March
15, 2014 was an unforgettable bloody Saturday for Nigerians and a mournful day
for the relatives of about 19 persons who were trampled to death at various
exam centres, including national stadium, where about 2 million youths gathered
for the job aptitude test organized by the Nigerian Immigration Service. Some
reports put the number of the applicants chasing the so-called 4000 vacancies
at 6 million. These multitudes were looking for an employer, greener pasture –
a successful leader of an organization. They were searching for the contact of
that man who has built his one-man business into a multi-billion-dollar
organization capable of paying huge salaries – a man who has paid his prize or
dues. You must think for yourselves and start from where you are with what you
have. It was Bishop Abioye who noted that “Grave digging is the only venture
that starts from the top. Anyone who starts from the top is digging a grave for
himself. You don’t know how much you can do until you start doing it.” These 19
graduates die because their minds has been conditioned to look for job instead
to create one. Poverty of the mind is of course the greatest tragedy to befall
any youths. Its hold you prisoner of your own soul.
I’ve studied and found great people who didn’t attend or graduate from school. A lot of times I have stated that going to school does not define education. Whether you attend a school or not, you can be educated. It could attend one of the best school in the world yet you are uneducated. Education as I always define is self-realization and Self-definition. Understanding what your purpose is and not allowing anything stop you from achieving them. Many of the people on this list didn’t attend school at all, yet they understand/understood their purpose and they lived it. Some others had the opportunities of attending school but had to leave because the school does not offer the kind of education they desire or require. Actually, going to school which is very very important is not education. It’s mere schooling. And permit me to say, schooling is the lock, education is the key. This is to point to you that even if you don’t attend the schools as your friends have, you still can be something because schooling does not define how educated you are, if on the contrary you have attended a school to the highest level, then you should also understand that your education defined by that. Schooling (which the world erroneously calls education) makes you stereotyped. Education makes you rather unique. This is evident in the lives of those I’ve listed below.
1. Abraham Lincoln President
Of the United states
2. Harry Truman -President Of the United states
3. Grover Cleveland -President Of the United
states
4. Zachary Taylor- President Of the United states
5. Andrew Johnson -President Of the United states
6. John Glen -Astronaut, U.S senator
7. Barry GoldWater S -Senator
8. Benjamin Franklin S- Ambassador
9. Winston ChurchHill -Prime minister of England
10. John Major -Prime Minister of England
11. Robert Frost -Poet
12. Florence Nightingale -Nurse
13. Buckminster Fuller -Futurist and inventor
14. George EastMan -Founder of Eastman Kodak
15. Ray Kroc -Founder of McDonalds’
16. Dave Thomas -Founder of Wendys’
17. Doris Lessing -Nobel Prize recipient in
literature
18. Christopher Columbus -Explorer
19. Joel Osteen -Pastor
20. John D. Rockfeller -Founder of Standard Oil
21. Karl Rove -Presidential Advisor
22. Ted Turner -Founder of CNN
23. Peter Jackson -Movie Director (Lord of the
rings)
24. Mark Twain -Author
25. Leon Uris -Author
26. Bernstein -Washington post reporter
27. Carly Fiorina- CEO of Hewlett Packard (HP)
28. Andrew Carnegie -Industrialist
29. William Faulkner -Nobel and Pulitzer prize
winner
30. Li Ka Shing -Wealthiest man in Asia
31. Richard Branson -Founder of virgin Atlantic
airways and Virgin Records
32. Enzo Ferarri -Founder of Ferarri
33. Henry Ford -Founder of Ford Motor company
34. Paul Getty -Fonder of Getty Oil
35. Larry Ellison -Founder of Oracle
36. Mark Zuckerberg -Founder of Facebook
37. Steve Jobs -Founder of Apple
38. Bill Gates -Founder of Microsoft
39. Paul Allen -Founder of Microsoft
40. Ringo Starr -Beatle
YOU ARE NOT JOBLESS BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO JOB
Joblessness is not a physical state; it is a static state of mind. It is a state in which the mind is not usefully engaged. It is a situation in which the mind is not given a target to hit because the owner is waiting for an external force (an employer). Newton’s law of motion states that an object remains in a state of rest until a force is applied. You remain unemployed until you employ your mind. The man who will move the world must first move himself. You are not jobless because you have no job. You are jobless because your mind is not working towards a useful end. Your mind is not working because you have not given it a task. There are millions of people who are on jobs or working but in the real sense of it, they are jobless. A man worked as a security guard for 35 years and ended up broke. Another fellow worked as a civil servant for 35 years, he retired and had no idea what else to do with his life. All along, these men were jobless though they were collecting salaries to keep their bodies and souls together because all it required for an employee to be paid was mere physical presence from Monday to Friday. For instance, my mind is actively engaged because my mind is working on my renowned book project which I’m writing presently. My mind is gainfully employed daily, working tirelessly on formulating ideas for the growth of the nongovernmental organization I’m presently overseeing – my vision. I put our organization project on hold to secure a job temporarily and I calculated my pay per an hour for 12 hours daily and I found out that it was a penny. I didn’t stop working even though I have better job offer but whenever I’m free I always read a job or research with my phone thereby engaging my mind because of where I’m going. Joblessness is of course synonymous with graduates who couldn’t find paid employment. 90% of students in schools are already jobless under the guise that says – “I will qualify for a good job when I am done with my NYSC.” In life, you don’t work because you have finished school. Education starts after academic distractions or temporary interruptions are over. For this particular reason, Steve Job, founder of Apple, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, Henry ford, founder of Ford Motors, Thomas Edison, Inventor of Electric bulb light and John d. Rockefeller, founder of Standard oil had to drop out from school because their minds were already engaged with projects that would later change the world and create employments for the educated in the formal sense.
