose to see the glass rather as half full.

Accept complete responsibility for your setbacks

There are two main words we can deduce from the word responsibility; “response – ability”. Our response ability towards setbacks or obstacles depends on us and not on circumstances or other people. A new paradigm must thus cause us to shift from blaming others for our misfortune, failure or setbacks to taking personal responsibility for whatever happens to us. This is because we are products of our decisions and choices and not of our circumstances. If this new paradigm is considered, we will learn from our failures

a new paRadigm



instead of repeating the same mistakes. It will also take away blame which renders achievement lame.

It is in your hands

A story is told of an old man who lived in a land far away in a house on top of a hill. This old man had dedicated his entire life to study and meditation. He was known far and wide for his intelligence, wisdom and sensitivity. Politicians, religious leaders, business owners, and dignitaries came to visit him and ask him questions. His answers were always correct. He seemed to have a special faculty that enabled him to cut to the essence of any problem or difficulty. when his answers and solutions were implemented, the result was always excellent. His fame soon spread throughout the land like fire in a harmattan season (a dry, parching land breeze, charge with dust on the west coast of Africa).

In the village below the hill where the old man


lived was a group of boys who played together. Sometimes they climbed the hill to visit the old man and ask him questions, for which he always answered correctly. Over time, it became a little game, with the boys continually trying to think of a question that the old man could not answer. But they were never successful.

One day, the ringleader of the group, a boy named Aram, called the others around him and said, “I have finally found a way to stump the old man. Here in my hand, I have a bird. We will go and ask the old man if the bird is alive or dead. If he says it is dead, I will release it and it will fly away. If he says that it is alive, I will crush it, and the bird will be dead. Either way, he will at last have been proven wrong”.

Excited about the prospect of finally catching the old man with a wrong answer, they hurried up the hill. The old man looked at their mischievous, expectant faces and then quietly said, “Aram, it is in your hands”. In the words of Peter Drucker, “The very best way to predict

a new paRadigm



the future is to create it”. Accept complete responsibility for your life, dare to go forward in the face of any risk and uncertainty and decide not to blame circumstances or other people for your setbacks, so that you can push yourself to the frontline in your own life.

Understand Failure as part of progress

Romans 8:28 [King James Version]: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose

Understanding failure as part of progress helps us to know what doesn’t work. It also gives us the opportunity to learn from our previous mistakes which resulted in the failure.

Failure does not mean nothing has been accomplished, because anyone who is currently achieving anything in life is simultaneously risking failure. This makes failure a part of success, because it is in failing that we learn


new ways of getting the results or outcome we are after. Paul galvin, at the age of 33, had twice failed in enterprise. Then he attended an auction of his own storage battery business and with his last $750, bought back the battery eliminator portion of it. This part became Motorola. Upon his retirement in the 1960s, he advised, “Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out”. For David McNalley, “The mistake-riddled life is much richer, more interesting, and more stimulating than the life that has never risked or taken a stand on anything”. For Thomas Edison who failed so many times in his inventions, “People are not remembered by how few times they failed but how often they succeed. Every wrong step can be another step forward”. Setbacks create resilience, they develop maturity and they prompt innovation.

To understand failure as a component of our success however, we would have to find out what actually went wrong and at what point in

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our journey to success. Thus we may practically have to Ask and answer these begging questions below;

l what specific choices, decisions or actions on my part caused the failure?

l where and when did I fall short?


l what successes are contained in this setback?

l what can I learn from this setback?

l what experience have I gathered from this setback?

a new paRadigm



l How can I turn this bad experience into a good one?

l who can assist me with this challenge?

l where do I go from here?


“Every major difficulty you face in life is a fork in the road. You choose which track you will head down, toward breakthrough or breakdown”

– J.C. Maxwell

Take time to answer these questions and your answers will be the way out toward breakthrough instead of a breakdown.

a new paRadigm

KEYS TO YOUR COMEBACK

05


How do you want to be remembered?

Imagine for a moment a picture of yourself driving to the funeral of a loved one. Picture

yourself in your most desired dream car driving to the funeral service. Imagine yourself in your best costume, parking your car and getting ready to enter the building where the funeral service is being held. with your mind’s eye see the faces of the world’s most influential figures; the Obamas, Ban ki Moon, Bill gates, Presidents of nations of the g8, the queen of England and other great world leaders.

As you walk to the front of the room and look inside the casket, let’s assume you happen to be the one in there, and it is your funeral many years after your entire life on earth. All these people have come to honour you and to show love and appreciation for your impact on your generation. what would you want to hear from your wife and kids, and all the other great personalities gathered as they speak about your legacy in your lifetime?

KeyS to youR comebacK



Kindly write your answer in two or three sentences in the space provided below; and that becomes what I call your “Legacy statement”.

Your Legacy Statement gives you Clarity of Purpose in life and that gives you direction for accomplishment. with your clarity of purpose you will always have a reason to persevere and not to get stuck in your setback, obstacle, failure or downfall.


2Cor 4:8-9

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair, Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.

It is out of your Legacy Statement that you capture your vision statement which translates into your strategic life time goals, objectives and daily routine.

The first key to turning your setback into a setup for your comeback rests in the clarity with which you see where you are going in life, so that your setback today will not be a good enough reason to remain where you are.

