Did you know? Successful people create their own LUCK!

By H.T. Mbindi
Don’t hope to be successful prepare for it

If you want to build a successful career and be successful in life you just have to do what it takes; put in hours and effort that will enable you to create opportunities and conditions that bring both luck and good outcomes. The great historian Arnold Tonybee coined the saying “nothing fails like success” to explain that when a challenge in life is met by a response that is equal to it, the result is success.

You may ask how many hours of effort are needed to become successful in every endeavours of your life. Highly acclaimed author and speaker Malcolm Gladwell said you need about 20 hours of practice per week before you become an expert at something. The author of the book Outliers said The Beatles amassed more than 10 000 hours playing time at clubs in Hamburg before returning to the UK where they got their ‘lucky break’. Bill Gates hit the 10 000 mark after he gained access to his school’s computer and before he got lucky with Microsoft.

There are so many such examples that include our own famous Strive Masiyiwa. Such people work and work and work for long hours with so much focused efforts. Through that they create opportunities for luck. They do so over the years. It’s not an event where you go to the bet hall and use your luck to get to the top. NO. Instead of working hard and for long hours many of us put excuses such as my parents and background was this or that, I dropped out of school because of this man who impregnated me, I did not get school fees and a whole lot of energy supping explanations. So what?

Know and develop your unique abilities
Whether you are leading, managing or just looking to move up to the next level, you need to have personal insight about your unique abilities. These days one of the biggest challenges that I hear people talking about is getting everything done in the time they have available. That as it may be very few takes time to invest their time wisely. This might seem blindingly obvious but, in my experience, not something that people do necessarily.

Action towards success
In simple terms, it takes yourself to become the best you want to become. Unless and until you take action, you can become the worst hence stay disappointed through your working life. To take your career to the next level often involves moving from your current to the desired. It means you need to become uncomfortable with your current situation and circumstances.

You need to be unhappy with your current salary and avoid waiting for collective bargain negotiations results. Instead make tough decisions and forgo the comfort zone. Do some serious soul searching and take up challenges. This could mean being away from your family for long periods. It could mean leaving your current job and using your meagre savings to improve yourself. It could mean working at night and studying during the day. Or vice versa. It could mean doing online lessons. All this require lots of commitment. Lots of sacrifice and often family support.

With or without O levels, with good A level passes and you could be having a good first degree you need to transcend boundaries to get to a level the Buddhists call the ‘middle way’. This is a higher level like the apex of a triangle.

Hope is not a strategy
People like companies experience recession. To survive recession companies employ a number of strategies. Equally as an individual you need to strategize about how you want to live your life. You must desire to live a quality life. Aim to live life well. To do so you need to work and work harder. Proverbs 14:4 says, “The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied” Proverbs 14:23 “In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.” In life people are driven by success not despondence, not wailing, not despair and hopelessness.

Be transformed
You can only be transformed if you engage in dialogues or conversations that allow for creative thinking hence solutions to emerge. You become transformed if your conversations allow for powerful bonding be it at family, work and even church level. Such an approach would move you away from badmouthing as a response to social pressures to a realisation that transformation become possible when you learn and keep learning as if you live forever.

One sure way of getting transformed is by avoiding lazy excuses. Instead quickly appreciate that there are no short-cut to the top. You just have to work hard and avoid fearing failure. Take serious note that in life we learn from our mistakes. Also take that successful people only appear on your radar once they achieved their success. You don’t know how and what they did in the background to get that far. In the background they had the resolve similar to that of footballer Cristiano Ronaldo. This player’s resolve and determination caused Sir Alex Ferguson to recognise him.

The lesson is that those who reach the pinnacle of their profession do so by toiling relentlessly behind the scenes over the years. So if you want to match their achievements you just have to accept that there are no short-cut to the top.

Do not mislead yourself into thinking simply having talent is enough

You will need to match your talent with hard-work and ambition if you are to progress to the top of your chosen career. Yes we explain a person who get to the top by winning a lottery as lucky but when it comes to explaining success in your or someone’s career be assured hard work was the biggest contributing factor.

Seek guidance. Get counselling
New jobs are emerging, so are new careers as well as new working formats and styles. There are lots of shifts in almost every economic sector. So, you need to move from the reductionist way of looking at things to an approach that allows you to accept that things have become complex. One sure way is by seeking career guidance and counselling and ultimately exercise reflection so that you are able to watch, listen, think and talk. Don’t talk first and think later as such an approach would never allow you to make things happen.

Many people make the mistake of assuming they know themselves and what they as well as how they want things.

Truth is very few really do. I trust you have wandered why people in positions to give assistance to people are difficult, tense, unfriendly and unapproachable. Then you say my goodness why then is he in that role? You need someone to help you develop a good understanding of your interest, those things that energizes you, that make you tick. Such a person can help you understand your attributes. Understand the values that influence your decision making in life? Your teachers, your pastors, sometimes your mom and dad can do so spot-on. But getting the help of trained counsellors isn’t a bad idea either!

Companies are still advertising for jobs
The job market has changed dramatically. When I started out in my career in 1990 things were very different. Jobs were usually advertised in newspapers or professional journals. Most of these were weekly or monthly publications.

We now live in a 24/7 world. Recruiters can publish vacancies around the clock. There are multiple channels that they can use.

Employers want employees with relevant skills to handle the job. They want employees who can contribute something to their company and enable the company to successfully achieve its objectives. Employers want to know if you take pride in your work. Let there be evidence that you care for your job.

This article is prepared and presented in the interest of providing free career guidance and counselling to all people who value education and training as a critical cornerstone to success in life. Trust Academy invites all people, with or without O levels as well as degree holders who have a dilemma or are unsure of what career path to pursue to visit their offices on number 52 FORT STREET between 3rd and 4th avenue for FREE career guidance. Alternatively, WhatsApp Herbert 0773 616 665/0712212179