In one of my books, Tapping God’s Blessings, I narrate the story of Tom, a man who arrived home in the evening with three appetizing mangoes.

He was so tired and hungry that all he wanted was to eat them go to sleep. He washed them, prayed, reached for the knife, but on cutting them he realized they were all spoilt. Of course Tom couldn’t eat rotten mangoes so he went to bed hungry. 

At around midnight he felt serious hunger biting at him hard and he decided to go and check whether they were really spoilt. He found them spoilt and decided to drink water. He went back to bed but hardly had he stayed there for an hour when hunger forced him to go and check again. 

On confirming for the third time that the mangoes were spoilt, Tom assured himself "These mangoes are spoilt only when I am looking at them; since I am alone here, I will switch off the light, so that I eat them in darkness without seeing them or anyone seeing me”. He did exactly that! 

Tom made the wrong decision – to eat spoilt mangoes – because he was alone in darkness and no one was watching to hold him accountable. What decisions do we make during the dark that affect our personal finances? When you are alone you can choose to do what’s right, but there’s always a temptation to do the wrong thing, after all no one is watching! Do you always find yourself over-sleeping, over-boozing, cheating, abusing drugs or making any other wrong decisions that take away instead of bringing money to you? 

Decisions are not like a fruit that you can choose to eat the good side and throw away the spoilt part. You have to be ready to eat both the good and the bad side. We must always be ready to face the outcomes of our decisions, whether sweet or sour. A person destined to prosper is brave enough to accept the consequences of their decisions. Decisions are like seeds; you cannot plant weeds and expect to harvest crops! Decisions are instrumental in determining the destiny of our lives; they are the keys that open and close the doors of either success or failure. 

I’ve learnt to take responsibility for my decisions, and that’s why I make major decisions while I am alone. I always find time to retreat from the daily noise and external influences into the silence of heart so that I can make a decision that I will never regret even if it didn’t yield the desired results.

If crowds have been taking you along on their way to a place called Failure, it’s high time to apply brakes. Stop forcing your way into music because other beautiful girls are going into singing. Don’t open a salon or a restaurant because ‘everyone’ is going into that business! Make your independent decision. Some of the decisions I’ve made while alone could sound ridiculous. For instance I decided to leave watching soccer; never to go to a discotheque; and never to drink alcohol. 

When I made a decision to enter the world of business at the age of 28, many people told me there was no money in writing. But I stepped out of the crowd and made a decision alone. Today, I have no single regret. Maybe the regret is that I took long to take the decision! Whenever I see people enjoying reading my books, businesses whose plans I wrote prospering, movies whose scripts I wrote being watched or songs that I wrote airing, I get an indescribable feeling of fulfilment within me. I knew I made the right decision, even though nobody was watching. 

Bake is the MD WORLD OF INSPIRATION & Founder, AUTHORS’ FORUM – +256-704666851