True Success is Simple Not Easy

In this episode, I reflect on the lessons I wish I had learned earlier in life, focusing on the important distinction between simplicity and ease. True success is simple but not easy! While success involves straightforward, clear principles, it still requires considerable effort and resilience. From biblical principles, I discuss how understanding this distinction can adjust our expectations and approach to achieving goals. The key takeaway is that achieving lasting success involves understanding and applying predictable principles, even when faced with challenges and disruptions.

00:00 Introduction: Lessons Learned in Life
00:28 Understanding Simplicity vs. Ease
01:12 Personal Examples of Ease and Difficulty
02:29 Defining Simplicity
05:27 Biblical Principles of Success
07:30 The Principle of Fruitfulness
09:36 The Process of Success
11:02 Conclusion: Embracing Simple but Not Easy Success

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Transcript

Dr Uche Okere: 0:00

Are there lessons you wish you learned earlier in life? As you look back at your life and your experiences, the things you enjoyed and the ones you didn't enjoy that much. Are there things you wish you knew when you were making some decisions that you made at certain times in your life? For me, there are quite a few of them and today I'm going to share with you one of such lessons that I have learned and that I live my life with almost on a daily basis. Very simply, I wish someone had taught me much earlier in life that the path to true success in life is simple but not necessarily easy. Oh, the first thing that comes to your mind might be, are they not the same? Is that not the same thing? Doesn't simple mean easy? But that's a confusion we often make. We often confuse simplicity with ease. And because of that confusion in our minds, we have different expectations because it's a belief and that belief results in different expectations. For something to be easy means that it doesn't require great effort. So, there are things that you find very easy to do. A few days ago, someone, I was somewhere and, and, the people wanted to record something, and someone sticks a mic in my face and says, Oh, can you speak for 30 seconds on this subject? And I just rambled, I just talked, and it was like, Oh, wow, you didn't even think of it, it was like effortless. Okay, that was easy, because for me, that's one of the things I consider one of the gifts that I have, one of the graces I have, that wake me up from bed, that wake me up from bed. And in the middle of the night and ask me to talk on a subject I'm familiar with, I would have something to say, okay? It might not make as much sense to you, but I would talk, I would have something to say. So, that's easy. That's something that I do with almost little or no effort, okay? But put me in a football team and ask me to play, eleven-a-side football match for ninety minutes, I will struggle. That would not be easy for me. Fine. Okay, there are things also that you'll find easy that other people do not find as easy as you find them. I didn't find mathematics in school easy at all. Maybe for you that's easy. There are subjects. I enjoyed chemistry. I loved chemistry. It was relatively easy for me. I understood what I was taught but mathematics required me to put in much, much more effort. So that's what it means for something to be easy. But simple on the other hand is totally different for something to be simple. Means that it's straightforward and uncomplicated. It means that it's straightforward, it's not complex. it's straightforward, it's uncomplicated. In my mind, for something to be simple means that there is a clear and understandable order of steps that you can follow. So if there was something you needed to do, let's say construct, that's something that is not easy for me. Building, you know this, this, this furniture packs you, you get from, from shops like IKEA and you have to build it yourself. I don't find that easy at all. Whatever I have to do with my hands, I don't find easy at all. Okay. And many times it's because the instructions are not simple. It's because they're not straightforward. So for people like us who don't find working with our hands very easy, that's a very complex task to do. But if there was something to do, and it had very simple and straightforward instructions, and it said, right, pick up A, put it on top of B, and turn it to 90 degrees, X, Y, Z, do this and do that, and you'll get that result. That's simple. Okay, I love cooking and one of the reasons I love cooking is because it's almost predictable. I know that if I boil rice, for example, for X number of minutes, I know what to expect. I know that if I add so-and-so amount of, tomato puree, for example, if I'm making jollof rice, this is the, this is jollof rice is a Nigerian recipe, by the way. If I'm making jollof rice, this is the, outcome I would have if I add so-and-so amount. Of of tomato puree. It's simple. All right. It might not be easy. All right, because it requires effort, but it's simple. I know what I need to do to get what I need to get. But these are two things that we often confuse. The fact that something is easy and that something is simple. We often