Your journey in life

As intelligent beings, humans are generally obsessed with the desire to imagine, plan, document and control the things that happen in our lives every day. There are times when we are able to execute our plans effectively and, in the end, we get the results we envisaged from the beginning. Other times, the world, and systems around us seem to be against us when the execution of our plans do not yield our desired results or any result at all.

A lot of us go on to publicize our success stories which is good as it shows others what is possible and sometimes puts us in a class where we want to be. Some individuals even optimize this method by creating a course that others subscribe to and they make money from that. That is smart!

What we do not publicize as much is our failures and our inability to attain certain heights due to hiccups along the way or our personal shortcomings. 

If you pay close attention to your mentors and other successful people, they have all failed in different areas of their lives. A lot of them failed repeatedly until they laid their hands on a tool that made them successful. Sometimes, these tools come from others which means at some point, a connection or some connections were made to bring about a rewarding opportunity to the beneficiary.

Late Walt Disney, an extremely successful American entrepreneur was fired from the Kansas City star in the early days of his career because his editor felt he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas”. He later went on to become the pioneer of the American animation industry, won several awards for his work and ventured into many successful businesses such as the Disney amusement park and the family museum amongst many others.

Oprah Winfrey is also a very good example. She currently owns the Oprah Winfrey network and her estimated net worth is about 2.6 billion dollars. Did you know that she was declared “unfit for television” by one of her producers early in her career? She went ahead to beat all odds to become very successful.

I personally know someone who was pretty much forced to resign his “prestigious” job of working in an Accounting department where he earned $16/hr. The job he got immediately after that in a different industry paid him almost $2000 after his first sale and the entire process took him only 1.5 hours to complete. In comparison to the aforementioned “prestigious” job, he was rewarded more for his work and has since risen to new levels of success in subsequent positions.

This write up highlights our desire to be in control of the outcomes of the things we venture into, the success stories we hear, the disappointments we don’t hear about and the ones we do that later turned into success stories.

It all points to one thing; your journey in life is something to pay close attention to. Many things you can control, some you cannot. Nevertheless, the quality and intensity of the work you do should improve at all times and do not despise the days of your little beginning because your disappointments may humble you but then, strength comes from such disappointments. Connections also matter so take advantage of the ones you are presented with. They may have rewarding opportunities embedded in them. Your failure is not the end of the world. It actually is the beginning of something new that could change your world.

At the end of the day, your journey in life is your story that may turn out to be your legacy.

Thank you,

Jide Dawodu