‘’Striving for success
without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted’’
David Bly
Our contemporary world
is facing one of its greatest challenges; the declining level of hard work
among youngsters. Instead of engaging in productive activities many youngsters
prefer to engage themselves in luxurious and frivolous activities that have no
relevance to their future. There is no short cut to becoming a global champion;
you become a global champion by working hard. ‘Hard work is the raw material for champions’.
It is a common parlance among many
youngsters of the 21st Century that those who work hard are not
serious minded; they are regarded as fools and most times society looks down on
them with disdain. Some even refer to them as people who are not smart. Today
examination malpractice is on the increase with parents, teachers and students
colluding as a team in achieving their common goals. Students lobby teachers
and lecturers with their monies and bodies in order to get cheap grades on a
platter of gold. Others get prepared answered scripts
to examination hall, while some teachers and management of some schools
engage in the heinous crime of releasing question papers to mercenaries to
write examination for students. Miracle Centre’s are everywhere in many
cosmopolitan areas across our society with parents paying huge sum of money for
their wards to pass with good grades. What has really happened to the values of
hard work inculcated into many of these individuals in the past? Many have
thrown in the towel of hard work to the dust bin and have taken to the common ‘Nigerian syndrome’ ‘’ If you can’t beat them you join them’’. As parents no matter the
help you want to render to your wards do it with a picture of their future in
mind. ‘The greatest reason why there are
so many graduates without pedigree on the street and the lack of refined
professionals in our work places is as a result of lack of proper foundation of
hard work in the lives of youngsters’
In many homes, youngsters
hardly wash their clothes and engage in other domestic chores because they have
maids and grown up extended family members that can help them out. Realize this
factual truth, your maids are only there for some time, they will not be there
to do everything for you later on in life. You will grow up to become
responsible individual on your own, get a job, get married and raise your own
home. If you are not hard working, how will you be able to combine your career and
possibly academics with the challenges of running the family? You must learn to
be hard working from home no matter the luxuries at your disposal because you
will need the experience later on in life.
Working Hard is not an attitude
that comes from birth; it is developed from the up- bringing of someone. Today
21st Century parenting has led many youngsters astray to a
generation of children that were never taught the relevance of hard work. Many
parents have neglected their responsibility to teaching their children to work
hard. The entertainment industry has done so much havoc to the mindsets of many
youngsters with the release of unhealthy doses of movies, songs, television
programmes, and video games e.tc. Rather than get a job, play games or sports
or get involved in other productive activities, many spend their precious time
watching programmes that adds no real value to their lives.
Many due to their own personal
experiences have resorted to saying ‘’ I
don’t want my children to suffer’’, this
statement is very okay as a parent but most times this is done in the wrong
manner. While it is alright for parents to want the best for their children however,
it should be done with an attitude of developing their mindset for hard work
for tomorrow when you will not be there to support them. Many parents offer
everything to their children without resort to letting them know they need hard
work to sustain the legacies their parents have left behind. This kind of
up-bringing has led to generational failures as you hardly see a millionaire’s
children who have sustained their father’s legacy to become a billionaire.
As a teen or youth realize that
the dictionary is the only place where success comes before hard work. 'Hard work is a tool which converts past
failures to success, weakness to strength, poverty to prosperity, and ignorance
into education’. No matter the wealth your parents have acquired on your
behalf or the one you have gotten on your own, if you don’t work hard you will
lose everything within a twinkling of an eye.
Hard work is just a little
difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary, when you act on the part
of the extra you become extraordinary and a beacon of hope to the hopeless. ‘No one makes it to the top as a global
champion without hard work’. Hard work is the divine strategy for success.
God Himself was a hard worker, no wonder He worked for six days creating heaven
and earth. He wants you and I to act like Him that is why He admonished us in Proverbs
22:29: “Seeth thou a man diligent in his business he will stand before kings
and not mere men’’.
