Motivational

Hardwork

By Judith Dandison

'Julie, you have always been the luckiest amongst the two of us' says Janet. Juliet turns and stares at Janet with a look of surprise. 'Look at you, you are a success. I can't even believe we were born by the same parents', Janet continues. Juliet smiles calmly and says, 'I am not born luckier than you, I worked and sweated. I prepared myself to be ready and able to use any opportunities that showed up my way'.

Janet and Juliet were born 2 years apart to Mr and Mrs Stevens. Mr. Stevens died when Janet was 15 years old and Juliet 13. Their mother became sickly thereafter and couldn't do much for them financial. Two years after their father's death, she informed then they had to quit school as she couldn't meet up with their tuition.

The two girls were devastated. After two days of mulling Juliet decided it was in her hands to fight for her future. She decided to stop pitying herself and to take control of her life. While Janet on her side was angry at the whole world, angry at her father for bringing her into the world without her choice and then dying and leaving her desolate. Oh, most of all, she was angry at her mother for not breaking her back to she that she had good education like her friends.


What did they do? Juliet picked up a job to enable her go to school and she worked HARD. She knew that it was up to her to make a better future for herself and her sickly mom. Janet also picked up a Job but was laid off within one week because she was always late to work and was lousy at the Job. She took up another job as a baby sitter but was sacked on the third day when her employer caught her in bed with her eldest son.Seven years down the line, Juliet from her sheer hard work and determination and her decision to take control of her life holds a good post in an advertising company while Juliet is Jobless, living in her mother's house with a son she had with a married man and saying to anyone that cares to listen to her, that she has been unlucky all her life.

Unfortunately it is not luck that has made her unsuccessful in life so far but her ardent refusal to accept responsibility for her life. As Les Brown put it, 'Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else'. So get up and take hold of your life. Nobody is luckier than you. The decision to be successful is a decision you have to make by yourself and believe in yourself that you can do it. As Ray Kroc put it, "Luck is a dividend of sweat, the more you sweat the luckier you get".

So, if you don't prepare yourself, you will be handicapped to use an opportunity even where it stares you in the face.

 Juicy Challenges 

J. N. C. Dandison

A footballer has a major problem. He has the difficult challenge of working with his teammates to plan, tackle, run and get the rolling ball into the opponent's net within a limited time. This problem in a football game is not seen by the footballer and the spectators as a problem. Instead it is viewed as a challenge that creates massive enjoyment for him and the spectators.

This is why I tend to see the everyday problems in one's life, not as problems, but as challenges that must be undertaken, as of necessity, to give birth to beauty.

However, unlike a footballer taking up the challenge of playing the game of football with a broad smile on his face, most times we as humans may not be able to take up life challenges with broad smiles on our faces. For instance, in life, a heavily pregnant woman who is very zealous to see the beautiful face of her unborn child has the onerous task of going through labour and childbirth. I am yet  to see a woman smiling through the pains of Labour and childbirth. She tackles the challenge with a face squeezed up in pains. But once this challenge is tackled by the woman and the health workers, a beautiful creation is brought to life.

We all want the best things in life but the truth is that they come after the preceding problems have been solved. For instance, if we need to communicate with others as young children, we will first have to go through the problem of not knowing how to speak from our mother's womb. All the good things we enjoy today in life, like electricity, refrigerator, medications for the sick, computers, money, internet and even Facebook and much more, came to being when a bold person decided to see the problems they solve, not as problems, but as challenges that must be tackled.

Imagine that you can have anything you wanted, anything at all. I mean where every single person can wish for anything at all, good or evil and it will be his without sweats. I can only imagine what the world would have been. I can only see a world full of lazy, spoilt and insensitive inhabitants and uncontrollable evil.

So welcome, let's see these obstacles thrown at us and the problems presented in life, such as lack of money, lack of education, need for independence, unhappiness, hunger, disabilities and the likes, as challenges which we need and must work on to grow, to conquer and to achieve. Sometimes we may have to try and try again until we score that goal needed to win the game. In life as in a football game, there is no option of quitting but we may restrategize.  With God, nothing is impossible.