Almighty God, as we as a nation usher in not only a new year but indeed a new decade, teach us to view each day as a clean slate, a fresh chance to write a new script and seize new opportunities. Teach us to value each day's experiences and seek to learn and grow from them. Help us to avoid neither risk nor responsibility, nor fear failure, only lost opportunity. Help us to learn, for learning is the key to living. Help us to seek first to understand for understanding is the key to finding value and value is the basis for respect, decisions and actions. Teach us to value differences and view them as strengths as we seek to build complementary and win-win relationships with our family, friends, colleagues and business associates.
Help our leaders to see themselves as servant-leaders who are responsible for results. Help them to act at all times with courage, consideration and most of all discretion. Help them to make decisions based on universally established business principles with emphasis on fairness and equity, not on politics, popularity, self-interest or expediency. Teach them to let their work and achievements speak for them so that visibility is achieved through productivity. Finally, help us all not to allow present circumstances or past conditioning to determine our responses to the challenges that we face; and help us to recognise that our success or failure as an individual or as a nation will ultimately be a product of our choices and decisions rather than the socio-economic circumstances in which we find ourselves.
Peter Permell
Via e-mail