That explains why Jesus never gave up on his journey to the cross even in his most difficult times of pain, shame and deep sorrow. He saw the glory of his resurrection after his death; with clarity thus nothing could stop him.




Find a reason why you can: Persevere!

Dr. John C. Maxwell defines Perseverance as finishing irrespective of whatever challenge there may be. It’s about finishing because you are determined to and not because you are destined to.

A vivid picture of how perseverance pans out is the story of how the World-Famous Kentucky Fried Chicken Business was created

Earlier in life Colonel Sanders started several business ventures that were not successful. He had a gas station in the 30s, a restaurant in the 40s, but they were not successful. when Colonel Harland Sanders retired at the age of 65, he had little to show for himself, except an old caddie roadster, a $105 monthly pension cheque, and a recipe for chicken.

Knowing he couldn’t live on his pension, he took his chicken recipe in hand, got behind the wheel of his van, and set out to make his fortune. His first plan was to sell his chicken


recipe to restaurant owners, who would in turn give him a residual for every piece of chicken they sold – 5 cents per chicken. The first restaurateur he called on turned him down. So did the second and the third up to the next one thousand.

In fact, the first 1008 sales calls Colonel Sanders made ended in rejection. Still, he continued to call on owners as he travelled across the USA, sleeping in his car to save money.

Prospect number 1009 gave him his first “yes”. At this point, I am sure you may understand the definition of perseverance better: finishing irrespective of whatever challenge there may be. Finishing because you are determined to and not because you are destined to.

After two years of making daily sales he had signed up a total of five restaurants. Still the Colonel pressed on, knowing that he had a great chicken recipe and that someday the idea would catch on.




Of course, you know how the story ends. The idea did catch on. By 1963 the Colonel had 600 restaurants across the country selling his secret recipe of Kentucky Fried Chicken(with 11 herbs and spices).

In 1964 he was bought out by future Kentucky governor John Brown. Even though the sale mad him a multi-millionaire, he continued to represent and promote KFC until his death in 1990.

On the journey to becoming successful in our pursuit, we can expect to encounter setbacks, obstacles, difficulties or challenges, but we must always remember that successful people persevere, they never say never, and they do not let obstacles get in their way.

Ps. 30:5b weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.


Develop the right Capacity for your Next Level

If the ax be blunt and one does not whet the edge, then must he put to it more strength; but wisdom is profitable to direct him. Eccl. 10:10(KJV)

Capacity is the actual or potential ability to perform, yield or withstand. Through challenges, knowledge acquisition, understanding and diligence, among other things, a person builds capacity. The capacity needed run a company with twenty staff is not the same as the capacity for a company with one thousand staff members. The capacity you need as a bachelor or spinster is not the same for a husband or wife. Every level in your life has the required capacity for significant success. writing in Byways of Blessedness, James Allen is strong in his call for us to embrace our circumstances. “Let a person rejoice when he is confronted with obstacles, for it means that he has reached the end of some particular line of indifference or folly, and is now called upon to summon up all




his energy and intelligence in order to extricate himself, and to find a better way; that the powers within him are crying out for greater freedom, for enlarged exercise and scope”.

“No situation can be difficult of itself; it is the lack of insight into its intricacies, and the want of wisdom in dealing with it, which give rise to the difficulty. Immeasurable, therefore, is the gain of a difficulty transcended.”

A ghanaian motivational speaker told a story of a delegation of ghanaian experts who went on a trade mission to the United States in the early nineties to prospect for potential buyers. The cane products in particular caught the attention of a giant retailer who initiated a discussion about a potential order for 20,000 shops. The exporter suddenly started fidgeting in his seat and stuttering at the most basic questions. The importer was both concerned and surprised; so he begun to find out if there was any reason why they could not deliver the order.


He asked about the availability of finance, labour, management, and technology. All these areas had minor issues but the biggest surprise was in the area of raw materials. when asked about how many hectors of the raw material were annually cultivated in ghana, the amused exporter’s response was that the product only grew in the wild in the western region of ghana. That was the end of the discussion because the size of the order they were discussing required dependable, uninterrupted source of raw materials. To turn your set back into a setup for a comeback, you need to build your capacity for the Next level.

A friend of mine also recounts a boxing match that also paints the picture of the essence of building ones capacity for significant success in an encounter that shook the entire world in October of 1974 at the Mai Stadium in Kinshasa in present day D.R. Congo. The match was promoted by the illustrious promoter Don King who managed to convince




the then heavyweight champion george Foreman to fight the former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali. george Foreman had emerged as a boxing giant having defeated Joe Frazier. Frazier had been of the opinion that in spite of Foreman’s successes, he did not have the capacity to beat him (Frazier). And Frazier’s confidence was not entirely baseless because he had defeated the great Ali in 1971. However, he experienced a great ‘paradigm shift’ after Foreman knocked him down six times in two rounds before the referee stopped the bout. Foreman had also beaten Ken Norton, the only other boxer who had also beaten Ali.

