Life is a journey full of ups and downs, sometimes you walk on thorns whereas sometimes you hit your breakthrough; become successful. Some people are so unfortunate that they live a miserable life for the rest of their lives, on the other hand some people live happily ever! They never experience tribulations or any kind of struggle. Such people often times become rude, they undermine other people, and they are careless.

 Don’t get me wrong, not all people are like that. You can find a cheese boy or girl or a rich person that is so humane, there are people who are like that in this life. That is a small analogy of this journey called life, it can be daunting and disappointing at times.

In the past, I kind of experienced a tough life; I walked on thorns. I was rejected by people I never thought they would. If I didn’t know better, I would have called anybody who can say life is a bitch “crazy.” There was a time in life whereby I felt lost; I didn’t see the need to go on living.

 Almost all my life I lived a clean life, I felt for other people, I showered people with love, and I also served the Lord Almighty whole heartedly. Whenever I took a look at my past life, I felt angry and demoralised. I did almost everything right, but there was nothing going right for me, that hurt like hell!

I have never been to hell but I presumed that to be a living hell. But hey, bad times are not for eternity, during that time of my testing, there was one thing that kept me going; people that kept me company, people I prayed with and the remaining people in my friend zone. This is why today I want to share with you my fellow readers about the best advice I got from one of my BFF.

A LIFETIME ADVICE I GOT

Have you ever heard of a proverb that “no man is an island,” in actual meaning it means that as a person, you actually have to consider other people’s advice. It was some time ago when I received this advice. My old varsity friend said to me..

dude, don’t let your past or history to dictate your future or define who you are!

This is a bit figurative hey, but we all get the meaning I am quite sure. Ever since I got this advice, it always rang in my head like a nice choral melody since I love choral music. Whenever I tried to give up, I recalled that advice. As a result, I found myself always in the right lane; not straying too much.

At EOL we teach business aspects, the question is what actually do we learn from the above advice?

• To always be consistent
• Be careful of the company(people) that you keep
• Don’t be short-sighted
• Business Models change

CONSISTENCY

My friend when giving me this advice, he meant that no matter what challenges I come across in life, I should not change my personality. He didn’t actually discourage me; he encouraged me to do well. Here we are now, stick to your original plans. Whether people think you are crazy, mind them not, stick to your business plans. Consistency is the drive which will help you to go far in business.

Imagine if you started farming project, then climate change arise, you switch to another business. Let us say you go for piggery, then swine flu just blasts out of nowhere, will you keep on jumping? I think that is the kind of question you should answer. Here is my answer even though you didn’t ask for it, stick to your original idea. You would rather use measures of dealing with crisis or disasters that may arise in business; risk mitigation than changing business ideas daily as though they were socks.

BE CAREFUL OF THE COMPANY (PEOPLE) THAT YOU KEEP

There is a common saying that “tell me who your friends are, and I will tell who you are.” As a business person, try not to get advice from narrow minded people, I am talking about people who are afraid to try new things. If you keep this kind of company you are likely to be scared to try new things. If you want your life to change, you should get out of your comfort zone. Do something which seems impossible, invest your time and money, then you will start to see change. I am pretty sure that ideas are starting to form in the back of your mind as you read this, plan thoroughly and go for it.

DON’T BE SHORT-SIGHTED

There is this movie I personally love, it is hilarious and it teaches a lot. This movie is called Love don’t cost a thing. Please after reading this article, go download it and watch it, it is a movie whose main characters are Nick Cannon and Christina Milan. Nick in this movie, had an impossible dream; he wanted to date or even be friends with this famous and pretty high school girl (Christina). His vision was to shift from being an ordinary boy who has never gone on a date to a famous boy. What about you my dear reader? Do you have a vision for your life? Let me get that gee sound saying yes! Yes, yes, that is what I wanted to hear.

Back to the story, Nick in the movie told his friends what he had in mind, they all laughed at him. But miraculously he managed to get his way in that girl’s life; he paid her $1500. Now his dream became turned out true, this shows that no matter how difficult it may seem, you should try by all means to find a loophole into reaching your business dreams. Even if you have to do something stupid, do it to get what you want, as long as you don’t commit a crime. Some of the famous musicians we know of today had to sing on streets in order to be famous. That can’t be hard I believe.

Fight all odds to get to where your heart desires. You must have a vision for your business, that way you shall be having a foundation and a direction of what you want to achieve. Now again try by all means as to what it is that you can do.

BUSINESS MODELS CHANGE

Always be ready for change. In the beginning of this article, I narrated my story how people changed, I am talking about people I never thought would change. The same thing goes in business, models always change, so as a business person you have to be adaptive. If you are in online business, my dear friend you have to be adaptive since you are always dealing with technology since you are online.

Sometimes you may be rejected while doing business proposal, all you have to do is don’t stop, continue knocking on other doors until something fruitful comes. Giving will not get you, in fact it is a sign that you are not fit to go in business.

If you were using twitter for marketing, then you see that business is not doing well, put on your mental hat; change that strategy, come up with a new one. You may as well shift to another social media platform. The business world is not constant, what may be working for you currently, may not work for you in future. As a result be ready to always test new things.

Finally, we reached to the end of today’s lesson, if you loved the article, don’t hesitate to recommend it to other people. On top of that, let us not forget sing this song “don’t let your past or history to dictate your future or define who you are!” Who knows what you can achieve if you sing these words whenever you encounter problems. Please do share this article, by so saying, bye!