Influence and lead yourself first

ATTITUDE

MY FIRST PAID UP JOB

It was in 2003 when I completed my high school (grade 12) and while waiting for final results, I joined my brother in the capital city of Zambia –Lusaka. It was actually my first time to come to Lusaka and since I had all the times, I gave myself a tour of the city and first place to visit was the University of Zambia as it was my dream to study at the highest Institution of learning in Zambia. After sometimes, I started selling groceries at small business called “Katemba” along Tito road in Rhodespark. I would woke up as early a 06:00am to open the “katemba” so that I capture those buying bread, sugar and milk for their breakfast. I did this for some time and while selling I would be reading books and my favorite was “Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren. After sometime, I encouraged myself to look for a part time job so that I could raise some funds to start preparing for my college /University life and just to buy myself clothes and shoes. After failed attempts of applying for jobs due to non-availability of vacancies especially that I had not even obtained my grade 12 results, it was difficult to land on a job even in industries. One blessed time, I finally got a job in a restaurant owned by some foreign Investors as a Waiter/Cleaner.

My job responsibilities were cleaning, mopping the floor, arranging tables, serve people, remove dirty dishes and glasses from tables, then take them to the kitchen for cleaning, offloading food from the truck during deliveries and others as assigned. We used to work from 09:00am to 10:00pm everyday including Sundays and my monthly salary was K90 (old currency). Ooh yes, below even the minimum wage for those who believe in minimum wages but one thing I liked was meeting new people every day and most of them used to encourage to go school and I used to enjoy different meals. My salary off course was peanut but I was saving it and I used to receive some tips more than even my salary.

I worked there for some months and my high school results came out. By then I had saved some monies to buy myself a bus ticket to Kasama, buy some clothes and gifts for mother. When I requested for few days off to enable travel to my former school-Mungwi Technical, my supervisor refused and gave me two choices, to go and get fired or not to go and keep my job. I looked at him and told him, that, “this was not my destination or final job, it was just a passing phase, I needed to get my results and apply to College/University.” However, despite pleading with him, he was adamant and therefore I chose to quit and left to collect my results. By the grace of God, I had passed well and got accepted at the University of Zambia under Government Bursary.

Years later, I decided to take my fiancé to have ice cream in the same restaurant and coincidently found my former workmates and same supervisor who looked surprised because by then I had graduated and working for a prestigious Bank. I told my fiancé that, some 4 years ago, I used to clean these tables, clean every droplet of food stuff on the floor and today is a different story.

I share this real life experience so that we can learn something:

¨       You are not defined by your prevailing circumstances

¨       You should follow what is best for you willfully

¨       Tough times are not permanent unless you permit them

¨       Life is full of choices, choose wisely

¨       Don’t ever despise small beginnings

¨       Don’t ever look down at people

¨       Use you time wisely and productively, find something to do e.g. voluntary work, read books

¨       Don’t permit anyone to hinder your progress

¨       Refuse to be stagnate or settling for anything

¨       Not everyone will support your dreams and visions

¨       Always Encourage and believe in yourself

¨      To be a champion you have to win some battles especially the battle of the mind

¨   There is time to serve and time to be served

¨       Above all, trust in God because He is always faithful

“If you can’t believe in miracles, then believe in yourself. When you want something bad enough, let that drive push you to make it happen. Sometimes you’ll run into brick walls that are put there to test you. Find a way around them and stay focused on your dream. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” ---Isabel Lopez

“So many people will tell you “no”, and you need to find something you believe in so hard that you just smile and tell them “watch me”. Learn to take rejection as motivation to prove people wrong. Be unstoppable. Refuse to give up, no matter what. It’s the best skill you can ever learn.” ― Charlotte Eriksson

God bless you!!

