Most of us struggle with relationships. We did. For many years we could not understand that despite our money, power, and success, people did not respect us. The desire to be somebody and to prove a point to the world started with the following incident in high school.

We put our hands up to be the Master of Ceremonies for a school concert. After introducing a couple of plays, a handful of kids started ridiculing, deriding and jeering us. This caught on like a wildfire and spread through that theatre like a pack of dominos. Imagine that; sixteen years old and standing in front of almost two thousand kids throwing popcorn at you. But we didn’t panic; within milliseconds, we made a decisive decision to throw it back at a couple of rowdy no-goods by announcing to our admirers that we could not “hear” them. They bought our bluff and started jeering even louder. We challenged them to continue until their pallets ran dry, stopping when they could go no more.

The alternative was to sob off the stage that would have given those few fools that started the whole episode a deep sense of satisfaction. Alternatively, we could have ignored their boos and simply introduced the next play, though this would have meant that they would have booed us at any and every opportunity up till the end of the concert.

But that episode left us with scars. We detested those kids and hated what transpired. We made a vow to be respected and to be held in high regard, no matter what. But the more we tried, the more elusive rank, regard, and honor became for us. It made no sense to us. Power, status and eminence became more elusory as the years went by.

Then one day we just stopped chasing wanting to be regarded as somebody by others. We got off our ego trip. It didn’t matter anymore about whether we were seen flying in economy class or business class on an aircraft. It made no difference whether we flew on a low-cost airline or a full-service airline, whether our credit card was a standard-issue card, an Infinite card or a Centurion card. We stopped trying to be all things to all people.

In the mean-time and without realizing it, we were pursuing experiences that would make us replete in gratification, enjoyment, and contentment. Like going on family walks, and while sampling rose bushes circumscribed in lush, manicured and pedicured gardens, scented their magnetic fragrances while bees pollinated them. We admired the moon, searched for the stars and played in the rain. Instead of being obsessed with owning things, we shifted our goal to experiencing things. In the process, we did not realize that we had connected to The CEO of the Universe. That in acknowledging his grandeur, grandiosity, and generosity, we became His friend.

This metamorphosis became apparent to us when we were evaluated on a periodic mid-year performance review at work. A 360 questionnaire to rate our interaction with Colleagues was disseminated to interviewees who were asked to rate us on various indices on a scale-out of five. The Business wanted to grow key individuals by soliciting impartial feedback, so they deliberately handed out the questionnaires to Colleagues that were perceived as not particularly fond of each other. The intent was not to drown us but to grow us.

The results were released about a month later during 1-on-1s with Line Management. We expected the worst, like a score of two out of five, because for fifteen years we carried baggage that we were disliked, resented and detested by those around us. But we were shocked beyond our wildest dreams when we discovered that we scored a handsome 4.8 out of five. That’s ninety-six percent; were we seeing right, we thought to ourselves. As we drove home that evening, we searched for answers rationalizing that shift and come up with an epiphany that seemed surreal.

It occurred to us that when we corrected our relationship with The CEO of the Universe, our relationships with mankind automatically corrected itself. When the CEO of the Universe loves a person, The CEO of the Universe commands the angels and animals to love that person too, and nothing in the world can change that. When we reached that point, relationships with others superfluously corrected themselves.

But as an imperfect creation, we should not expect perfect relationships. There will still be those that will be jealous, envious and covetous of us. That is a normal function of life. Accept it gracefully, cognizant that human beings by nature become ugly when they see something that they like but are too lazy to pursue achieving it for themselves.

Reciprocally, should The CEO of the Universe detest a person, He commands the angels and animals to detest that person too, and nothing in the world can change that. Except us. We have the choice of whether to change the status quo; we can decision to either change this or to leave it unchanged. The decision is a choice that rests with us.

In our best-seller Highway to Heaven, we have enumerated numerous examples of how this can be achieved. This is not a book to give you inspiration for a fortnight where after things go back to how they were. Rather, the intent of our work is to give you a framework that contains tactical, easy-to-understand and easy-to-implement solutions that will catapult you into an elevated stratosphere, that after implementing it, you will look back in awe, and after a year, five years and ten years, your future you will say to yourself “wow, it that really what I achieved ?” 

When faith believes in the incredible, we receive the impossible. There was a time when we were as hard as a rock. This was especially when we worked for large Corporations and saw things in black-and-white. Then one day we decided to give this principle called faith a shot. Impossible things happened that were incredible. Through a car crash, we ended up short term debt free in five months. When we visited a sick man in the hospital that we didn’t know, our son was instantly cured of auditory disability.

If you are looking for a miracle and can’t find it, consider this: more than one hundred and fifty thousand people die every day. If you got up this morning, you are already a miracle. If you can breathe without an oxygen tank, you have the gift of health that is a miracle. If you have a roof over your head, that is a miracle, for studies show that you are not one of the one hundred and fifty million homeless people in the world. If you got up with food still in your belly, then you are not a part of the one-in-eight people in the world that went to bed hungry. Those are miracles.

Excerpt from Highway to Heaven, Isaac Lakhi’s best-seller. To learn more about our Coaching & Mentoring Challenge, click here