The gift of repositioning

In marketing terms, the concept of repositioning is altering a brand’s status in comparison to competition. It is usually executed by changing the marketing and communication mix in response to changes in the marketplace, or due to failure to attain the brand’s goals.

In a spiritual sense, repositioning is living life more meaningfully, harnessing our strengths, chasing our elusive goals, aligning our secular being with our revered existence, and being a gift to others and to one’s self.

In the book Reposition Yourself Reflections, an accompanying volume to the New York Times bestseller Reposition Yourself: Living a Life Without Limits, author TD Jakes gives us a compilation packed with insights and mystical pep talks on day-to-day life — financial matters, destiny, prosperity, relationships, personal emotions and creativity.

Jakes is an African-American spiritual leader dubbed by Time magazine and CNN as “America’s Best Preacher.” He summed up the book’s main thesis this way: “If you don’t like the way your life is going, redesign it. Redeem the years you lost. Restore your vision, revive your passion for living, and reclaim what was dormant inside of you. I cannot give you the dream but I can give you the tools to reach the dreams you have inside. I have seen what successful people do over and over again. I want to show you how to reposition yourself so you can do it, too. I have learned that minor adjustments make a big difference.”

Combining both spiritual and wordly insights, Jakes carved up an exclusive intermingling of sensible and realistic steps tied with the sagacious understanding of the Scripture. Without a doubt, this tome is a makeover for the soul. It gives us a ticket to success and to firmly grasp the action points essential in positioning ourselves for the boundless possibility that comes from implementing minor modifications in the way we think and strategize. Jakes emphasizes that there is nothing more critical than our next move, our next choice. Before we make another decision, it would be helpful to reflect on these select principles repositioning our persona.

Denial is how we get stuck. Why aren’t we asking the question, “What do we want to do with the rest of our life?” Are we afraid where the answer might take us because it might open up the Pandora’s box of our lives? So we stick our head in the sand and avoid posing the query. But we have to be honest, provide answers to the question if we want to attain self-authenticity. We have to have a truthful conversation with ourselves where we can begin to say, “This is not important to me. I need to shift some things to make myself happier.” Indeed, to live life to its full potential, we should move our life around.

Prosperity is not real if it’s based on debt. Pay our arrears. Train ourselves to stop spending all we earn, and borrowing recklessly on credit cards. Start investing, producing, owning and developing something. Being challenged financially is very curable, but we’ve got to have a plan. Good credit is actually all about making a good name, an unassailable reputation with colleagues and the business community. We can restore our good name by getting out of debt and re-establishing good credit.

Living without limits means constantly changing boundaries. Our lives have constantly changed and evolved in response to the events, people and opportunities around us. We have been divinely blessed. But we’ve also made deliberate attempts to grow, to be in a position to receive, and to reposition to receive more. Many times we have failed and tried again. Our mistakes must be our lessons. As we gain in experience, we must not allow our past mistakes to bind and gag us. Mistakes and failures expand our limits, just as successes do, if we learn from them.

Often the “enemy” is actually within us. We can only correct what we are willing to deal with.  Confrontation isn’t something that we enjoy. Some of us have learned over the years to say what has to be said and face what has to be faced. But still many choose to live in a perpetual state of denial rather than risk the hard work that is needed to meet issues head-on — weaknesses and inconsistencies in others, and in themselves. The fear we experience when we confront is preferable to the deadening of our emotions that goes with denial.

The danger of traditional thinking is stagnation. The wisdom of our elders could have been great for their times. But we need a dynamic and constant re-evaluation in order to steer clear of the downside of applying obsolete, unproductive principles. And to survive in today’s environment, we have to update our personal philosophy. Our parents and ancestors have laid a great foundation, and we are eternally grateful for that. But it is dangerous to build a new floor or an additional wall to a house that was built for a climate very different from the present one. Yet subconsciously we often stay with the inherited framework and never make any advance into contemporary progressive thinking.

Insistence and tenacity win over diversity.  Cultivate the mind of a champion. It will provide the edge. We have to refuse to accept average or ordinary, even if it already puts us in a place of unprecedented distinction. We have to adopt the discipline and the training of gladiators to become winners. We have to be programmed to succeed, to ultimately risk for our highest and best self, to be qualified to win, conditioned to overcome adversities, and be conquerors.  We have to be positioned as winners, and even if we lose everything, we have that unformulated, seemingly indescribable gift of landing on our feet in shoes with silver linings.

We can’t achieve what we can’t conceive. Despair is the enemy of vision. And vision is often one of the first powers we lose when hopelessness — lack of finances, feeling rejected or defeated, among other things — sets in. So when it attacks us, we should never lose the recognition of where we are, and continue to believe in who we are and what we can do.

Just because “it was” does not mean, “it must be.”  We get stuck because we live where we are accustomed to living. We cling to places from the past. We hold on to old relationships that retard our progress.  To grow, we need a healthy environment, populated by people who will validate, encourage, challenge and stimulate us. We need to build a support system that is based not on where we came from, or even what we did wrong, but where we intend to go. Identify the right people and build relationships with them. Approach them with humility and confidence, and let them know — by what we say and how we behave around them — that they are significant to our success.

Anger resides in the lap of fools. American poet Langston Hughes penned the phrase that expresses our sentiments: “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” But we must feel the pain. In repositioning, we talk about where we came from, our trials and disappointments. Many of us have been angry about many things — how unfair life is, why our work rusts, why the traffic moves ever so slowly, and even our own selves. But what we shouldn’t do is succumb to rage and blame. Anger without action leaves us bitter, not better.  If we’re angry, be angry. Get it out and move on. Voice our outrage and grief. Get it out of our system as much and as regularly as we need to, but we should not allow anger to annoy us and immobilize our forward movement.

We are responsible for attaining and managing our provisions.  The way many authors write about wealth is much like parents who spoil a child. It may sound good and sweet when we’re getting blessed, but eventually the result may lead to a spoiled brat who whines for things but doesn’t have the sense to sustain what has been given. Learning how to manage and separate from the financial limitations that clutter our life can be one of the most liberating feelings we’ll ever experience.  We will not likely become rich, but we need not worry about money again. We will feel in control because there’s no crisis, secure because there’s a strategy, and fulfilled because we’re finally facing the facts.

Every winner expects to lose along the way. One of the problems we have with the way faith is taught is that we do not prepare people for the truth that faith may not get them what they want, even if they incessantly pray. This “name-it-claim-it” idea is hazardous misinformation. It makes people think that success is easy as 1-2-3 or simply a “do this,” “do that” routine, telling the Almighty how we’d like it. We get disturbed when we hear people teaching that faith in God guarantees success or that a certain offering given to the church will ensure a blessing. It takes the tandems of faith and work, success and struggle, failure and fortitude to produce success. Learn from the sales trainer who said, “I don’t have to teach you how to win. All I have to teach you is how to face rejection and not give up on winning.” Losing is indeed part of winning. Like a child who stumbles his way into walking, we must learn what not to do by falling on our way up.

We are given the gift of repositioning and what we do with is our repositioned self is our gift to the giver.

* * *

Email bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.