Many times than few, candidates express fear and desperation owing to pressing needs on all sides. This mien takes the toll on them and makes them grind at the mill of unproductivity in cycles without pay. The deadliest part is still that they keep seeing others as responsible for their loss.
This post is two-pronged: a thank you to all those who have directly or indirectly impacted in to me the values that form the me that writes, and a brotherly and loving advice to those who mistakenly or deliberately think that others are responsible for their failures or misfortune.
Sometime ago, I lived in a wonderland. A land where you lived on promises from people that never got fulfilled. I kept on believing thinking it was faith…that wasn’t faith but foolishness. Subsidising my laziness by outsourcing my responsibility of becoming better and value FULL and ABLE, I built transient shock absorbers of small successes that fetched small cash that barely sustained me. As a young unmarried man, I thought that was a better life – making some few thousands and not thinking of how those few thousands could become more thousands and make some more thousands so I can also be a channel for others to make more money, and live a better life.
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It was more recently that I realised the failed promises were never the fault or making of those who made them. It was mine. Fully mine!
As long as we feel anyone owes us anything, we will continue in our irresponsibility. It was after I started taking responsibility for my thoughts, decisions and actions that I started appreciating the lessons all the kind people have always invested their time teaching me.
In life, I have come to realise that to become the best you can be, expect the least from people. Even when you know that something will come from anyone around you, yet prepare for the worst. Why? Each time you prepare for a NO, when you build a mechanism that caters for the otherwise…’The What Ifs’, a yes will never surprise you! That’s why you will hear someone say that a future you prepare for will never surprise you!
If you’re looking forward to having or in need of better opportunities like me, do well to leave your frustrations at home, in fact flush it away in your WC and never look for it again. Take the right attitude because frustration is the only currency that buys you desperation and continuously opens you a spreadsheet of increasingly negative purchasing power.
Seek until you find the discipline to channel your energy on one focus area at each phase or stage of your career or life. This was a major challenge in my career growth as many or some of you might identify with or perhaps have experienced. This is usually common with individuals who have the tendency of thinking they are multi-talented, multi-passionate like me. Before I call myself multi-talented, I must first have made meaning of one talent so that the other(s) take definition from the meaning of the first. Without this, confusion will surely creep in and not to far from confusion is it’s senior partner, frustration.
Doing many things at the same time is doing nothing all of those times.
I received one message advice – the same message – from more than one person at different places and times in past which still rings a bell in my head and helps me focus:
‘Taofik, you are a brilliant guy, you have the potential to succeed but you can’t do too many things at the same time. You’ll stretch yourself thin. Decide on what to do, focus on it and give it time.’
I am also offering this advice to every young person thinking many things can be done at the same time and at the same breath of strength and resources. If you think it’s possible, well I agree, but remember, excellence can not be achieved at the same time in many things.