Ali had been suspended in 1967 for refusing to be drafted into the army. He regained his license three years after in 1970. It was after this that he lost to Joe Frazier in 1971. So with these weak background many tipped Foreman to win the bout of 1974. Foreman was confident he would beat Ali. His dream was huge and he knew he needed to beat Ali for the world


to totally recognize him as the true champion. This is the account of the match;

Ali began the first round by attacking Foreman with the unconventional (and provocative) ‘right-hand leads’. This was notable, as Ali was famed for his speed and technical skills, while Foreman’s raw power was his greatest strength; close range fight would, it seemed, inevitably favour Foreman and leave too great a chance that Ali would be stunned by one or more of Foreman’s powerful hay-makers. Ali made use of the right-hand lead punch (striking with the right hand without setting up with the left) in a further effort to disorient Foreman. However, while this aggressive tactic may have surprised Foreman and it did allow Ali to hit him solidly a number of times, it failed to significantly hurt him, and before the end of the first round, Foreman had started to catch up to Ali, landing a few punches of his own. Foreman had also been




trained to cut off the ring, preventing escape. Ali realized that he would tire if Foreman could keep making one step to Ali’s two, so he changed tactics…..

As a result Foreman spent his energy throwing punches that either did not hit Ali or were deflected in a way that made it difficult for Foreman to hit Ali’s head, while sapping Foreman’s strength. As the fight drew into the eighth round, Foreman’s punching and defense became ineffective as the strain of throwing so many wild shots took its toll, and Ali pounced as Foreman tried to pin him on the ropes, landing several right hooks over Foreman’s jab followed by a five punch combination culminating in a left hook that brought Foreman’s head up into position and a hard right straight to the face that caused Foreman to stumble to the canvas. Foreman did get up, but not before being counted out by referee Zack Clayton.


why did Foreman suffer such a great defeat on the hands of Muhammad Ali? Your guess is as good as mine. I believe that Foreman’s defeat reflects the fate of many people in life. They have great dreams, great aspirations but they lack the capacity to make it happen. Foreman had a huge dream but did not have the requisite capacity to make the dream happen. It’s necessary to dream big, but it is also sufficient to develop the right capacity to make the dream a reality. Having the right dream without the right capacity will be disastrous in its accomplishment. Many young people in this 21st Century, like george Foreman, have ambitions that are far greater than their capacity.

The twenty-first century is seen as the most successful century in the history of the world. There are more opportunities to succeed than ever before. A very good example is that you could speak to the entire world at the click of a button the same way you access information




in a second. Nonetheless, capacity for growth is needed more than before due to the weight of competition. In the Bible, Prophet Jeremiah is quoted as saying, “If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, then how can you run with horses? “ Jeremiah 12:5a.

So how do we develop the right capacity for significant success?

In my opinion developing the right capacity for our dreams must be intentionally driven, thinking intensive and action oriented. Grow spiritually, expand your knowledge base, perfect your skill set, Improve on your health, be financially literate, forge the right alliances and partnerships.

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death”

– Albert Einstein


Commitment

“ You cannot be committed and not be creative, you cannot be creative and not be productive, and you cannot be productive and not be successful and you cannot be outstandingly successful and not be impactful”

– David Oyedepo

To commit is to pledge yourself to a certain purpose or line of conduct. Commitment is the most important single factor in individual success. Commitment ignites action and dedication to duty. To turn a setback into a setup for a comeback, we would need to make an unwavering decision to commit to hard work, dedication, excellence, focus, personal development, etc. In committing to doing what must be done, it will mean getting rid of all unproductive activities that do not get you closer in any way to your intended objective. In doing so you need to have role models and




support systems to constantly inspire you, avoid the company of negative people and rather connect to positive ones.

A very good case of commitment is evident in the story of Cortes and the Aztec Empire. The Aztec Empire was at the height of its power with a population estimated between four to thirty million people in today’s Mexico. Hernando Cortes set out from Cuba on February 18, 1519 at the head of an expedition of 11 ships, 50 sailors, 530 soldiers, 16 horses and 14 pieces of artillery, very scant resources against such a mighty Aztec Force.

Before marching inland, Cortes did what many describe as unthinkable. He burned all but one of his ships. He understood that in an operation as perilous as this, hesitation or doubt among his soldiers could jeopardize their chance for victory. If they met with a great a great setback, - as they surely would- they might well think of retreating. By burning the ships, he gave his men no choice but to


concentrate on advancement and victory.

On the plain of Otumba, Cortes’ wearied army of 400 conquistadors was met by an Aztec army numbering in the tens of thousands. without firearms, they were soon fighting for their lives in exhausting hand –to – hand combat that continued for hours. All seemed lost when Cortes decided to make bold strike against the Aztec commanding general. He called five others and together they smashed through the Indian lives. Cortes ran the commander through with his lance. Deprived of their leader, the Indian force was thrown into confusion. Cortes had won his most desperate and hard fought battle. After two years, he conquered the entire empire.

The Indians were in all their strength, but Cortes’ men, though wasted by disease, famine, and deficiencies in the military apparatus had discipline, total commitment and implicit confidence in their commander.




“The Quality of a person’s life is indirect proportion to their commitment to excellence regardless of their chosen field of endeavor”

– Vincent Lombardi

Be bold and take some risk

The dictionary definition of risk is the exposure to the chance of loss. Many people judge whether or not an activity is worth the risk by the fear of failure it generates in them or the probability of success instead of the value of the activity. The reality is that everything in life is risky. Much more so, deciding not to take any risk is even riskier, because the more you risk failure, the greater your chances of success. Thus to turn your setback into a setup for a comeback, we must learn to be bold and take risk.

