The matrix: Architects of our own paradise

Morpheus: “I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it” (The Matrix)

Likewise teachers, religious leaders, mentors and influential figures alike can only enlighten us to a certain extent but we are the architects of our own paradise.

Colleges and universities believe in the power of education and employers often filter candidates by level of degree attainment. While certain companies place high priority on proven skills, abilities and overall intelligence.

Winston Churchill famously said “success is not final, failure is not fatal, it’s the courage to continue that counts”. It could be argued that failure is key to joy and happiness, however as long as you get it right in the end. Failures can be viewed as a series of experiments- experimental scientist or scientist in general never stop carrying out empirical studies because of failed experiments, rather they keep on trying different things until they achieve the desired results. If you fail at something you are not the failure but the experiment is the failure. For instant, in football if a team fails to perform more often than not it’s the manager and his formation or game plan who gets the blame, even though it’s the players fault at times due to blatant lethargy.

You get out what you put in. Hard work and dedication pays. Michael Gladwell stated that it takes 10 000 hours to perfect your craft, and the hours are key to success.

Some argue that a narrow focus increases efficiency particularly when starting a business but as you grow your business and your team you can widen your horizons. For it has been advised not to put eggs in one basket. Meaning it’s not wise to concentrate efforts and resources on one area as you could lose everything.

Choose (what you want to do) Connect (get connected to an advisor or expects in that area as well as potential consumers) create (start don’t procrastinate commit (be diligent and never give up on your dreams). However if you are not enjoying what you are doing it’s best you jump ship as fast as you can. If you persevere with the job you hate you continue to live a life of perpetual unfullfilment.

Positivity, brilliance and passion are some of the key attributes to create a happy life. Passion is arguably the currency of life. Find your passion and be happy, my niece pointed out that some times its hard to realise your passion. Well it’s easy to identify your passion- what do you like to do with your spare time? What do you like to read? What are your favourite tv programs and why? What are you following on social media? What makes you tick? Such questions will help you to identify your passion, find something you love to do. You can also use your passion to generate income- getting paid while doing what you love to do. Some love reggae and use it to make a living. Well some might say music takes talent, natural ability to sing. Another good example is Michael Dapaah’s (Big ShaQ) passion is to make people laugh and he doggedly persevered to make a break through with the hit comedy song “mans not hot” which made him. Dapaah used to grind 9-5 at Vodafone and had had enough of that life. And wanted to do something creative and interesting so he started creating comedy skits and characters like Big ShaQ.