So many times throughout recorded history men and women have missed great blessings, benefits, and rewards simply because they were not aware of the risks they were taking, or about to take, or were failing to take. As is always the case, all ideas, activities, and actions that a person takes always carry with them consequences. There are good and bad consequences totally depending on the category (good or bad) of the idea, activity, or action taken. God’s Law of sowing and reaping is always in play concerning the things that occur here on earth. Good ideas produce favorable consequences. Bad ones don’t.

Success occurs in a person’s life whenever opportunity and preparedness simultaneously meet.

This is a major focal point in any person’s life. Psychologists have estimated that the average person on earth will experience two great “opportunities” to succeed during the course of living out their own life. Sadly and all too often, most everyone is totally “unprepared” to take advantage of the good idea, activity, or action required to be taken so as to experience this opportunity to succeed.

Missed opportunities regardless of the cause are, in fact, just that…missed chances.

A Truth of Life is: You never have a chance to change or succeed unless or until you personally take a chance.

Success does not attack. It is not a spectator sport.

It is totally and completely your own personal responsibility to get yourself prepared for success. No one can or will do it for you. This is precisely why there is no such thing as “surrogate success.” I always tell people that personal success is just like going to the bathroom,…it is just one of those things in life that you have to do for yourself.

Personal preparation for success varies among different individuals and operations required to effect the achievement of the specific type or level of success that is desired. Suffice it to say, that you alone control your own success. And it will be achieved or missed as relates to your own circumstances depending on how well prepared you are to recognize the opportunity and take advantage of it.

Chance, risk, fate, and stretching yourself out of your comfort zone and into the fringe of fear are the watchwords of those successful souls who have preceded you on this earth, and who have attained great success.

A person never “quits” their way to success nor do they “luck” their way to becoming successful. Just understand that becoming highly successful in any chosen endeavor is going to demand and require you to work, and then work, and then work some more. It is a long-term process with lots of bumps, bruises, and hard knocks. You see, the truth is that you can only “fail” your way to success. All real, true, and lasting personal success is built and based upon a foundation of failure. The truly successful people on earth have long records of failure after failure from their work efforts. They have experienced strike-out after strike-out in their attempts to succeed. Perseverance is the real key. Staying the course until the success has been achieved is the pathway to success for any individual.

Success is where you find it. Many of the biggest “finds” that produced incredibly large financial gains for the prospectors who discovered them are those that came out of hiding right from underneath their own noses. The blessings and rewards came from places so ordinary, unsuspecting, or unobtrusive that most everyone else looked past these places of discovery or walked right past the very place the hidden treasure was actually found,…preferring to search in some other more exotic or remote place.

Books have been written, stories told, and legends established by human beings throughout all of history regarding men and women who have sold all that they possessed to finance their worldwide quest for hidden treasure, precious metals, valuable stones, other natural resources, or opportunities. After a lifetime of failure and suffering, these sad folks wind up returning to their individual starting points, totally empty-handed, broke, and destitute, to sadly discover that the very thing that they had sold or sacrificed to find their “hidden treasure” was, in fact, the very location at which the new owner, occupant, or possessor had “found” the “golden egg” or the very thing that the original owner was in search of in other parts of the world.

Real success is finding or discovering those great and valuable treasures that lay hidden from view…even if they are right before your own eyes.

A story please………

A story is told and passed down through the generations in old Mexico of a poor man who found the great “blessing,” the great “reward,” right from where he was living in abject poverty. It seems the local police authorities arrested and jailed a dirt-poor peasant man who had lived in a tar-papered shack for most of his life. This man had recently built a brand new pumice block house on the beach for himself, his wife, and their several children. What a delight it was. What a blessing it was to live in a new home.

Everyone wondered where this peasant got the money for the construction project. They thoroughly searched out the source of his funding and discovered that the man had sold two full sized solid gold bars to a local jeweler in their own village. The jeweler had paid the poor man fifty-eight hundred dollars for these two twenty-four carat gold bars! At the time, the bars had an actual market value of over one-half million dollars!

More of the story began to unfold as the search for truth and its related precious treasure continued. Highly trained archeologists were brought in by the Mexican government. A thorough study revealed some most interesting information.

Nothing that happens to you is by accident.

God has clearly told us that no matter who we are or what we have or have not done with our lives that He still loves us and has a great plan and purpose for our lives. His word tells us the absolute truth that “One sows while yet another reaps.” He further explains that “all things work together for good to those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.” These are absolute truthful promises of God to you and me.

Back now to the story…….

The great Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortes lead an military expedition into Mexico with the planned purpose of overthrowing the entire Aztec Empire which was lead by the great warrior leader, Chief Montezuma II. Cortes’ army defeated the Aztec forces and succeeded in killing the great Aztec Chief in July 1520.

The Mexican archeologists affirmed that these two gold bars under investigation were indeed a part of Montezuma II’s lost treasure.

History tells us that the greatest, the largest undiscovered lost treasure today on the entire earth is Montezuma II’s gold.

In the first quarter of the fifteenth century, this Aztec ruler (who had acquired the greatest amassed fortune in gold bars in any civilization) saw clearly that the fall of his empire was coming at the hands of the Spanish. Indeed his Empire was abolished by his death at the hands of Hernan Cortes. Now what we do not know is what ever happened to Montezuma II’s gold stash.

As discussed above, a peasant man had now found a few of the gold bars. Does this now mean that the world is close to actually discovering the whole treasure? Only God knows.

I am not suggesting or encouraging you to stop what you are doing with your life and go to Mexico to search of the hidden Montezuma II treasure. What I am suggesting is simply this: The greatest discovery yet to be made by yourself is the discovery of the opportunities, blessings, abilities, and benefits that you have in living–the undeveloped, non-actualized potential within you…that waits to be discovered like a long lost treasure.

The secret of Success always has lain in the second letter of the word…it is YOU!

You were fearfully and wonderfully made by The Creator of the Universe within your mother’s womb. God knows everything about you. God has designed you for greatness. He has engineered you to achieve great success with your life. He has a grand plan for the use of your life…You just have to let out that greatness that lies hidden within your own heart and mind.

May I exhort you to go in your own power and accomplish the great success that God has prepared and planned for you.

Peace And Love to All of You………………Poppa Bear