If you want to fulfill your potential here on earth, if you want to be the best that you can be, if you want to make impact here on earth, you must have a conscious and a continuous separation plan on the ground. You must always be separating yourself from those things that are not helping you to get to the top of your world.

Why you must have a conscious and a continuous separation plan on the ground is because no matter the stage you find yourself, there is always the need to separate and if you don’t separate, you become complacent and may never advance further.

The ladder of life has a lot of inbuilt obstacles to frustrate our climbing, and that is why a lot of people find it very difficult to get to the top. That is why the top has become the exclusive preserve of the fittest and most courageous. And because only a few people can boast of these attributes, the top has become highly exclusive and reserved.

Even FIFA, the football governing body has an unwritten rule that exceptionally skillful footballers should be given special protection by the referees. No average player should be allowed to go hard on them because they are the reason stadia are full to capacity and FIFA make money, not the average players. The mentality in FIFA is the same in the other fields of human endeavour.

This simply implies that once you are at the top, everything is made to suit your whims and caprices. I know you have heard that rules are made for the poor, while the exceptions are for the rich. Have you ever heard that a rich man was caught for wandering? The answer is no. The reason is because the rich strolls while the poor wanders and there is a very big difference between the two in the book of law enforcement agencies.

The only way you can save yourself from the embarrassment being given to the poor and begin to enjoy the exceptions that are reserved for the rich is by putting in place a continuous separation plan. I want to let you know that if you don’t put this plan at work and in play, you are bound to end your life in mediocrity.

When people hear of separation, their minds usually run towards abandoning their friends who are not doing well. But it is not true.

The greatest obstacle that is hindering our advancement in life is we, ourselves. We are our own best friends as well as our own worst enemies.

Man by nature is an escapist. He has innate tendency to blame others for his failure, wrong doing or mistake. He hates accepting responsibility for his actions and inactions. Man is a blame pusher.

In the Garden of Eden, when Adam ate the forbidden fruit and God asked him why he had done that. Instead of accepting that he erred and plead for forgiveness, he pushed it over to Eve, his wife and in the same breadth indicted God Himself. “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate.” Simply put, “Eve gave me the fruit to eat, but if you God had not created her to be with me I would not have eaten of it since nobody else would have given it to me.”

God said to the woman: “What is this you have done?” The woman replied: “The serpent deceived me and I ate.” This can also be translated as, “I was deceived by the serpent you created. If you had not created the serpent, it would not have deceived me to eat of the tree. Even if I am guilty at all, it is under mitigating circumstance.”

So, for us to advance in life, the separation must start from ourselves. You must begin by separating yourself from yourself. You must separate yourself from all the unhealthy beliefs and habits. Most of us, our beliefs are too negative. Most of the time, we are thinking negative things for our neighbours, friends and colleagues, wishing for their downfall as if their failure would determine our own success. When we hear that a neighbour or colleague has come into big money, instead of rejoicing with him, our minds would run to think, “he must have gone to a native doctor who must have made blood money for him, or he has joined a secret cult that uses human beings to make money.” Is he the only person in the business? Why have others in the same business not come into big money? Our minds would begin to search for who had died or was incapacitated in one form or the other in his family or around him in recent times to attribute the money to his blood. When we hear that a woman has given birth, instead of praising God, our first question would be, was it through CS (Caesarean Section)? If a student graduates with a very good grade, you would hear, “Aha! We know how they get the result.” If it is a ‘he,’ they say “he bought his way through, or he was in a campus cult and intimidated the lecturers into giving him good grade.” If it is a ‘she,’ they say “Aha! She must have slept with all the lecturers on campus.” If somebody is promoted in the office, our minds would come up with negative reasons to play down or rubbish the promotion. As far as we are concerned, nothing comes on merit. Success does not come clean.

But the truth is that you can never attain great height with such a mindset. To advance in life, you must separate yourself from negative thoughts. One thing is very clear: people who think negative of their neighbours are never healthy physically. They are always suffering from one ailment or the other. The reason is because negative thoughts have a way of discharging toxins in the body that cause disorder in our system. We have diseases when our minds are not at ease (disease) and there is no way our mind would be at ease when it is working on the negative direction, conjuring all kinds of negativities to discredit the success of our fellow human beings.

Apart from not being healthy physically, these people end up as the dregs of the society because by spending most of their time running negative commentaries on the success of others, they would have no time for their own advancement. But come to think of it. How can we succeed when we attribute every success to one form of negativity or the other? Even the Good book says that you cannot benefit from what you despised. You cannot despise somebody’s success and still want to be successful. It is against the natural law. So, for you to succeed in life, you must separate yourself from unhealthy beliefs. You have to start to think positively. You have to appreciate and rejoice with those who are making progress. You have to pray for them. You have to love them and by doing all that you are attracting their successes to yourself. The more you identify with success and with successful people, the more your conscious mind sends the message to your subconscious and the more the message is given parts within you just like sperm in the uterus is given parts, and in the end, conception would take place after all the parts have developed.