In another prospective, Google and Yahoo were actually founded by PhD students who turned their academic research papers into business empires. Yerry yang and David Filo, the founders of Yahoo Inc., had to suspend their academic program indefinitely. These youth founders engaged their minds in an academic environment towards a useful end – to solving an existing problem. They were employed big time by first employing their minds to create something as students. They were so consumed with their self-employment that they had to quit their doctorate program. Working is a natural process through which humans use their creative minds to change their environment and circumstance for better. In all of these process, you don’t earn a living because you have a degree. You earn a living because you have created something useful and needful. You earn a living because you can help existing organizations solve their administrative or business problem. Competition is business is becoming lush, they need young minds who can help out, who cannot only show the new way out but will lead the way into innovations. You have to write your own job description and advertise yourself. This is a brain-based economy.
THE WAY YOU’RE PROGRAMMED TO THINK IS KEEPING YOU SMALL
Based on what Nigerian youths has be fed with that getting a degree is ultimate in securing a brighter future, they disqualifies themselves and not eligible to pursue their dreams. They won’t work on their dreams until they have gotten a degree certificate and concluded their National Youth Service. The reason is that university education is appreciated more as a status symbol that gives you false self-esteem than a tool that unlocks your intrinsic value as a person in relation to your true-self-worth and market value. As a result, youth is wasted in the pursuit of a degree certificate that would not guarantee automatic job opportunity at a blossoming youthful age. These are social waster. The Nigerian educational system is seriously programming the minds of our youths for non-existent jobs in government, banks and other prominent organizations. Therefore they never engaged their mind in a rewarding long term project that would profit and contribute to the economic growth of Nigeria.
YOUR TRUE CAPITAL IS……….?
What is your true capital? Capital is the initial key resources with which you start an enterprise. Obviously, money is not your initial key resource. I can hear you say money is your capital. Money is only a medium of exchange of value. The key to actualizing your dream is you. Capital is the head of a place right, the capital of Nigeria is Abuja while that of America is Washington DC, because these are where the Heads of the two countries reside. What is the capital of you? Your HEAD is your true capital. The head houses your brain, eyes, ears and mouth, and each of them is your key resource. With your eyes and ears you can see or hear about problems that need to be solved. With your brain, you can design the solution to the problem. Most importantly, with your mouth you reach out to somebody who can be of great help to you. What you see and hear will be interpreted and responded to by the way you are. You are the way you are by the way you think. The way you think is determined by what goes into your mind – knowledge – your key resource.
YOU MUST CHANGE YOUR PRIMITIVE WAYS OF THINKING – THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX.
Persuasion is the art of influencing other’s decisions with words to your own advantage. The most effective way to do this is by speaking and by showing what you have done with the little you have. Knowledge and relationships are enough capital to start an enterprise. The problem is how to use what you already have to get what you don’t have. How much do you have in the bank of your mind to withdraw from when you stand or sit before that potential partner or investor? Assuming you have adequate knowledge in your brain, do you have the skill to communicate your value proposition effectively? Use your head, it is your number one capital. One of the greatest truths I ever heard is that you don’t see the world and your environment the way they are but the way you think. You interpret reality based on your thinking skill-set. You interpret your environment better when you think better, and you think well when you know better. “The bottle is half full” and the bottle is half empty” are different interpretations to the same reality. Seeing opportunities is determined by your interpretation not by your location or the amount of money you have.
Please note that post is not to discredit school. Potential-worldchangers by this post does not stand to condemn school. The post is to educate and motivate us including me as potential-worldchangers to never lose faith in our vision that God has given us no matter our background and challenges.
Reference:
The Audacity of youth by Tochi Okafor & wikepedia (education and schooling differences)
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