Stop Looking for Jobs!

It took me 20 years of working from one place to another to realize that you can never be financially free if you remain an employee.  For shock effect, let me give you an idea of what I am talking about.  I started out working at a very young age of 15.  All of my educational pursuits after my High School was done on part time basis.  By the time I was 22, I had reached the first basic base of Higher National Diploma (HND) almost at par with a B.Sc. from a University. 

As far as I was concerned, the world was at my feet.  I was a senior staff at a multi-national company; Personnel Officer with many pecks.  A few years later, I was poached by a bank and I ended up in the banking industry for 8 years.  By the time I had logged in 20 years of hard labour working from age 15, I did an average check of my total income - all time.  Guess what it came up to: N2,700,000.00 (Nigerian Currency) and in US dollars it came up to $17,647.00!  That was what I was working 8 hours daily and over 40 hours weekly in 20 years!  I looked myself in the mirror and felt sorry for the person I saw standing there.  How was I ever going to become financially free?  At that point, I knew the best thing to do was to quit the job and use my skill set (and I have them in quantum) to create multiple streams of income.

I took a look at myself and I discovered I could write professionally (I had published 3 books and edited tons of publications for other outfits), I had the capacity to train people in management and leadership, I could speak, I have organizing skills and could become an event manager; I am a whizkid on the keyboard - I type more than 100 words per minute - that is a skill set all in a class of its own.  I had over the years acquired skills for professional proposal writing, feasibility studies and general consultancy on how to erect and manage a business.

These were enough to get me started and the first attempt I made at earning income was a consultancy job with a Church.  I was already an ordained minister and it was easy for me to fit into the system.  I had the task of starting their leadership institute and run it in its first few streams; it was done and I was on a monthly allowance for 12 months - the duration of the contract.  During this period, I maintained a client base for training, freelance writing and media consultancy - having also a skill in broadcasting.  By the time I was through with the Church contract, I found another stream of income to develop - eCommerce.  This is a whole world waiting to exploited in our climes and millionaires are being made in their numbers in the Western world.  I am at the moment positioning myself with relevant knowledge in this area.  

Why for heaven's sake should I look for a job again?  I didn't need a capital to do all these.  The best capital I had was the skill set I had developed over the years while working with the different organizations.  While I was an employee, I went beyond my call of duty because I had an inkling that one day I was going to be off the employee status and run my own show.  This made me a valuable employee even though it did not attract rapid promotions.  But wherever I had worked, I left a footprint and a vacuum that is difficult to fill.

Are you a graduate fresh from school?  Don't dream of climbing a corporate ladder, think of building a ladder yourself!  The beginning may be daunting and hard, but would you prefer the comfort zone of a salaried job than a future where you determine when you wake up and when you go on vacation?  Think of the future and pay the needed price today.  Are you an employee slaving it out for someone else?  It is time to put an exit date on the calendar.  

No nation's economy is ever built around salaried employment, but on the strength of the small and medium scale enterprises of that nation.  The GDP of every nation is predicated on the amount of entrepreneurial activities in the country.  Yes, we all cannot be business owners at the same time, but we must aim to own our lives eventually and employ others too.  Make that move today!

Keep Moving!

          It has been observed that a moving train is hardly stoppable by any external force.  However, the train standing still at the station can be prevented from moving if an object is placed in front of the iron steel wheels on the track.  This should teach us that it takes so much energy to get started but very little energy is required to keep moving.

          A lot of people are afraid of keeping a consistent pace because they cannot have the benefit of seeing beyond the next bend.  As a result, they stay in one place to contemplate, consider, analyze and procrastinate.  The journey of life is not like someone who has been to that future you intend to go and then comes back to give you an idea or a clue as to what you should expect.  You might have to stumble into a lot of discoveries yourself.  You have to necessarily discover some things for yourself since your purpose for life is unique and different.  Being scared of moving for not knowing what lies ahead is therefore a journey that may never be taken.  I once heard someone say that “over-analysis causes paralysis”.  

          In the living of a goal-oriented life, you must keep moving even though you might not say for certain what lies ahead.  You might have a clue but you may never be totally sure.  Most of your walk must therefore be by faith in the God in whom you trust and in the reality of what you seek to achieve.

          Sometime in the summer of 2007, I embarked on a journey of 1,550 kilometers to cover Abuja-Makurdi-Kano-Abuja in just two days.  My schedule was to get to Makurdi from Abuja on Saturday morning to visit my father who was bedridden after a minor surgery, speak to a students’ body at the Benue State University for 2 hours and see my siblings in my family house in the same town before hitting the road for Kano the same day.  I left Abuja on schedule and got to Makurdi at 9.15 am.  I sat for half an hour with my dad in the hospital and headed for the family house and spent only 30 minutes there.  I drove to the University campus and spoke from 11.45 to 1.30 pm.  Had a whistle stop over at the hospital to tell my dad I was on my way and eventually left Makurdi at 3.30 pm.  My destination was Kano, nearly 800 kilometers away.

