Announcement: There will be a Business Opportunity Meeting on Saturday 1pm, 3rd Floor, 71 Allen Avenue, Ikeja Lagos. If you are interested or you want to book a sit for your friends. Send a text to 08034772724. Send the names, and phone numbers. It’s Free this Weekend.
“Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more” – Anthony Robbins.
I have been extremely busy in the last few days, travel, meeting, e.t.c. I’ve been unable to sit down and craft out the thoughts of my heart. I have many pending things to say, and as I write this morning, my heart is being tugged into many directions. I hope I’m able to withstand the temptation of writing 3 articles within the next 2 days J.
I read a story sometime ago, about a young lad who was caught by the police for snatching a wallet with less than $10. He was caught, kept in custody for a while and later arraigned before a juvenile court. When the judge asked him weeks later, why he had stolen the wallet, the young lad replied, “because the world owes me a living”. Apparently he had grown to buy the philosophy freely expressed in his environment. That we did not ask to be in this world, and hence the world owes us a living. Of course if you live in the west, it probably is easier to develop this mind frame, even the way the governments operate, it’s easy for the people to feel they are entitled to somethings. Interestingly however, we who live in the side of the world where our government makes it clear that we are not entitled to anything, still live like we are. We waste our time and energies demanding and hoping for entitlements!
“Too many people think the world owes them a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” – Mark Twain
The world does not owe you, you owe the world. Every civilization you currently enjoy was bought with sweat and blood. Hours of people’s lives, days of people’s sweat and months of people’s blood were shed to construct that road, build that house and invent that gadget. You owe the generations before you for not leaving the world like they met it. You owe all that added value to your life, who added ease to your journey and excitement to your strides. The world doesn’t owe you a living and you have no entitlements. If you want something, you were created with the capacity to go ahead and get it!
“Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will – his personal responsibility.” – Albert Einstein
I once shared with a graduating class of students that asked me to talk about being a 1st class entrepreneur in a 3rd world. I explained to them that it’s not so bad being 3rd world. Third means that there is first and second ahead of us, and we can learn from their shortcomings and from their successes. The greatest plague that ever hit humanity is not a physical disease, it’s a mind disease. Once you resign yourself to fate, and assume that you’ll get what you want because the world owes you, you have damaged your potentials. Nothing kills initiative and a sense of responsibility faster than the entitlement mentality. The entitlement mentality manifests in different ways. It manifests as HIV (Having Insufficient Vision), STD (Short Term Drive) and LOI (Lack of Initiative. When you think you don’t need to give anything to get what you want, you set up yourself for sure failure. America today is groaning under the burdens of social security and “basic minimum benefits”. The demands of the “basic minimum benefit” to Americans puts an annual burden of $1.5trillion on their government, and the social security system is expected to crash latest by 2041 with a lifespan of 50yrs. Whatever system we create that makes us sell people entitlements will only hurt them in the long run.
The world does not owe you a living! The world however owes you chance. A chance to try, a chance to venture, a chance to know, a chance to succeed, a chance to use your talents, a chance to leverage on your relationships. Just chance! That’s all you and I get. Interestingly however, that chance is good enough. The first leap an entrepreneur makes off the level of an employee, is coming to understand that he would earn nothing, if he does nothing. When you become enlightened to the reality, that even if you are on salary, you are really not entitled to what you don’t earn, you take the opportunities you have more seriously. Your eyes open to new possibilities, and the parts of the human brain that God locked up from people who don’t need it, gets opened for you. We don’t all start off in life equal, our backgrounds, our families, our talents, skills, privileges and all differentiate us. There is one thing we all have in common however – time. In that time is our chance, and how we spend or invest it, is what defines what we get out of life.
You want to be knowledgeable, go ahead and read! You want to be wealthy, go for opportunities. You want to be wise, walk with the wise. The bush rabbit isn’t going to run through the forest maze, hit it’s way to town, make it’s journey to your house, burn it’s fur over fire and make it’s way to your cooking pot. When that kind of scenario presents itself to you, you are being set up. Run! Just like the law of gravity, there are other laws that govern this operation of this world. Your awareness of how they work, does not alter their function. They work wether you know it or not, and one of such laws clearly demonstrates, that to get anything you must give something. It’s called the law of sowing and reaping. Everything that is happening to you today, is harvest for certain seeds you have sown. What will happen to you tomorrow is harvest for the seeds you are sowing today.
Let’s stop expecting opportunities to fall on our laps, let’s place our laps where opportunities are falling. Everything you have worked for, everything you have made moves for, everything you truly desire and deserve is heading your way today, but you need to be out there in the field of action to connect it. Today is another chance. Maximize it!
“The greatest thing a man can do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other” – Orison Swett Marden
