Decide Today, Make Those Sacrifices or Be Comfortable – There Is A Result

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Update (28 May, 2024)

By Arthur Moses Opio

It’s is ironic how we are inclined to comfort, we normally want things the easy way and technology has done a great deal to bring comfort to people. While listening to a gentleman talk at a recent event, he mentioned something that gripped my heart and has stuck, he called it the rule of life and I thought I could share a few personal insights from this quote.

“Do the easy and comfortable and life will be difficult, do the difficult and uncomfortable and life will be easier”

When it comes to matters of personal finance, sometimes we will be excused for being young and naive because in most instances we either weren’t taught or we just put good advice away by saying "I will do this when I am earning this much" or "I will do this when I grow" etc. 

When we are young (age, physically, emotionally), we are bound to make a lot of mistakes like buying out of impulse, desiring to have the latest trends of things which in simple terms just enslave us. However, I want to bring hope and light to those who are reading this piece to encourage them that they can start all over to avoid making mistakes that many have made.

Life is About Sacrifices

Life is about sacrifices. I am encouraged by my mother who sacrificed a lot of things to make sure we had a good education. 

There are times she would say, “I am not having new clothes all the time, just because I want you to study.” These words touched me so deeply and there is a life lesson I learned and that is, the day you get children, you stop living and working for yourself but so much you do is for and about them. God bless my mother.

Working and Earning

When I started working and earning, there was pressure by my peers or just the corporate class to go chill out, hang out and just spend spend spend spend… and spend but I was already a grounded guy and knew what to do with money, however, this doesn’t mean I haven’t had my fair share of mistakes, and to me, they are learning points.

Still, I have seen this evil under my eyes where a young corporate lady or guy will tell you that, I can’t save because I earn little, however, they are the same people hanging out every Friday or over the weekend and to make it worse they even borrow to sustain such a lifestyle, they do nothing to increase their money but do everything to spend it – how foolish. It is sad and we still see such things happen.

From my savings, the first mistake I made was to buy a car. I had two options in my mind and the other was to buy land. I did not buy the land and as much as I was happy with the car, I look back and regret that decision. I chose comfort at the expense of investing, who knows what that land would have done for me or my family, I was short-sighted and I encourage any out there to look beyond your comfort while making decisions, look at the bigger picture.

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When we choose to do the difficult and uncomfortable things now, for example, saving for a rainy day, saving to invest or start a business and delaying gratification, or avoid to spend to impress someone who doesn’t have an ounce of care towards us or just trying to keep up with the status quo, it puts us in a place where we have control of certain things in our lives.

Made a renewal of his life: Amos Wekesa said this, click this article for the full story.

"I hadn't eaten meat for so many years, I looked old but I was not that old. I went and served meat and I remember walking home and I cried and told God, 'Why did you make me so poor?' that even meat is such an important thing and that day I made a renewal of my life and that if I get a chance, I will work so hard and my dream was to work so hard to eat a lot of meat.

There so many difficult decisions in life that have to be taken, and such decisions aren’t based on how strong or how weak we are, they are based on the fact that we can see the end result or see the end from the beginning – that’s being visionary. Life is quite predictable and on a personal note, I think it stems down to the decisions we make in life keeping all other factors constant.

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Decide Today

Decide today to live purposefully, to plan, have a vision, have a goal, decide to save and decide to invest; when you make such tough decisions now.

• You will be required to do away with certain things that you have been so hooked to.
• You will have to put some friends away and get those who are willing to make you grow.
• You will have to take the high road even if you are alone, along the way, you will find those who believe in your dream.
•  You will have to start living on purpose and not out of pressure to appease a few.
• You will be focused on your goal.
• You will have to be unstoppable.

#Transform #Impact #Empower

What Inspires Businesses or Companies (The WHY, not The What)

One of the biggest questions to ask on earth is Why? It normally points to the purpose of a thing. I had been taking some time off to read and study a few things. I was encouraged by Ojara Andrew to read the book "START WITH WHY by Simon Sinek" with a caption "How great leaders inspire everyone to take action'.

There is already a wealth of information that is flowing. I really get the notion that so much wisdom is hidden in writing and if the culture of reading and studying can continue, I believe we can beat so many odds.

While reading about Manipulations and Inspiration, I have learned so much about how companies or businesses are surviving and indeed the biggest thing they are doing is MANIPULATION which is quite costly and by the way, it really works. However the writer points business people, companies to the fact that people should always look to inspire other than just manipulate.

The writer says that "if most companies don't really know why their customers are their customers or why their employees are their employees, then how do they know how to attract others and encourage loyalty among those they already have". He says that the reality is that most businesses today are making decisions based on a set of incomplete or worse, completely flawed assumptions about what's driving their business. He then says that there only two ways to influence human behavior: you either Manipulate it or you can inspire it."

Simon Sinek says, "Leadership is the ability to rally people not for a single event but for years" and he says in business leadership means that customers will continue to support your company even when you slip up. He pauses and asks a question, "if manipulation is the only strategy, what happens the next time a purchase decision is required? What happens after the election is won?

Finally on Manipulation vs Inspiration. He says that there is a big difference between REPEAT BUSINESS and LOYALTY. Repeat business is when people do business with you multiple times. Loyalty is when people are willing to turn down a better product or a better price to continue doing business with you.

Loyal customers often don't bother to research the competition or entertain other options. Loyalty is not easily won. Repeat business, however, is. All it takes is manipulations. I guess we have seen this with people loyal to their telecom companies or suppliers etc.

I hope you get some insight from this, otherwise, keep the culture of reading and studying alive, it won't only help you but others as well.

I live you with that quote on Entrepreneurship.

Be blessed

#Impact #Empower #Transform