Apart from separating ourselves from unhealthy beliefs, we also need to separate ourselves from unhealthy habits. It is obvious that one of the major setbacks to our advancement in life is our unhealthy habits. Some people are by nature lazy. They feel too heavy or tired to do anything.

Most times, they would be looking for excuses to dodge responsibilities. If they see their peers climbing the ladder of life, they would take a defeatist stand by saying that everybody must not be moving at the same time. They would tell you that they want to move at their own pace, that there is no hurry in life. All these are consolatory words to justify their laziness.

However, I want to say that there should be hurry in life because life itself is too short to be spent on procrastination. We should always be on the move because there are always new heights to climb and the more we could climb within the short span allocated to us here on earth, the better.

There are also people who have sold their souls to alcohol and cigarettes. These are unhealthy habits that would not allow one to fulfil one’s potential here on earth. For instance, those who have the habit of drinking while they don’t have houses of their own or claim that they don’t have money to go into business, once you buy and drink a bottle of beer, you have consumed the money for two blocks of cement. If you are a moderate drinker that drinks just two bottles of beer per day, it means, you are consuming the money for four blocks per day and it requires just 2,500 blocks to build a two-bedroom flat and 3,500 blocks to build three-bedroom flat.

Therefore, if you are taking just two bottles of beer per day, it means in two years, you would have consumed the money for 2,920 blocks which would have given you two-bedroom flat and a fence round the house. Have you, therefore, seen that the reason you have not built a house of your own or gone into your choice business is not because you don’t have the money? You have it quite all right, but you are spending it on something that cannot help you to grow. As it is with those that drink alcohol, so it is with those that have other unhealthy habits. Whatever money you spent on that habit, could have been saved and spent on something positive. But because the money usually looks small, like that of a bottle or two of beer or a packet of cigarette, we hardly know that if we save it, our lives could be transformed through it. We would be spending our money on those unhealthy habits and yet be praying for big break so we can go into business or build house without knowing that we already have the break in our hands but wasting it.

Once you become addicted to anything except work, it is simply good night to success. Any habit that does not help in your physical and spiritual advancement is unhealthy. So, you need to separate yourself from it. Just as any habit that most of the time takes money away from your pocket instead of bringing in should be avoided. Once you are able to separate yourself from unhealthy beliefs and habits, you are on the path to the top.

The next place to look at is your immediate environment and that is where you find your relatives and peers. Here, most of the time we find major challenges to our advancement because of emotional attachments and other sentiments, we hang on to the things we know very well are not helping us. This attitude has made many to die without fulfilling their destiny. I know how emotional it is to separate from a relationship. I know how emotional it is to separate from one’s peer group.

However, if we look very well, we will discover that apart from our unhealthy beliefs and habits, the greatest obstacle to our living our lives to the full comes from our immediate environment or even from our own homes.

In our immediate environment are Eliab, Lot and Uzziah, rolled into one. What do I mean? Many Christians pray against the ‘Goliaths’ in their lives and claimed to be the David that would kill the Goliath so, they would prosper. But what they don’t know is that the greatest obstacle they have is not the Goliaths, but the Eliabites, the Lots and the Uzziahs of this world.

David killed Goliath because he was able to turn his back (separate) on his brother Eliab, who apparently was his greatest obstacle. Abraham was able to achieve his potential and become a blessing to mankind because he separated from Lot and Isaiah was able to become one the greatest prophets because King Uzziah died.

Goliath has a positive side because he draws you out to fight. He challenges you by provoking the man in you to assert himself. In Goliath, you have a chance of raising a finger or even asserting yourself. Eliab on the other hand, is a cold blooded murderer. He is a silent killer. He quietly kills the man in you. He defeats you emotionally and psychologically. In Eliab, you are not even supposed to be seen, let alone have the opportunity to raise a finger or even prove yourself. He renders you impotent and unworthy of anything. Lot is also another big hindrance that people don’t remember to pray against. He is a modified Eliab. Though unlike Eliab he does not blackmail or talk down on his victims but he is a leech. He would never allow you to achieve your potential or to be the best that you were created to be. All the time Abraham was with Lot, he was just an average person, living from hand to mouth. Abraham was struggling with life because of the negative influence of his brother Lot. His destiny was wrapped up. But immediately Lot was separated from him, his (Abraham’s) eyes were opened and he discovered for the first time that where he was standing was filled with milk and honey and from then onwards he began to prosper. When Abraham began to prosper, it was Lot’s people, among all the people in the land, that came to fight him. Lot, in case you don’t know, means veil or cover.

