In the previous edition, we looked at how individuals can convert into advantage a debilitating cycle of vision and failure, joblessness, poverty, lack, and want.
We maintained that individuals can break away from such difficult and challenging realities of human existence if appropriate strategies are applied.
We cited the case of a University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) computer science graduate with a second class upper degree who could not get a stable, well paid job seven years after graduation, to the point that he started nurturing negative thoughts.
Through a network of schoolmates he initially avoided, he was connected with a contact in a bank that fetched him a well paid employment. Two additional offers came his way in less than four months from another bank and an oil company with more robust packages.
American inventor and businessman, Thomas Edison, lost a valuable record of his experiments and equipment worth over $2 million in a fire incident at his New Jersey laboratory in 1914 when he was barely 16.
Unruffled by the devastating damage, the inventor of electric light bulb, motion picture camera, and many other devices that greatly influenced life around the world, said: “There’s great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burnt up; thank God we can start anew.”
Edison was a poor student. When a schoolmaster called him “addled”, his furious mother took him out of the school and taught him at home.
“My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had someone to live for, someone I must not disappoint,” Edison said many years later.
At an early age, Edison showed a fascination for mechanical things and chemical experiments.
Around the age of 12, he lost almost all his hearing but did not let his disability discourage him. Instead, he treated it as an asset, since it made it easier for him to concentrate on experiments and research.
Henry Ford, another American industrialist and founder of the Ford Motor Company, was once asked what he would do if he lost all his possession. Without mincing words, he said he would be a millionaire again in five years. How? Ford said he would think up another fundamental human need and meet it by offering a cheaper and more effective service than anybody else.
There are practical strategies one can apply to convert adverse situations to an advantage.
Be informed
It is important to know what is going on around your economic environment, your industry, and your community. Knowing this much will enable you make the right moves to success.
Keep clued-in
There is an all important clue from your heart, call it the still small voice, which keeps coming to you in times of challenge. You may do better to consider this innermost prompting that embodies your aspirations, motivations, strengths and weaknesses.
This may spring up new direction in your heart and lead you to breakthrough.
Keep connected
Networking is a powerful and valuable tool that connects you to your ultimate success just as it did for the graduate in our illustration. For every breakthrough, there is an indispensable element of networking.
Meeting people does not only provide tangible help but also helps to clarify your thinking, providing perspective and a positive approach to issues.
Keep learning
Learning does not stop. It has to continue for one to be marketable. Learn new skills, facts, technologies and innovations if only to stay marketable, particularly, in times of joblessness.
As you learn, activate your creative ability. That is the evidence you need to prove that you are outstanding and can make a difference.
Keep away from draining influences
Certain influences may jeopardise your chances of hitting the much needed breakthrough. Avoid such influences with the potential to keep you low. Identify such influences for what they are and keep them at bay.
Keep moving
Despite debilitating influence and the constant threat of nothingness pulling you to a standstill, it will amount to self-annihilation if you resign to fate.
Keep moving, be appropriately connected and, above all, keep the all-important faith in God.
