HOW TO FINISH TOO

                

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