Preparedness – 1

“A man’s gift makes way for him and causes him to sit before kings and great men”

SUGAR!!! Today is the 1st of feb, 2008. Can you imagine? 31 full days have passed. I just attended a presentation on FINANCIAL EMPOWERMENT delivered by my colleague. It was supposed to be a rehearsal, for the real deal on sunday, but it couldn’t have been done better. It was evident he was prepared; not necessarily because he spent a night losing sleep over the presentation but because he’d been preparing for it all his life…….Maybe i’ll go into details later in another post……………I wish I could just continue writing my post but i couldn’t do that if i didn’t refer to “the beginning”. The beginning here refers to 3 posts titled “where are you 1-3″ at Deolu. There he talks about Joseph’s journey through the 6P’s-Padanaram(plain), Pit, Potiphar’s house, Prison, Palace, Prime Minister. You will have a thorough knowledge of what those P-junctions mean with relevance to life.

I got an inspiration concerning this journey as regards the lessons Joseph learned at each of these P-junctions. Please indulge me as i take you through my thoughts.

Padanaram (plain ground) – LATENT OR TALENT

Joseph was born and raised here. He had latent managerial talents that weren’t exploited. His father loved him TOO much because he was the son of his favoured wife. He had lost Rachel-Joseph’s mother at childbirth and as a result doted on Joseph and his younger brother Benjamin more than was necessary. He didn’t allow him follow his brothers to learn the shepherding and cattle rearing. He felt if he exposed him, he’d probably lose him to the wild. He believed he was too tender to face the rigours and dangers of leading cattle through the wilderness. what if lions and/or bears got him? what if his brothers sent him alone to get something for them and he lost his way? what if? what if?. Those are questions that would probably have run through his mind so he decided to play it safe and keep his son at him.

How many of us decide to play safe with our latent abilities and talents? How many times do we remember the things people said about us when we were younger and exhibited some gift or ability. “your boy will be a great doctor” they’ll say to your parents or”you will be a very good engineering” they’d say smiling as they watched you take apart a toy car. “you’ll be a good artist”, “you’ll be a great………..bla, bla, bla. My teachers in pre-school told my parents I’d be a first-class student and that they should watch me. Well they weren’t too far from the truth. I became a first-class material and that was all there was to it. I neither made a first-class, no was i close to it. So what happened?

I realised that the difference between a raw material and the finished product is processing (preparation). So also is the difference between a first-class “material” and a first-class “product”.

Also, to process the raw material, you must first break off the outer covering and expose the inner. You can not afford cover up your talent, skills or abilities. If you want them developed, they must be exposed to the processing machine (an enabling environment). They must be developed. Lots of parents are the outer covering of raw materials that must be broken off. All they keep saying is, “he is still a small boy”, “i want him to be right-handed”, “Stop playing football! If you play football, you’ll amount to nothing”. Tiger Woods was given a golf club at the age of three. Venus and Serena Williams started playing competitive tennis before they were 10yrs old. Roger Federer and Micheal Schumacher started competing in their various fields respectively before they were ten.

I personally, am of the opinion that if Jacob allowed Joseph to exploit his talents and abilities, his brothers would have loved him and not hated him because he would have made life very easy for them. He would have made sure everything worth doing in the house was done effectively and well. He was born to handle resources effectively, human or otherwise. The only reason they called him a dreamer is because that was all he did. He didn’t do any work at all………is what you have latent or talent?(note: they have the same letters). I’ll continue at the next post.