Hard work is a spiritual tool
of success no wonder work appeared about 564 times in the Bible. Hard work is
putting your faith to work. As a child of God you must learn to walk by faith,
each time you engage in hard work you are engaging your faith to deliver to you
your harvest. In the same light John Mason posited Faith without work is like gold
within
the earth, it is of no value until it
is mined out. A person who has faith but has no action is like a bird that has
wings but no feet ‘’
Hard
work is an opportunity to succeed, every hard working individual appreciates
opportunities and always maximizes them to their advantage, and they see
opportunity with an attitude of focus. No wonder Thomas Edison once said ‘’ opportunity is missed by most people
because it is dressed in over all that looks like work”.
As
a teen or youth, there are opportunities for you to reach the top but for you
to get there; you must put on the overall clothing that appears like hard work.
Opportunities always appear in disguise it is only the hard worker that can
unravel the solution.
Many
Individuals always say you are very lucky but they fail to understand that luck
don’t just happen, luck only happens when hard work meets with opportunity. In
the same vein, Richard Branson owner of the Virgin Atlantic Airlines and Virgin
Group once says ‘’ I believe that luck is one of the most misunderstood and
underappreciated factors in life. Those people and businesses that are
considered generally fortunate or luckier than others are usually also the ones
that are prepared to take the greatest risk and by association, are also
prepared to fall flat on their faces very often. I have often been accused of
being lucky in business but I too believe that a lot of very hard work has played a major part in any luck that has come my
way’’2
As
youngsters moving in the information age revolution your focus needs to be more
strategically powerful like the laser light in order for you to get ten times
result on your investment of time and resources. This implies your hard work
should transcends just physical efforts but to maximizing the potential of your
brain or mind to working smarter in bringing profitable returns.
Roll
call of fame from famous athletes like Michael Jordan to top business
executives like Aliko Dangote, Mike Adenuga and Bill Gates, all these people
were well known for waking up early and working towards their goals while
others are sleeping on the comfort of their beds. Even spiritual giants and
fathers of faith like Jesus Christ, Apostle Paul, John Wesley ,Pastor Enoch
Adeboye, Pastor Benny Hinns, Bishop David Oyedepo, Dr Myles Munroe, Pastor
William Kumuye, Pastor Paul Enenche, Bro
Gbile Akanni, Mike Murdoch and Pastor Sam Adeyemi were all great hard workers
who hardly have time to waste. Though some youngsters want to believe hard work
is old fashioned; old fashioned or modern fashioned as it may be, hard work is
a basic prerequisite for Global Champions.
Michael
Jordan was known for being the greatest basket baller of all times, rising from
mediocrity to becoming an authority. He is a multi-talented basket baller who worked hard and made a mark for
himself. According to his long time coach Phil Jackson, it was hard work that
made him a legend. When Jordan first entered the league, his jump shots were
not good enough. He spent his off season taking hundreds of jumpers a day until
it was perfect. Michael Jordan attested
to this principle of hard work in a piece in one of his articles that his
defining characteristics were not his talent, but having the humility to work
hard constantly. As a young guy/lady are you working hard daily?
Apple
Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook who took over from Steve Jobs was known
for his workaholic nature. Fortune Magazine reports that he begins his day
sending e-mails at 4:30 am in the morning. He is always the first to report in
the office and the last to leave. He used to hold staff meetings on Sundays
night in order to prepare for the new week.
American
Idol host Ryan Seacrest host a radio show from 5-10 am and runs a production
company while appearing seven days a week on Entertainment Channel. Ryan told
the New York Times that even as a young child, his goal was to become a classic
and iconic broadcaster. He moved towards that goal by taking on a preposterous
work load. Because of his hard work, he recently got $300 million as equity
funding for his television company to acquire more businesses.
