I grew up in an environment where I constantly heard the words “Life is not a bed of roses.” In those days I used to fantasize about my dad owning beautiful cars and houses with big compounds. Sometimes I would pray he came home from work in a beautiful car but I never woke up to see those thoughts come to reality.
Growing up was a challenge all through. Anytime I remember the way I grew up I always thought that was how I learnt most skills that are useful to me today. True, many people suffer, they have gone through forms of pressure; psychological, emotional, environmental, financial, etc., but the question is, how they dealt with it, and what did they bring out of it. I think I gained a lot of skills, basically, most of the skills I need to succeed in life, and this book is an evidence of one of those skills.
Without being conscious of it, now, when I do a review of my life, I can see for certain that I have never settled for less in areas where I know I just have to make the best happen, one thing is sure…..”Life will never give you what you desire. You go out there and get it from her.”
Do not think you will wake up one day to meet your mansion ready, waiting for you? Or you will wake up and see that the business you have been dreaming of is right out there turned into a conglomerate? No, of course not, you go out there and get what you want.
My growing years was very crude and tough process. Back then I always knew I would conquer all these challenges with time. I am someone born with a wild imagination; I love imagining things where there is nothing. And most of the time when I was a kid, when I felt the suffering was too much, I would just go to a quiet place and rest my head either on the wall or on my hands and start imagining things. I started looking at the way things were going to be, my whole life, the businesses I was going to be involved in, the way I was going read so much and become a professor. As at then, the greatest achievement I knew that I could accomplish was to become a professor.
Right since the time I was a kid I knew where I was going and what I was going to do, I knew what I wanted and what I did not want. That was the beginning of trying to find my chief aim in life. I was gathering the data and information I need to succeed in life.
I am going to share a story with you about a particular incident that happened to me as a kid, the impact of this story is so great that it is fresh in my memory like it happened yesterday. It was during my primary school days, after being transferred to a public school named I.M.G, School 1, BCGA in Apata, Ibadan in Nigeria. My family was doing so badly financially at the time, and the situation had gone from bad to worse. I was transferred to this school from a private school in that same area because my family’s poverty level at the time was so high.
Immediately I got to the School, I knew I was in the wrong place and was never satisfied with my lifestyle there, but as a kid there was nothing I could do about it. I remembered thinking, it was just too mediocre and you did not even have to tell me before I knew it was a school for the poor. And no doubt I recognized very early that I was not meant for the school. I complained at home, told my mum I did not like the school but she told me they had no choice than to put me there and there was nothing they could do about it.
I did not like the students of the school as they lacked even the least bit of etiquette and respect. The only happiness I had right then was when I was thinking of the future (a concept I have come to know as big-picture thinking). I did not think of the present, I lived only in the future.
On a certain day which I remembered clearly, my dad called me and said he was not having money to pay for my Common Entrance Examination, that was in ‘97/’98, and the examination fee then was three hundred and fifty naira, N350.00. That was how the skill acquiring processes started for me. Right then and there I developed the skill to strategic and constructive thinking. I thought of my BMX Bicycle, already, before that time I had started making money from it.
My dad bought the bicycle for me and my sister when we were still living in Kaduna around ‘94/’95, that was when he was working with an insurance company. I was around 10 years old then and was an expert in riding a bicycle. I was renting out the bicycle, 5-10 minutes for five naira N5.00. And that was how I started saving the money for my Common Entrance gradually.
Funny enough, my parents would ask me how much money I had made for the day, and ask me to bring it so we could use it to get some food stuff, so right then I had been learning money management skills, making sure I saved as much as possible. In those days, either there was a fight, between two or more people fighting over the bicycle or they would not want to pay for riding, and just as you know, I was so small then, but I developed the eye to look out for myself and make decisions as fast as possible.
From time to time, I would check out my savings, it was under my bed, and anytime I did that, just seeing the money increase mage me so happy. It made me have the feeling that no matter what, I was going to the Secondary School. I would never give up or settle for less. Then after maybe two and a half months of saving with side removals to give to my mum and the family, I counted the money and behold it was three hundred and twenty naira N320.00.
