Breaking down your ultimate goal

Our goals and dreams always seem very big and the mere thought of fulfilling it can be very overwhelming most times. The problem is we always focus on the big picture, the final destination and tend to always forget about the journey.

Getting to that goal, dream, big picture is a process. The process is actually more important than the final big picture. The final big picture is as a result of the process. So what you put into the process determines how the end picture would be.

A lot of us get so frustrated on the way to fulfilling our dreams and the reason is because we are constantly focused on the final picture that we  always seem too far from where the final picture is that we begin to feel like under achievers  or failures that we get so frustrated and a lot of times we quit.

I studied Electronics and Computer Systems Engineering as a first degree in a top university in London. By the time I was in my final year, I knew without a shadow of doubt that I did not want to work as an Engineer. Problem was I kept saying to myself that I had a very strong analytical mind and was very intelligent, so I would have a very successful career but I knew I would be very frustrated. After a lot of searching myself and digging deep, I knew I wanted to work in finance. Uhmmmm, then came the dilemma, how do I achieve that dream.

I began to do my research, my guidance counsellor told that with an Engineering degree, I could go on to work in any field, which was very true. One of my options was to apply to any of the accounting firms but I knew I did not want to do Audit. The aspect of finance that I loved was using figures to explain the strategy of the company, or using numbers to analyse the success of a company.

I was so sure I did not want to go and do a masters especially because I had already abandoned a masters programme and mentally I was not prepared to quit at something else. So after much research, i decided to my professional exams in finance, but I decided to do CIMA as oppose to ACCA as I was not interested in audit. Deciding to do the exams was the easiest part of my journey.

The hardest part was finding an employer that would give me a job. It was difficult for employers to understand why I wanted to do such a change. A lot of recruitment agencies told me I was dreaming, told me I would be better off getting a job in IT or Engineering. There were days I came out of their offices and I would cry out of frustration or get so upset but I knew what I wanted to be and I kept pushing and knocking on doors in the face of rejections and discouragements and obstacles.

Today, all those seem like distant stories because I have become more than I ever dreamed that I wanted to be in my chosen field of finance because as I got to know more, my dreams got bigger and my visions got bigger and I aspired to achieve more, but I took it one day at a time and I broke my dream into little steps.

My steps were;

1. Apply to do my professional exams
2. Find a school to take my classes
3. Look for a job in finance to get experience
4. Draw up a career path, wanted to be a finance manager within four years, achieved it in less than that
5. Do more study- a masters degree which I have done.

Now I have attained a greater height in my career and I am living my career dream.

The key is to have a final destination in mind and break how to achieve it into smaller steps as little goals that need to be achieved and you would feel less overwhelmed and less frustrated.

The LGP Team

Determination! A key ingredient for success

I spent the last two weeks reading up on lives of successful people and the one they all had in common was their ability to press forward, to persevere no matter how many times they failed. Their ability to pick themselves up after every fall, get up and keep moving forward. The funny thing is unless you begin to read up on these guys, you never really learn about their constant struggles and failures, all we see are their constant successes and we think they must be more intelligent than us or they had it better in life or they never really failed at anything but the truth is they probably have more failures than you and I because they have tried at it more times than you and I have had the courage to try.

We all think Microsoft and Bill gates springs to mind and we say a man who has been successful in changing the face of computers but this was a man who dropped out of college to pursue a dream and who had every door closed in his face in the beginning when he was looking for funding and for someone to believe in his dream. I can imagine Bill Gates walking into a bank or into anyone's house to ask for funding, they would all be falling over to give him the money but alas fast forward now, Microsoft is one of the few companies with a very healthy cash flow on their balance sheets.

I was talking to a group of young people about the ingredients of success and I asked them who a successful person was and they mentioned Messi and Serena Williams.

Serena Williams as a Tennis player has a very successful career winning 18 grand slams and many other trophies. I've followed her career for a very long time, she had days where she was knocked out of tournaments in the very initial rounds. What did she do after every defeat, she learnt the lesson and came back out the next time fighting to win, that shows determination. Did she fail at that point, yes, did she pick herself up and keep pressing forward? Yes also.

I like to compare determination to two natural things in life. When you physically fall down , even though you get hurt, cut or bruise yourself, I am very sure you don't just stay there and never get up. No, you stand up and get treatment for your wound or you get someone to help you if you are unable to help yourself, somehow no matter what it takes, you get up after a fall because you need to get well. That is determination. The second thing I like to compare it to is a child learning to walk. I always watch them in awe because no matter how many times they fall, they cry sometimes but they get up and keep at it because they are determined to get to their destination, they are determined to learn how to walk.

Why am I saying all these, it pains me to see people who have the ability to succeed at something they have a passion for and quit at the first sign of an obstacle or decide of give up after a fall or even so many falls. The truth is for you to succeed you have to be determined to get u and continue on after every fall or failure. It is not okay to quit when things do not go your way or when it gets very rough, that is when you should pick yourself up even if it means getting help and press forward.

My primary school motto was perseverance and success- it made more sense to me as I got older. For every great success story, there  are a series of failure stories behind it. No wonder the bible says a righteous man may fall seven time but...... When it comes to determination, my greatest hero is God, who after Man fell in the garden of Eden, He kept coming up with different ways to redeem man and was determined to save us His beloved creation and did not give up until He sacrificed His son, Jesus at the cross. Imagine if God had given up....food for thought. Jesus is another very powerful example who when faced with the cross even though at one point He prayed to God to let this cup pass over Him, still went to the cross because He was determined to save us, to fulfil His purpose. Imagine a world where His blood was not shed.

I leave you with this, find a successful person who you admire, search for information, their stories, their biographies and begin to read up and get behind the story of the person, I believe in there you will learn a bit about determination to succeed.

The LGP Team