confuse the two of them. And as a result, our expectations in life. are very, very different. They are determined by our beliefs of what simplicity is and what ease is. So I wish someone taught me earlier in life that success, achieving true success is simple. Why? Because there are principles that if you follow, you can almost predict your future. But that doesn't mean that it's easy. That doesn't mean that it doesn't require effort. Many of us grew up expecting easy success and perhaps when those who taught us were teaching us, they meant to say simple, but they said easy. They meant to let us know that it was simple and predictable if we followed the principle, but they somehow communicated that it was easy and that had a certain effect on us. Simple is not the same as easy. Achieving real success is simple, but it's not easy. And I see that in the Bible. I see that right from the beginning, okay, God makes that quite clear. God makes that quite clear. If you read Genesis chapter 1, verse 28, this is a verse of scripture that the theologians refer to as the dominion mandate. So this is where God instructs man and equips man to do what God, what he wants them to do. Genesis 1:280 says God blessed them and said to them be fruitful and increase in number fill the earth and subdue it. Now the first thing i see there is that there is a simple predictable principle that you can follow if you want to be fruitful if you want to be successful if you want to have dominion like God wants you to have if you want to rule and reign because the subsequent verses go on to talk about about about those then how to do it Is, first of all, to begin from the place of knowing that you are blessed, because God blessed them. Alright, and I'm talking from the Bible because, as a Jesus follower, I live my life based on the principles of the Bible. But I also realize that all truth is God's truth. And on whatever principles that are true in the material world, find their roots and their origins in the Word of God, whatever it is, whatever truth that is true, you will find its roots and its principles from, from the Bible. So whether or not you're a Jesus follower, whether or not you believe the Bible listening to me, this is relevant to you, this is universal truth as I go on, you will find tthat to be the case that God bless them and what I mean is that to bless is not Blessing is not a felicitation. To bless is to empower to bless is to equip So this is why Every human being is blessed. Every human being has something. Every human being has a certain degree of capacity to do what they need to do in life because they've been equipped, they've been blessed. So God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful. All right. in saying to man, to humanity, be fruitful, there's a principle that is a simple principle there of how to achieve success. It is the principle of fruitfulness. It is a principle that the farmer understands. That he doesn't expect a harvest if he doesn't plant a seed So if God is saying to man be fruitful, he must have put a seed in man He must have put something in man. That's what he blessed them with. He put a seed. He put some potential in man So every one of us has the potential to be successful. You have the potential to be successful. I have the potential To be successful. but the principle is that of fruitfulness, right? It's a simple one, but I have what it takes to be, to be successful. I have to find it. I have to discover what that thing is. And that's what I call your gift. It's your inherited creeping to fulfill your purpose. It's the thing that you've been equipped with so that you would fulfill your purpose. That is the simplicity of true fruitfulness. But because of this principle of fruitfulness also, it implies that you don't have a harvest if you don't plant your seed. So every seed that must bear fruit must be planted, it must develop, it must have the right environment to develop into its potential. Because potential is not enough. Nobody pays potential. Nobody gets rewarded for potential. Undeveloped potential is a waste. It was Dr. Miles Monroe who said, The richest places in the world are not the gold mines of South Africa, Nor are they the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, But they are somewhere right down your street, Right down my street. They are the burial grounds. They are the places where people have been buried. Who had the potential to write tens of songs, But they never wrote them. Who had the potential to write tens of books, but they never wrote those books. That is the danger and tragedy of unfulfilled potential. So the simplicity of true success is that it's based on the principle of fruitfulness. You need to know that there will be forces that would come against you and you have to subdue them. That is where true success is not easy. It requires some battle. It requires you to keep going because there will be things that will come against you. In the words of Myron Golden, disruption always follows intention. When you have the intention to discover your gift, to develop it into a thing of value, and to deploy it so that you will find true success, which is defined by fulfilling your purpose, maximizing your potential, and being as productive