Excellence is the virtue of an intelligent man, an intelligent man is not necessarily the one with a university degree but the one who is able to challenge the mind to do exploits. I have seen an academically intelligent man with Phd who acts like a device backed by a remote control. Excellence shows a high level of valuable quality; the state of being excellent is the state of being successful at a particular thing.
To be excellent, decisions and choices play a much major role. The decision you make in your twenties can and will influence what you become in the fifties. Be bold to take certain decisions without fear. If you want to start a business, start it without the fear of losing, losses are part of business ventures, the motive is to nurture and propel you as you’ve identified your short comings.
The ability to not give up is the key to success, being positive and ready to welcome any form of challenge is the right spirit to becoming successful. The essence of this paper is to motivate and get you on your toes to start something really good now. This is what I read from a page and I loved it, it reads “Reading others’ success story is one of the most important ways to strengthen the energy and enthusiasm you need to become successful, no matter what business you have and in what competition you want to become successful. You need to learn how those who have been able to stand out of the crowd followed the right track seriously. This encourages you to do the same and not to give up until you get where you want to be.”
The success stories of Bill Gates, Alinko Dangote, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and Marcus Garvey is what I want to handle to encourage you. One of the best ways to be successful isn’t in a government provided job and neither is it in working for someone but it is in working for yourself and doing your own business. Being successful is being excellent in the decisions and actions you take today. This paper’s motive is to assure and guarantee your success only if you decide to go the right path towards success. I would like you to take few minutes to read these short stories about the world’s most renowned, successful and powerful men and how they did it.
BILL GATES
Gates once said “if you are born poor, it’s not your mistake but if you die poor, that is your mistake”. The morale from this piece is; though you can’t control how things start since you have no chance and the opportunity to determine how they should have started, you have the opportunity to turn that situation around for your greater good.
Bill Gates’ success story has continued to inspire many across the world. The story of a Harvard dropout topping the Forbes Rich List year after year is no mean achievement and being able to do it year after year means one surely has some special abilities. The unique characteristic that makes one tick, overcome challenges and gives the strength to continue even when encouragement is few and hope is all that keeps you moving ahead is what makes the clear distinction between a successful and an average achiever. It is not just about being at the right place at the right time but as Gates himself said, it is necessary to “Do the right things, long enough, consistently.”
Success does not come in a platter. One has to strive for it, work towards it and achieve it bit by bit. Unlike what you see, it is never an overnight transition. There is no fairy Godmother whose magic wand helps you wake up a millionaire after spending the night as a pauper.
Bill Gates as a Lakeside Prep School student spent many days designing computer programs. Though this meant that his academic performance suffered and his homework was incomplete on most occasions, he remained committed to his passion (that is perseverance at work here). Think of the time Bill Gates started. At a tender age of 13, he was experimenting with the many computer applications that later on would become the foundation of his eventual success. Given how expensive computers were at that point in time, he used his school computer extensively at that point of time to further his passion and give shape to his dreams.
The fact that he chose to constructively give shape to his thoughts rather than mere daydreaming was what eventually turned the tide in his favor. Now someone who dropped out of Harvard University was awarded a degree and honored with a doctorate from the same University he dropped out from.
ALINKO DANGOTE
I have less to say concerning Aliko Dangote, he came from a rich background and I don’t really see his story as much inspiring. Forgive my choice and construction of sentences but Aliko Dangote’s grandfather, Sanusi Dantata, was once named one of the wealthiest people living in Kano. He made his fortune by selling commodities such as oats and rice. So Aliko had the foundation laid and he tapped from there, what inspires me of Aliko is his entrepreneurially mindset. He believed in building his empire, creating his own wealth and creating employment for millions of people in the world. He is an achiever, such excellent success well-crafted by a mastermind.
To succeed, it doesn’t matter the corner that you are but what you make from such a corner. Tenacity has being Aliko Dangote’s hallmark and that is one quality to excellence, continuity on doing the right thing for a longer time. After graduating from college in 1977, Dangote managed to convince his uncle to lend him $3,000 to start a business. The funds from the loan allowed him to import soft commodities at wholesale prices from international suppliers. Two of his main imports were rice from Thailand and sugar from Brazil. He then sold those items in small quantities, and at a lucrative markup, to consumers in his village. The venture quickly became successful and turned into a cash cow . Dangote claims that on some of his best days, he was realizing a daily net profit of $10,000 . That allowed him to repay his uncle in only three months.
DR. KWAME NKRUMAH AND MARCUS GARVEY
In the socio political perspective, great men like like Dr.Kwame Nkrumah and Marcus Garvey never gave up on their quest to achieve what they yearned to achieve. To achieve your goals and what life got to offer, you need not compromise to challenging situations but you fight to win. He stated “Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift. Thy claim it as their own and none can keep it from them”. Such powerful mindset is what successful individuals possess, they claim ownership of what they yearn for.
Marcus Garvey on the other hand, was a Jamaican political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a proponent of the Pan-Africanism movement, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League . Garveyism intended persons of African ancestry in the diaspora to “redeem” the nations of Africa and for the European colonial powers to leave the continent. His essential ideas about Africa were stated in an editorial in the Negro World entitled “African Fundamentalism”, where he wrote: “Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality… to let us hold together under all climes and in every country.
He believed in just and what is supposed to be. He stood by what he understood was right and ensued justice prevailed for the blacks.
Conclusion:
Being a successful person in life is not necessarily about acquiring different levels of academic certificate. You can write your success story in any way you like it but believe you can do it. All the great successful men in this world applied one thing to being successful and that was excellence. Excellence in their thinking and in their actions too, same excellence was exhibited. Life is full of choices and to be successful, it doesn’t matter whether you are black or white, American or Indonesian, what matters is your mindset and the choices you make today.
Writer: Emmanuel De-Graft Quarshie
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Visit degraftxclusive.blogspot.com for more quotes and inspirational messages.
Read more: How Aliko Dangote Became the Richest African | Investopedia http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/100615/how-aliko-dangote-became-richest-african.asp#ixzz4OnWpomRk
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