Lessons for entrepreneurs and how to survive the hell days
After travelling from Nairobi to Maseno, I wasn’t in my best moods. I was feeling like a miserable failure after failing two important examinations of the society of actuaries. It is not easy to go through such experiences and if you ask those who have been through such, I tell you that it feels like casting all your plans into the basket of surrender and burn it to ashes and forget everything; perhaps find other things to do. All through my life I have passed all my exams but sometimes things change. If seasons must change then situations must inescapably change also and that includes how you look at things.
I discussed my situation with my friend Kenneth Munene and he gave me a sound advice. I never had the opportunity to jot down what he was telling me but there is one thing that I wrote in my mind and I am sure it is going to stay there permanently. He told me that the most important thing in the process of achieving my goals is to work with the results I want and not the results that I get. This statement has kept recurring in my mind for sometimes now and its truth has continued to provide me with more insights every day that pass.
Best days are ahead of us and those days will come to pass irrespective of what transpires. We should never allow our eyes to be blinded by transient smokes of temporary failures when all that is needed is to stay focused on the most important goals that we want to achieve. Failure is not an enemy of success but we have been conditioned to fear it; failure is the best friend of success. Failure comes to us before success so that we will appreciate the sweetness of success when it comes, for how can you know the true sweetness of honey without first drinking bitter herbs?
What if the worst of things happen?
I have learnt not to take the little things of life for granted. So many things are bound to happen to you. Times will come when you will be thwarted and tossed roughly by storms. Those times will be very hard for you to hold out and sometimes your precious possessions will be taken away from you. You will trek miles till your shoes wear out and your collar fade and your eyes get covered with brown dust. You will long for little sunshine but darkness will insist on accompanying you to every nook and cranny. Your throat will coarsen and dry yet not a single drop of water will you get. No coin to grease your pockets except many packets of hopelessness. Every place you will pass you will meet unfriendly people who will avoid you like leprosy and then your tired back will be overburdened by the inscription of ‘HERE IS THE BEST FAILURE’
You will spend many days praying for this curse to be taken away from you but that will only seem to increase your troubles. As a matter of fact, that is the time you will start losing all your friends one by one including your fiancée. You will begin to wok hard but the harder you will work the poorer you will grow and each forward step you will make will count two backward steps like you are being pulled by unseen forces from behind. As you travel the great highway of life, many crowds of people will pass you no matter how fast you will think you are walking. You will be drained dry as well as your good health taken away from you. Moreover, you will keep falling on cragged and rocky surfaces thereby increasing and multiplying your wounds. Hot irons will be pressed against your raw wounds and no matter how loud you will cry there will be no mercy upon you.
- Nugget #1: This will often not be the tragedy of your story of life. Neither will it last more than is necessary. Moments as these will be an indicator of not just a bright but a dazzling future around the corner. The last thing you will do is to give up like a coward and loss the thrill and drama and die disgruntled and empty with nothing apart from stained blood and wet tears still running till they turn your eyes sore and blacken your vision.The harder you fall, the higher you will bounce; the more darkness will engulf you the more fight you will need to stage to light your candle so that you stand like a confident solder. This will be the best of moments to filter your friends from the pack of all those who claim to be close to you. Never must you be intimidated by failures, instead keep trying and keep on keeping on. Stay focused on where you want to reach without allowing anything to distract you. These are only short lived difficulties that require determined souls; souls that know what they want out of life and are not afraid to risk their time and everything for it.
- Nugget #2: This will be the moments to concentrate not in your mistakes and slips but on your strength only so that you work with the end in mind. That is, working with the results you want and not reacting to the results you get. It is worth saying it over and over that you must have the end in mind because it is only through so that you will be able to execute flawlessly. Successful people create what they want while failures react to things that happen to them. These are the moments to learn and the moment to turn challenging situations into a great classroom where you will learn great lessons. Be wise and remember that all the stars you so admire do shine at night and not when there is light. Remember too that great leaders are born in epochs of adversity and great tribulations. The revolutionaries of yester years endured vast opposition but since they withstood all injustices, they are today’s heroes.
- Nugget#3: Even if you are down, you will not be there for too long. Also, if you have fallen to the rock bottom, you will not fall further and the only possible way is to rise. You will not fall forever, your energy will not be drained forever, and you will not sweat blood and shed tears forever. All your toils must one day come to a halt and time is coming when you will rest your limbs in total rest and peace as you enjoy the fine things of nature. You’re the one who will determine how long you are going to stay down and how many times you are going to rise. If you will stop complaining and fretting, achievement is yours by right and no one will have power to take it away from you without your acceptance and this is the sure way of being sharpened and this is the best form of growing into maturity.
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