It is partly an act of faith, sometimes an act of sorrow (see the biblical story of Benjamin’s name) but most often an act of stubborn insistence that we will have a hand in shaping the future.

My last name for instance “Erekosima” ironically translates into “Don’t give him a name” – and tells the story of the first Erekosima about 6 generations before my time, who was such a feared, powerful and temperamental warlord that other members of the community declined to attach a nickname to him as was customary for other chieftains and kingmakers of his stature. As such things often go, it became his default nickname, and one of 3 surnames borne by his descendants.

Thinking about this whole issue of our traditional African names reminds me of a talk I delivered at a Men’s event in Colorado Springs a few months ago, entitled, “The Epic-Driven Life”.

In my conception, the epic-driven life is a complete philosophy of self-management through which you can ignite your noblest ambitions, douse your fears, and generally hold yourself accountable to live a more passionate life.

The word, “Epic” (ep.ic) is defined as

“…pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero in which a series of achievements or events is narrated in elevated style”

(See Dictionary for this and other related definitions).

The epic-driven life is a life lived intentionally. A life in which you intentionally choose the epics that excite you, write those epics down to the best detail that you can, and then proceed with purpose to “act out” the epics of your dreams.

Millions of people read the Purpose-Driven life and while I have never gotten around to reading beyond the first page of that book, I presume there may be parallels between the lessons in that book and those I’m sharing here.

However, “Purpose” is much bigger (and for some people, more elusive) than an “epic”. An epic starts as simply as sitting down and writing down an achievement that would tickle you to death if you went out and accomplished it just as you saw it while you were daydreaming.

About 10 years ago, I purposed in my mind that I would be time-flexible when my children came. I was neither a parent, nor married at the time. It would be another 8 years before marriage, and 10 years before this first child.

However, the epic I wrote in my head has directly or indirectly informed my decisions such that I’ve been an entrepreneur for over 9 years and self-employed for the last 5. While the journey itself had twists and turns that I couldn’t have anticipated, I find myself HERE…at home on a weekday…where I thought I would be.

In a previous post on “How To Prosper in 2010” I communicated another epic upon which I’m actively working as I speak: To go from a one-man consultancy to a Business consulting firm that grosses 7 figures in record time, while generating record growth and profits for my clients.

The beauty of the epic-driven mindset is that an epic is a valuable asset all by itself. My coaching clients at MarriageInspiration.com took their tears and turned them into gold.

I have seen people completely change how they handle setbacks when they realized that “it all works together for their good” by contributing to their epic. Any story that can be told can be sold if it’s dramatic, audacious, or otherwise interesting enough.

I’ve seen the epic-driven mindset cause formerly timid sales professionals to happily glide their way to the proverbial batter’s box, because they have connected the seemingly mundane events of their lives to something far more exciting…an epic with a living, breathing, hero smack in the middle of it.

If you’re reading this post, I choose to believe that it’s because the seeds of a great epic lie within you. Release yourself to the epic of your dreams, record your achievements, your setbacks, and your insights. And then please share them.

The world awaits…

with bated breath.

As you prepare to usher in the new year, I have a question to ask you.

Have you made absolutely sure that you maximized (extracted absolute, maximum, leverage out of) all the resources that were available to you?

And if, upon examination, you conclude that you did not, have you prepared yourself with plans to both appreciate and maximize your blessings in the new year?

Since I will be taking a break from this blog till the new year, I want to share with you my step-by-step plan for How To Prosper in 2010. Enjoy:

1. Count Your Blessings (Past And Current)
About 2 weeks ago or so, I posted a list of my “Teachers” for whom I felt grateful. It was an exercise in gratitude, and an exercise in creativity. I could not think about who they were without examining what explicit and implicit lessons I learned from them.

2. Be A Worthy Steward (Servant) Of Your Blessings
This means that you put your blessings in a “capital” context. The term “capital” has to do with a resource that can be invested in such that it produces a return over and above what is invested into it. Are you investing in your gifts, talents and resources such that they are producing a return over and above your investment?

3. Adopt a Leverage Mindset
There’s a quote from the Christian bible that comes to mind when I think about this point. In 1 Corinthians 3:21-23, Paul advises his “beloved Corinthians” with the following words:

…For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours…

Are you wasting “your teachers”?
Are you wasting Google? Youtube? Facebook? Meetup.com? Jing (Techsmith.com)? Blogger.com? And WordPress.com? All of which are yours?

