All posts by : Success Bridge

“You can accomplish virtually anything if you want it badly enough and if you are willing to work long enough and hard enough” – Brian Tracy.

We all love people who succeed in any field. We love it when people lift the trophy at the end of the season, come out the best in their examinations, or walk down the hall to collect an award. Sometimes, we assume they excelled because they are lucky or talented. The truth is that successful people work harder than ordinary people. When others are sleeping, they are busy repeatedly trying until they get what they want. In a world where everything seems to be at our fingertips, it almost seems that hard work is no longer considered a prerequisite for success. We often see the lifting of the trophy or the collection of awards or prizes. The naked truth is that all successful people are hard workers and if you want to excel, you have no short cut.

Yahoo’s former CEO, Marrisa Meyer (2012-2017), was a former employee at Google. She used to put in 130 hours of work while at Google and sleep under her desk! When Marissa became CEO of Yahoo, she worked very hard but could not reverse the company’s falling fortunes. She was still paid a whopping $239 million in stock and stock options when she resigned. She currently runs a company called Sunshine, that focuses on artificial intelligence and consumer media. Hard work got her there. Former Pepsi CEO, Indra Nooyi, used to work as a receptionist between midnight and 5 am while studying for her masters. While raising two young daughters, she would go to work at 7 am, stay till about 8 pm, and still take mail bags to read at night.  

I am not saying that you should not sleep in your quest for success, but only pointing out that if you want better grades or a better life, there is a price to pay. That price is hard work, unfortunately. So, what can hard work do for you?

HARD WORK WILL DEVELOP YOU

Hard work does not kill; instead, it helps you brace yourself to solve the problems that come your way. For example, you may be studying very hard at night to pass your exams. In the process, you gain valuable skills such as perseverance and patience that you will need to solve problems. You cannot become a champion in your field if you do not work hard.

HARD WORK LEADS TO RESPECT

The truth is that people respect hard workers. Why? Because hard work is hard. When you are committed to your work, others appreciate you and will not be afraid to commit things into your hands. Just stop for a moment and think of the impression you will have of a store where you buy something, but you see the attendant sleeping on duty. Irrespective of the condition of the person, your impression will be a negative one. If you want respect, work hard.

YOUR HARD WORK BENEFITS OTHERS

You may be working hard for a personal goal, but indirectly, your work will help others around you. If you study hard and become the best in your class, your parents, school, and friends will be proud of you. If you work hard to deliver goods to people, you will be benefiting your customers by ensuring that they get what they want. Hard work always pays.

I would like you to try working hard at something for a while and see the benefits to you and others around you. There may be something in you that just needs hard work to come out. Why not jump on it and make yourself and your society proud.

I look forward to your questions and comments in the comments section below.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Besidone Ebule is the Project Director at B2SL, where he works to encourage personal development and build success networks. You can contact him at bessy.ebule@b2sl.org.

“Learning never exhausts the mind.” – Leonardo da Vinci.

There is nothing that you cannot learn. The question is, are you ready to learn? Everything you say and do now was learned somehow, directly, or indirectly from others. Although it might not be obvious, a lazy person knows how to be lazy from somewhere or someone and somehow approves that being lazy is acceptable. When a lazy person works with a productive person, you might hear something like, “I cannot come and kill myself” because the culture or quality of hard work is missing. Though hard work is not easy, you must imbibe the culture of hard work if you want to succeed. The beautiful thing, though, is that you can learn how to work hard. Hard work will not kill you!

To learn how to work hard, you must first accept that it is crucial to put in some more effort, and you must be able to evaluate the effort you are putting into your work presently. Let’s assume that you just read an article of 500 words to answer questions correctly. If you read 50, 70, or 80 pages, you have not worked hard enough to answer all the questions correctly. If you fail some of the answers, you should agree that you did not put in the required effort, i.e., you did not work hard enough. One way to evaluate yourself is by looking at the kind of result you are getting as a student or in your tasks. The worst thing that can happen to you is not being able to evaluate yourself.  If you are not working hard, you will know. Once you know, you can change and become successful. Evaluate yourself now. Are you working hard enough? 

