Life pays any price you ask of it

 

Dar es Salaam is famous for its heavy road traffic jams, popularly referred to as ‘foleni’ by its city dwellers. This other day, I hired a taxi from my base in Masaki. I told the taxi driver my destination - Makongo Juu. He pulled out a charge sheet from the glove compartment, gave me a bill and we contentedly sped off to join the foleni. He hyped the ride with some bongo music by a local artist - Asley. We talked about a variety of topics – nice food, politics, the weather, obiashara, and music. We connected. He was one of the liveliest people that I had ever met in the city. He laughed like a child. He told me that he came from Ukerewe Island on Lake Victoria near Musoma. When we were halfway through the ride, I changed my mind and told the driver to take me to another destination. After we had covered some distance, I again changed my mind and directed the driver to take me to yet another place. Before we hit a corner, I remembered something. I tugged the driver and tapped him on the shoulder to catch his attention. I told him that I had changed my mind, again. We should go to a different location. I noted something on his face - a frown. I knew something was brewing up. Fed up with my indecisiveness, the taxi driver stopped the car by the roadside, put on the hazard lights, switched off the engine, heaved a sigh, and asked me; “. . . Mzee, kwa mara nyingine, unaelekea wapi? Wapi unapenda nikupeleke kwa gari? (Sir, for once, where are you going? Where do you want me to take you?”)  I just stared at him dumbstruck like a dodo bird soaked by monsoon rain. He repeated the question. This time in English but still addressing my title in Swahili; “. . . Mheshimiwa (honorable), what is your destination?” I told him to restart the engine and drive on without telling him where I was going. At this moment, he got frustrated and asked me to pay and get out of the car, immediately. The taxi driver’s actions and words still sting and pain me up to this day, although his actions and words were communicated to me with great respect. He alerted eloquently; “. . . Mimi sipendi kumwendesha mtu ambaya hana uhakika na anakoenda. Je! unandielewa? (I am not interested in driving someone who is not clear about where he wants to go. Do you understand me?”). Following his instructions, I got out of the taxi. Embarrassed. Without looking at me, he switched the engine on, pressed on the accelerator pedal, and disappeared into the foleni. I found myself forsaken. Stranded. I did not know what to do next.

Does this story sound familiar to you? This is what happens in real life for most of us. We don’t know what we want out of our life. We want one thing, but our actions and efforts go elsewhere. How often do we sit down to draw our life plan about what we want to do, be, and have before our time to die comes? Are we surprised that we are stuck with the same results year after year?  We are not hitting the bull’s eye. I am writing not to scare you but to raise the right level of awareness - most of us reading this blog have already spent fifty percent of our lifetime on the planet. The question is: how do we want to spend the next fifty percent of our life? True, life pays what you ask of it. You have heard the phrase before that life can’t help anyone who does not have a specific goal. Guilty - my lord - the taxi driver could not take me to my destination simply because I did not give him the exact address of where I wanted to go. 

I like playing jigsaw puzzles. One thing that I have learned over the years about these puzzles is that you cannot put it together without first having seen the picture of what it represents. It is difficult to piece together something whose picture you have never seen before. This is what happens in life when you try to do something whose outcome you have no clue about. Opportunities may be available in our family, neighbourhood, workplace,  or country but we fail to utilize them simply because we cannot spot, recognize, or accept them as such. Have you not come across someone from outside a system or country who became successful in the same environment that the indigenous, pioneers or owners failed to progress? Don’t you wonder why adopted children tend to be more successful than biological children of benefactor parents or parents under the same upkeep? Consider migrant businesspersons from the East - they are everywhere on the globe and whatever they touch, turns into gold. You cannot achieve the outcomes that you desire if you don’t know and don’t have specific areas of life to focus on and work on.  It is as simple as it can be.

Old but true story. Once upon a time, there was a Masai farmer who lived in a small village at the foot of Meru Mountain. One day, he received news from his son in the city that a certain Chinese company was buying timber from locals for export. The son felt his father should benefit from this rare business opportunity. So, he wired a message to his father in the village. The farmer was very excited by the news. He was living on the periphery of a very big forest that boasted of a wide variety of trees suitable for lumbering. He went to the nearby town and bought a big chainsaw. The following day, early in the morning, he marched into the forest with four strong men to cut down trees for timber as communicated by his son. He led his four-member team into the depths of the forest. After they had set up their chainsaw, ready to start sawing the trees, the farmer realized that there was one problem. A big problem. He lacked some information. He did not know which tree to cut down for lumbering. His son did not give him, nor did he ask the son for specification of the timber. Was it cider, mahogany, eucalyptus, teak, pine, or any other type of timber that the Chinese sawmiller was looking for? They wandered in the forest for weeks with the chainsaw labouring on their shoulders trying to figure out which type of trees to cut down and process into timber. After many weeks of wandering in the forest, he and his team got exhausted, and frustrated and returned home without any piece of plank in their hands. He came out of the forest which had the potential and capacity to revolutionize his life, empty-handed. 