African-
American Lawn Tennis legends Venus and Serena Williams who dominated the Female
Lawn Tennis for over a decade were all raised with hard work on a lawn tennis
court by their father. From an extremely young age their life were described by
the New York Times as ‘get up 6’ 0 clock in the morning, go to the tennis court
before school. After school, go to tennis’. The William’s family was built
around propelling the two youngsters towards success in sports. Today the
William Sisters’ are World Champions’
with several records in Wimbledon, London Open, French Open, Australian Open, the
Olympics and several other lawn tennis competitions
New Chief Executive Officer of Yahoo, Marisa
Mayer is known for her incredible stamina and hard work. She puts in 130 hours
work at Google and told Joseph Walker that she managed her schedule by sleeping
under the desk and being strategic about her choices.
Chief
Executive Officer of JP Morgan number one bank in the United Kingdom Jamie
Dimon has been known to be one successful banker’s story for the past few
decades and known to have brought the success story to JP Morgan. New York
Times revealed that he spends his weekends working through piles of reading and
putting together a list of questions with which to grill employees on Monday.
Fortune reports that his life is spent almost entirely on work and family.
Aliko
Dangote Chief Executive Officer of the Dangote Group a Nigerian businessman and
industrialist who is currently the richest man in Africa is known to be a
workaholic from his youthful age. He started his business with a loan of
500,000 naira from his uncle Sanusi Dantata to pay back in one year but due to
his hard work he paid back the loan in six months. His schedules commences from
4:30 am in the morning to about 2:00 am in the night meaning he sleeps for just
two and a half hours. No wonder he was able to make mark on his generation.
STRATEGIES
FOR HARD WORK
Bernard Shaw once said ‘’ when I was young I observed that nine out
of every ten things I did were failures, so I did ten times more work’’. Hard
work is one of the crucial pillars of champions. If you want to be successful at anything work
hard. But to succeed you need some strategies. These strategies include the
following.
1.
Set your goals for life. Goal is the
core basis, reason and purpose of a thing. It is an observable and measurable
end result of a thing. It is the purpose towards which an endeavor is directed.
The result or achievement toward which effort is directed or aimed at. For
every areas of life set goals. For example academics, family, career,
spiritual, finances, business, relationship and many others.
2.
Write down your goals. Written goals
have proven to have significant impact in life. The Bible was so emphatic on
goals when He posited in Habakkuk 2:2: ‘’Write the vision, make it plane on
tablets, so he may run who reads it’’. Furthermore, a study at Harvard
University in the Book ‘’ What they
Don’t Teach you in the Harvard Business School by Mark McCormick proved the
following arguments about goal setting: ‘Only three percent of the graduates had
written goals and plans, 13 percent had goals but they were not in writing and
a whopping 84 percent had no specific goal at all. Ten years later, the members
of the class where interviewed again, and the following findings came up. The
13 percent of the class who had goals were earning on average twice as much as
the 84 percent who had no goals at all. And what about the 3 percent who had
their goals written? They were earning on average ten times as much as the
other 97 percent put together’’. The
result is that without goals you have no direction in life. Goals are the sign
post to your dreams in life.
3.Let
your goals be SMART meaning
S Specific
M Measurable
A Attainable
R Realistic
T Timely
4.Your
goals should also be SMARTER
E Evaluate
R Re-evaluate
5.
Do away with toxic mentality syndrome.
This implies you need to do away with poisonous mindsets that prevent you from
moving forward. There are so many of these toxic mentalities among youngsters
of this generation, this include white collar job mentality, victim mentality,
consumer mentality and materialism mentality.
i.
WHITE
COLLAR/SALLARY JOB MENTALITY-
This is one of the
greatest reasons why there is high level of unemployment in our society. Many
youngsters allow their mindset to be poisoned seeing that once they graduate
from school the next thing is to get a white collar job in a blue chip company.
They expect their employer to pay them salary that will make them wealthy.
