What I Wish I Knew Before The Age 20

Description

“Life is lived forward, but understood backwards.”
I have written this book to share with my generation, in particular, and the youth worldwide, insights I have discovered about life and how I believe life could be lived successfully, through the application of wisdom secrets. It’s a natural thing for anyone to aspire for success which brings fulfilment. Unfortunately, this craving to succeed is so intense among many folks that it is pushing many, especially the youth, to rush through life with much haste to the complete disregard of the invaluable nuggets that bring about success, integrity and respect in life. While I do not intend to give an account of my early experiences in this book, a casual look, in retrospect, into my background would bring home in clear terms, my reasons for writing this particular book. I was born to a polygamous father and an illiterate mother and happened to be the last son of my father’s numerous children. I grew up without knowing my
father because he died before I was two years old. All I knew about him was what I was told by my siblings and other family members. Life for me was not any different from that of the local community. However, for some reason I had a great desire for education. Even though it was difficult for my mother to finance all five of us through school, I had this unusual desire to do everything I could to attend school. This desire was so strong that at age seven, I would sell anything, from foodstuff and kerosene, to all kinds of products just to finance my education. In one instance when I was in the sixth form (high school), although I was the head prefect of my school, I had to sell banku and soup, a Ghanaian local dish, in another suburb during vacation just to enable me to meet the educational expenses at that level. Throughout all these times, I guess unknowingly, I was still in search of the laws and secrets that would bring success and fulfilment my way. However, I did things my own way with success eluding me at every turn. Things were unbearably tough and during these times I continuously asked God WHY; why He should expose a fragile youth like me to such life-threatening situations. I did not have any mentors or guardians in the strictest sense of the word, and so life to me was defined according to my own interpretation of things. Memories of pain, distress, hurt and disillusion of those years still surface in my mind, and I have wondered on many occasions why “life” could be that unconcerned. However, as I crawled through life, past the age of thirty, I began seeing things with a different perception and outlook. I began to give meaning to situations with a new paradigm, a combination of motivation and different levels of thinking.
Then one day as I strolled through the streets, I walked past a building with an inscription which caught my attention. At first when I read this, my natural response was to ignore it because it did not make sense initially. But then suddenly I found myself memorising the inscription I had just read which said “life is lived forward but understood backwards”. Finally, it dawned on me that, that is how life is. One does not always understand the ways of life or the things one goes through until one has aged past the particular incident. It is normally after a while that one comes to grips with the true meaning and purpose of what r e a l l y t r a n s p i r e d .
As I reviewed this incident and the story of my life, I saw the true sense in what I had read, and understood that in life there is the need for one to exercise patience in everything. This is because everything that happens has a reason. And that when you are unaware of the reasons of the things happening in your life there is the tendency to take certain steps or actions that may create a future of disaster for you. I suddenly understood that without wisdom and innovative learning, one only lives in a world of darkness. From that day I knew that there was a distinction between “being taught how to do “and “learning how to be.”

It is with this desire in my heart to help my generation and the youth (future leaders) worldwide to understand this indispensable ingredient of life that I have compiled these wisdom secrets. As you read through these wisdom secrets, may the Lord open your eyes to the particular nugget that will bring an awakening into your life and spirit just as it did for me. Understand that if others have succeeded against all the odds that were against them, then you too can succeed.

Please pursue the dreams of your heart because you can. The pursuit of your dream will be a lifetime investment, which will yield uncommon desirable results for you in the very near future. The fact that you are reading this book indicates that you are ready to embrace the challenges of the 21 century and make your mark in your world. You see, in life our parents bring us into the World, but in the end, we are responsible for what we become. Therefore, I urge you to charge at every obstacle confronting you in the pursuit of your God given dream and CHANGE your circumstance.

Remember that in life, you don’t get what you want, you get in life what you are. Your generation is waiting on you for the little you can do, therefore don’t let time and circumstances use you. Rather use time to make your mark.