Wow!
To me, that was big money, and all I needed was thirty naira to complete it and I could go pay for the Common Entrance Examination form. I went out with the bicycle that afternoon, my plan was to ride it with such display that people will come out to watch me so that they could rent the bicycle and I could earn my remaining thirty naira. But just as I was doing that I saw my Dad coming, he called me in, asked me how much I had gotten?
I told him with great joy that I was having three hundred and twenty naira, and then he explained to me that my mum was sick, and had been taken to a Church (because there was no money to fund her treatment at the hospital). She was going to need anointing oil for prayers and some other things. I felt sorry for my mother and stood there wondering what I was supposed to do.
“Go and bring the three hundred and twenty naira,” he said.
I remembered not understanding what he said. “But that’s my Common Entrance Examination fee,” I thought.
Oh! It was such a sad day for me.
I can still remember very well, I stood there, staring bleakly, I love my mum, I did not want her to die, and here was my dad asking me for something I had worked so passionately for. Sadly, I had to give him the money; everything, my entire savings for about three months. We both went to buy everything mum needed. At home, there was nothing I could do, I sat down outside and saw my dreams of going to secondary school that year just crashed right before my eyes because between that time to the day the exam is going to hold was not even up to three months, at which the sales of the form would have been closed.
So I just sat down there, thinking of a way I could save the amount of money from my bicycle but there was nothing. I remembered crying. I have to write this exam to go to school.
That single experience gave me such an in depth of knowledge and since then I have that inner conviction so great it is helping me today.
Miraculously, I do not remember how, but someone borrowed my dad the money and I got the forms. I was so happy and since everybody wanted to attend the Government College Ibadan (GCI) I filled it in too, for first and second choice, I was so happy. When the result and placing came out, I was placed in another school, Apata Community Grammar School and was glad that at least I was going to the secondary school. But there was another issue, something I could not handle this time. The registration fee to get into J.S. 1 was very high.
Government College Ibadan was higher, I thanked God I was not placed there, but what happened to me? I was afraid my Dad would not be able to pay. The fee for Community as the name was called was around four thousand naira N4, 000.00. That was like a hundred thousand in my family.
Well, Dad and mum did all they could but could not raise the money. My mates, friends, cousins were all in J.S.1, it was very sad that I was still going to attend primary school once more, it was so painful.
So as it was, that year, since there was no money, I had to stay at home. I remembered riding my bicycle around with passion, the year that followed was easy. Dad got a job working in a biscuit factory, and had some small amount of money kept for me, but I remembered it was the then Governor of Oyo state that made everything so easy for my family “Governor Lamidi Adeshina” provided free education and my family spent around a thousand naira N1000.00 for me to start schooling.
I got admitted into a notorious school in Apata, Ibadan; African Church Grammar School, known by everybody as “Afro” but nonetheless my mates were in J S 2, while I was in J S 1. This made me develop this habit of big-picture thinking or what I call the sweet-thinking. I would always tell myself, that I was not cut out for this low level of life; right then I always knew I was going to be a star, and I constantly told myself to reinforce the belief. That thought alone always gave me the fuel I need to move along.
During my early secondary school days, I did all the odd jobs a kid can do back then, sold ‘ice water’ on the street and market place (pure water sachets was not common in those days), sold biscuits, cooked groundnuts, anything sellable, and I never forgot some of my classmates taunting me, shouting “ice water, ice water” after me. I used to be shy and I remembered I did not want people recognizing my face in the neighborhood, so I was always taking quicker steps and short cuts to getting to my destination.
Today, as I look back into time, as I write this part of the book, I know my parents have forgotten most of these things I am writing, they will only remember after reading this book or the manuscript. Today I am doing so fine with myself and I am happy. I believe so strongly in the words of Poet Henry David Thoreau “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavor to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.”