Amelia Earhart; first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean in an aircraft as passenger and


first female pilot to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean is a good example of someone who took a bold decision to risk some more in order to achieve her goals. Born in Kansas in 1897, she liked reading books and reciting poetry. She also enjoyed sports, particularly basketball and tennis. During world war I, Amelia decided to study nursing when she recognized the impact of war on the soldiers who served in Europe, so that she could as well help. Thus she became a military nurse’s aide in Canada. After the war was over, Amelia enrolled as a premedical student at the Columbia University in New York. In 1920, after her first year, she visited her family in Los Angeles and that’s when she took her first plane ride at Daugherty Field in Long Beach, California, and got hooked. So is reported as telling herself; “As soon as we left the ground I knew I myself had to fly”, and she never returned to med school. Amelia immediately started working odd jobs to earn the required fee for taking flying lessons - $1000- and did. After working for some time,




she started learning how to fly from Anita Snook, another pioneer flier.

Learning to fly wasn’t easy but she told her husband her perspective on flying: “Please know I am quite aware of the hazards…I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others”. With perseverance and true to her word - -As soon as we left the ground I knew I myself had to fly” – she made her solo flight in 1921. The year after, she set the first of her many aviation records for highest altitude. By 1935, she had become a seasoned, world-class pilot and had done a lot to accomplish her goal of opening doors for women and legitimizing commercial aviation.

She intended to fly around the world; a feat which had already been accomplished by a man, but Amelia intended to route her flight near the equator and set a record for the longest flight at 29,000 miles. In March 1935,


she flew the first leg from Oakland to Hawaii. But as she took off from Luke Field near Pearl Harbour, she blew a tire and crashed the plane, causing tremendous damage. She had encountered a setback, but was ready to turn it into a setup for a comeback. Her damaged plane was shipped to California for repairs, and she planned her next attempt. Two years on, Amelia started her around-the- world goal once again.

Helen Keller is quoted as saying Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing”

Excellence for mastery

Excellence is a product of repeated practice, hard work, smart work and right work. To be outstandingly good at something, it’s going to involve relentlessly pushing past your comfort




zone, frustration, struggle, setbacks and failures.

Six keys to achieving excellence to turn your setback into a setup for a comeback.

1. Pursue what you love. Passion is an incredible motivator. It fuels focus, resilience, and perseverance.

2. Work hard, Work Smart and Work Right. we all move naturally toward pleasure and away from work. Hard work here means industrious. Smart work means applying the power of the mind to work faster for results; right work means going by the standards and applying integrity. The combination of these three will produce Excellence.

3. Prepare and Practice intensely. To achieve excellence, preparation and practice must be more than performance. Repeated practice will enable you to hone in on your skill and


make you an expert. As the maxim goes; practice makes perfect.

4. Sharpen you Saw. Take regular renewal breaks for relaxation. Relaxation does not only provide an opportunity to rejuvenate, but also to metabolize and embed learning.

5. Get knowledge and Understanding. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge – Hosea 4:6. Knowledge is so imperative in the journey to success. The reason is that, we cannot rise above the level we know. In other words if you do not know the way out of your setback, you cannot turn it into a setup for a comeback. Knowledge gives understanding and understanding gives the way out of every setback. Make a lifelong commitment to personal development by going for knowledge through the reading of books, attending conferences, listening to audio tapes etc. The more you do this, the more you develop yourself, and the more you develop yourself the greater your




value will be to the market place and that has a positive correlation with your worth in life.

6. Diligence. The dictionary definition for diligence is constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken; persistent exertion of body and mind. Diligence goes the extra mile. Diligence adds “extra” to ordinary. Diligence does not allow tiredness to be an excuse. Proverbs 22:29 – Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.(KJV)

7. Discipline. The ability to do what you know must be done at a particular time. You may be a “Solomon” in wisdom, but if you are a “Sampson” in discipline, turning your setback into a setup for a comeback will remain a book title to you and not a reality. Jhoon Rhee defines discipline as the habit of taking consistent action until one can perform with unconsciousness competence.


“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Be Flexible and Adapt to Change

we must learn to view change as a natural phenomenon – to anticipate it and to plan for it. The future is ours to channel in the direction we want to go…we must continually ask ourselves, “what will happen if…? Or better still, “How can we make it happen?” – Lisa Taylor

Perhaps the most relentless resistance to the possibility of turning a setback into a setup for a comeback is the unwillingness to change. One wise man said, “The only thing that does not change is CHANgE itself ”. I recently saw a post on my Facebook page and I thought it was characteristic of people who are unwilling to be flexible and adapt to change; especially politicians who are unable to turn the setbacks of corruption, poor health care system, poverty




etc. in developing economies, particularly Africa into successful outcomes.

“The Top Ten Strategies for Dealing with a Dead Horse”:

1. Buy a stronger whip

2. Change riders

3. Appoint a committee to study the horse

4. Appoint a team to revive the horse

5. Send out a memo declaring the horse isn’t really dead

6. Hire an expensive consultant to find “the real problem”

7. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed and efficiency

8. Rewrite the standard definition of live horse

9. Declare the horse to be better, faster, and cheaper when dead

10. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position


I am sure you might have seen just about every one of these “solutions” enacted in your place of work or country. But there is really only one effective way to dealing with a setback as this – dead horse – which could mean any other challenge in your country, place of work or even your own life. when the horse is dead, for god’s sake, dismount. To be successful you need to be willing to change. As simple as that!

