Sunday, September 19, 2010

The World Needs You!

Are you confused about what career to pursue in life? Do you have something you would love to do but you haven’t figured out how to make money from it yet? Do you constantly feel depressed that you have to work on that eight-hour job daily while your true potentials waste within you burning for outward expression?

Answering ‘yes’ to any of these questions doesn’t mean that something is wrong with you. It only means that you need to re-evaluate your career focus and values. I’ve been there. I spent several years struggling with boring jobs, failed projects, and painful financial investments wondering why life won’t favour me for once. But all these happened because I had a wrong perception about life, money and career.

The world is full of unhappy, frustrated and impoverished people facing this same dilemma. Many of us grew up among people who believe that ‘some careers are lucrative while others are not’. So everyone makes a run for the ‘good’ careers because they seem to be the only passport to social acceptance, wealth and happiness. Eventually they get stuck in unfit careers, not being able to excel and yet too fearful to quit- because of family responsibilities. You can get out of this rut today by realising that the world needs you.

THE WORLD NEEDS YOU!

Life can be fun, exciting and exhilarating if you develop enough courage to follow your heart when locating your ideal career. There are laws that govern everything we do. If we break them we face the consequences. These laws have no respect for personalities, emotions, sincere intentions or social status.
Career doesn’t make ‘something great‘of a man. It’s the responsibility of the man to make ‘something great’ of his career. In other words, find the right career and you’ll eventually make more money than you will ever spend; but if you make a blind run for the ‘high-paying’ career, all the financial management skills in the world won’t help you become rich.

Not all medical doctors are successful. Neither are all cleaners poor. The medical career would not make success of a doctor, who has never treated a patient successfully in five years. But a passionate and determined housekeeper can skilfully evolve his work into a multimillion dollar cleaning company. Therefore bother less about what will make the world run after you. Instead, bother about what makes you come alive; because what the world needs are people who have come alive. And you can only come alive when you locate a career that reveals the best of you to the world. Unfortunately, only about 10% of all races ever get to locate their ideal careers.

THERE’S ONLY ONE VERSION OF YOU
One of the reasons why people make wrong choices is because of the plague called identity crisis. You see a good looking man in a black Italian suit walking out of a bank and suddenly you begin to ‘feel’ like pursuing a banking career. Someone else sees a singer’s exotic mansion on TV and then begins to fantasize about recording a musical album. It’s great to admire, but it’s suicide to envy. When a person isn’t sure of who he really is, it becomes difficult to draw the line between admiring and envy.

The cure is to understand that you are UNIQUE. And that’s the best gift you can give to the world-your uniqueness. Miss it, and the world misses a chance to meet the best ‘you’ in your lifetime. Express your uniqueness and the world will eventually reward you with fame, happiness and fortune. There’s only one Tiger Woods. Neither do we have two Nelson Mandela’s in this generation. How about our very own Austin ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha? We are yet to find his replacement in the Super Eagles. This reflects how irreplaceable you will become if you locate and pursue your ideal career. Now let me ask you, what will you be known for in the next few years? I leave you to answer that.

MOST PEOPLE ARE MISSING IT!

A research finding I read about recently shows that 87% of the world’s population don’t like their work. And 80% of the world’s workforce agrees that they don’t use their most treasured talents on a daily basis, meaning that their best talents are not relevant to the career they are currently pursuing. That is why a good part of the world is unhappy and frustrated. I hope you are not part of this saddening statistics? Not to worry if you are, because you have the chance to reverse it as I deal with the ‘how’ in next month’s article.

The world needs you. You are Unique!” The best of you will never surface until you believe in this timeless truth. Set yourself free. Be all you can be. But it all begins with choosing the right career. You can’t choose the right career with an unhealthy crave for money in your innermost being. Go in search of your true career and money will follow. This is the first step to a truly successful career.
We’ll continue next month. Success!