The greatest and the most dramatic life changing examples that can reasonably influence and change our lives are always around us. Life is a series of experience, some you decide to learn from it, some you decide not to while some may change the whole adventure altogether.

I can still recall my P.H.E (Physical and Health Education) teacher in Junior school teaching about ways of starting a long race, then he mentioned this specific type , “The staggered start”. In this type of race, all the contestants are expected to start the same way but the track makes a racer seem ahead or behind another racer.

Setting out therefore to again answer the basic questions about business and its opportunities, I came to the realization that it doesn’t matter how much  you have anticipated this race; it still leaves you with the staggered start: some will appear to be ahead of you while some will appear to be behind without you knowing that you are at the-same point. The most important factor at this stage is how much time you have dedicated in your preparation to respond to this challenge so that when you finally run the race to a straight path, you will finally be ahead of the others.

When setting goals, time is always accurate and everything is always in order but then these factors will set in: the Internal and External factors. Internal factors: the problems we chose to create. External factors: the ones we can’t stop (but can choose to respond to). The  “business giants” most time make up the external factors.

You can choose how you respond to situations due to the height of your knowledge (or ignorance) and the wisdom to choose the knowledge to apply. To every cause, there is a reason, reason requires response, response is the application of logic as logic is the pattern of events or to say the inevitable consequences of their interaction as defined in Encarta dictionary. Logic fortunately sees the end from the beginning (the law of seedtime and harvest), it supports the school of thought that requires the right application of knowledge to succeed which of-course is relative to different situation. It is therefore expedient that we know that knowledge (acquired through learning ) in itself or its application alone is not enough, but the proactive response given to these situations (acquired through positive reasoning and experiences).

The whole process of learning sometimes may not really make reasonable sense at the point of learning. You may never know the one that will change the outcome of this staggered-start  race called life and today it may seem that most “racers” are ahead of you but I tell  to learn all you can now, read, survey, anticipate, participate, and be innovative so that one day (which comes sooner than you anticipated) will come with you leading this race. So I have learnt with this concluding anonymous quote that is boldly written in one of my old books, bold enough for a blind man to see.

“Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or the faster man. But sooner or later, the man who wins is the man who thinks he can.” 

This is an introduction on the topic, continuation will be by next week Sunday. Till then, Manifest.