The moral of the story is that no matter how magnificent your tools may be, . . . no matter how many resources may be at your disposal, . . .  no matter how intelligent and diligent you may be, . . .  no matter how effective and efficient you may be with your skill if you cannot ascertain your target and do not know or cannot figure out the outcome of the target, your tools, resources, intelligence, diligence, adeptness become worthless, useless, and meaningless. 

Imagine going into Starbucks and placing an order to a barrister for: “. . . a cup of coffee.” Although you may have placed your order politely, the barrister will not spare you with her questions: ‘. . . avec latte or without?’ ‘. . . size of mug – small, medium or large?’ ‘. . . take away or in-shop consumption?’ Worse, a rude barrister will just throw a menu in your face for you to re-place the order. Similarly, you cannot go into MacDonald’s ordering ‘. . . the best meal that you guys make, here,’ and expect to be served a meal that you are looking for. Be specific with what you want. Life offers you and me a catalogue or menu of opportunities. Unless we are specific with what we want, the available opportunities won’t mean anything – they will pass through our fingers like sand. 

Life is like that - the best way to achieve results is to be specific with our desires or goals. Life is biased toward people who know where they are going, what they want, and who have a game plan. When you know what you want, act on it. Believe me, the whole world will conspire to help you achieve your goal. Life pays any price it is asked to pay on your behalf. 

Think for a moment. If someone asks you, “. . . where will you be in five years’ or ten years?” What will be your response? Think for a moment. Where you are today – is this the point of locus or destination that you had planned to be five years or ten years ago? What happened? What did you do to successfully be where you are today or what made you not be where you had planned to be?

Who you are today, . . . what you have achieved this far, . . . what you are doing today are all results, outcomes, products, and in some cases by-products of your by-gone days’ effort, hard work, commitment, sacrifices relative to your life priorities. The world we live in is a place of abundance. No question about it. Most of the time we miss opportunities because either we do not know what we want out of our life, or we aim too low or plan too small or we simply do not know what opportunities look like. Think about the Masai farmer, in the story above, who failed to secure a new business deal, which could have transformed his life and that of his family due to a lack of specification of the timber that the buyer was looking for. The forest offered him abundant opportunities. It is not a mere coincidence that the Springboks won the Rugby World Cup thrice in 1995, 2007, and 2019. Just look at events leading to the games. They knew their target – the title. The coaches just put the icing on the cake and hyped the tempo. Every successful team works together for a common or shared vision.

No need to emphasize the point. Who you are today is the outcome of your past years’ commitment. Now, let us recast the question. In the next five years or ten years, where will you be? Who will be your friends? Who will you become? What will be your contributions to the community? This may sound like a cliché - an overused statement - but there is some truth in it. Today is the best time for you and me to re-design our five-to-ten-year life plan. Draw clear-cut goals and steps. Hire a coach to assist you in understanding the wheel of life. Join other men and women who share your aspiration – a mastermind or business network international. John C. Maxwell put it better than I could, “. . . one is too small a number to achieve success.” The surest way to shape your life is to get yourself to act on your goals. But you must be specific with your goals and actions. Have at least five goals in each area of your wheel of life.  

Two persons who are in the same situation will get different results due to what they do. Our daily dominant actions or activities shape our future - who we are going to become next year and beyond. My first prayer is that you and I should not come out of the forest of life empty-handed like the Masai farmer in the story above. Chart your course. My second prayer is that you and I must not be stranded in the traffic jam of life, clueless about our destination as I did in the foleni of Dar es Salaam in the opening story above. Know where you are going. It is your decision, not your environment, that determines your destiny of success. Do not blame your boss, spouse, parents, workmate, the economy, the state president, the weather, or your culture. If you are to blame someone, blame the person standing in your shoes – yourself. You have unlimited power to revolutionize and transform your life and significant others. This will happen if and only if you are specific with what you want out of life and life will pay any price you ask of it. Give it a try. Your payoff is real if you are specific and committed to your goals. 

