The Challenge Ahead---A Call to Self-Reliance

Welcome To Mastery
By Charles M.King

Change, competition and challenge are significant and ever increasing realities in today’s ever changing, global community. With nations such as China and India emerging as major technological, scientific and economic players, and with the advancements in cyber activity we have become nations without borders.
No longer is there competition and challenge within national borders, but now we are players on a global stage. The diversity of our now global challengers make them formidable in all walks of life. The old cultural rules that were nurtured into us inside the comfort of our national borders no longer work. The time is truly here when we must endeavor to be all that we were created to be. In order to be a successful player on the global scene, we must aspire to be all that God intended.
This global diversity coupled with its many advances make it clear to us that now anything is truly possible; something which is not new but far too many of us view it so. Our world is now truly a dynamic and exciting place to live while enjoying the richness of rising opportunities around the globe. Not only are there opportunities abounding around us but these are times when anyone can and must be prepared to seize those opportunities.
Never have there been so many areas where wealth and prosperity can be realized in such a short span of time. One needs only to look at the meteoric rise of You Tube from obscurity to a worth of two billion dollars in just two years; or Apple and its revolutionizing the way we record and listen to music, or the increasing interconnectivity of telephones, television and the internet, to get a glimpse of what is possible for anyone of us. To me this was God’s plan from the beginning.
More than seventy-five years ago the noted Scientist at General Electric who first made alternating current commercially feasible, Dr. Charles Steinmetz, was asked what line of research would see the greatest ultimate development. His response stunned his audience: “The greatest discoveries will be made along spiritual lines,” he exclaimed. “Some day people will learn that material things do not bring happiness and are of little use in making men and women creative and powerful.” Dr Steinmetz predicted that when that day comes, the world will see more advancement in one generation than it has in the last four. That day is here and it is the time for each of us to seize the possibilities for the potential and subsequent prosperity it brings.
Truly, the old form of paternalism that existed here in America in employment until the early eighties is now decidedly a myth and we are all on our own to be responsible for the style of life we will live. Entrepreneurialism and the accompanying self-dependency is now the order of the day. Those who seek comfort in their narrow corners of the world will be woefully disappointed and likely left behind. The enormous possibility for prosperity will definitely elude them.
I doubt that I will ever forget the day at a company, Babcock and Wilcox, where I had been contracted to teach personal development seminars for all levels of employees. I had been teaching these week-long classes at the company for a period of twelve years. There were rave reviews each year and, in fact, there had developed a waiting list each year to get into the seminars.
In early 1981 I was conducting a seminar for another company at a local hotel, when a flood of people rushed out of a large meeting room, some weeping, some visibly angry and outraged. I recognized some of these people and many of them recognized me. Immediately some of them converged on me and began to say to me: “After attending your classes we thought we were secure. Many people attending your classes were promoted to higher positions or were otherwise recognized for good performance, now look at us; we have been deserted. Because of what we learned in your seminars we thought we were secure.” These were employees of Babcock and Wilcox who had just received notice that they were terminated.
It would have been senseless to deny their implication at such a traumatic time. However, I never believed in such security and I never intended to imply such a thing in my seminars. I knew better from first hand experience. As a young captain in the US Army in the 1960’s I had under my command several ex-colonels and majors who had been RIF’D (Reduction in Force) and were reverted back to sergeants. I saw the hardship, disappointment and humiliation these men had suffered. From their plight I concluded that security is a myth.
From that experience I knew there was no security outside of one’s own confidence in oneself. On that awful day in 1981 for more than three hundred distraught people there was no need to deny their claim that they had been misled. As I left that hotel I was thoroughly convinced that I had intended to help them build confidence in themselves by stressing the value of their own self-concept, while at the same time they were perceiving something quite different. They obviously heard what they wanted to hear.
From that day there were to be nearly 8000 more layoffs from that division of the company alone. This marked the beginning of a shocking moment of truth, we’re all on our own in this world and those who can accept this have the potential for great prosperity. I do not believe that there was ever a Divine intent for a person to place his or her fate in the hands of another person, thing, position, condition or organization.
I would label these days a time of spiritual awareness, where those who align themselves unreservedly with the perpetuity and the abundance of the spirit will render themselves productive, prosperous and joyful for a lifetime. We are now seeing the world truly unfold in spectacular ways and only those who prepare themselves by developing and committing to actualizing specific and bold strategies will achieve whatever they desire. In earlier days we considered high achievers as special and gifted; today we recognize that the heights they reached can be common to us all
Truly, we can advance civilization the same way these historically high achievers did. With a strategy for success, however we may define it, we can live masterfully in our chosen corner of the world and enjoy peace of mind, great joy, and an ever increasing sense of self worth.