Be hopeful and put your trust in God

“There is hope for your future; says the Lord” - Jeremiah 3:17

“My hope is Built on Nothing Less” – Edward Mote

My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;

I dare not trust the sweetest frame,

But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

On Christ, the solid rock, I stand;




All other ground is sinking sand.

One of the respected and most successful men of god in my home country, ghana (Dr. Mensah Otabil) once shared a testimony on hope and trust in god, saying that many years ago; he was going through some personal struggles. He had lost both his parents within the span of a year and everything in his life came to a standstill. Nothing seemed to be going right. Then one day, he read the Jeremiah verse I quoted above, which says; There is hope for your future; says the Lord. He read that simple verse and prayed one simple prayer and said; “god, if You are able to lift me up and raise me up, I’m going to preach for the rest of my life, and I’m going to tell people You can make something out of nothing and You can lift people from nowhere”.

You might have given up because of your setback, your situation may even be worse than the one I have shared, but if you can believe in the ability of god to turn that situation


around, your setback will be turned into a setup for a comeback! Have hope and just trust in the god of a second chance to lift you up to the next level. Pray to him and ask him for a turn around. Irrespective of your challenge and difficulty, your hope in god will deliver you from trouble. I once read a story about a young lady and her relationship. Bishop Dag Heward- Mills narrated it this way;

One day, a beautiful young lady went to play some sports and got terribly injured. Because of the injury she could not walk or move any part of her body from her neck downwards. All the young men who had wanted to marry her changed their mind.

But one day, a Chinese man came up to her and said he wanted to marry her. Everyone was shocked that someone wanted to marry a lady who could not walk or even lift her hand. To everyone’s amazement he actually married her. The next thing we knew was that he had had a baby with her.




Most of us would choose someone who looked nice. As soon as there is something unpleasant about somebody, people stop loving the person. In this case, the young man married the young lady even though she did not have the use of her limbs.

This is the love that Jesus has shown us. He loved us and chose us when we were yet dirty, ugly and sinful. Christ has shown us the extreme love that no one else can demonstrate. Why do you still continue to reject His love? Accept Him as your Lord and personal Saviour. Accept His love TODAY!

In order to have a relationship with him, you do so with just two basic and simple steps. First you have to believe in Jesus Christ as the son of god:

“whosoever believeth Jesus as the Christ is born of god” – 1 John 5:1


Secondly ask Him to come into your heart. You can thus pause and through the process of becoming “born again”, which I call the “ABCD process” if you are not born again or not sure of being born again.

A – Admit you are a sinner;

“For all have sinned and come short of the glory of god”. Romans 3:23

“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of god is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” – Romans 6:23

B – Believe God loves you and that Jesus died for you;

“But god commandeth His love toward us; in that while we were yet sinners, He died for us. – Romans 5:8




C – Call on Him and repent now;

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. – 1John 1:3

D – Dearly invite Jesus into your life through the prayer of faith;

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and opens the door, I’ll come in and dine with him and he with Me”. – Revelations 3:20

After going through this exercise genuinely, you do not need to depend on any man to go into the presence of god on your behalf. You can just walk right into god’s presence anytime, any day and make your request known. That explains why the bible says; let us go right onto god Himself, with true hearts fully trusting Him to receive us because we have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean and because our bodies have


been washed with pure water” - Hebrews 10:22 (The New Living Bible).

You hope and trust in god beginning from now will pay off. I can hear someone asking, how about a person who is already born again and has been hoping and trusting god, but has still not seen any turn around yet. My answer is keep on keeping on. weeping may endure for a night, but Joy comes in the morning. Psalm 30:5. god bless you greatly.




Activity: Set Clear Intentions for a Comeback

get a clear picture of what you want, what you are going to give in exchange, or what you are going to do to acquire it, and when you are going to have it. write it all out in a statement below and visualize being there right now.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

A CALL TO ACTION

06


“You will never change your life until you can change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine”

— John C. Maxwell

Too often we say we want something, but our actions don’t reveal a deep, inner

desire to obtain it. we want to make more money, but we watch the clock all day and aren’t prepared to do more work, or we’re scared to start a business. we need our burning desire to become a passion and we need to be willing to sacrifice what we might want right now for that bigger, more rewarding goal by doing what we say we will do.

work on your goals until you can break it down into a daily outcome. Any timeframe longer than daily may result in losing focus and inaction. Once you know what daily result is required, you can now design your activities

a caLL to action



to achieve the result. when you understand the daily actions required to achieve your goal, you have a formula that wILL work.

I can almost hear you asking yourself, so where do I begin? well, after going through the pages of Turning Your Setback into a Setup for A Comeback, you might have read hundreds of steps you can take to implement and apply on the challenges that confront you. what do you do now?

In Theodore Roosevelt words, “Do what you can, with what you have, right where you are”. what matters most at this stage is taking action on at least one idea that can help you immediately. Don’t procrastinate. If you think you can improve your life and move your life a step forward with a particular action step, just do it!

