Ride on Your Gift & Reach the Great Heights

By Ashbel Vudzijena

This book, RIDE ON YOUR GIFT & REACH THE GREAT HEIGHTS, helps you to appreciate the significance of your natural ability in helping you to reach great heights in life. It helps you to identify your gift and ride on it until celebration day. It is a book for everyone. The book is divided into 2 parts. The first part highlights the seven attributes that will assist you to understand a natural gift or talent, a distinctive natural ability. It gives you a good idea about gifts or talents.

The second part of the book makes your understanding of gifts complete and it guides you towards turning your own gift into a successful career. The worlds most famous individuals are people who simply discovered their gifts and turned them into careers. Our major challenge as ambitious people is to turn inappropriate foundations into careers. Instead, we should turn our gifts into careers so that we become accomplished individuals. This book is an asset which every home must have. The book demonstrates that your gift is something right under your nose.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781463452452

Ashbel Vudzijena

Ashbel Vudzijena is a motivational social worker, poet, writer and speaker. He is a writer whose dream is to speak into the lives of people. He strongly believes in the capacity of gifts and natural abilities that we are all endowed with by God. Ashbel Vudzijena has a passion for the welfare and phenomenal success of individuals and families. Contact details: [e-mail]; [phone] /[phone]

Book preview

Author’s message to the reader

Truly, there are several factors that work together to give success to goal-oriented people. My concern is that people do not realize that there are factors and sub-factors that contribute towards success. People rank the factors as if they were at the same level of significance in their lives. First things first—A gift is supreme! If you want to succeed with fulfillment and utmost excellence you need to respect and breathe life into your gift. Identify your gift or talent first. This is the primary factor. After discovering and making up your mind to pursue your gift you can then consider the sub-factors that make the administration and application of the gift possible. My message is that your hard work, perseverance, determination, discipline, focus, dream, consistency, visualization and commitment become most rewarding and meaningful if you invest them in a gifted career. It is less rewarding and more stressful to persevere in a discipline in which you are not gifted. Your hard work is less rewarded. I acknowledge that you need to combine a number of factors to succeed but before you think of all these factors you need to be in the right place—your gift. Remember that gifts are not man’s idea. They are God’s idea. Gifts are your finest strength. Hardwork within giftedness is superior to hardwork outside giftedness. There you are! I wish you a pleasant and insightful reading.

Ashbel Vudzijena

Contents

Author’s message to the reader

Acknowledgements

Dedication

PART A

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Highlights From Part A

PART B

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

ABOUT ASHBEL VUDZIJENA

ABOUT THE BOOK: RIDE ON YOUR GIFT & REACH THE GREAT HEIGHTS

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my wife, Grace, and children for their tolerance that allowed me to be absent-minded when I conceived of crystallizing some of my ideas into this book.

I also wish to thank Pastor Jeremiah Muzondo of the Worldwide Family of God Church for introducing me to a biblical verse (Proverbs 18:16) that opened my eyes to God’s views on natural gifts and talents.

I want to thank Milton Kamwendo, a motivational consultant, who has worked tirelessly to nurture the habit of making grand dreams in the keen readers in Zimbabwe and beyond. I am one of them.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my precious family and all those who seek to identify and ride on their dormant gifts which this book seeks to activate for the benefit of families and the world at large.

PART A

The 7 attributes of a natural gift

When it comes to your gift, your natural territory, the people around you are the first ones to notice it and you, like a

cheated spouse, are normally the last person to know

and admit its existence.

Chapter One

You can still reach the Great Heights

You can not teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself

Galileo Galilei—

You have made the right decision by choosing to read this book which, in its simplicity, provides you with an insight into yourself. This insight can change the course and fortune of your life on a permanent basis. It may bring about a new lease of life to you. I agree with Oliver Wendell Holmes who said;

A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience

This book focuses you on your natural gift and the phenomenal results that will sprout from your efforts to ride on the gift God gave you. You now stand a good chance of receiving that insight because you have started reading the book. The new insight may help you make new decisions and provide a new orientation to the business of your life. It is an insight into your gift and the Great Heights that await your arrival.

