The Promise Of Today; The Reality Of Tomorrow

By Anthony Oluyinka Adesile | Feb 21 2025

What can you do today, or not do, that would have significant impact on your future? Everyday provides us with two options and these options are determinant factors in tomorrow’s realities. Each day provides us with the opportunity to either do or not do anything. It opens up myriads of opportunities to either spend or invest in the future because whatever we do today is our investment options for tomorrow. Recognising this great potential and opportunity enables us to decide on what we invest and how we invest. This is where the doing or not doing something comes to effect.

To Do Or Not To Do
Let’s first clarify what we mean by doing or not doing anything. This is because whatever we choose to not? do is in itself an act of doing something. Choosing to sleep all day is an activity in providing the body with restful indulgence. It can be a positive investment if we clarify the reason for choosing to sleep at the time and the benefit it provides in building up strength to achieve future outcomes. On the other hand, when sleep becomes an everyday indulgence that steals away valuable time to build something, it becomes an activity in doing nothing.

To do or not to do something is about what we do or not do that impacts on our realities tomorrow. It is the activities we commit to in building something tangible; something that makes the future we see become a reality.

 The Future We See
You must have heard about the well-known gentleman who set out on a journey. As the train journeyed through landscapes and towns, the ticket man moved from coach to coach, checking passengers’ ticket. On reaching the gentleman, the ticket man greeted him with recognition and waited to check his ticket. As the gentleman unsuccessfully looked for his ticket, the ticket man asked him not to worry since he was sure he purchased a ticket. That was when the gentleman told the ticket man that he was not in any way worried about not being able to show the ticket, but was more worried because the ticket held the key to his destination. Without the ticket, he was lost to where he should get off the train.

You see, the day is like the train that is taking us on that journey where every occupant has a destination. The ticket man is only there to affirm that we are really on that journey and probably qualify us for the journey. But while some may be like the gentleman who did not know where he was going, many do actually have a destination in mind. These are the visionaries.

 Defining Vision
Vision is the ability to see the future, plan the future and walk the future. Seeing the future enables us to enter each day with clarity of purpose, without which we navigate blindly and without cause. It’s about conceiving specific outcomes, clarifying them in terms of deliverables and actioning them as each day unravels. That’s when the day becomes an opportunity for the attainment of purpose or for lost opportunity when not planned for. As it were, the principle of visioning is that ‘whatever the mind can conceive, the man can achieve’. The determining factor between conceiving and achieving outcomes, however, is in the opportunity each day provides to execute planned actions.

Time Value
Just as each day opens up opportunities to explore and exploit, we are also provided with 24 hours to use to do whatever we want. I chose the word, ‘use’ to highlight the value of activity rather than frivolous spending of time allotted for the day. Why waste time on frivolities when it can be invested with achievable outcomes in mind? The value we place on our time is dependent on the magnitude of our tomorrow’s outcome and our personal drive and commitment to make it happen. Each hour becomes priceless and counts towards the fulfilment of purpose. Whether we sleep, eat, think, exercise, read, plan; whatever we do in the hour and in the day counts towards the fulfilment of purpose.

 Now Is The Time
It’s never too late to start something. Every missed opportunity opens up potential to access other opportunities. That’s the beauty of the day. It provides the opportunity to start anything at any time. If you have not yet woken up to the realities of the limitless opportunities each day allows us, you can start now by following these steps: 

1. Wake up to the realities of diverse opportunities available to you
2. Take a step back to conceive or see a future you desire for yourself
3. Plan out how you can achieve that future
4. identify and eliminate distractions that could impede on your plan
5. integrate your plan into specific time slots for each day
6. Make each day count with conscious investment of time
7. Don’t rule out the place of rest as an investment that provides a good return of good health, sound mind and a man that is ready to take on the world
8. Start now; not tomorrow

Celebrate Your Failures; How to translate failures into a learning experience

By Anthony Oluyinka Adesile | Feb 20 2025

Everyone knows who Thomas Edison was. People like talking about him and his many inventions. His renowned demonstration of electric lighting in 1882 transformed the world that you and I live in today. It was a spectacular demonstration birthed by a resilient attitude that contravened human perception of the word ‘failure’. He had learnt the values of failing and used it to his advantage. Edison matured to see failure as a learning process that someday would bring success!

You can be another Thomas Edison. You can rise up above your failures and make a difference. Think about where you have failed or given up. Did you really think that was the end of the road for you? Has your boss given up on you? Did you fail to meet your target at work? Have you let some people down and feel like melting out of existence? Have you let yourself down in some way? Failure is an interruption on your way to up. Don’t be permanently helpless. Take that failure, correct it and move on! The following tips should help you:

1. Change Your Mindset. What’s your attitude to failure and how does it affect you? Are you weighed down more by how you think people see you or by how much you judge yourself? You know what? ‘Fear defeats more people than any one single thing in the world’, says Emerson. It’s time you stop whining and start winning! Change your mindset. When you focus on the conditions brought about by failure, you begin to see inadequacy, fear, reproach – you get more exposed to the malignant that saps you of your drive to attain your desired future. How about focusing on the positive. It’s not the end of the world for you, yet.

2. Take Cue from Others’ Experiences. I have just made reference to the courage of Thomas Edison. There are many examples around to draw strength from. Think about many who had fallen and yet risen to become celebrated achievers. You can be one of them too. I read in the December 1997 edition of Management Today about how a CEO absorbed his 20 – 30 million dollars in personal loss during the 1997 Wall Street crash and launched three take-overs. What caught my attention was how this CEO inspired Cellular One managers in San Francisco to build an entire cellular network in half the previous record time.

3. Learn From Your Own Experience. Have you ever seen failure as part of learning? Difficult you may say but not impossible. We have just mentioned the first part – overcoming your fears. The second critical part is what you do with your failure. You cannot just shake away failure and pretend that it was not there. You must need to focus on the learning. What have you learnt from the experience? Do you truly understand the process that led to the failure? Would you have done it better and how? Is there an attitude or behaviour you need to change? Think, think, think and change! Sceptics called Thomas Edison a failure over his attempts at making light by using electricity at a time when many thought gaslight had come to stay. His reply was, “I have not failed. I have only discovered 10,000 ways that didn’t work”. These same people applauded him when his resilience paid off.

4. Communicate What You Have Learnt. Maturity comes with being consistent in your learning experiences. Experiences are values that you learnt to live by, which have become part of you over time. It is what you communicate to everyone. If what you have learnt is inconsistent with what you communicate, then no learning has effectively taken place. Failure translated into a learning experience takes courage and determination. Once a decision is made, stand by it and be consistent in your resolve until your learning becomes you. Consistency is the wheel by which the world knows that you are evolving, learning and changing positively. It is what earns you respect and makes you become a superstar.

Think How Not To Fail. Strange as it may seem, the best way to avoid failing is to avoid not to fail. Good thinking births good planning, and good planning results in novel performance. Bear in mind, however, that good thinking and planning often get tried and tested in the valley of experience. So when you feel as if you are failing, mind you. You are neither failing nor falling. You are very close to success. So keep at it until you break-through.