as you can be. You should expect that there will be some form of disruption, there will be some form of opposition. There will be things that will come against you. You should expect that you wouldn't get the results you were supposed to, you thought you would get on the first day. There are things that will come against you. You should expect that the first business you try to start might not succeed. You should expect that the first day you begin to market and promote your idea and your business doesn't mean that people will start buying on that day. You should expect that you may lose some money at the start, at the beginning because disruption always follows intention because you need to subdue, first of all, before you can truly experience the dominion that you already have the potential. I wish somebody taught me this much, much earlier in life because when you know that success is not easy but simple, you will do life differently. I would have done some things differently if I knew this lesson earlier. Number one thing I would have done differently is that I wouldn't have expected quick success in some things that I did. Because the principle is there. The farmer doesn't plant his seed today and expect his harvest tomorrow morning. The farmer knows that there are times and seasons. He knows that depending on the type of plant or the type of seed he has planted, he needs to wait for the right season. He needs to wait for the seed to develop. And much of the development is not visible to the ordinary eye. So he waits for the process. To have his way. I would not have expected quick success. For example, there are marketing efforts I have tried to do in the past and because I didn't get a result in the first one or two weeks I just killed it. I stopped the things I was trying to do without learning without knowing that this was the process the fact that the results are not coming today does not mean that i was doing the wrong thing no it's just the right it's just the process it's just the fact that this is how it works this is how this process works it is the principle of fruitfulness it's not easy but the simplicity of the principle is that if you plant the right seed in the right soil under the right conditions and wait for the right amount of time you There is nothing on earth that will stop you from getting the right results. That is the subduing that some of us need to do in some of the things that we're doing. Some of you listening to me today, the things you are doing are not wrong. You're just going through the process. Some of the work is already being done in you. That doesn't mean that. And the fact that you cannot see the results, yeah, it doesn't mean that no work is being done. So, when you know that success is simple but not easy, You will not expect quick results. Number two, when you know that success is simple but not easy, you will not give up when things don't seem to be going well. I've already alluded to this talking, talking, speaking to the first point. Because you will understand that every work works. You will understand that while the seed is in the ground, The fact that it hasn't sprouted yet doesn't mean it's not working. It's still going down. It's still developing its roots. So that when it's time to go, it will have the roots to draw sufficient nutrients to sustain itself. Then, you will not give up because you will realize that nothing is really wrong. This is what saves us and delivers us from the shiny object syndrome. If you're often distracted by the lady in the red dress, going after the next thing, going after the next marketing fad. So going after the next advert and changing your course 360 and not sticking to a particular course that you said you were convinced about in the past. It may just be that you're expecting easy success and not simple success. You're not following the simple process of, or the simple principle of, of fruitfulness plant your seed discover your seed develop that seed your seed is your gift and deploy it in a way that people will pay and the third thing that you will do when you realize that true success may not be easy but it is simple is that you will truly experience real sustainable success because when you stick it out when you subdue both yourself things that are coming against you, as you are trying to be fruitful. You will grow. You will develop the capacity to truly be a successful person. Because true success is not measured by fame or what people say about you. It's measured by the extent to which you fulfillment God's purpose for your life. It's measured by the extent to which you make a real impact on people's life. And it's measured by the extent to which you are productive. Thank you. All of this only happens when you have stuck through the process, you have stayed on course, and you have allowed the work to be done in you so that it can be done on you. So that's it from me today. I wish somebody taught me much earlier in life. A true success may not be easy, but it is certainly simple. It's not complex at all. There are principles through which or by which you can predict. So I hope this helps somebody. I hope this blesses you and helps you in one way or another. Let me know if it does and God bless you. Bye bye.