IF I HAD QUIT...

 

Written By Chibuzor Michael Onah

IF I HAD QUIT...

One time in my life I was so depressed, confused and all hope was lost. I seemed to have been so blind that I thought I won't see possibilities ever again.

 I felt menaced by my black thoughts. If it were possible, I had wanted to disappear from the surface of this earth.  I wanted to leave this world  because I was tired of existing. 

FAILURE AND SUCCESS, Success Is A Being

Sometimes circumstances of life can make you not to think straight the way you ought to, the way you want to, and you might not be able to figure out something nice when doom lurks around you. If by chance you are able to think straight in the face of doom, it will definitely be one sided. 

Default, malady, frustration, calamity,  problems,  pains, anxiety, death and many more inevitable occurrences are bound to happen in ones life often times. And you know what? You can't escape them because they are inevitable. 

 Permit me to delve into FAILURE AND SUCCESS. One time, I had stumbled on a quote by Sugar Ray Leonard that says, "If you never know failure, you can never know success." This is certainly true!

You see, failure and success are friends. They could just love each other sometimes. Other times though, failure fights for its normalcy. It tends to want to fight for a higher place in ones life. This is because failure wants you to fail. It doesn't want you to succeed.

On the contrary, success always threads with innocence on its own. It Wants you to make it, to achieve everything good you're planning or heading for in life. 

But the bitter truth is that life seems to have stated it clearly that you can't succeed if you don't fail. It is a statement of fact, that for every failure you encounter on your journey in life, you learn more.  When you fail at writing for instance, you will know more by learning from your mistakes. 

For every failure you encounter, you will need to pray more, read more, write more, surf more, attend serminars and conferences more, get yourself good mentors, make good new friends,  ask as many questions as you can wherever necessary and be submissive to your mentors,  instructors or your teachers to learn more. 

Some time in 2018, January precisely, I had enrolled for a computer program at a programming Institute. There, my lecturer, Uncle Frank would always say to me, "if there's anything you begin to do initially and it's working fine for you, I think that's not the right thing to venture into because anything that is worth while and too easy in the beginning will always have hitches somewhere in the end. So quit! Start all over some kind of stuff again." 

You're not made because you achieved success,  you're made through tough times you were able to overcome while conquering failure. This is very thoughtful.

While I was building my first company with my friend Obed who was helping me to shine, no one could help me at the time. It was he who encouraged me and took it upon himself to stand by me at all cost through torns and brimstone. It wasn't easy for us then, but we needed to do it.

One of the days, we were sitting together on a long bench, with a HP laptop on his laps. We were putting some slides on a website we were building. Suddenly, we got a mail while we were still focused on the slides for the website. And while he was about clicking on the mail, I hurriedly tapped him on his right hand. 

''What's it?'' He asked nervously. I knew he got tensed because he was about to do something very technical and it needed full attention.

''Am sorry please, but I need your attention, do you mind?'' I asked softly. 

''What could that be?'' He asked, his eyeballs poured permanently on the laptop screen. 

''What benefits do some persons get from quitting their vision?'' I inquired while his fingers were still glued on the keyboard with his head shaking as though he was brainstorming and wanted to figure out something.   

His expression of silence gave me time to briefly think about something and funnily enough, we had same thoughts as though we had made it known to each other before. 

''Absolutely nothing, there's no achievement in quitting," we chorused. 

"Giving up on something can not just solve any problem rather it escalates to something beyond repair." He continued.  

"So it is better to stick to your dreams,  visions and goals and wait patiently. In due season you shall harvest from that same tree you have planted."

 

"Some people quit just when they're one small step ahead of their breakthrough. They don't realize that it takes patience and perseverance to achieve dreams in life. Look, don't leave your dream for someone else to enjoy its fruits at ease when it's time for you to be ecstatic with your payed labor. It is a great tradegy such a thing to happen."

"So be wise enough and  have a sense of urgency."

''Thanks, Mr. Obed, for squeezing out your time for me during your busy schedule." I had replied in appreciation. 

''You're welcome,'' he responded while he continued fetching out some defaults which resulted from my interrupting his work and our resultant conversation. 

You and I have got some dreams but we can't just let it go into oblivion simply because of the challenges around us. We can overcome them only if we don't give up too soon. With time and patience, if you can just persevere enough, the sky will be your stepping stone.

I will share with you a brief story about Lucas George the film maker and CEO of LucasFilms.

One time in his life he needed some good amount of money to promote Star Wars but didn't have it as at the time he so desired. Preceding that time, his futuristic plan was to make Star Wars very exceptional from every other film maker that produces hollywood movies. 

Lucas caught the interest and the vision and he had moved on wandering about from studio to studio for several months in search of money to establish Star War. But all his efforts came to  naught. He persisted and never intended giving up even though there were times when he felt like throwing in the towel. "I'm done, I'm done. I don't need this.  I want to go." He had said to himself on the long run. 

He moved on in search of money regardless the several menacing hinderances he was faced with.   Well, he eventually got the money and launched LucasFilms, and thereafter Star Wars became a hot cake amongst its contemporary. He made billions of naira from it before he eventually sold the company. 

I hope you have grasped everything from this very concise story of Lucas and his company that I put for you in the fore front of this book. 

If you find yourself in a no-man's-land, that is, you're in the midst of torns, confusion, devastating doom, please don't give up. All you need to do is bow down your head for a moment. I believe you can come up with something very reasonable. 

You can't figure out something good nor can you change your life when you're in a black mood. You see, Lucas persevered and he moved on with every bit of his life despite the trauma that came with each disappointment. He was so positive that in the midst of all his pains what he could see was progress and countless possibilities.  Through his life's story and experiences, he saw tomorrow at every instance in time. Your failure doesn't count, your success does. Look away from your failures but focus more on succeeding. 

Below is a list of exalted men and women who failed one time in their field while still building their career, and because they never allowed failure to cage them, they had moved on with their lives and today they're wealthy, famous and philanthropists.  

Facebook...  Mark Zuckerberg 

Lindaikejiblog... Linda Ikeji 

Nairabet... Akim Alabi 

Google....  Larry Page and sergey Brin

Oracle..... Larry Ellison 

Cement/ Sugar industry.... Aliko Dangote 

Forth Oil....  Femi Otedola 

ZOGOCH  International...Orji Victor 

Apple... Steve Job

Microsoft...  Bill Gates 

UBA bank....  Tony Elumelu 

SpaceX...  Elon Musk 

Glo Communication.... Mike Adenuga 

Harry Potter... JK Rowling 

In the midst of life's challenges, they stood very firm to their feet and overcame failure and now have succeeded. Success is a virtue. Get it at all cost, positively. 

I tell you how success operates. 

Success has eyes,  it can see. Success has hands,  it can touch. Success has legs it can walk, and success has emotions, it feels. 

In a nutshell, Success is a being. When you do the right thing its comes to you, and that's a sure thing about it. So in life, if you don't succeed you're likely to fail. 

#Chibuzor Michael Onah