After sincerely evaluating yourself and seeing that you are not working hard enough, you can then start asking how you can work hard to achieve success. For example, how many more pages of the book do you have to read? How many hours of practice do you need to perfect that song you are learning? How much more effort do you need to develop yourself daily or weekly? Everyone may have a different need depending on their current circumstances. Hey! Do not kill yourself yet! Some of you are already doing well. Keep it up. Once you can determine the answer, please write it down to be committed to it. Mark Batterson once said, “the shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory.” 

You must also be able to identify why you need to work hard. The reason this is important is that not everyone is fighting for success. Some people are comfortable with an average mark. If you are reading this, I believe you are not satisfied with the average. Like Jim Rohn once said, “the stronger the WHY, the easier the HOW.”  If you are fighting to succeed, it becomes easier to find ways and the motivation and energy to achieve your goals. 

Guys let’s get to work as the world is waiting for us to showcase the success that we can achieve through hard work. 

I am looking forward to your comments and questions in the comments section below.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Adimah is an entrepreneur and the Project Manager of B2SL INITIATIVE, where he manages the vision. He is a great believer that a prosperous Nigeria is a product of successful Nigerians. You can reach him via email at charles@b2sl.org.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

“Talent is a gift, but you can only succeed with Hard Work” – Jean Beliveau.

Talent can do things naturally, such as singing, communicating, organizing, or decision making. The saying above stresses that if you don’t work hard, you will not likely succeed. Let’s say you are naturally able to crunch numbers and understand mathematical concepts. If you are preparing for WAEC, NECO, JAMB, or whatever examination, you must study and sharpen your aptitude for you to excel. The extra effort you put in reading outside the regular school hours, attending lessons, etc., will determine how far you succeed. Have you seen people who play sports? They continue to practice even when they have no competition because they want to keep improving their chances of winning.

Success doesn’t come by wishful thinking but by continuously working hard on your goals. If you want to excel in your academics, you must prepare to make it happen. You can grade yourself at the beginning of the term to have A’s in all subjects, but that grading will only be an inscription on a paper until you sit up to read, research and revise what you know. Studying will give you the confidence to answer any question in the examination with ease and comfort.  

Oprah Winfrey is one of the most successful Black American women in the television industry. Oprah began her life in poverty, and early in her career, she endured numerous setbacks. She was fired from her job as a reporter because her bosses believed she was “unfit for television.” Oprah’s bosses removed her as the co-anchor of weekday news on WJZ-TV, which resulted in her getting demoted to morning TV. Despite the setbacks, she did not give up. She worked very hard and finally earned fame from her TV show called the ‘Oprah Winfrey Show.’ Oprah was talented, but she backed it up with hard work to become successful.

If you come out from an examination hall feeling happy and at ease, you have likely put in some arduous work. Working hard in secret brings success in the open. As my mentor, Aaron Zebedee, president, and founder, TLMI (Thinkers Leadership Mentoring Initiative, Yola, Nigeria), always says, “For a man or woman who has done his or her natural duties, even death is as natural as sleep.” Hard work will stretch you both mentally and physically, but it will pay off in the end. Hard work makes you ready and suitable for responsibilities that come with unimagined rewards. When you get out of your comfort, you get success, influence, and more opportunities to grow positively and impact the world.

Every human endeavor requires hard work to succeed, be it farming, education, entertainment, or academics. Our wishful thinking can never change things around us. We need to get up, roll up our sleeves, and work until we make what needs working to work again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Henry Ibrahim is the Content Creator at B2SL. He loves working with young people to help them discover their purpose in life. You can contact him at ibrahim@b2sl.org.

“Coming together is the beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success” – Henry Ford. 

Some people believe that working alone signifies strength. There is a place for being recognized as someone who has achieved a remarkable feat. However, working with a group of people always produces the best result for sustainable success. Many successful people in the world today worked with other people in teams. The strength of unity and cooperation can achieve a lot more than a lone ranger. An American investor, George Shinn, once said that there are no self-made men; instead, one reaches his goal with the help of others. Here are some reasons why working alone is problematic.

