By Aniekeme Finbarr
I grew up with the assumption that “I can get what I want in life”. The thought of this echoes often in my mind “Aniekeme, You can get what you want” I live with it, build my life around it and push forward to achieve anything I wanted without minding the pains and the stress of life.
Friends, if you want to get what you want from life, you have to ignore the naysayers; those people who would always come around to discourage you from attaining your full potential. Sometimes, they will come in the form of friendship, they will criticize every move you make, smile at you when you stumble and pretend to be happy with you when you succeed.
If you want to get what you want from life, you have to believe in yourself, develop yourself, build yourself, never stop learning, always strive hard to be the best.
If you want to get what you want from life, you have to go after it, don’t waste any time, don’t be afraid of what people may say, just go for it and you will get it.
Let me share a page from my book: Dare It, Do It
“Well, it dawned on me I had dropped out of school. I took action. I went back, picked the University Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) forms, which was and is the first step to securing admission into the university in Nigeria. I filled the forms religiously and submitted it.
I was given a venue and date for the examinations. I prepared and took the exams on the scheduled date. By this time, the format had changed from the manual question papers and answer booklets to computer-based.
One of the invigilators was my former school mate, we were in different departments. He looked at my registration slip, saw my name, smiled and exclaimed, “Wow! A second degree? You prefer this to going to law school?” He sought to know more but I just smiled and took my seat.
I learned from that conversation that when you are on a recovery mission, you don’t need to pause on the way to explain yourself to every Tom, Dick, and Harry. You owe no one any explanation of what you do and why you do them.
Like Haruki Murakami once said, “Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language”.
One of the factors that would drain you in recovering from a challenging situation is explaining yourself to others. In fact, the mere thought of it is frightening. I dare repeat, you don’t have to explain your choices and decisions in life to everyone who you hardly know or not in any serious relationship with.
The choices you make are yours, although, there are obvious circumstances where you should make explanations. Your
spouse, business associate or partner, or close friend may be bound to know of some of your decisions especially as it
affects them too.
Ultimately, your decisions should be what is best for you. A wise man once said “You are not required to set yourself on fire to make others warm”