Opinions of Wednesday, 14 June 2023

Columnist: Tony Ogunlowo

Reaching that elusive goal

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We all have dreams of where we want to be in Life or what we want to achieve in Life. But for some reason or reasons, our aspirations become an elusive goal. Despite our best efforts it still remains elusive.

What are we doing wrong?

For the uninitiated Life is too complicated. We live in a matrix whereby outside influences, often beyond our control, dictate how we live our lives. Things like peer pressure, culture, religion, and conformity to society’s expectations of us determine how we live. Break away from all this, and you will be labeled as a non-conformist, or even worse!

The secret to achieving your elusive goals in life is very simple……
break away!

It’s your life and nobody else's, and if you know what you want, you have to make the conscious decision to walk away from the matrix that is holding you back. It kind of echoes the time when Jesus told his first disciples to leave behind everything of their lives as fishermen and follow him, literally just walking away from everything they had and were.

It takes a brave man to leave everything behind and venture into the unknown, but these are the brave men who’ll go on and achieve greatness. They are the ones who discovered that the Earth wasn’t flat, that man could travel into space or even land on the moon, or risk everything they had—money, life, reputation—to invent things that have not only made our lives easier but better.

Where would we be without electricity, planes, cars, the internet, or, most important of all, smartphones?

The second secret to reaching your elusive goal is to be a maverick. Being a maverick is entwined with leaving the matrix—not one without the other.

Everybody wants you to conform and be like everybody else. Nobody likes a maverick because they are disruptors and non-conformists who’ll bypass reason and stake everything on a nonsensical dream or goal.

Perhaps, but they are the ones who are now multi-millionaires and billionaires, reshaping our world with their crazy inventions and ideas.

The third secret to achieving your elusive goal is time. How much time are you prepared to devote to going from A to B? A year? 5 years? 10 years? Or are you crazy enough to devote the rest of your life to attaining that elusive goal? This is where 99% of people chasing their goals fall off the ladder: they don’t have the time to waste.

Some will give it a month, a year, or even a few years before they throw in the towel. We are all conscious of time and every morning when we wake up is another day less of our time in this world. We can’t turn back time, slow it down or freeze it: the countdown to our Death Day started the day we were born.

If you’ve got a dream, you can’t keep an eye on the clock: let it click away! (- but also set yourself a reasonable time frame to complete the task).

While the clock is ticking away you need to ask yourself a question: do you want to be an old man (- or woman) on their deathbed regretting the things they could have done in this life but didn’t because they didn’t have enough time?

My simple answer to this is I would rather die trying than give up. This way I can go to my grave, with a smile on my face, knowing I gave it my best shot. And if I achieve that elusive goal? Well, roll out the bunting, the party tables and we are going to rock until we drop!

No pain, no gain: you only come to this world, in your current incarnation, once. You are not coming back again. So, if you want to do something exemplary, something great or you just want to be the first person in your family to climb Mount Arafat then as the American Marines will say,” …it’s time to haul ass!”.