You cannot find road bumps, tight corners, or steep slopes if you do not go on a road trip. If you do not want to experience turbulence, you do not fly. If you do not fly, chances of tapping into a new culture, visiting new places, gaining fresh perspectives about new people, places, and food, will not be possible.
Growth comes with discomfort.
If you do not get out of your house, you may not get to know all the opportunities available. If you want to grow, get out of your comfort zone. “Get out of your house” is a metaphor I use here to mean taking a deliberate effort to knock on doors, to send a proposal, to reach out to prospects. If you do not reach out, you may never experience rejection which means that you lack the experience of handling bad news.
Growth is not glamourous.
Every time you try to grow, challenges come. And you can see the challenges during the election period. Some candidates find it difficult to campaign. Others just lack the cash required to finance the campaign logistics of traversing the whole country within two months. It is a huge challenge, but they are gaining tremendous insights about the living conditions of Ugandans, the state of infrastructure, public speaking skills, and generally lots of insights from elders, advisors, and many people who are challenging them.
I can confidently say that “the more the challenges, the more the growth.” When you are just from University, finding a job is a tough task. However, once you move past that stage of finding a job, just any job, the next one becomes easier to find. When you find a job, if it is great, you will find that every day is a challenging one for you as you are presented with new tasks, requirements, and challenges that call for new and fresh thinking. However, a role that is repetitive or does not require you to learn new skills, makes you stagnate.
Any role that exposes you to new skills, people, and places, or any of the two, is fantastic. Focus on excelling it. And keep doing your best. Ask for more challenges to win. To discover new places, new cultures or see great sites, you must get out and travel. However, during the journey, you will experience lots of challenges and difficulties. That is because the journey of growth is not glamourous. But the outcome is.
Copyright Mustapha B Mugisa, 2020. All rights reserved.
