‘What do you have?’ The woman sitting across the table from Myles Munroe was sobbing hysterically now. ‘I don’t have nothing pastor, I don’t have nothing. Tell me, how do I raise the kids?
What Do You Have?
I don’t even have a college degree, tell me who’ll employ me now? She sobbed even more, too overwhelmed by her emotion and present condition to think through the question she was being asked.
Again she responded with a seemingly conclusive ‘I don’t have nothing’ The disturbed but calm gentleman continued softly ‘I mean something you don’t get to use frequently, maybe a washing machine, just something you don’t really use often in the house.’ Her sobbing has reduced a bit now, ‘I have an oven in the kitchen I don’t use often, but what has that got to do with this?’
‘Perfect’ he’d got what he wanted, ‘go home, bake some cake take it back to your former workplace, the very same place where you just got laid off and give everyone a piece. Do that tomorrow.’ For a woman who had just been fired with no one in sight to help with the bills, that piece of advice can be considered most inappropriate or even heartless. Left with no option, she reluctantly complied. To her shock, everyone liked it and some of her former colleagues placed orders for the next day. She supplied again the next day and like a big joke, she was in business before she realized it.
Years later, when Dr. Myles Munroe had forgotten what transpired, a woman visited his office, thanked him profusely for helping her and wrote him a fat cheque worth thousands. When he could not really place the face nor understand the reason for the appreciation, the woman told him her story: that little business she reluctantly started had grown into a multimillion Dollar empire.
So today, I put this very same simple question to you: What do you have? What are you looking for? Have you looked inwards? Who said you don’t have what it takes to make your dream a reality? Countless times, we are always hasty to say we have nothing and fold our hands but do we really have nothing? You may not be rich, you may not be famous, you may not have a college degree but you sure have something. You have everything you need to succeed. We are caught up in the temptation to look everywhere else but within.
It was Orison Marden who once submitted that ‘The golden opportunity you are seeking is in you, not in your environment, it’s not in luck or chance, or the help of others, it is in you, yourself alone’
Around 2006, Linda Ikeji began blogging. To some extent, it was meant to be a distraction from the pains of her failing to succeed in floating a magazine. Things were rough and she didn’t think it to be a business option. Soon enough she began enjoying it and would not have entertained any suggestion that she is as good as the brightest of American or European bloggers who at this time were drawing multiples of hundreds of thousand visitors and smiling to the banks for it. It was unthinkable that they weren’t smarter or that she could do whatever they could do, and even be better at it. Of course it took a couple of years, persistence and courage so that today, that lady that has been featured on Forbes, CNN and many other international platforms and successfully sports a blog capable of drawing over one million views in twenty four hours.
Robert Kiyosaki was right when he said that to become successful, money is not the most important thing we need. It doesn’t matter how poor you may be or how humble a background you may come from; show me a young man whose eyes are keen at seeing opportunities from afar off before others can sense it, whose business acumen is mature enough to transform those into multimillion Naira investment and I will show you a business mogul who will go places.
So go out there, open your eyes, see all the opportunities your eyes and imagination could not capture before, utilize them and like Linda, one day, you’d be celebrated; people who have raw uncut diamonds in their possession have nothing, absolutely nothing to do with lack.
Igbokwe Ifeanyi is a writer, researcher and entrepreneur. He can be reached at Ifeanyi.igbokwe@gmail.com, 08032788811.
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