          By the time I arrived Akwanga, a town in Nassarawa State, just 170 kilometers from Makurdi, the car developed a major mechanical problem.  The water pump was leaking, but I never knew what was happening as the temperature kept rising.  I had to keep a jerry can of water in the car to constantly refill the empty radiator.  The speed at which I was travelling had to drop to avoid over-heating the engine.  But I kept moving – even against the advice of a concerned Road Safety Officer who upon learning that I was heading for Kano advised that I pass the night in Akwanga.  The time at this point was 6.00 pm.

          Sensing that traveling through the thick forest road of Southern Kaduna would be disastrous if the car eventually stopped in the middle of nowhere, I decided to take the Jos route and entered Jos, Plateau State in Central Nigeria  at 10 pm.  

          At Jos, comfort zone sense demanded that I pass the night in that city and continue the journey the next day but purpose sense said, “keep moving”.  I had to travel through the lonely Jos-Kano road between 10.25 pm and 2.15 am when I eventually arrived Kano.  If you are familiar with the Jos-Kano trunk road in Nigeria, you may remember the famous Falgori forest known for high profile robberies and stray wild beasts straying from the Yankari Game Reserve just across the border in Bauchi State.  I had to go through tens of check points mounted by security forces to achieve my dream of entering Kano that night.  All these happened because I refused to stop but kept moving.

          You will get to your dream place in life faster than you anticipate if you keep momentum.  Refuse to give up; don’t give in; don’t give out; keep moving towards your goal.

          There is no doubt that you are going to face obstacles, but no barrier is powerful enough to stop a determined and purpose oriented individual.  The force of purpose brought under a determined and focused person will always prevail over any barrier put in front of it.

          Are you being harassed and intimidated?  Keep moving.  Do you have men talking down on you?  Keep moving.  Refuse to get distracted.  Is your business up against some strange attacks by competitors?  Keep moving.  The intention of all these distractive activities are all geared towards making you to abort your journey, but if you keep moving, sooner or later, you will become a celebrated icon and we all shall begin to call you a celebrity.

PS:  The piece is a chapter culled from my yet to be released book "BUSY STANDING STILL - getting rid of organized emptiness".  If you require an advanced e-copy of the full book, I can make it available to you at a token amount.  

Kindly send me an email @ goba_ogwuche@yahoo.com and I will supply you with the payment details you need to make to obtain a full version of BUSY STANDING STILL. 

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Mind Your Business!

People can really be nosy about other people's business!  It can be so annoying to have people who have no single idea of who you are make statements about you like they have some license from some authorities to speak on your person.  How can you seat in your own house and begin to make laws as to how another person in his own house should live his life?  Who made you the judge?  You may be wondering why I am fuming this much... well, I am very crossed with the way I have seen people pock their noses in the business of fellow human beings.  

For God's sake, shut up if you have no details about the life of anyone.  If you mind your business, you will have less headache.  I am serious... many people fall sick for other people when those for whom they are concerned are not losing sleep at all.  Everyone is free to live their lives the way they deem fit as long as they do not interfere with yours.  Many of the things you are bothered in others have no direct bearing with how your life should turn out at all.  Shut up!

Nigeria, my country

I am a citizen of a very interesting country.  We are the most populous black nation on the face of the earth.  In the West African bloc of nations, 15 of them - our total population is bigger than 14 of the other nations combined.  Super nation you may call us.  You are right but we are a poor nation with weak societies in every facet.  China has used its population to its advantage, ours is our own albatross.  

Our leaders are a product of our society so we deserve the leadership we get.  We are a bunch of very unambitious people in terms of getting the best.  We are easily satisfied with mediocrity and average living.  Persistence, excellence and consistency are virtues that are scarce.  People live on the basis of survival and if they can afford a meal per day, they go to bed without thinking of tomorrow nor are they bothered about who is dictating the pace of things from the leadership point of view.  We are so religious that is has led us to the point of foolishness.  When we are expected to be calling the shots in terms of our rights, we philosophically say "God dey", meaning, God is watching!  We abdicate our responsibility and leave it on the laps of God.

I want to be a street pastor

What does that mean?  I want to identify with the man on the street.  Yes, he is ignorant and does not know his left from his right... I want to be able to show him the way.  I don't want to be like those who live in mansions (even though I want one) but are not concerned about those who live by the street corners.  Our churches are prospering to the high heavens!  Our pastors are riding the best cars and "efizy" is everywhere in the Church.  We dress fine, eat in the "happening" restaurants and wear flashy super star smiles but we are not doing God's work.  I think God is not happy.  I feel it.  The hungry amongst us are wondering if it is still Church.  When a man walks up to a pastor's office and wants to see the Man of God, we so protect the Man of God from being seen on account of protocol that we "protocolize" the hungry man out of help's way.

Our Churches are "centers of excellence" but the street in front of the Church is flooded and the roads are dilapidated.  We blame the government for not repairing the road but we show no example.  Most of our members are unable to pay their rent and keep their kids in school but when we meet them, we investigate how they come to that pass for over 3 months until the members are tired of being "tried" and they leave us alone.  What a Church!  We want to be on satellite TV but cannot address the simplest needs in our midst.  Is God really happy with us?