There is nothing wrong in aspiring for a well paid job but for you to be a
global champion your mentality needs to be smarter beyond just remaining as a
paid worker. Olumide Emmanuel once says: Your boss is not your source but your resource;
your employer is not your source but just a resource; your
government is not your source but just a resource; your salary is not your source
but just a resource3.
Research has shown that only 2 percent of world
billionaires become wealthy through earning salary the remaining 98 percent
earn their money from working hard and smarter through creativity and
entrepreneurship. As a Mechanical Engineer nothing stops you from going to an
auto repair workshop to learn the rudiments of practical realities of
automobile engines dismantle and couple them together. As a Computer Scientist
you should be able to know and operates a lot of applications on the computer
systems and possibly design your own software. They are many graduates of Computer
Engineering who cannot design software. As a trainee Journalist studying Mass
Communication or Journalism you can reach out to Television and Radio Stations
for volunteering opportunities even before graduation. Design your own program
that can capture the interest of audience that will announce a particular media
house. Whenever you make yourself relevant in a chosen area of interest, jobs will
not be too hard to get and if the job don’t come create one by starting small.
ii.
VICTIM
MENTALITY-
This
is the toxic mentality that feels that victimization or marginalization is the
reason why many people are where there are. Individual with this kind of
mindset always have the feeling that somebody owes them something and that if
they fail it is due to the effects of not being helped. They are not always
responsible for their failures; they feel they failed because someone refused
to help them. They are always carrying the mindset of victimization which may
appear in the form of minority group, colonialism, neo-colonialism and slavery.
Emmanuel Olumide once says: “No one can make you fail without your
permission, so whatever you allow or permit is what you get”4.
Among
common terms associated with these mindset are ‘’ I couldn’t get the job or
contract because I am black, I am a woman, I am from the minority, I am an
orphan, I am not educated, I don’t have a godfather, I am not a graduate like
them. I couldn’t go further in school because I have no body to pay my school
fees, I am from a poor family, I failed the examination because I could not
afford to buy text books. These are all genuine and salient statement of fact
but the fact does not make it real. The person that brings the reality of the
situation is you, by taking necessary steps of faith. As a youngster ready to
soar with the champions, you need to do away with these mindsets because for
every excuse you give there are a million and one out there with similar kind
of situation but they refused to give up instead they worked harder and smarter
inculcating the attitude of patience, focus, determination and hard work.
iii.
CONSUMER
MENTALITY-
This
is the mindset that consumes everything without conscious effort in sustaining
production and saving for the future. They consume riotously like the prodigal
son without regard for investment and savings. This kind of mindsets is common
among children of the wealthy who have no basic foundation in hard work. A hard
working youngster will always be conscious of waste because they know the
amount of energy, resources and time they took to bring about production. The
scripture was very emphatic on this in Proverbs 21:20 Amplified Version when it
says:
‘There are precious treasure and oil in the dwelling of
the wise but a self confident and foolish man swallows it up and wastes it ‘’.
A consumer mentality youngster will be very difficult to grow beyond their
stomach because all they are interested in is to eat up what they have;
therefore they cannot move on the ladder of Global Champions.
iv. MATERIALISM MENTALITY-
This is the mindset
with the excessive desire to acquire and consume material goods without regard
for savings and investment. It is bond with the value system which regards ones
social status based on wealth and consumption as well as the notion that
happiness can increase through buying, spending and accumulating material
wealth. They believe the only reason they need to work hard and be rich is for
themselves and their immediate families. A genuine hard working individual
works not only to satisfy pleasure of self but to touch humanity with a milk of
human kindness. They focus their earnings on buying pleasurable items like
latest wrist watch, jewelries, cars, clothing etcetera. Why spend millions on
luxuries and you don’t have any single business investment? Why waste money on
vacation now when you know that it can be channeled into a business venture
that could raise the money for vacation and other pleasure later.
6.