When I sit back and think, I try to look at the difference between me and the boys and girls of those days that shared the same situation with me; where are they today? What exactly is the difference? Why does it seem they are not as successful as I am? You know it, because you have read about it in previous chapters. It is difficult summing this into these words because right then we knew nothing about most of these things. I sum this into two words that came to my understanding in those days, and that is imagination and reality.
Imagination takes you deep into the heart of what you want. Though you have not seen anything like it, though you only got a glimpse of something, you can run it in your imagination to get a full picture of it. This distinguishes us because later on I realized not everybody can imagine great things. I never believed at first but there are people who cannot imagine anything at all or either have a low imagination power.
Reality is different in the sense that it is what you see happening to you, your perception of things around you, your perception of the world. What you see happening to you, the way you see things happening in your environment is your reality. This is where the factor of Optimism and Pessimism comes in. An optimist has a positive reality. He tries to see things as good in life, he sees the good and best in any bad situation. While Pessimists sees the bad side of whatever situation they found themselves. Even though, I have gotten to see that people’s reality is different, what they can see and what they cannot just see.
No matter how hard you try, some people cannot just see anything. They cannot see themselves doing any good in life. And even if you succeed in making some see, they would not believe in it.
Reality is a major tool of success in one’s life.
I remembered my second session in this same school, it was worse, I used a uniform I have been using from the time my family was still in Lagos, and it was really tattered, I remembered getting into a fight at school, and my uniform was torn from the top to the end, well, what did I expect? Mum only stitched it for me, that was the best I could get at the time; no sandals, even the one naira, two naira, we were expected to bring as break food money could not be afforded, I remembered running out every time the class malim came to beat us because we couldn’t pay, either I would run out of the class, or beg the malim to get his favor or he beats me, as you know, the malims can be wicked for their so called disciplinary measures.
But right there and then, the only thing I always thought of, was how great I was going to become. And I would always say to myself, only if these people know what I will become in the future. I have come to the understanding a long time ago that man himself creates his own limitations. I have experienced the limitation I created for myself, and once I came to full understanding of this process, I stopped all this limitations and created something better for myself.
I go on painting pictures and dreams for myself and since I know it is boring to live in poverty and local lifestyle. I live in my dream 99% of the time, I prefer sitting down, and enjoying my dream instead of answering my mum’s call, and when I do, I would come back and start again because it is an interesting world I was painting for myself.
It was after about ten, twelve years that I got to read Donald Trump’s Book “Think Big” with Bill Zanker, where I saw the saying; “Even when you cannot do anything, when nothing seem to be happening, enjoy your dream.”
I paint my dreams and I do enjoy it to the core. And really those dreams are becoming a reality to me today. I am a writer, an author and an entrepreneur. I run my own businesses. Not actually what I want to be, but because of my reality which came as a result of my imaginations, dreams and thoughts.
A final word, the combination of dream, imagination and your thought are a deadly tool in getting what you want out of life. These combinations are the greatest leverage you can ever use in getting what you want. The greatest invention came from imagination. Most of Thomas Edison’s work came from imagination. What invention he was able to imagine, he was also able to imagine himself working on and he was able to imagine the final product, and so giving us the light bulb. In the Saturday Evening Post, “What life means to Einstein, an interview conducted by George Sylvester Viereck”, Einstein was quoted saying; “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
You do not have to get to a particular age before you can start using your imagination, you can train your kids to have good imaginations. You can start with yourself right now. Stop reading this book, close your eyes for a moment, smile, put a smile on your face, this puts you at ease, then imagine yourself in that place you want be in the next two, three years. Imagine yourself doing that thing you have always wanted to do. See yourself in that house, in that car, on that piece of real estate. And make sure you feel good about it. DO THAT NOW! DO IT. Practice this every day and you can enhance your imaginative power day by day.
....culled from the book 'The Ultimate Leverage'
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Have a wonderful week ahead. God bless you all.
