By Anthony Ubani
Twelve years ago, a Harvard student invited 5 people to his room to discuss a business opportunity. Only 2 of the 5 people showed up. Today, those 2 people are billionaires: Dustin Moskovitz $9.9 Billion and Eduardo Saverin $6.3 Billion.
The guy they met that night? Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, has a net worth of $35.7 Billion.
Now consider for a moment what it must be like to be the other 3 people who were invited, but chose not to attend that life changing meeting. They probably laughed when they were invited and said, “who is this small boy to be inviting us for a meeting.” Today they probably live with the perennial thought of what could have been and the torture of life-long regret.
Some people will quickly attribute it all to luck. But there is no such thing as luck and even if there is, luck only favours the bold and prepared. Two quick leadership lessons here.
First is that those who must excel, succeed and make impact in life must go beyond being intelligent and hardworking. They must equally hone their instincts and develop their sixth sense that much like an antennae discerns opportunities where lesser mortals look and see emptiness.
In the race up the ladder of success, our physical bodies has the least role to play. our soul, the arena of reason and emotion has a much higher role to play.But our spirit, which is responsible for much of what we refer to as intuition, instincts, gut feeling or hunch, is the chief referee of our success or failure in life. Those who will impact their generation must therefore essay to cultivate their spirit being.
That leads to the second point. It is important to understand and appreciate that our greatest success does” not usually come from or rely solely on our greatest efforts. The most beautiful things in life are typically found in the most unlikely of places. And the best things in life are free – like an invitation to attend a meeting with a pimple faced teenage boy.
It is yet another indication that there is a sublime, and I dare say, a supreme power that has a hand in the affairs of men. That power is God Almighty and he shows mercy and compassion on whom it pleases him to show mercy and compassion upon.
Brutus in the Shakespearean play Julius Caesar correctly philosophized that “there is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” But the reality of life proves clearly that far above and beyond a tide, there is also a divine hand in the affairs of men which leads the flood of fortune to them that believe.
Do you believe?
Anthony Ubani, August 2016