One wise man said, almost 95% of everything you do is determined by your habits. Your habits; good or bad, determines your character


and your character determines your destiny. A good habit comes from a good action taken daily. And a good action taken daily comes from a good decision. Thus the dividing line between success and failure is “Decision + Action”.

Therefore, change your paradigm NOw! Start by deciding today exactly what you really want to turn around for good with the lessons you have learnt from this book. write out a list of the specific action points and set a definite timeline for accomplishment.

Apart from the limit you place on your own imagination, there is no limit to what you can achieve. Take some action NOw! As the maxim goes; one action is valuable than a thousand good intentions.

Prolonged idleness paralyzes initiative. Never let what you think you cannot do keep you from doing what you can do. Start with what you have, instead of joining the “waiting

a caLL to action



generation”, who are either waiting for a special circumstance, an opportunity, an uncle in abroad or the government to do something for them before they act.

Write down the action steps you are going to take NOW with deadlines in the spaces provided below;

ACTION DEADLINE


PERSONAL NOTE

After going through these chapters of wisdom on turning your setback into a

setup for a comeback, you cannot “sit and cry” when the going is getting tough. Instead, you must “stand and fight” the course of your life’s achievement. Have the courage to;

RISK more than everyone thinks safe

DREAM more than others think practicable and

EXPECT more than anybody think possible.

Know your worth, because the world will tag you with the price you think you are worth. In this way you will always come out better and not bitter.

In all these, never ignore the role of god in your life because He is the Alpha and the Omega, the all-knowing and Everlasting father who knows your end from your beginning.



I pray that all things; the good, the bad and the ugly, work together for your good, in every area of your life.

go therefore and turn every setback you are confronted with into a setup for a comeback!


The answer to the numerous and ever increasing challenges of developing

economies, particularly Africa and in my case ghana, lies not in foreign aid, neither does it lie in world Bank’s debt cancellation, nor the g-20’s support. Rather it lies in our own ability as Africans to look inside our continent’s abundant human and natural endowments, with a new paradigm of seeing equal opportunities, and visionary leadership that looks beyond the selfish and individualistic ambitions of the rich few.

The “how” is in the adoption of the “personal responsibility” approach. Countries like China, India, Brazil, Malaysia, South Korea etc, have shown that it is workable. China for instance has proven that it is no more a liability being a populous nation, but an asset to the world. By 2020, I believe China will be equal to or

A MESSAGE TO DEvELOPING ECONOMIES



greater than America.

Africa must thus stop blaming slave trade and other factors for their misfortunes and see the solution in many problems as a way of becoming first world.

By solving the problems we are confronted with as a continent and turning our setback into a setup for our comeback, we stand tall in the quest to becoming financially independent, since money is a reward for a problem solved. The times have changed, we cannot continue to play the blame game, and leave our economies to positional leaders.

Young men and women must wake up and rise up to influential leadership and change the norm. Let us believe in ourselves! Let us believe in our economies!! Let us believe in our countries, and let’s believe in our continent.

god bless us all!


EPILOGUE

Knowledge is not power, Applied Knowledge rather is

– Richmond Kwame Frimpong

Now you know what to do to turn that setback confronting you in your career,

marriage, academics, business, ministry or calling into a setup for a comeback. Even though we have come to the conclusion of this book, you have not come to the conclusion of your journey to Accomplishment. Not until you do or put into practice the knowledge shared, you are as good as the person who has not read this book yet or even worse. Not until you apply the knowledge you have, the power of liberation that comes with knowledge will still be a struggle. Activate the principles you have learnt in this book and make it practical in your daily routine till you see the effect of its



application in your life.

A hungry tiger in the jungle does not get fed by pursuing his prey from 8:00am – 5:00pm. He only eats when he makes a kill. when he doesn’t, he starves. Be results biased. Not until you see the results in your life please don’t stop practicing, and god will change your life for good and turn your mess into a message. Stay blessed and be empowered for success!

god bless you richly!


RECOMMENDED READING

• The Holy Bible• Possessing Your Possession – Bishop Oyedepo• One Minute Millionaire – Mark Victor

Hansen & Robert g Allen• Pillars of Destiny – Bishop David Oyedepo• Becoming a Better You – Joel Osteen• Overcoming Crises – Dr. Myles Munroe• The Impossible is Possible – John Mason• The One Minute Manager – Ken Blanchard

& Spencer Johnson• The Quest for Supremacy – Eastwood Anaba• Why you act the way you do – Tim Lahaye• The Value of the Dot – Dr. Mensah Otabil• Harvard Business Essentials – HBS Press• The Power of Self-Discipline – Brian Tracy• The 7 habits of highly effective people – Steven

Covey• Your Best life now – Joel Osteen• Who moved my cheese – Dr. Spencer Johnson



• Making Every Day Count – Albert & Comfort Ocran

• Imitation is limitation – John L. Mason• The Power & Principles of Vision – Dr. Myles

Munroe• The 8th Habit of Highly Effective People –

Steven Covey• Developing the leader within you – Dr. J.C.

