Your Big Life Plan By Jon Gordon
It’s big but you can’t see it. So great that if you could see it you wouldn’t believe it. It’s your destiny and it’s calling you. If you don’t believe me just remember Albert Einstein. He could not speak until he was four years old. He did not read until he was 7. His parents thought he was retarded. We know they were wrong.
Or how about Beethoven. His music teacher said, “As a composer he is hopeless.” Wrong again. And let’s not forget Muhammad Ali. His teacher once told him, “you ain’t never going to be nothing. He showed her and the world that he was the greatest after all. We all know Helen Keller’s story and we certainly all know our own story.
February 22, 1980. Lake Placid, New York – the host city for the 1980 Winter Olympics. The Soviet Union’s Olympic hockey team was set to play the United States Olympic team in an important game that would probably decide the gold medal. Yet, calling this a “game” was a stretch.
The Lundy-Smiths are a remarkable family from inner-city New Orleans. Susie Mae Lundy and husband, Willie J. Smith, a Baptist pastor, raised nine successful children. According to FORTUNE magazine, the parents set an entrepreneurial example built around commitment, faith and hard work. Each child grew up with assigned responsibilities. By age five the six boys were expected to hose down and sweep the driveway of the family’s Exxon gas station and auto repair shop. 
Two thousand years ago on April 15th one of Jesus’ disciples came to him and said it was time to pay taxes (that’s how I know it was around April 15th), but they had no money. In response to his disciple’s statement Jesus said “no problem”. Now why could he say “no problem”? Well, word had it that Jesus was a miracle worker. If you hand a problem to a miracle worker what they are inclined to say is “no problem”. You’ve got to hang out with people like that. 
Competence goes beyond having a specific expertise. It certainly means being knowledgeable and skillful in your field. But it also means possessing a problem-solving ability that goes beyond your own specialty. If you don’t know the answer, or how to fix the problem, with competence as an ability, you know how to go about getting someone who does. Competence means having a can-do attitude and following through on it.