In the next few months, I’ll be 33. Looking back at my life, I think I’m extremely lucky. I feel lucky because I figured out a lot of things about life pretty early and because I figured out a lot of things earlier than most people, I succeeded faster. But my journey has always been about myself and my invisible angel.
Though my parents (especially my mother) gave me the best of themselves in terms of love and care, they never taught me anything significant about life and today, I wish my parents have been there to guide me and tell me some of the truth I later discovered by myself.
In today’s article, I’m going to be sharing with you the 3 things I wish my parents taught me about life at age 13.
The purpose is superior to the degree my father is illiterate. He cannot read a single word of English and grow up, he hated the fact that many of his mates who had degrees have a lot of respect and social recognition. Because of this, he wanted me to have all the degrees in the world and that was the only thing that matters to him when I was growing up.
While I don’t think it’s wrong to go to the university, I think there’s something else that’s far more important than having a college degree and that is, knowing who you are and what you are created to do. Today, many people are miserable.
Some people are doing the job they don’t like and they think it’s because they are underpaid but that’s not the truth. Some people are making a lot of money and they are still not happy and they can’t figure out why they are miserable. Well, this is what I’ve discovered.
When you do what you were created to do, nothing else matters. If you know your purpose in life, you’ll never have a job. You’ll never have a job because every day of your life will be for play. While I feel lucky to discover my strengths and weaknesses very early at age 18/19, I wish I had discovered that at age 15.
How can you discover your purpose in life?
Your purpose is in who you are. To discover your purpose, you have to discover who you are, your strengths, weaknesses and how you’re different from other human beings. This may not be an easy journey but you have to embark on that journey if you truly want to live.
How are you different from other humans?
What do you do easily even though others find it very difficult? And most importantly, if you have a billion dollars in your bank account tomorrow morning and you don’t ever need money again, what career path would you follow in the next 5 years?
This last question is very important because purpose and money are not the same.
Your purpose can and should give you money, but money would not be the reason for it. Your job or business should give you money but money should never be the primary reason why you wake up in the morning.
The name of the journey is a failure everyone in the society where I grew up believes in success but nobody talks about failure. In our world today, everyone talks about how to be successful. This is not right and I wish my parents taught me how to fail because knowing how to fail is much more important than knowing how to succeed.
This is so because success is nothing. Failure is the only thing that ever exists. Everyone can enjoy success. What most people can’t do is to endure failure. If you want to be rich and successful, you need to learn how to fail, more than you learn how to succeed. The reason for this is because you’ll only succeed once or twice in your entire life but you’ll probably make mistakes and fail a thousand times.
This is what I mean, all my entrepreneurial life, I have only had three breakthroughs and I can tell you, those three breakthroughs are enough to give me all the money I need for my entire life. Most entrepreneurs don’t need three breakthroughs, a single big break can change your life forever. But think about this, I had to make mistakes and fail for 8 years before I could have a breakthrough. What I’m saying here is simple; you need to know much about how to go through failures than how to be successful because failure precedes success and failures come in tons while you only need a few success.
Friends are as important as parents I know that no parents will like to teach this but I wish that my parent could call me at 13 and tell me, “Hey Steve, your friends matter to your life than your parents.” This may not be a complete truth but I honestly believe that people you hang out with are as important to your life’s success as people who give birth to you.
When I look back at my life, I can’t imagine how my life would have turned out without some great friends who inspire and encourage me to be a better version of myself. I have 9 siblings but none of them have been very valuable to me as much as my friends. People you hang out matters as much as your parents. If you’re not conscious about the people in your circle, you’ll find yourself where you never intend to go because humans are like chameleons. We change our outward and inward colors, dreams and aspiration to match those of the people we meet regularly. If you want to achieve greatness in life, make friends with the people who want to achieve greatness. If you walk with average people, they will make you average.
The summary of this article is this:
The purpose is more important than a degree. You can live a great life without any degree but you can’t without knowing who you are and what you’ve created to do. Failure precedes every success and it comes in tons, so you’ll do better by learning how to fail than by learning how to succeed. Your friends determine who you become. Choose who you hang around very diligently.
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