Maxwell• Million Dollar Habits – Brian Tracy• Career Distinction – Aruda Dixson• Pathways of Success – Dr. Mensah Otabil• Awakening the giant within you – Anthony

Robbins• The science of being great – wallace D. walter• As a man thinketh – James Allen• Mind Powers – Christian H. godefroy• The Power of Leadership – J.C. Maxwell• The 360 degrees leader – J.C. Maxwell• Rich Dad, Poor Dad – Robert Kiyosaki• Failing Forward – J.C. Maxwell• How to think like a CEO – D. A. Benton• Good to Great – Jim Collins


• The more you know the better it gets –Albert & Comfort Ocran

• Beyond Orientation – Richmond Kwame Frimpong

• InsideOUT – Richmond Kwame Frimpong• Don’t Stop Here – Richmond & Elizabeth

Frimpong• Cracking the Secret Code to Financial

Independence – Richmond Kwame Frimpong

Recommended Reading


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Von Oech, R. (1993); How you can become more creative, Nightengale ConantTracy, Brian (2002); Create your own future, John wiley & Sons Inc., Hoboken, NJRobbins, Anthony (1997), Awaken the giant within, Simon & Schuster Inc, SydneyOtabil, Mensah ( July 2006), The Value of the dot, Combert PublicationsCovey, Stephen R. (1989, 1992), Seven Habits of Highly Effective people, Simon People, Simon & Schuster, UKHeward-Mills, Dag (2012), He that hath, Parchment houseBuabeng Jeremiah (2013), Take Off, Matrix Publishinghttp://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cfs/305_html/Gestalt/Woman.htmlhttps://www.google.com.gh/search?q=paradigm&source=lnms&tbm=https://www.dictionary.com

TURNING YOUR SETBACK INTOA SETUP FOR A COMEBACK

Study Guide



“Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it or work around it”

– Michael Jordan

1. How does Vincent Norman Pearle describe setbacks in life?

2. Life is a mix of and

3. wallace E. Johnson later saw that it was god’s unerring and wondrous plan to get him into the way of His choosing. why did he say so?


4. why did Successful Pastor and Educationist described in chapter One had to quit school after form 5?

5. when did Mr. Kofi Amoabeng begin his company; UT group and where?

6. when did Mr. Ken Ofori-Atta also begin his company; Databank group?

7. Abraham Lincoln became President of the United States of America in what year?

Study guide



8. How many times did Abraham Lincoln fail before he succeeded in becoming a President?

9. who was the first man in medical history to successfully separate Siamese twins joined at the head?

10. At what age did Dr. Ben Carson become the medical Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery?

11. what is the theme of Steve Jobs “comeback” story at the college graduation?


12. Mention the names of the companies started by Steve Jobs after his dismissal from Apple.

13. And whenever the answer had been “No”, for too many days in a row, I knew I had to change something. who said this?

14. “Failure is never the end unless you allow it”. who said this?

15. List 5 Character traits of Joseph in the Bible.

Study guide


16. where can we find the Joseph story in the Bible?

17. what is a Paradigm?

18. Setbacks are enablers for success. True / False

19. what are the “4ps” of the Joseph encounter?


20. List 5 keys for a “Comeback”

i.

ii.

iii.

iv.

v

Study guide


NOTes



ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richmond is Vice President - Databank Retail Services and Branch Manager -

western & Central Regions. He is an Author, Motivational Broadcaster on Social Media, Radio & TV, and a Life Coach. Richmond serves as Business Advisory Board Member; SIFE-KNUST (now ENACTUS) and on the Board of Pinnacle Management Consulting-UK, as Facilitator and Country Director for ghana, Nigeria, and Liberia. He is also the Convener for one of ghana’s Biggest Tertiary Campuses’ Motivational Conferences - Exit Strategy Summit - now in Nigeria, Cote


D’ivoire and the United Kingdom.

Richmond holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics & Philosophy from the University of ghana, an MBA from the Paris Business School - PgSM (France) and currently pursuing a Doctorate Degree in global Business & Leadership.

what is more, Richmond has certification from the ghana Stock Exchange (Securities Industry Courses) and is also a licensed Broker’s Dealer’s Representative by the Securities & Exchange Commission -ghana.

His passion is to give direction and a sense of purpose to his generation via the sharing of knowledge and wisdom. He is married to Elizabeth (an Architect & MD of CorporateClean) and blessed with two lovely children; Lady & Jason.

Above all, he is redeemed by the blood of the lamb and he owes everything to Christ Jesus.


OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR


EXIT STRATEGY SUMMIT — GALLARY

Exit Strategy Summit is an annual entrepreneurial and career development

conference that creates a platform for young graduates and post graduates at home and abroad to explore the opportunities in their home countries regarding their career after school. It is currently one of ghana’s biggest Tertiary Campuses’ Motivational Conference with nationwide coverage in all the 10 regions across ghana. In addition to ghana, the conference is now available in Nigeria, Cote D’ivoire and the United Kingdom. Every year hundreds of thousands of young men are mentored and trained to make the best out of their career and entrepreneurial dreams.

WORTH NOTING: 40 ESSENTIAL NATURAL LAWS OF SUCCESS

APPENDIX



The Law of Abundance:

we live in an abundant universe in which there is sufficient money for all who really want it and are willing to obey the laws governing its acquisition. Nature and human personality are equally rich, you only have to develop and use the potentialities that lie in them.

The Law of Advantage:

One small well-placed jack can lift a heavy truck. Human beings can use a wide variety of mechanical, social, mental, and personality tools that multiply and magnify natural strength.

The Law of Cause and Effect:

Everything happens for a reason; for every effect there is a specific cause.

