I keep asking myself this question "What makes people get ahead in life?" and after a while i got to discover what makes people get ahead in life is more than what many of us think. There is a limit to where the everyday effort we put in what we do can get us to. The bible puts it succinctly. "The fastest runner doesn't always win the race. The strongest warrior doesn't always win the battle. The wise sometimes go hungry. The Skilful are not necessarily wealthy. Those who are educated don't always lead successful lives. It is all decided by chance, by being in the right place at the right time."
As much as we encourage hard work 💯 and smart work, we must also understand that there is something beyond working hard and working smart. If you have ever read the stories of the wealthiest and most prominent people on earth. They are usually the stories of hard work plus an advantage. Bill gates immersed himself in the knowledge of computer, he put in thousands of hours learning to program while his peers were riding their BMX bicycles. But what if he was not born into the kind of family he had?
At the age of 11, Bill Gates was already getting bored with school and was no longer paying attention while in class Do you know what happened next? His parents sent him to Lakeside School, which was an "extremely exclusive preparatory school. While Bill Gates was in that "extremely exclusive preparatory school, the school needed to acquire the computer of those days where you needed an entire room to install the
computer and it was very expensive. The Mothers Club (mothers of students in the school) came together and bought the computer for the school.
No other school around had that machine. It was that machine that Bill Gate will later spend thousands of hours learning how to program. And by the time he was 13, he wrote his first program. These people worked very hard but beyond working hard they had something else going for them and they took advantage of their advantage.
Life favours the advantaged. Today, 9-year-olds are writing computer programs. 6-year-olds are coding. It is no longer as big an advantage as it was during Bill Gates' time. But it is still an advantage. What do you have going for you? What is your advantage? You may not have the kind of advantage these people had. But are you taking advantage of your advantage? 🤔
What is your own advantage? Do you even know the advantages you have right now? Do you know being on Facebook alone can be an advantage for you? Do you know that Facebook group you belong to can be your advantage? Do you know that sense of humour you have can be your advantage? Do you know that ability to play the keyboard 🎹 can be your advantage?
2022 is no longer around the longer, it's here. You may not know how to design with Canva. You may not even know video editing, but I guarantee you that if people know me more than they know you, I am the person they will pay and then I will hire you to do the job. That is the advantage that visibility gives and I am taking advantage of that. Are you taking advantage of your advantage?
Leaders start early while others are still sleeping.
This is an amazing post that clearly lists those privileges that are glossed over in success stories. People have advantages by birth or circumstance that gives then a major lift. It's really not a level playing field and we have to maximize whatever makes our own circumstances unique.