So, all the while Abraham was with his brother Lot, his eyes were spiritually closed so that he would not manifest his potential. He was on the land of plenty but was struggling to feed. However, immediately he was separated from Lot, his eyes opened and he began to live the life that God has destined for him, a life of abundance and blessing to mankind.

The story of Abraham and his brother Lot was also the same of Isaiah and King Uzziah.

While King Uzziah was alive, Isaiah was nobody. He was confused and struggling with his purpose in life. But when Uzziah died, Isaiah’s eyes opened and for the first time in his life, he saw the Lord sitting on a throne and from there he began to shine like a billion stars. That was when he became one of the greatest prophets of God, which invariably means that had Uzziah not died, Isaiah would have died unsung. Even in the wilderness, Moses had to separate from the children of Israel so he could speak face to face with God. So, if you want to get to the top, you should first of all set an exit target and then begin to separate from all the things that I have talked about. You must separate yourself from all the Eliabites, all the Lots and all the Uzziahs in your life. It is only when you have done this that your eyes would open for you to see your potential.

From what we have learnt from the life of the characters above, it is necessary that some people in your life must die before you can manifest your destiny. (Isaiah and King Uzziah).You must turn your back on some people in your life before you would become that who God created you to be (David and Eliab). You must separate from some people in your life before you would attain your goals in life (Abraham and Lot).

For me, I know how emotional and painful it is to separate from relations, peers and friends. This is worse for me because I have a photographic memory; I remember 40 years ago like yesterday. However, I know that for me to advance in life, I cannot continue to hang on with the same set of people year-in, year-out, just to be called a home boy. I have said it somewhere that if you always find yourself surrounded by the same faces or the same set of people, know it that you are not moving forward. The reason for this is because, once you are moving forward, those who lack the capacity to move with you, would drop by the road side. (Water naturally finds it level so do human beings.) A saying goes, ‘show me your friend and I will tell you who you are.’ The saying simply means that you must be at the same wavelength with the people that you hang around with. Like attracts like. (The law of attraction.)

In order to protect my emotion so that I can easily separate, what I have learnt is to adopt the doctor-patient or lawyer-client kind of relationship. You know that medical doctors are trained not to fall in love with their patients. They do everything humanly possible to save lives, but in their minds, they are doing their jobs. Nothing emotional. This helps them to move on with their lives and practice if the patient they are treating dies. No emotional outburst.

In the same vein, that people go to jail does not mean much to lawyers. They do everything in the book to stop their clients from going to jail, but if in the end, they could not stop it, life goes on. Emotion does not run high. So, right from time, I developed this type of relationship with the people I see around me. I do the best I can to be of help to them. Sometimes, I become their fool by going the extra mile. I don’t know what might be going on in their minds while I would be doing that. They may be thinking that Peter has fallen in love or was being exceptionally good. But I am just doing that for myself. I am doing what I know is right. I am doing what makes me happy. It gives me joy to help out of my own inconvenience and that is why sometimes I want to go the extra mile.

Personally, I don’t see any big deal in helping out of one’s convenience. Even Satan is doing that. The advantage of this mindset is that when I want to separate myself, I don’t become emotional because from the outset, there was no strong attachment. Like the medical doctors and lawyers, I was just being professional.

Therefore, learn how to be professional in your relationship with people. Learn how to send your emotion on holiday so you can easily separate when the opportunity comes for you to do so. However, try to encourage your friends and peers to grow with you. Whatever you are doing to advance in life, bring them into it. Teach them. Help them.

But in a situation they are not coping or trying to become a spanner in the wheel of your progress, the best option is to separate from them. You can later come back to rehabilitate them and that is when you have made a firm root at the top so that they would not be able to drag you down.

•Culled from the book, How To Be The Best That You Can Be.

ABOUT THE COLUMNIST

Peter Anosike is a well-known journalist and development economist.

His book, Dangote’s Ten Commandments on Money (Lessons on How to Make Money from One of the World’s Richest Men), was rated as one of the best development books in the world by Wall Street Journal and FORBES. The book has been adopted as a workbook for grooming entrepreneurs by the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN). Anosike’s other of his books include, How To Be The Best You Can Be and Look Forward and Lean Less On Your Past – all trending in Smashwords along with Dangote’s Ten Commandment on Money and How To Be The Best You Can Be. You can follow him on Facebook and Linkedin.

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