You are your choices by BMC

THE POWER OF YOUR CHOICES

Personal development legend Jim Rohn said , "if the idea to change ourselves makes us uncomfortable, we can remain as we are. We can choose rest over labour , entertainment over education , delusion over truth and doubt over confidence .The choices are ours to make . But while we curse the effect (the outcome ) , we continue to nourish the cause ( i.e we are the ones fueling  the cause of that outcome )". The fact of the matter  is that we all make choices , good or bad . If I may ask, how many choices have you  made today? If you list them they will be quite a number from the food you chose to eat , the movies you chose to watch , the music you listened to just to mention a few . Believe it or not you have astonishing power to make choices each day such as the :

Power to choose encouragment over discouragement
Power to choose self motivation over self pity
Power to choose action over mere talking
Power to choose investment over consumption

Power to choose right friends over bad company
Power to choose to invest in knowledge over laziness
Power to choose hard work over laziness
Power to offer compliment over unobjective criticisms
Power to choose to be productive over inproductive

The important thing is that we all have the power within us to make such choices which should help us become better human beings. The power of choice is a gift from God and it's up to you to
 choosewisely . It is said by Catherine Pulsifer that, "life presents many choices, the choices we make determine our future." This is true because the choices we make ultimately influence our decisions and these decisions determines our future or the ultimate output . For instance, if you consciously or unconsciously choose laziness over hardworking , the results of such would include lacking which will bring about poverty and other hardship. Equally, if a student choose to study hard , the results will show . If you decide to be lazy to work in this performance driven work culture , your job will be terminated and you will give visa to poverty and economic hardships in your life. If you choose to ignore the speed limit , police will arrest you or may end up causing accidents . If you to choose to steal company property , you be caught , charged and end up losing your job , perhaps even jailed . 

The important thing to remember when making such choices is to ask whether that will help you to achieve your goal , whether that is a priority or not . Ask yourself whether that choice you are making is important to your life goals . If you make that choice today, what will it mean for your tomorrow , your next month , your next year? 

Consider an intern who chooses to work for free to gain experience and another one who choose to remain at home till when he gets a full time job. All these two have their rights to make choices but
a wise choice would be to invest in gaining experience even if it's for free or no monthly allowance. I have seen interns who maximised their time , demonstrated good attitude , worked hard and ended up having full time jobs .

Consider a business man who after making some profits in his business venture decides to spend his profit on big luxury cars , holidays abroad etc and one who choose to reinvest the profit and gain more market shares . Believe me or not , the one who chose to spend his profit on consumption will end up not growing his business and risk liquidation . I have seen some close friends and relatives who chose  early gratifications , consumption and ended up selling their possessions to make money for rentals when they could have built their own houses instead of spending on luxury holidays . Holidays are off course important but you have to make wise choices at right times .

While growing up in a village I recall good friends, I used to school with at the same school in the same classroom and some chose not to study but other bad vises and later on dropped out of school , chose early marriages and unproductive lives. When I recently visited my village to bury my grandfather , I met few of them in a sorry state , asking for monies from me that life was tough in the village.I honestly I felt bad because these guys had potential to excel but they chose a different root and the results not desirable . 

Friends , each of one of us encounters difficult times, hardships , headaches , hurt feelings , physical and emotional pains and this is not what matters but how you choose to respond to them matters most .You  have the choice to program your mind for victory , for making wise choices because ultimately whatever you  choose to put into it (mind programming ) will be reflected in outputs.

The power of your choice affects you destiny. It may seem  hard to choose right over wrong but the rewards of wise choices are far much better than the consequences of bad choices. Remember that

you do have a choice . And like the legend Jim Rohn had put it , "Each of us has two distinct choices to make about what we will do with our lives. The first choice we can make is to be less than we have the capacity to be. To earn less. To have less. To read less and think less. To try less and discipline ourselves less. These are the choices that lead to an empty life. These are the choices that, once made, lead to a life of constant apprehension instead of a life of wondrous anticipation And the second choice? To do it all! To become all that we can possibly be. To read every book that we possibly can. To earn as much as we possibly can. To give and share as much as we possibly can. To strive and produce and accomplish as much as we possibly can."

Some Inspirational quotes from Jim Rohn:😊

"Days are expensive. When you spend a day , you have one less day to spend. So make sure you
  spend each day wisely."

"We must all suffer one of two things:the pain of discipline or the pain of regret."

"You cannot make progress without making decisions,"


God bless you!

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