You were once a kid, weren’t you? Do you remember your kindergarten and primary school teachers, parents, and peers, asking you, ‘. . . what do you want to be when you grow up?’ Do you remember how you answered them? Will I be naïve to say that back in the day, you were a big dreamer and answered the question with something specific? You knew what you wanted, why you wanted it and you had the formulae to achieve your goals. Sine dubio, you answered the question with great specificity,   “. . . I want to be a pilot, a hunter, an engineer, a bus driver, a soldier, an architect, a teacher, an insurer, a nurse, an astronaut, a historian, a musician, a maharaja, a monk etcetera.”  Fast forward to this day - are you the person that the kid you once were wanted to be? Would the kid you once were, be glad about the person you have become? I am reminded of a beautiful quote by Charles Buwoski, who quizzed, “. . . can you remember who you were and who you wanted to be before the world told you who you should be?” As you kept on iterating, you reached a certain age, perhaps when you were in university or you had just moved into your first job, the tone of the question, ‘. . . what do you want to be when you grow up . . .’ changed. It became ‘. . . what are your dreams and aspirations?’ I do not know how you answered it. Life begins at 40 - they say. As you journeyed into the second half of your life, the question of ‘. . . what are your dreams and aspirations . . . ’ once again changed pitch and it became ‘. . . what are you going to do with your life?’ This question is more difficult to answer than the first two questions because it touches on legacy - what one will be remembered for after one is gone from this planet. I am privileged to have been a leadership and personal development coach to some brilliant college students, business managers, and executives. This is one of the questions that is discussed in masterminds. Two sets of answers usually come out. There are those who know what they want to do with their life and those who are lost in the foleni (traffic jam) of life. The former often say that they ‘. . . want to live a balanced life, engage themselves in work that brings happiness and prosperity.’ They want to maximize their unique natural gifts, talents, and skills to help others. Remarkably spiritual.  

Decrypt the wheel of life and draw a plan for each of the seven areas of the wheel. In a nutshell: One - have a vision. Create goals. Know what you want in your life. What are your hopes, dreams, and aspirations? Two - create a set of values. Set standards and norms that you want to embody, every day, as you move toward your goals. Three - ask yourself how you will get there. Draw strategies on how you will achieve your goals. You should have a clear-cut set of methods for achieving your goals. Four - bear in mind that it is not a quick and linear progression toward your goals. You experience detours, challenges, and tests along the way. You meet nay-sayers, who try to erase and talk you off your dream. You meet criticism. Anticipate obstacles and condition yourself against them. Toughen yourself. Someone said, “. . . to an achiever, criticism is a compliment.” Five - how will you know that you are making progress toward your goals? How will you know that you have arrived or what will it feel like when you get there? Devise tools for measuring progress and allow flexibility to recalibrate your plan. At this stage, I need to put a small disclaimer. It is not as easy as I have put it, here. Drawing a meaningful personal development plan is not as easy as you may think. Hire a coach to help you draw a plan for each area of the wheel of life or simply join a mastermind. Bear in mind that success is a reward. It is conquered step by step and belongs to those who are specific with what they want, and life pays any price you ask of it.

A story is told about the celebrated multi-billionaire - Warren Buffet. One day, he sat down to coach his struggling friend on life goals. He asked his friend to write down his goals. He instructed, “. . . first - make a list of the top 25 things you like to do in life. Next - circle the top 5 things from the list. Be realistic and choose carefully. Then, discard the other 20 things.” Mr. Buffet concluded, “. . . work only on the tasks that relate to the top 5 goals.” 

The rationale behind this exercise is that you cannot work hard on 25 important items at once. Buffet’s advice was that his friend should run away from the non-circled things as fast as he could. By choosing only 5 top life goals, one will be far more focused and committed to achieving them. Do you and I have a 25-item list? More importantly, what are your top 5 items? Lack of clarity, not prayer, is the way people sabotage themselves. Craft life around your interests. Carpe diem (seize the day). Common knowledge teaches us that we cannot hit a target that we do not see. If you do not know who you want to be, and what you want to have or do, the odds are that you will never reach it. Oh, lest I forget - life pays any price you ask of it.

Lester Chinyang’anya ǀ General Manager - Operations ǀ Minet Malawi