Develop investment mentality: This is
the mindset that dwells on multiplication of all that one has through multiple
streams of investment channels. It is concerned with the acquisition of assets
instead of liabilities. The ideology where your money work for you instead of
working for money. We are in a generation where many youths are carried away
with diverse technology particularly the innovation in mobile phones. Many
youngsters get carried away with the fanciful technology without any
consciousness for investment. You can buy the latest Smartphone until the next
big technology shows up but you cannot buy the latest shares or investment that
will take care of your future. There is nothing wrong in buying big phones but
as a hard working and investment conscious youngsters your investment comes
first before any other pleasurable spending. Consumer mentality will use all
their hard earned salary to buy Smartphone but investment conscious youngster
will use their income to buy asset (something that puts money into their pockets,
these asset gives them returns and the profit buys liabilities) but the other
teenagers and youths waste their earnings on frivolity. Which one are you;
Investment conscious teen/youth or consumer conscious teen/youth? Investment
conscious youngster is prudent on how he/she uses his/her time, energy,
association, money and talent. What have you been doing with your time, money,
talent and association? Is it running into investment or running into
liabilities? Your answer may not be far from mine.
7.
Develop your talent and skill into a
professional. We are at a crucial cross road in our nation when emphasis is
shifting from just being an ordinary employee to being a professional in one’s
chosen vocation or career. As a hard working teen/youth you must develop your
capacity in terms of your talent and skills into professional where you become
an authority in your chosen area of calling. Who is a professional? A professional is a member of a profession
(vocation founded upon specialized education and training) it is the standard
of education and training that prepares members of the profession with the
particular knowledge and skill necessary to perform their roles. Being a professional means to be a pilot of
your chosen profession to the point where you become an authority. In every
profession, professionals are well paid because they dictate the pace and mind
of the profession.
As a hard
working youngster you must bear in mind that professionalism is not about going
to school, it is about developing yourself with the ethics, standard and
quality of the profession, attending relevant trainings in the course of doing
your job. It is not about being called an Engineer but in practice through
bringing engineering solution to problems. Having passion for a particular
vocation and not going extra mile to build your capacity as a professional is
tantamount to knowing the job and being underpaid as a technician instead of
engineer.
Everyone should
rise to the task to embrace professionalism in every chosen vocation. Know your
onions well to the point that nobody can ignore your services. Act with clear
sense of direction and conviction that you are in the right vocation to deliver
solutions to the problems of humanity.
HOW DO I BECOME PROFESSIONAL
i. Have
a clear goals and know what you want in life
ii. Write
down your vision and work towards
accomplishing them
iii. Train
to be an expert in your calling.
iv. Work
with people who are smarter and versed than you and humble yourself to learn
from them even if they are your mates
v. Avoid
involving yourself in shady deals that is inimical to your profession
vi. Always
learn to update yourself on your professional ethics and values
vii. Attend
your professional training and courses
viii. Uphold
technical and ethical standard or else you will be thrown out. Every vocation
has its ethics and standard
ix. Control
your private interference from your job. Avoid using your company’s account as
your account, if it is your personal company place yourself on a salary.
x. Be
passionate about your job always. When it comes to working hard to deliver best
result and productivity, professionalism is the surest path.
Remember the
roll call of many great achievers; they were all professionals who focused on
developing a professional mentality. When it comes to professionalism in
business you have Bill Gates and Larry Ellison professionalized in software
development. Aliko Dangote focused his business professionalism on selling and
distribution of commodities, Ray Kroc, Dave Thomas and Carl Linder focused on
fast food, Mary Kay focused on beauty care, Michael Dell and Ted Watt focused
on professionalism in computer hardware, Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani
focused on professionalism on fashion design. Professionalism based on hard work has brought many of these
individuals from nobody to somebody, from mediocrity to authority, from poverty
to prosperity, from zero to hero and today there are being celebrated as global
champions. You too can become another icon to be celebrated. Work hard to be
well known at whatever you are doing.
Agenyi Enyo Monday
