Grow
This statement from Ngolo Kante
is so evergreen.
Most of us have failed in doing
the essentials. We just want to live and nobody cares about growing. It is so
disheartening when you see an elderly man or woman working tirelessly to make
ends-meet at a time when he or she should have been enjoying or living life. Most
of these victims of circumstances, in one way or the other are responsible for
what they are passing through. They failed to grow when it mattered the most.
A sage once said, we have three
phases of life:
- Before you are 25 years old
- Between your 25th till your 50th birthday
- Between your 50th birthday till you are 75 years of age
And I would like to add the 4th
which is
- Between age 75 till you die, if you could life that long.
Now let’s get the details on
these phases:
- From the day we were born to the day we are 25 years old:
This phase comes
with so much distraction and deceit from all angles of life. This is the period
when we deal with juvenile delinquency. But the most exciting detail about this
period is that it is a time in our life when we get to learn so many things
comfortably without intense pressure if we wish to. You could acquire great
skills at this level, you can also end up wasting the better part of your life
at this level of life.
It is highly
expected of you to have one or more of the following before you are 25:
a.
A Skill
b.
A degree or a tertiary academic certificate
c.
A business
d. A concrete trade or business training.
If you fail to attain any of this before you are 25, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t acquire any of them after this time. Before you hit 25, people will be very willing to help you out on little things especially in our Nigerian setting. You won’t have so much pressure about getting your own apartment, or getting married, or being independent etc. To most people, you are still within the growing age and needs assistance as much as possible. For someone in school (tertiary institution), people will only be interested in knowing if you have graduated or when you are due to graduate. They will pay little attention to what business you do, who you work for, where you live, the achievements you have made, when you are getting married, when you buying a car or building a house etc.
This phase is my point of
interest.
What are you doing or what did you do at this phase of your life?
Are you growing or are you living?
What skills do you have?
Have you acquired a tertiary
certification?
Do you have any business?
Are you working for someone on a
business or career that will sustain you and your potential family on the
long-run?
What efforts are you making?
These days we spend most of our
times on social media and watching movies instead of doing the most essential
things we need to do now. Our youths are busy trying to impress a society
that cares little about what they are or what their most intense needs are. Everyone
wants to look expensive and sophisticated on the little money they make which
can’t even maintain such life style. We spend so much looking good outwardly
but we spend less on our inward personality. No thought on investments, growth or improvement. We want to party as hard as the young man that owns a very strong business, have as many girl friends and spend so much for them as much as that guy whose parents are wealthy enough to credit his account handsomely each month, we want to wear good clothes and own good phones and live a luxury life as much as some other person whose life has already been made or who is not in the same level as we are.
ADD VALUE TO YOURSELF
- Make yourself an indispensable asset by building your intellect in any field or career path you have chosen and gain at least a little knowledge of other things. Be versatile and don’t remain empty. Nobody cares about how you look out there, your looks will be appreciated and used but it won’t fetch you much unless you beautify your inner self. People only care about what you can offer them either materialistically or knowledge-wise. What you can do or the problems you can solve determines to a great extent, how much you will make or worth. It will determine the kind of people you attract and it will also determine the kind of opportunities you meet. Remember, luck they say, is when opportunity meets preparedness. Don’t just rely on luck when you are not prepared. You may not marry a rich man just like your friend or sister did. But you can make your home rich if you have something upstairs. You might not marry that lady from a rich family just like the other guy, but you can build an empire for yourself and your family. Luck is not just what we think it to be. Start from the scratch and grow gradually to the top. Do not live the life of the celebrities or business moguls you admire, rather make an effort to know what they were doing when they were at your present level and not what they are doing in their current status. Young people follow trends instead of building their lives. One of the best way of building yourself is making friends who have like-minds as yours, reading books, listening to people of higher intellectual prowess etc.
Comments