How many people are we teaching God's ways?  We select those who sick with us on the altar and make them look very excellent but they are empty in their heads and in their hearts.  They can't even explain simple biblical terms to save a soul and yet we "ordain" them as shepherds!  What has happened to good old Discipleship?  What kind of generation are we breeding?  That is why I want to be a street pastor, possibly with no name or title but one who will do God's bidding and help people find Him!  God help me to be that street pastor to the shattered.

The Ultimate Gifts of Life

You would be giving yourself all sorts of headache if you pre-occupy yourself with the idea of trying to figure out life as a whole.  In actual fact, life is not meant for you to figure out, it is meant to be lived based on the revealed will of Him who kept you here - and that is done on a step by step basis.  If you want a full package of what lies ahead of you all at once, you won't get it.

Many of us enter life with preconceived idea what our parents told us, what we see in our immediate environment and what our friends tell us.  On the basis of this small narrowed idea, we go out with some kind of ambitious boldness and feel like the world and life is all about the "little" we know.  We argue about issues only from the perspective of what we know and without desiring to learn from the perspective of others who are not from our own end of the globe, we end up making a fool of ourselves and making very critical mistakes in decisions that we make.

It is in this vein that I have made up my mind to receive gifts from life on the basis of every experience I have because every season and experience or challenge comes with it it a gift that is so valuable that can't be received from any other medium.  As I pondered over this, I stumbled on a movie that confirmed this concept of gifts of life... and I want to share with you some of these gifts:

1.  The Gift of Work

Life itself operates and revolves around work.   If things must work in your life, you must get down to work.  If you don't, nothing gets done.

2.  The Gift of Money

We must learn how to handle money.  We must be masters of money and not slaves to it.  It should be realized that money is not the ultimate in life and we must not make it so.  Learning to give value we are paid for is and should always be the ultimate.

3.  The Gift of Friends

It is unfortunate that true friends rarely exist.  What we have in excess are acquaintances who relate only on the basis of how convenient it s for them.  When a relationship demands responsibility and becomes costly, people begin to shift base.  We tend to get involved with people on the basis of what we can get from them and not what we can give.  True friends are hard to find but we must make them.  Go out and be a true friend to someone.  If such people have a different mind, they might be changed when they see the unselfish nature we display.

4. The Gift of Love

Everyone wants to be loved and to love.  One way or the other, we have narrowed love to romance.  It is far beyond that.  Love is the essence of God.  Love is about sharing your life with people.  In it is the virtue of giving and being spent for someone whether they are deserving of it or not.  Some kind of warning here though:  to love is not to commit suicide either.  Rewards are not given for suicide.  Balance is applicable.

5.  The Gift of Problems

In life we face all kinds of challenges.  There are problems everywhere.  People are facing them daily.  Problems are not palatable.  Nobody wants to face them but they are gifts.  We learn from them.  When we overcome, we become better people.  Welcome them as gifts.

These are some of the few gifts of life that can make us better people and cause us to life more fulfilled life.  Maturity comes when we welcome these gifts and use them.

OWN YOUR OWN LIFE!

Today, I am inspired to speak to you about how you can actually own your life and be free from the encumbrances of trying to be what others want you to be.  One of the greatest undoing of our generation is people who want you to be what they figure you should be.

They look at you, size you up and come up with a verdict that you cannot go beyond certain limits.  That is a lie from the pit of hell.  For many people who respect those who pass such verdicts on them and they have not attained a measure of independent thinking and living yet; this piece is for you.  If you are afraid to break free from the bounds of such blockade that keeps you tied to the apron strings of people who think they own your life for you, you must pay attention here.

You are the ultimate decider of what happens in your life

At birth, between infancy and when we attain the age of accountability, decisions are made for us by our parents, guardians, school teachers and tutors.  By the time we cross the threshold of 18 years and above, our decision really should count.  In sub-Saharan Africa, you find a 40 year old man still hovering around his father's house waiting to be told what to do!  That is madness with a new coloration to it.  When are you going to be the driver in your destiny?

Many times, we tend to confuse respect with responsibility.  I will respect you but I will not allow your opinion to overrule my destination - that is my personal responsibility.  You may make suggestions and I will listen to counsel but the ultimate decision is mine!  

Many destinies have been ruined by people who left decision making of crucial issues in their lives to people they claim to respect.  It happens all the time; someone has to tell you what profession to go into, what course to read in school and who to marry - without taking your own personal uniqueness into consideration.  I believe an individual must be taught sound principles and be left to apply those principles in his life as he or she deems fit based on such person's individual uniqueness and personal drive in life.

In the next couple of days, I will take some time out to examine some critical areas of an individual's life that destiny decisions are critical and how it should not be left at the hands of others no matter how much you respect them.  I shall also be sharing some personal experiences and how I eventually broke lose from such malady and now own my life with God as my ultimate guide.

Keep a date with me.