LIMITED PRODUCTIVITY

When you work alone, what you can achieve is limited because of your limited abilities and knowledge. You have only one perspective to developing an idea as opposed to working with other people. When more people bring diverse ideas or different perspectives to the table, they help create the concept better. Different and varied opinions from various individuals will undoubtedly lead to a more significant success if there is a good organization, unlike when the thoughts come from one person alone.

LIMITED ACCURACY AND EFFICIENCY

Another monumental problem of working alone is that it reduces accuracy, efficiency, and performance. Let’s say B2SL wants to host a party, and only one moderator oversees the planning, looking for the venue, choosing the dress code, organizing entertainment, refreshments, and other activities. It will be complicated for this person to plan perfectly and accurately. But if all the moderators have specific duties, we see that the performance would be optimum because everyone’s skill is at work. The rate at which two or more people do a job is higher than that of one person doing the same thing.  Working as a group or with others brings division of labor which improves efficiency and performance.

MONOTONY

Monotony means a lack of interest and a variety of tedious routines and repetition. When a person does things alone, a point will come when he would be stressed out and bored of the job. But if there is a division of labor, there will be little or no stress. Just think about the idea of one person doing a job that ought to be done by three different people. It will only take some time before the stress comes. There is more fulfillment when there is teamwork since each team member works to progress that same aim. As the saying goes, variety is the spice of life. So, when there are diverse ideas and more hands and minds working for a particular goal, stress, and boredom are eliminated.

LOSS OF FOCUS

When you work alone, you may quickly lose focus, deviate from your original plan, or get discouraged because you have no team members to encourage you. The energy that others bring into the team can inspire you to bring out your best and help you focus on your goal. The truth is, achieving things all by yourself is not an easy task, and you must look for ways to bring other people into your work for a smoother ride to success.

Let’s endeavor to work in teams for more success. As Helen Keller said, “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.”

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Victoria Aiyedusho and Noble Uzoagba are post secondary school students in Nigeria. They are dedicated to success in their academics and future career. They are members of B2SL Success Hub.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford.

Right from the first week’s blog post of May 2021, we have seen that we cannot build anything significant without teamwork. Therefore, it is crucial to know how to mobilize or form a team to change the world from whatever level you are. 

Mobilizing a team that will be successful can be tough to achieve as some people may still be struggling with the team’s vision. You will have to be patient with people to allow them to learn and grow. When mobilizing a team, you must be clear with what you want to achieve with the team. You will then know the kind of people you need in the group. What should their belief or value system be? What should their interests be? What skills should they have? You wouldn’t want to employ the services of a doctor to build a house, would you? If you’re going to form a band of musicians, you look for people who can sing and not people who can farm!

Let’s assume you are trying to get a group of your classmates together to prepare for a forthcoming examination. The first thing you do is write the goal down to know what you are trying to achieve. You then go on to mobilize a team of reading partners that can make this possible. After that, you develop a group contract which is a written or unwritten document that defines the aspirations of every member in the group. In countries, this is called a constitution. In your case, your chosen students should be hard-working, punctual, willing to learn, and ready to abide by the rules of the group.

Because there are so many subjects you take; your team should have people interested in the same topic. There’s no use studying in the same group comprising Physics and Literature students, so you don’t have to be reading and asking questions from people who are not learning the same thing as you. The values and pursuits of those in your group should be the same as yours. I have personally met students who get tired after reading for 30 minutes and some that can read for 2 to 3 hours straight without getting tired. You need to know about these different skills. Some are more comfortable reading late at night, while some prefer reading during the day. Therefore, it is better to form a team with students who have similar reading or studying habits as you.

Mobilizing a successful team is worth it, and I will love to hear about your experience in mobilizing a team in the past or how you intend to mobilize one going forward. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Adimah is an entrepreneur and the Project Manager of B2SL INITIATIVE, where he manages the vision. He is a great believer that a prosperous Nigeria is a product of successful Nigerians. You can reach him via email at charles@b2sl.org.