The Law of Belief:

whatever you truly believe, with feeling, becomes your reality.


The Law of Decision:

Every great leap forward in life is preceded by a clear decision and commitment to action.

The Law of Appreciation:

giving honest and sincere appreciation to others is one of the best and easiest ways of gaining power. The law of appreciation is paradoxical, however: you should not expect others to give you honour in return for the appreciation you give them.

The Law of Chance:

we live in a world of law and order, not one of chance. Over an extended period of time, good breaks and bad breaks will average out. we should be diligent in following the laws of nature, for they are ordained for our benefit.

The Law of Concentration:

when a person concentrates all available energies on one specific task, the possibility

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of success is greatly increased. when time and talents are divided among several enterprises, chances of success are proportionally reduced.

The Law of Compensation:

There is an appropriate compensation for every act. No one can do a good deed without receiving a reward at some time, in some way; conversely, no one can do something evil without suffering some penalty.

The Law of Courage:

The ability to make decisions and act boldly in the face of setbacks and adversity is the key to greatness. Courage is the quality of mind that meets danger or opposition with firmness. Isolated performances of great deeds do not make individuals heroes or cowards; they simply reveal character to the eyes of others. Every successful life needs challenges, hurdles to overcome, and problems to solve in order to bring the power of courage into play.


The Law of Example:

One of the greatest forces in the world is the power of example. Example is how human beings learn morals, manners, and most essential knowledge.

The Law of Experience:

Only human beings have the ability to record their experiences. This capacity has provided a unique heritage for our enrichment and practical benefit. By surveying and examining past experience, we are able to recognise clearly and accept the good, as well as to identify and avoid the bad.

The Law of Fusion:

The whole is judged by the part-and the part is equally judged by the whole. One tiny spot of rot in an otherwise healthy apple requires that we classify the apple as diseased, and recognise that it endangers other apples nearby. A practical application of this law is

appendiX



the fact that environment has a great influence on individual growth. we are judged by the company we keep.

The Law of Idleness:

The inevitable result of idleness- with regard to physical, mental, spiritual, social, or personal development is weakness. Inactivity is for this reason virtually equivalent to self –annihilation.

The Law of Instincts:

Unlike all of the lower creatures, which spend their lives directed and controlled solely by instincts, human beings have the additional capacities of thought and reason. Instincts nevertheless serve an important function in human life. An important part of education is to recognize, understand, and cultivate these powerful and valuable inner tendencies.

The Law of Loyalty:

Loyalty means constancy and faithfulness in any relationship, and it implies trust and


confidence. To implement loyalty successfully, we must think thoughts of faithfulness and then put them into action. Loyalty is not a gift that is simply given; it is a superb accomplishment.

The Law of vision:

Vision is the ability to project plans and hopes beyond the boundary of present circumstances. The person who has vision thinks about and prepares for the future, while the person who lacks vision lives only in the present.

The Law of Spoken words:

Automobiles run and airplanes fly, but human beings literally talk themselves forward. A mediocre idea well expressed is often more.

The Law of Probabilities:

This law says; for every event, there is a probability of that event occurring under certain circumstances. Since it is possible to measure the effects of given causes in most every circumstance, it is also possible-if all of

appendiX



the relevant facts are known-to predict results in advance.

The Law of Reason: Reason is the quality of sense and understanding that is the guiding and directing faculty of the mind. Cultivation of reason is a necessary condition for true success.

The Law of Motion:

A body in motion tends to remain in motion until acted upon by some outside force.

The Law of Responsibility:

You are completely responsible for everything you are and for everything you become and achieve

The Law of Preparation:

Effective performance is preceded by painstaking preparation.


The Law of Persistence:

Your ability to persist in the face of setbacks and disappointments is your measure of your belief in yourself and your ability to succeed.

The Law of Creativity:

Every advance in human life begins with an idea in the mind of a single person

The Law of Direction:

Successful people have a clear sense of purpose and direction in every area of their lives.

The Law of Attraction:

You are a living magnet; you invariably attract into your life the people, situations, and circumstances that are in harmony with your dominant thoughts.

The Law of Planning

Every minute spent in planning saves ten minutes in execution.

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The Law of Risk:

Risk is inherent in any investment of time, money, or emotion.

The Law of Unlimited Possibilities:

You can always get a better deal if you know how.

The Law of Leverage:

Certain things you do enable you to accomplish vastly more than you would if you spent the same amount of time in other activities.

The Law of Clarity:

The clearer you are about your goals and objectives, the more efficient and effective you will be in achieving them.

The Law of Greater Power:

The person with the greater power, real or imagined, will get the better deal in any negotiation.


The Law of Priorities:

Your ability to set clear and accurate priorities on your time determines the entire quality of your life.

The Law of Practice:

Continuous practice of a key skill reduces the time required to perform the task and increases the output achieved.

The Law of Competence:

You can increase your efficiency and your effectiveness by becoming better and better at your key tasks.

The Law of sequentially:

Time management enables you to control the sequence of events in your life

The Law of Expectations:

whatever you expect, with confidence, becomes your own self-fulfilling prophecy.

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The Law of Service:

Your rewards in life will be in direct proportion to the value of your service to others.

The Law of Integrity:

great business leadership is characterized by honesty, truthfulness, and straight dealing with every person, under all circumstances.

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