How To Embrace Challenges And Open Your Paths To Success
Turn Crisis moments into Opportunities
Do you often get angry when things don't turn out for you as planned? I know how it hurts because I've been there several times.
In such situations, you feel like giving up even when you know the best thing you should do is to hang on.All you’ve read in motivational books, seen on videos, or heard from audios just wouldn’t seem to make any sense. They’d all seem like fluff.
Most times, life doesn’t give us what we desire but presents to us the opposite of what we painted for ourselves with our imagination. We need to come to terms with this and stop the Why me: Why me? Questions we ask ourselves when problems befall us.
I'd share with you how you can view these circumstances when you encounter them, accept them in the light of newer reasoning and use them as springboards that shoot you to success. Let's begin.
First, I know you wish to become successful, but if you ask the most successful people you know about their secret sauce, most likely they’d share with you their stories of woes. This goes to show they’ve all had their fair share of catastrophes. You and I know some of them: Jack Ma, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs, and Richard Branson all of them have had their fair share of woes at some point in their journey before they made it. I challenge you to read their biographies and discover for yourself. None of them was an overnight success; they knew poverty, faced rejections, lost money, and suffered business failures before they became successful.
I am not insulated either. I’ve had my share of setbacks and risen from them. I’ve run a business for eight years, closed it, and started something else.
It wasn’t just working out.My wife was running a PhD, we had a young family, my partner got transferred to another city, and I was working full-time. We just felt the business would survive on the side, but due to a lack of proper attention, things nosedived, and we had to close the business. Despite the failure, I learned plenty of lessons, one of which is that to grow a business, paying close attention is key, which is a big win for me and has added to my wealth of knowledge.So I lost a business, but I learned lessons that I’m putting to use and making money from.
The loss became, for me, a part of the learning curve and a springboard for another source of income. That is the spirit.
What do you do with your phone when it delivers bad news? Do you smash it on the floor because it delivers bad news? Nop.Why? Because you know soon it will also deliver the good news.
Just yesterday, I got a call from a friend saying that he lost his mum and immediately I sent in my condolences.
Some moments later my phone beeped and I saw it was the birthday of another friend which was announced on my alumni WhatsApp group. What a contrast, I hummed to myself.
As I was settling in to begin my activities for the day one of my field staff called in that a payment we were expecting from a customer didn’t pull through. He promised to pay it next week while I got another call that a deal we were chasing had been closed.
As I reflected on all these one thought came to my mind. You may ask, what?
The reality that chaos and order are the two commonest elements of our human experience.
We are straddled in this fundamental duality of existence.
One moment things are so smooth and running well and the next there’s a huge problem which disrupts the plans and everything we’ve put in place is ruined.
We all seek a smooth sailing existence but often, this leads us to complacency while chaos leads us to begin again and unto a path of growth. There lies an opportunity.
Nobody ever wishes for bad things to happen but what I've observed is the reality of this duality that, on the one hand, things may go well and on another note, they may become awful.
As part of our shared humanity, my heart goes out to all the victims going through some challenging circumstances at the moment. No matter what the situation is, I wish you the best outcomes but firstly, you must brace up and take up the challenge to begin again in a more determined manner while acknowledging that you are also winning in many other areas of your life. This acceptance and your coming to terms with the reality could be a turning point which creates the pathway for your success. The idea is just to be ready to begin again.
I wish you the best.
See you next time
Emmanuel
