The Truth: It is God’s desire that you should be at the top, however, no launcher was set aside for that.

Nature has made it in such a way that before we get to the top of our careers, we must pass through an individual, institution or organisation.

Put in another way, before we get to the top of our ‘worlds’, we must be assigned to an individual, institution or organisation for grooming.

I have never heard of anyone who was born and like a rocket shot to the top without some kind of guidance.

Even Jesus Christ, the Son of God, had to sit at the feet of other great minds to learn before he began his ministry.

That, however, did not in any way diminish His status as the greatest man ever to walk on earth.

He even took his studies so seriously to the extent that when his earthly father Joseph died, instead of leaving Egypt where he was studying to go for the burial, he wrote a condolence letter to his mother, Mary, and sent it through Apollonous of Tyna.

If Jesus Christ, an Avatar, could be so devoted to acquiring knowledge, why won’t mere mortals like you and me?

In the conventional school, this guardianship is known as pupils and students. In the legal profession, it is known as pupillage. In the medical profession, it is known as housemanship. In trading and other vocations, it is known as apprenticeship. Employees with the ambition of becoming employers could also be put in this category.

The fact is that in the attempt to be trained, that is to acquire knowledge or skill, you may find yourself under one cruel or if you are lucky, a kind master, mistress or boss as your guardian or teacher.

But whatever perception you may have of him or her, the things that ought to be at the back of your mind are the following: You are there to learn. Your guardian has successfully gone through the process that you are trying to go through and as such has experiences to impact on you. If he or she was a failure, you would not be there to learn from him or her, because we don’t identify with failures. Learning requires humility, patience and perseverance. You are there to help yourself and at the same time help your guardian or master. The student or learner needs the teacher more than the teacher needs the student. Therefore, the student or learner must be submissive to the teacher.

It is obvious that in the process of acquiring knowledge or skill, we encounter challenges. Our guardians may decide that we should learn the hard way, probably to make us stronger in the trade. For instance, instead of going digital, they may decide to use the analogue method to teach us.

But the problem that students usually have here is, rather than focus on the light at the end of the tunnel; they would concentrate on the challenges that they are going through and by doing that lose focus of the future. Rather than keep on reminding themselves that they are there to acquire knowledge which does not come cheap and could come in several ways, they would dislike their guardians and also dislike everything they represent. They would begin to play truant by alienating themselves from their guardians and their establishments.

But the truth is that before you succeed in life, you must pay your dues in service. You must serve your master, mistress or boss with your whole heart. That is the law of nature. It does not matter whether he is cruel or kind to you. The only exception would be if he or she is deliberately working against your development and future. But if it is a case of being hard on you or miserly, which a lot of people undergoing training complain about, that should be taken as part of the training because every boss wants to show that he or she is a disciplinarian and a prudent manager of resources and not a loafer or waster.

My advice is, no matter the situation you find yourself, you should learn to turn the things you consider as negatives into positives. Learn how to turn disappointment to appointment, misfortune to fortune and disability to ability. No matter the circumstance that you find yourself, always try to see the cup in the circumstance as half full instead of half empty. Never let any situation in which you find yourself overwhelm you. Always try to make your problems submit to you and that is by always looking for the positive side of any situation that you find yourself, no matter how ugly they may seem.

The rule here is: Whenever you are disappointed, look for something to give you hope and encouragement.

So, dear reader, any place you find yourself, whether as an apprentice or as an employee, student or teacher, make sure you take the place as your own and work your heart out to ensure its success. It does not necessarily matter whether everything is strewn up together for you there or not because most of the time, the reward for this does not come immediately or in that environment, but it surely comes and many successful people in the world today do testify to how diligent and faithful they were in serving their masters in spite of all challenges.

The truth is that the spirit with which you served or worked for somebody is the same spirit you would use when you begin to work for yourself. Some people erroneously think that they could half-heartedly serve or work for another person, and then when they start theirs, they would become tigers at work. But it does not work that way. Where would the spirit of a tiger come from? From which market can they buy it? And which surgeon would do the transplant, that is, remove the half-hearted spirit and replace it with that of a tiger?

What we should be mindful of is, whatever we do constantly for a number of times become part of us. For instance, if you have one year to serve or work for somebody and instead of giving your all to the service or work, you begin with the spirit of pretense, before the year goes halfway, the pretense has taken root in your subconscious mind. And once that happens, you would need a super human effort to purge yourself from it.

So, wherever, you find yourself as an apprentice or an employee, know that you are there for a purpose. Nature does not make mistake. Bring out your whole heart to serve or work for the success of the place. If the place succeeds, you would be part of the credit. But even if nobody gives you credit, the most important thing – which is even more than all the credits in the world – is that you have built within yourself, success mentality and whenever you become independent, you would continue with the mentality.

You would always be reminding yourself: “after all, I have been part of the team that did it before.” You have built in yourself the spirit of a winner, that is winning mentality.

However, if you pretend throughout the period of your apprenticeship or service and later become independent, you would fail in any endeavour you find yourself even with all the resources in the world at your disposal because when the going gets tough, which is natural, you have only pretense mentality to fall back on and then you would discover that you have been standing on a shifting sand.

So, from creation, God destined you to be at the top. But there was no launcher that was set aside for the top. It is only service that can take you there.

•Culled from the book, How To Be The Best That You Can Be.

ABOUT THE COLUMNIST

Peter Anosike is a well-known journalist and development economist.

His book, Dangote’s Ten Commandments on Money (Lessons on How to Make Money from One of the World’s Richest Men), was rated as one of the best development books in the world by Wall Street Journal and FORBES. The book has been adopted as a workbook for grooming entrepreneurs by the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN). Anosike’s other of his books include, How To Be The Best You Can Be and Look Forward and Lean Less On Your Past – all trending in Smashwords along with Dangote’s Ten Commandment on Money and How To Be The Best You Can Be. You can follow him on Facebook and Linkedin.

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