The price of Success
There was this sage in our family that had the skills to combine various leaves and get results. You might call him a native doctor or traditional medicine practitioner. Some even believed that he was a rain maker. As the custom was in the traditional setting of Iyah-Gbede back then, we processed garri at the rock site so his help was sought to ‘hold’ the rain while women fried their gari.
Then came an unserious cousin of mine was always playing truancy in the village secondary school. She approached Baba Pharmacist for ‘soye’. Soye is the trado medicine believed to give an edge to a student especially dull ones in an exam situation. It makes them pass effortlessly. As my cousin approached Baba, she was shocked by Baba’s response. Hear him, “I don’t do soye for unserious students.” As the years unfolds remember the words of Lester Sumrall, “God cannot bless ignorance, He can only bless intelligence.”
Success comes at a price. You may stumble on many things in life but success isn’t one of them. The problem is that; those who stumble on it never sustains it. It take preparation and diligence to make and keep success.
Whether you call it hard work or smart work, there is an amount of commitment that guarantees proven results. It is needless to say that there is dignity in labour. Therefore the journey to success cannot exclude labour.
But just as the labour of fools wearies them, a person that must labour must have an idea of what to do and how to go about it. Hence, vision is paramount to success. State the aim for which you need to work hard. Is it to make money? Or to impact more lives through goods and services? State the vision.
Then draw up the means of attaining the vision. What are the resources available around you that are free or will cost less? Even if it costs much, so long they will give you the desired result, explore them.
Never be afraid of routines. Life is a combination of routine and creative duties. Certain things require consistent and repetitive engagement to make a habit of them. In fact, success is not an event. It is a habit. You cultivate it through routine duties that are carried out excellently.