How To Understand Your Goals in Life

Life, according to what the revered Late Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo, the erudite Nigerian statesman and the first Premier of Western Nigeria whose avowed political opponents tagged as the best President the country never had said many years ago when he was alive, is not a bed of roses but the courage you bring into it. This was due to the gruesome experience he went through in his youth and formative years. Here was a man who rose from the bottom pit of adversity to a great factor to reckon and without whose indelible effort, the nation would not have been what it is today as the indisputable ‘giant of Africa’.

During his year of the locust, he was a hewer of wood and fetcher of water to the general public in the greater Nigerian community, the exercise in which he was engaged to enable him educate himself since his father, the pillar of his support, passed away when he was nine years old. He did not allow the wanton adversity to stand on his way right from that tender age and when he became an adult, he never succumbed to the wiled and guiles of natural adversity. Mention any great landmark infrastructure and social welfare opportunities in his part of the country even up till today, his name is always a recurrent decimal in anything first. He it was that initiated the first television station in the whole continent of Africa, the first radio broadcasting station, the first football stadium, the first industrial estate as well as the first tallest building in the country which he named ‘Cocoa House’ the edifice that has remained a very great monument for the past 56 years.

According to him, the purpose of introducing free education for the children less than 18 years in the part of the country that he governed as Premier between 1952 and 1959 was to ensure that the then young Nigerians who he identified as the leaders of the country in the future were liberated from the shackles of disease, wants and ignorance. The reason is therefore not farfetched why he remained a second to none icon and the greatest colossus that the nation of Nigeria has ever produced since its amalgamation by our erstwhile colonial masters in 1914. The following points are the major fundamental philosophies he propounded in his life time.

Goals in life:
He was of the strong view that the problem with many people is that they do not know what they want in life. It stands to reason that if you can establish your vision and focus very clearly, half of your life time problem is solved. By this very fact, whatever is not in line with your pursuit should not be entertained.

Knowledge is power:
Since it is said that reading makes a man or woman, there is no way you can avoid being a good reader and do that with a view to learning and being broad minded. It is quite important to develop the habit of the reading culture. The point is very clear that if you are in love with books, there is hardly anything that someone may bring or say that you will not be armed with facts to either corroborate or jettisoned. Since ignorance is a disease, people in that category are the most vulnerable because they embrace whatever comes to them hook, line and sinker so for you to make any headway in your terrestrial journey, you must understand your goal in life.