It has been said that “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” How do you take the tough times you face in life? Do you take them as stumbling blocks or opportunities? Do you let them propel you or stop you? Do you just go through them or grow through them? Your reaction during tough times can make you either thrive or die. Which do you choose?
In my reading of books, journals, magazines and listening to videos of some of the people you might define as successful in the world today, it has become clear to me that they all succeeded from unclear circumstances. When others would have chosen to stop, they chose to keep going. They took each failure as a lesson and an opportunity to work harder and smarter. They took hate and negative criticism as a motivation to move forward. They took crisis as opportunities to offer solutions and in the process built empires.
The power to thrive is therefore within you. It is in the decisions you make every day as you face different occurrences in life. One thing is inevitable though, HARD WORK. Thomas Edison said “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Tough times require one moving against the wave not sitting back and waiting on luck. We forget that what people call luck is a combination of two things: opportunity + preparedness. “I find that the harder I work the more luck I seem to have”, Thomas Jefferson. “There is no luck. It’s simply preparation meeting the moment of opportunity. There is no luck without you being prepared to seize that opportunity”, Oprah Winfrey.
One thing should therefore be clear; that to thrive, you have to work hard. You have to work harder each day than you think you did yesterday. It’s not about being gifted. Successful people succeed on purpose. “The man on top of the mountain didn’t fall there”, Vince Lombardi.
I am Wanjiru Kaburu 