Tips for Making your Life Counts

- Babatunde Oladele

You are adding value to people when your encounters with them make their eyes shine brightly, make them smile, make them say “thank you,” make them eager to talk to you or desire to be in your company.

On the other hand, you are depleting from people if every day your encounters with them make them frown, make them look or groan, “Oh no, not again!” make them say “I’m sorry” quite often, or they avoid you as much as they can.

In Search of Career or Business Success?

Look Here: 

When seeking the roadmap to success in career and business, you must essentially look in three places:

1. LOOK UP: to God for instructions, the blueprint of what you are meant to do, the direction detailing how you are to go about it, when, where, and for His favour,

2. LOOK INWARD: inside yourself and do a written inventory of your strengths, your skills, your flairs, your talents and the gifts of God in you that have commercial potential, and finally

3. LOOK OUT: for opportunities in the marketplace where the application of your endowments will prove both useful and profitable. Look out for people who can be of use to you as service providers, mentors, strategic partners, amongst others.

These three steps are by no means exhaustive in accomplishing business/career success. But they sure can get you on the path if you do them rightly.

To your success!

Babatunde

10 Simple Ways To Know You Are In The Job You Are Naturally Cut Out For (Part 2)

How do you identify the job you are naturally cut out for or ascertain the one you are doing now is it?

1.    You will enjoy doing what you do, and it won’t be a drag or drudgery to you.

2.    Time will not be “of essence”, and you will not be watching it, since you can start whenever you like and end whenever you like. I agree that this one may be a hard pill for the apostles of structure to swallow. But, check it out in the lives of those who are all fired up about their job.

3.    You flow seamlessly into the work, with minimal or no friction anytime, any day, and in most places. You also hands off your work with a teeny feeling of reluctance, but a soothing sense of accomplishing something.

4.    You are doing something by which people generally hail you or associate you whenever they see you or thoughts of you pop up on their mind.

5.    Money is not a major consideration for doing what you are doing. Although it is a necessity of life and a viable motivation factor, your primary drive is derived from your sheer involvement in and satisfaction with what you are doing.

6.    You want to learn all you can about the vocation, or certain aspects of it where you feel you can still be better.

7.    You want to make everyone who comes into contact with you an artisan in the vocation. You want to teach them, help them, guide them, and/or instruct them on how to do it. And you will be willing to do all these, even at no fee.

8.    You want to passionately defend, justify, or clarify certain notions about the vocation, or its operational aspects, that you feel is wrongly bandied or misconstrued by people.

9.    You are agitated when you see people who are similarly engaged doing the same work the way it ought not be done, either by underperforming, under-delivering, or not conforming to certain norms and standards pertaining to it.

10. You eagerly look forward to getting up from bed every day you have to work to get on the task or an assignment you have in hand. And you won’t mind sleeping late engaged in what you are doing. In the event you are busy doing something else, you are not so excited and you can’t wait to be done with it to get back to your love vocation.

Like I mentioned, this list is neither authoritative nor exhaustive. You may be presently engaged in the job you are naturally cut out for and not find yourself in any of the above bits. We will like to learn your own slant to this.

Cheers!

10 Simple Ways To Know You Are In The Job You Are Naturally Cut Out For (Part 1)

Dear friends,

I found myself in the meditation mode not long ago and the object of my rumination was why some people seem to derive so much fun in their jobs – bubbling in their productivity therein – while some only do the required rounds, watch the clock and tick the day.

I know this is a much-discussed issue in the career industry worldwide, with various postulations and sophisticated theories. So, I was under no illusion that I was going to come up with a groundbreaking solution that would land me a Nobel Prize for solving a nagging human problem. However, the Pilot of my flight of consciousness was not discouraged, but kept on conducting me to a point where I was able to capture some bits on what usually separates an excited worker from a placid one.

The distinguishing factor is interest – borne out of the natural configuration of each individual. It is a fact that we are not all wired the same way; even identical twins may not have identical emotional sparks. Therefore, individual interest plays an important role in job gratification, which in turn results in productivity. That does not discountenance some external or psychological variables that may facilitate or hinder job performance, such as remuneration, work environment, and self-esteem, to mention a few.

So, on the fulcrum of interest only, I came up with the following 10 submissions that will help an individual to ascertain what kind of job s/he is naturally cut out for, and if s/he is presently engaged in one. I’m not sure the list below can be described as authoritative, neither is it exhaustive; so, I’ll welcome inputs from you guys.

14 Questions to Help Clarify Your Steps after a Flash of Inspiration

We all get a flash of inspiration or an idea to do or run with something from time to time. If you don’t get on it right there and then, some of these ideas thaw in intensity and later disappear into oblivion, some remain subdued at our sub-consciousness, while some are nagging and clamouring for immediate treatment.

