Managing Success Without Losing Destiny: Lessons from ThriVe! with Babs

Why success rarely collapses suddenly, and how misalignment, fear, and drift undo destiny

Success, Babs Oladele insists, rarely explodes in one dramatic mistake; it leaks away, through drift, fear, and divided attention.

A Grand Finale For “Navigating the Journey of Destiny”

On 1 February 2026, the ThriVe! with Babs community gathered online for Chapter 54 of the monthly live-sharing series, marking the grand finale of a long-running teaching arc titled “Navigating the Journey of Destiny.” Hosted by writer, mentor and facilitator Babs Oladele, the session brought together family, friends, mentees and followers for a reflective conversation on the theme “Managing Success.”

ThriVe! with Babs began several years ago with in‑person meetings and has since grown into a regular virtual forum, with sessions recorded and uploaded to YouTube for a wider audience. Over the years, the platform has explored themes such as identity, purpose, wilderness seasons and personal growth, using the biblical Exodus story as a central metaphor for the journey from bondage to destiny.

The Exodus as A Map for Modern Lives

In this concluding instalment, Oladele returned to his core image: the Israelites’ journey from Egypt to the Promised Land as a mirror for individual journeys toward purpose and fulfilment. He treats the biblical text not as a weapon or a sectarian code but as a rich piece of literature from which universally applicable life lessons can be drawn.

Egypt, in this frame, symbolises bondage, struggle and limitation; the wilderness represents the painful, confusing in‑between, full of hardship but also preparation; Canaan stands for destiny: the place of rest, impact and divine acknowledgement. “Destiny,” he argued, is not about mere survival but about thriving in the space you were designed to occupy, where your work, character and calling align.

From Wilderness Scars to Profitable Wisdom

Before diving into success, Oladele recapped earlier lessons on “wilderness experiences”, those seasons of setback, delay or difficulty that often precede major breakthroughs. He urged participants to analyse how they got into those seasons, identify the root causes, and then deliberately set guardrails to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Beyond analysis, he encouraged a proactive response: turning the insights gained in hard times into “profit.” That profit might take the form of a book, a programme, a mentoring platform or any initiative that allows a person to share what they have learned with others facing similar battles. In his own case, the ThriVe! with Babs series, now in its 54th chapter, is itself a product of lessons distilled from years of personal and professional journeying.

“Success Is Eroded, Not Exploded”

The centrepiece of the session was a slide titled “Pause & Ponder,” which carried a sentence that has become something of a thesis statement for the entire teaching.

Success is rarely destroyed by a single catastrophic error. It is eroded by misalignment, unmanaged fear, and undisciplined attention over time.

Oladele unpacked this in three movements:

• Misalignment: When people drift away from the values, disciplines and practices that took them to their “promised land” in the first place.
• Unmanaged fear: When anxiety, insecurity or imposter syndrome is left unchecked, slowly poisoning decisions and relationships.
• Undisciplined attention: When scattered focus and poor stewardship of time and energy open the door for decline.

He reminded listeners that the “law of gravity” applies metaphorically to life: whatever rises naturally faces forces trying to pull it down, whether through external pressures or internal neglect. Staying on the “successful side,” he said, means working intentionally against that pull.

Why Some Never Arrive, And Why Others Lose It

Drawing again from Exodus, Oladele contrasted Moses and Joshua. Moses led the people out but did not enter the promised land; Joshua completed the journey. For him, this is a sobering reminder that starting well does not guarantee finishing well, and that gifted leadership alone is no insurance against derailment.

He then asked a harder question: if Canaan is a symbol of destiny, how did the Israelites later lose what they had received? From the biblical narrative, he distilled several warning signs:

• Disobedience and moral compromise: Treating success as a licence to relax convictions.
• Leadership failures: Leaders who drift, abuse trust, or prioritise self‑interest over their assignment.
• Internal division: Factions, complaints and power struggles that slowly hollow out a people from within.
• Identity loss and unhealthy comparison: Wanting to be “like other nations” at the cost of their distinct calling.

For Oladele, these patterns echo in modern organisations, careers and families: success is not only won on the outside; it is also lost from the inside when character, clarity and community break down.

Managing Success: Principles For Staying in Your “Canaan”

Having explored how success unravels, the session turned to practical principles for managing and retaining it. Oladele framed success as stewardship: something entrusted, not owned outright, and ultimately accountable to God. From that vantage point, he outlined several anchors:

• Humility
  • Remembering that talent, opportunity and timing are gifts, and refusing to rewrite the story so that success appears self‑made.
• Responsibility
  • Staying faithful to the responsibilities success brings, whether to family, clients, community or mentees, rather than using new status as an escape route.
• Commitment to core values
  • Holding fast to the convictions that guided earlier stages of the journey, even when new options and shortcuts appear.
• Ongoing spiritual fortification
  • Recognising, as he put it, that life includes “negative forces” and pressures, and that inward strength, spiritual, moral, emotional, is needed to withstand them.

He also emphasised the need for feedback and teachability: in the biblical narrative, the Israelites repeatedly ignored prophetic correction; in contemporary life, people often dismiss constructive feedback that could protect what they have built.

Destiny As Becoming, Not Just Arriving

One recurring line in the teaching was that “destiny is less about distance and more about becoming.” Oladele argued that the true measure of a journey is not how far a person has travelled on paper, but who they have become in the process, how their character, wisdom and resilience have been shaped.

Some battles, he told the audience, are “not to destroy you but to define you”, training grounds for the kind of person who can carry success without being crushed by it. The wilderness, in this view, is not a detour from destiny but part of its curriculum.

An Invitation to the ThriVers Community

As the session drew to a close, Oladele reminded participants that ThriVe! with Babs is an ongoing community, not a one‑off webinar. Future sessions will continue to explore life, purpose and growth through a mix of reflection, teaching and open conversation, with details to be shared across the platform’s channels.

He left listeners with a final encouragement: delays on the journey are not automatic denials; often, they are divine preparation for a weight of success that must be carried with depth, not just excitement. Managing success, he suggested, is ultimately about becoming the kind of person who can remain aligned, courageous and disciplined long after the initial breakthrough has passed.