Are you wasting your social capital? Are you wasting your business networking contacts? Your client and prospect lists? Your vendor relationships?
Are you wasting time that could be better spent in the warm embrace of your friends and family?
Are you wasting your nearest public library? The business resource section? The free reading at Barnes and Noble? The local small business development office? The nearest business association or networking group?

ARE YOU WASTING TIME?

4. Set S.M.A.R.T. Goals
Now that you’ve gone through the steps above, it’s time to apply those to goal attainment. A S.M.A.R.T. Goal is:

S- SPECIFIC
M- MEASURABLE
A- ACHIEVABLE
R- RECORDED
T- TIME-ORIENTED

Set and record goals for your spiritual life, health, intellectual life, financial life, business life (if relevant). All these goals should meet the SMART criteria. Being specific means that instead of saying something like “I’ll be more grateful in 2010″, you can commit to “Sending X number of Thank you letters and notes in 2010″, or “Saying a prayer of gratitude every morning when I wake up in 2010″.

Being measurable means that your goal is concretely observable and track-able. For instance, “200 new clients in 2010″. You’ll either reach it, or you won’t.

Achievable – I struggled with this one when I first learned about S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting. Eventually I hacked out a meaning that resonated with me…If you can’t reverse-engineer your goal into a daily set of activities or investments of time, money and effort, then your goal is not achievable for you. Choose another one. Here’s what I mean. I set a goal to build a million dollar revenue business in 14 months (ending December 2010). However, For me to reach that goal, I have to draw out a plan of approach by which I can see that it is possible for me. That’s what I mean by achievable.

Recorded -This one means you should have it written down, recorded on audio, or even on your blog (like I did above). Some teachers and coaches even say you should tell others about your goal. Although I practice that, I’m not sure that’s the correct advice for everyone.

Time-delineated – “New year” goals tend to have deadlines by default. One year.
However, if you notice that you’ve been a “Serial resolution breaker”, you’ll want to make sure that you decompose your “new year resolution” into Quarterly, Monthly, Weekly Goals And Plans.

5. Forget About Motivation And Think Like Thomas Edison
Forget about “feeling motivated” before you take action. Resolve to “act your way into feeling motivated” instead. Nothing motivates like success and the rewards that come from success.
Stop waiting around for motivation and just take action on the plans you reverse-engineered from your goals. Remember that all things are Yours!
Convert both success and failure into marketing and business epics – Blog posts, videos, case studies, Ebooks. Do you realize you can make people pay you to hear all your “epic setbacks” (or failures)?
Stop thinking “Pass/fail” and start thinking “continuous, systematic improvement”. Every failure is just one more step toward your eventual success. Think like Thomas Edison (Read “Edison on Innovation”) who failed his way to success in finding the ultimate light bulb material.

The road to prosperity for you in 2010 will not be found in “searching for the far off wealth”. It will be in discovering your own wealth (already “here” with you) and mining it for maximum leverage.

What’s that?
It’s the opposing streams of 2 strongly influential instructions under which most of us must conduct life and business. The first instruction comes from life, and the second comes from within us.

Both are unyielding, unrelenting and uncompromising.

The first says,

“No Pain, No gain”

… and comes to us from the outside world, from the elements, from other people. It is externally imposed and externally enforced. Shirking this instruction will quickly lead to failure and poverty on multiple fronts.

The second says,

“Pursue pleasure, avoid pain”

… and it comes to us from within. Left untamed, it’s voice will ring so loudly as to drown out all extraordinary effort from which extraordinary character is born and without which there can be no relative expertise or value. Following the leading of this dictum too casually will lead to enduring regret.

The foundational forces of your productive destiny – the market reality & the psychological reality are in conflict. No wonder you have a difficult time going directly and consistently toward your goals. There’s an internal conflict between what you have to do to succeed, and what you want to do to succeed.

I first began to appreciate the extent of this problem when I was coaching real estate investors who wanted to expand beyond the 4-property limitation imposed on them by conventional real estate financing. These soon-to-be creative real estate investors often started off on the wrong foot by asking, “How can I do enough to get maybe one property a month, without doing all the rest of that stuff”?

..And by “all the rest…” they meant the whole, entire business of “marketing, networking, studying, inspecting, planning, selling” etc!

I had to turn away at least one memorable prospect who just didn’t get that economic life outside his “boss makes me do it” world depends on people doing everything possible within legal and ethical boundaries to meet their goals.

Trying to play the “effort police” by looking for just the right amount of hard work to get minimally acceptable results is what gets most of us in trouble. Through the millennia, wise men have shared with whoever would listen, that the path less traveled, that narrow way that leads to earthly paradise, is the path of focused, unadulterated hard work.