Interesting story, I was introspecting the
other day and mused at the ultimate irony of not finishing a post titled how to
finish. Now wouldn’t that be something? Hope you had a wonderful week? The Ukrainian
ceasefire was called off this week and I pray that a swift solution will be
found for this impasse. In football news Brazil won last week and the French were
knocked out of the world cup, to the pleasure of Nigerians the world over, I hope
your country or your adopted country are doing well in brazil am supporting the
hosts and the nationalmannschaft . In other news I got a massive set back in
the bid to host a conference this fall, it was immeasurably infuriating but
hey, take it on the chin and keep on keeping on. The best things are never
handed out but are achieved through consistence and persistence. That’s what
separates those that are celebrated from those who are celebrating. That provides
an excellent segue to the theme of this post “how to finish too” see how I’m
not imitating the “think like a man too”.
On a more germane note, the last post suggested
that the way to go out and finish was too look inside because, ultimately our
outward expressions are basically a mirror of our inward selves. So if you’re
reading this post and you’re lost just read the previous one to get a better
hang of what I’m talking about. Finding a way out of a rut is a much a function
of acknowledging that one is in a rut as much as it is in identifying how one
got there. That is why telling ourselves what the mistakes we made were, is sine qua non. If we must begin to finish
the things we have started or the thing which we need to start. In my opinion
and from my experience how far we go in anything is as much a consequence of
our dedication and persistence in that thing as it is a function of our
ulterior motive for embarking on that course of action in the first place.
The question of motives is fundamental to all
human action. Intent and purpose is what separates man from all other animals
that live on this planet. Many people accord human development to being a
product of a higher intellect but I would argue that while that may play a
role, it is the fact that those intellectual capacities are all focused towards
achieving an aim that is not immediate, is the single factor has enabled us to excel.
In a nutshell we have advanced because we do things that facilitate our doing
other things we have understood that big tasks can be broken into smaller tasks.
If we bring this down back to the subject of motive, we can begin to see that
we are increasingly likely to finish something which we have the correct
motives for.
But this raises the question what are the wrong
motives or more importantly, what are the right or good motives. As I have said
earlier the motive is oftentimes of greater importance than the resulting
action. It is the motive behind an action that is the fuel that sustains it. Motive
specifies how much effort is put into a task it determines how much persistence
will accompany an undertaking. So important is motive that people will do the
menial of tasks if it brings them closer to their destination. So all of this talk about motive and motivation will
be of no value if we do not see how it leads one to finish a task? Well as it turns out, the motive is the reason
we take the first step. As long as the motive is wrong or flawed in some way
the chance of abandonment of any project midway goes up exponentially. Consider
this, if a person wanted to make a wooden sculpture for instance there are very
few people who would view this as a wrong objective but say perhaps that the desire was borne out of jealousy which they harbored
towards a friend or colleague who excelled in that area, or the desire to show
that they too could do it. It wouldn’t be hard for frustration to get the
better of someone like that when the wood, refused to take the desired shape or
form. In no time, no one would be surprised if the said person gave up on this “dream”
midstream. For the person whose desire is to be a sculptor because he has the aptitude
for it, the difficulties he encounters along the way become not sources of failure,
but lessons. There is no better example of this than the story of Thomas Edison
the man who invented the light bulb faced with thousands of repeated failures
he famously said “i have not failed i have just discovered 10,000 ways that won’t
work…” this quote encapsulates how motive significantly determines or shapes
perspective. What for one is an “I give up” moment is an source of study for
another.
Going back to our central theme of finishing and
drawing on the findings from the last post (which I insist you go read again) it
won’t be hard seeing how many failures can be linked to starting something for
the wrongest possible (forgive me English) reasons. Now if you would go back to
the list you already made critically go through those things which you
highlighted as failed projects and ask yourself the question why did I actually
start this? Question your motives again, look at the preceding circumstances
and how they informed your choice to start up on the project that ultimately
failed. Now this is in no way suggesting that the reason one venture or the
other failed was because the motives were wrong no, in actuality they might
have been perfectly good, but perhaps not backed with a strong enough
conviction. The lesson here is to understand that finishing is far more
important than starting. Before you start consider this; are there some things
which made you fail before which are still around you, or that you are yet to
deal with? Next, why exactly are you starting this really why is it important
that you do this?
At this point I think it pertinent to state
that although the title of this writing is to finish what you started, there is
no one way to finish what you started, there are several reasons why some things
fail and if you know why they failed you will agree with me that you stand a
better chance of doing a better job the next time around.
Remember the prizes are given at the end of the
race if the prize is not worth the race for you, or the track is not one you’d
really want to be running at this time, why start ? your life will be more fulfilled
if you finish three things than if you started thirty. Go through your list
with this perspective and perhaps you will take the next first step with
clearer eyes.
The next post will touch something most of us
refuse to acknowledge as a problem.
ciao
