No be curse o, na true!

Ok so this is a mini rant. To who it may concern (including me!)

If you failed in the pure water business, you see your neighbour selling Coke and proceed to empty your storehouse and fill it up with Coke. You haven’t asked the most important question. Why did the pure water business fail into the first place? One would argue that everyone drinks Coke, Coke sells, Coke is a strong brand. Well what about water? We all need to drink it don’t we? In that case you cannot tell me that the product was the problem. So what went wrong? You most definitely will not succeed in this business either, except by some divine intervention you decide to look at your process one step at a time and objectively pick out what your weaknesses were. If not, prepare to close shop! No be curse o, na true!

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You can call your frozen fish company Alleluia! Fisheries, or your garri mill, Success Is Mine Mills. If your fish are below par, rotten or of questionable quality in any way and your garri is half dried and full of stones, you are going down! The only people that will buy stuff from you are those who feel one thing –pity! Please I beg of you, don’t hinge the success of your product on your name alone. Look at the names that currently rock the world, Apple, Virgin, Trump! Does that give you a clue? The brand makes the name what it is, not the other way round. No be curse o, na true! (Let me state that I have nothing against these names and they are entirely fictional and were not intended to vilify any company or business in any way. These were purely for illustration purposes)

If you complain that your thighs are fat, your tummy is round, your feet smell, your arms are flabby and you haven’t done anything consistently over time to change it. Please save us the drama. You don’t really want slimmer thighs, a flat tummy, sweet smelling feet or toned arms. If you did, you would have got it by now. Forget the evil genes we all blame before we've done 10 reps of sit ups. You don't have it because you don't want it. If you don’t believe me picture how you methodically planned to buy those red stilettos even though you knew there was no kobo in your pocket. You didn’t have all it took to get it but that didn’t stop you did it? But because you didn’t have Nike trainers, joggers that matched and a pretty headband, you can’t be caught dead in scraggy gym wear and you therefore couldn’t go to the gym. Exactly! No be curse o, na true!

If you want a job, I mean if you really want a job, you will most definitely get one. Before you get angry, just picture this: have you stopped to ask why you don’t have a job? I remember an interview many moons ago with a customer service company; we had been discussing informally and then the question came – ‘How many customer service trainings have you attended?’ I must have mumbled something like...’errrr, not very many of them’. In my mind I was fuming, it was more like ‘errr.... sweety if I had attended those trainings I wouldn’t be here, isn’t that what we do when we get the job? Why would I go training myself with money I don’t have?’ The guy smiled at me and said; ‘if you really want it, you will find a way’. I thought yea right; same old same old. You just didn’t want to give me the job in the first place. But then again, to be honest with you, I didn’t really want it. If I did, I would have been way more prepared. 

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We set ourselves up from the start. You want to work in HR but you haven’t read any HR books or even considered attending a departmental seminar on HR processes or written to a journal to get some copies online for a reduced fee. We are always looking for how to receive. We keep waiting and waiting and waiting for someone to give us a job. Endlessly waiting, even though we know that with each year we wait the competition for the positions we vie for doubles, triples and quadruples in size. I am not talking about amassing certificates and walking around pumped up but clueless. I am talking about finding out what’s really important. Is it really that terrible to think of volunteering, or making something to pitch to a company as a supplier, or helping out in a company on a part time basis while you equip yourself with the skills you need to get where you want to go? Not everyone would agree. There’s no power, the roads are bad, cost of living is high, people are suffering, employers are wicked, politicians are looting and in fact this is modern day slave trade! Call it what you want, but humans are very perceptive. If you come into a place begging to be given or go into a place willing to give, I can bet your guess is as good as mine on who we think will be favoured. Work on moving from being 'unemployed' to being 'employable'. Employers are human; they want assets, not liabilities. No be curse o, na true!

So first things first; where do you want to go? It sounds like the most elementary question but I have discovered that most of us really don’t know. I mean, we think we do until we are asked point blank. Where do you want to go? 

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If you can’t answer that question you can’t visualise it. If you can’t visualise it, you can’t internalise it. If you can’t internalise it, you can’t plan towards it and every change in the direction of the wind will change your life’s path. For as long as you don’t know what you want, there will be many people who will take over, channelling their life aspirations through you. Then you wake up at forty and realise you had been living someone else’s dream. No be curse o, na true!