It seems there are more cases of the first two categories above than there are the third. And even in the event of the persistent third, it takes some process to transport an idea from the realm of intangibility to the sphere of concrete reality. A course of action is required to transform an inspiration into an expression, a move into a movement.

Below are 14 questions that will help you to clarify your thoughts and define your steps on what to do after a bout of inspiration:

1. What is the assignment?

Answering this question will help you to clearly define and have an insight on what exactly you are required to do.

2. What are the tasks?

This will help you to identify the tasks that are involved in the assignment. The tasks are the bits and pieces of things you will have to do to ensure that you are on track of executing the assignment.

3. What is the purpose?

Knowing the purpose of your assignment will give you a sense of location and direction. It is soothing to the mind to know that one’s actions are premised on a motive that is considered noble or charitable. Knowing the purpose of your assignment gives you a sense of significance for being a contributor to the advancement of the mankind. And when the chips are down, it also gives you reasons to go on.

4. Who are the targets?

You must be able to define your audience, your market or the class of people whom your assignment (campaign, products, and services) will benefit. This is a very critical aspect because the success/failure of your offering, nay your fulfilment/frustration as a pioneer, are largely dependent on identifying the group of people who need your idea or would benefit from your assignment, and then taking your campaign to them.

5. What is the scope?

Knowing the scope of your assignment will also save you a lot of stress and frustration. The scope of your offering may the within your locality, it may also be within your state, region, nation, or continent. Knowing this will help you to plan your move and your scale of operations.

6. What is the platform?

The platform is the means/channel through which you want to execute your action or pass your message to your audience, target, market etc. You need to determine what platform is most suitable to reach your target. And you can’t determine this until you have taken time to study your audience very well that you know their tastes and preferences.

7. What are the modus?

You need also to take time to plan your modus operandi. How do you intend to pass your message across in a way that it would be effectively understood? How would you deliver your offering so that it would be warmly received by your target? How…? How…? How…? The modus questions help you to take care of all matters pertaining to impact in your delivery.

8. When is the time?

Timing is a strategic factor in all endeavours that can either make or mar its outcome altogether. Knowing the time to start, the time to move, the time to charge, the time to pause, the time to withdraw, the time to quit et al requires more than an average thinking.

9. What is my source?

Knowing what gives you inspiration, energy and drive will help you know what to do/where to go whenever you are running dry and need to replenish. So it is in your best interest to identify your source of creative energy before launching out so as not to get bewildered and cut off in the middle way. You should also be able to identify how best you access your source of creative energy.

10. What are the resources?

Knowing the resources that are needed to effectively perform your tasks helps you to know what to look for and what to spend on. By having a holistic inventory of all you need to fulfil your assignment, you are better positioned to kick off on a sure footing. Even if you don’t have all of them at the moment, you know when you would need what and what you can do to improvise along the way.

11. Who are my mentors?

A careful consideration of all the factors above would help you to identify who you need to seek for counsel in your set assignment. You would have also determined what you need to take them on so that you don’t get there and start rambling on irrelevances, wasting both their time and yours in the process. It is always advisable to have highlighted all the other factors before rushing to mentors.

12. Who are my partners?

Taking time to answer all the questions above will also help to determine the kind of people you would need as partners or running mates. Knowing your own areas of strengths and weaknesses is also a critical factor to determining who you seek to partner with you and what skills set you require to deliver on the assignment.

13. What preparations are required?

You will also need to determine the kind of preparation you would need in order to deliver effectively on your assignment. What skills you need to acquire, what training you need to do, what habit you need to acquire/shed etc etc.

14. What knowledge is required?

Acquisition of relevant knowledge is an aspect of preparation. But it deserves to be treated as an independent factor so that it is not abandoned altogether. You need to know the range of information you will require to execute your assignment successfully. You also need to know where you can access this information, whether they are formal or informal settings. What are those things you need to know even before you start? What are the ones you need to acquire on the go?

All these are the questions you would have to answer verifiably to insure your inspiration and ensure that it does not end as “one of those ideas” we all have and don’t give attention to until we see someone else thriving with it.

The Character of Success

Success is fulfilling an identified personal life purpose with:

• The fear of God
• Integrity
• Sound Ethical Values
• A Sense of Mission
• Compassion
• Character

Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either fortune or failure. - Jim Rohn

If you develop the habits of success, you will make success a habit. - Michael E. Angier

The common denominator of success lies in forming the habit of doing things that failure don’t like to do. - Albert Gray

The Wrong Concepts of Success

• Having money, riches and wealth
• Having many properties and assets
• Being popular and in the news at all times
• Having fleet of cars
• Having many children
• Marrying many wives
• Having many admirers
• Being a public figure
• Being the envy of everyone around etc