Life Sense: Living from Success to Significance

By Terry Mante

Life Sense takes you on a thirty-day personal development journey that leads you to know yourself better, discover your purpose in life, renew your paradigm and grow your influence. The book offers challenge and inspiration to enrich you in diverse areas of life such as leadership, character, spirituality, business, career, and relationship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Terry Mante Exchange
• Release date: Jul 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201000134

Terry Mante

As a thought leader with keen interest in the progress and wellbeing of people, Terry has written over 400 articles for publication in newspapers and magazines in Ghana and reputable online portals. These works span a range of subjects such as faith, leadership, politics and governance, business, self-help, and career development. His work has been cited and quoted by many authors, bloggers, colleges, companies and PhD candidates in Australia, Ghana, India, Nigeria, United Kingdom, United States, and other parts of the world. As a consultant and advisor, he offers guidance and counsel to individuals and organizations to bring out the best in them and position them to function effectively. He has worked on market research, strategy, branding, corporate training, capacity-building as well as PR and communications projects for clients in diverse fields. He is a personal development coach, business development and management consultant and communications practitioner.

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TERRY MANTE

LifeSense

30-day personal development program

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LifeSense: 30-day personal development program

© 2014 Terry Mante

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author and/or publisher, except where permitted by law.

Scriptures marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Quotations marked NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of International Bible Society. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

Life sense: 30-day reading

Day 1: The magic of asking questions

Day 2: Tough questions of life

Day 3: The power of self-identity

Day 4: Appreciate your worth

Day 5: Humility is not timidity

Day 6: Stand out when told to sit in

Day 7: An unsinkable ship

Day 8: Can love really be blind? 

Day 9: Spiritual capital

Day 10: Three signs of mental laziness

Day 11: Vain achievements

Day 12: Age does not speak

Day 13: Money grows on trees

Day 14: Encourage yourself

Day 15: Four steps to entrepreneurship

Day 16: Crying winners, dancing losers

Day 17: Good is the enemy of great

Day 18: Efforts, results and rewards

Day 19: Where are you?

Day 20: Adjustment

Day 21: Keeping the clock

Day 22: Strands of time

Day 23: From success to significance

Day 24: The spirit of influence

Day 25: Pedestrians, passengers and drivers

Day 26: Living with a sense of legacy

Day 27: Simplicity

Day 28: Leaders’ generosity

Day 29: Move on

Day 30: It’s not over yet

LIFE SENSE: 30-DAY READING

For years, Terry Mante has provided challenge and inspiration to many people seeking to have meaningful and significant experience of life. Life Sense brings you a selection of Terry’s array of pieces compiled from his newspaper features, books, radio broadcasts and online posts. This 30-day journey will certainly enrich you in diverse areas of life such as leadership, character, spirituality, personality, business, career and relationship.

The thirty stand-alone chapters in this book will take you through a holistic personal development journey. Necessarily, this journey is to be completed in thirty days – reading one chapter and following through with the application guide each day. Why must you do this in thirty days?

Focus: Each write-up has a unique message that must be elaborately ingested. For you to maximise the benefits in each chapter, you need to take time to think through the lesson and carry out the application each day. This will ensure focused learning everyday of your life.

Habit: What you do daily determines what you become ultimately. This thirty-day trip will help you to cultivate the discipline of adding value to your life everyday. It will help you to build into your daily routine a culture of growth and development.

If you follow through this for thirty days without any break in the cycle, you will become an institution of positive paradigms, pulsating principles and progressive practices.

DAY ONE

THE MAGIC OF ASKING QUESTIONS

Life is not a mystery. There is meaning to life. If you know this, you will ask the right questions.

QUESTION DEFINITION

STUDENTS use questions to expand their knowledge base, teachers employ questions to assess their students, while journalists ask questions to derive information and clarification from policy makers. Researchers ask questions to gather and analyse data in order to contribute solutions to the problems that perplex humankind. In daily human interactions, we ask questions.

A question is a mechanism we use to seek information, clarification or opinion about matters of interest. Questions are fundamental to the human experience.

Some of the questions we ask daily are: What is your name? What’s for dinner? How is she? Where are you going? What is the agenda for today? How do I raise money for utility bill? Who should I marry? How many children do I want to have? How do I get a job? Which course should I study at school? Why is the earth not flat? From the mundane to the divine, question upon question we ask.

When you ask a question, you expect to get an answer. Thus the answers you get reflect the questions you ask. You may not get the most ideal or desirable answers to all the questions you ask but one thing is for sure; no question, no answer. If you don’t ask questions, you will not have answers in your life. If your life is not moving on the track you desire, then you have to check the questions you’ve been asking.

QUESTION DYNAMICS

Wrong question, wrong answer: Of course, if you ask me Terry, how old are you? I shall answer appropriately by telling you my age. But perhaps, what you really need to know is not my age but my weight. So in my mind I would have answered your question well but you would have no use for the answer. If you think life is not responding to you the way you expect or desire, then turn and look at what you have been asking life to do for you. If you ask wrong questions, you will get wrong answers.

Right question, wrong answer:  Sometimes, you may be asking the right questions but you’re getting crooked answers. If you deem the answers you are getting inappropriate, then perhaps you may want to reconsider the direction of your questions? What is the source of your answers? Do you know the basis of the answers you are getting? When you want to ask a question, be sure you are asking the right person. Be sure your source is credible.

Sometimes, the problem may not be with the answer but with you. Do you understand the answers you are getting? Do you have a frame that is able to correctly analyse and interpret the answers you receive?

Right question, right answer: Asking the right question is important but getting the right answer is even more important. When you act on the basis of the right answer, your life moves in the direction you desire. The quality of your life is directly linked with the questions you ask and the corresponding answers you receive. To drive your life positively, you must ask the right questions to the right people at the right time.

QUESTION DESIGN

HOW do you get to ask the questions that pertain to your life?

Know life: How can you ask questions about a concept you don’t know about? If you have a general idea of life, you can ask specific questions about life. Life is not a fluke. It is a carefully designed system that can be studied, observed and understood. Life is not a mystery. There is meaning to life. If you know this, you will ask the right questions.

Know yourself: Every person has things that satisfy, annoy, excite, interest or exhaust them. You’ve got to know those specific things about yourself. This will cause you to ask the exact questions that relate to your life. Who are you? Why do you exist? What are your strengths and weaknesses? These are questions you need to ask about your life. And the answers you get will produce order and meaning in your life.

Know people: Your