In case you have been worried all along trying to make headway and breakthroughs in your endeavors but without success, I wish to draw your attention to the observation made by Deepak Chopra who said;

Everything that is happening at this moment is a result of the choices you’ve made in the past.

While one may argue that this statement sounds too absolute, one may still agree that this statement holds true for most of us. A proper reflection upon one’s life may draw us closer to this assertion. Some of the decisions we made in our lives were a drawback while others were giant strides of progress. There is a Turkish proverb that says;

No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back

In the game of pursuing Great Heights avoid being an unfair referee to yourself—declaring game over! when there is still more time-space. Tell yourself play on! Apart from time, most likely there is still some hidden energy within you that may bring about a new twist to the story of your life.

Before you resign to fate and tell yourself that you can never reach dizzy heights in this world you need to ask yourself whether you have ever applied your gift, talent, calling or commission to all your industrious efforts. All these have one source—God! In simple terms your gift is your natural ability. Some people have always been treated by society either as mediocre or as failures not because they are not excellent performers but because they have pursued careers that are outside their domain of gift. While families play a crucial role in helping you to reach great heights, there is a place in your life that deserves the personal application of your gift even if you belong to a nurturant family. The role of the family, especially the favour of a religious, stern and caring mother or grandmother, is critical for setting a foundation for the proper identification and pursuit of gifts. This observation is supported by the biographies and childhood experiences of various prominent personalities notably Sigmund Freud (The Father of Psychoanalysis), Thomas Elliot (The Great Poet and Literary Critic), Oprah Winfrey (The popular international talk show host who received formative care from her grandmother), among others.[1]

Whatever background you have, I advise you that the earlier you discover and turn to your gift the better. Your primary salvation is to discover Jesus Christ. Your secondary salvation is to discover the talent, natural capacities and commission that Christ gave you.

I used to think that believing in gifts was man’s own wisdom until my pastor showed me Proverbs 18:16 which alerts us to the revelation that;

A man’s gift will make a large opening for him, and it will lead him even before great people

A South African magazine called Soul (June 2007 issue: page 32) published the inspiring story of Yvonne Chaka-Chaka, a great African female musician who is based in South Africa. Yvonne Chaka-Chaka is one person who rode on her gift of music and reached Great Heights in her life. As a musician, she has performed for world-respected dignitaries, like Queen Elizabeth, Nelson Mandela and many others. In her own words Yvonne said;

. . . . Being a musician helped in taking me where I am today. . . . 

With reference to her most memorable performance as a gifted musician Yvonne said;

. . . . I’ve had a lot of great moments, but the one moment that will always stay in my heart, was when I went to Uganda in 1991 for the very first time. This was when they dubbed me Princess of Africa. There were so many people waiting for me, from the airport to Kampala—which is a very long distance. I was just so overwhelmed! I was pinching myself, not believing that all those people were waiting there just to see Yvonne! It was a wonderful moment.

Oprah Winfrey’s biography shows that she is another person who decided to ride on her gift to Great Heights.

. . . . She rose from poverty and a troubled youth to become the most powerful and influential woman in television and, according to Forbes Magazine, the world’s most highly paid entertainer. Though primarily recognized as show hostess Winfrey also produces and occasionally acts in television movies and feature films. . . .  In addition to her reign as queen of the daytime talk shows, Winfrey has also proven herself a gifted actress. In 1985 she received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress with her film debut as Sophia in Steven Spielberg’s The Colour Purple. . . . (Oprah Winfrey—Biography—MSN Movies)

If you desire to reach Great Heights in your life you need to go beyond receiving Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour if you are a believer. It is not enough to receive Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour if you want to be a luminary in your own right. Receiving Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour is good enough if all that you want is to be called a child of God even if you are not necessarily a prominent personality. You may have observed already that there are multitudes of believers in the churches who are still groping about trying to breakthrough and reach Great Heights in society but it appears to be a futile attempt. Most of them are failing to reach high echelons because they don’t realize Christ believes in lifting people up through the gifts he endowed them with. It is Christ who gave people gifts and in those gifts lies excellence. If only you could realize the dynamite in your natural gift you would compete with a revered professor in that field.

If you follow your gift you can still become the village, school, community, national and international champion that you have always dreamt to be. You can even start thinking big even if you never used to.