Fill your life with laughter

INTERESTING title — isn’t it? Tell me the truth — drop me an email or a WhatsApp message. Why would you read an article, a book, a newspaper, a magazine if that doesn’t add to your thinking? Alternatively change the article title to what comes first, a hen or an egg? Or education and a rewarding job?

Imagine an environment where there are plenty job opportunities, do you think an employer or investor would be interested in hiring or employing you? Come to think of it again if your company were to be acquired by a new investor, a new owner who then decides to do a skills audit in order to select who should be retrenched or laid off and who should stay and be given new responsibilities are you going to stand and be selected to stay? If your answer is yes — laugh at that thinking. If your answer is no then laugh hilariously with that thinking.

Once you are done with laughing proceed to read the Biblical story about Noah. Noah was given an assignment by God to build an ark. This was in preparation of a disaster that was to strike. Call it disaster management. Naturally Noah invited others. Some immediately listened and heeded his exhortation. Others laughed at his invitation. When disaster struck laughter couldn’t help. The morale here is that a journey to a rewarding life has never been easy. It has never been filled only with laughter. Fortunately it has been characterised by a voice calling you to do something in preparation for a rewarding life. Besides Noah there was also John the Baptist who went around calling people to change their way of lives in preparation for the coming of a Saviour. Compared to these harbingers of change and the need to prepare for a rewarding life Trust Academy through its Career Guidance programmes on radio, in newspaper editorials, in partnership with the National Employment Services Division (NESD) and other stakeholders invites you to embark on a mission to learn and improve yourself. Trust Academy invites you to learn in order to acquire new and relevant skills that guarantee your employability and adaptability. Trust Academy wants you to drop this ambition in life of just getting by or merely surviving. We want you to make a difference. We want you to be unique. We want you to live a purposeful life. A life filled with hope rather than despair. We want you to create a future where yourself, your family, your neighbourhood, your community, your company and your country wins. Our aspiration is that you become a useful person in the environment where you live instead of becoming as the music icon Oliver “Tuku” Mtukudzi said a “hero rauya”.

As Trust Academy we are very clear that this is not an easy thing to do but we are convinced that it is worthwhile. We believe excellence is the result of training and development. No one is born with inherent excellence in him or her. As W Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne correctly observed in their Preface to their book Blue Ocean Strategy (2005: px) “to improve your success you need to study”. This is the only way you can make a positive difference in your life. Learning and studying make your life challenging and worth living hence you can afford to laugh relevantly instead of recklessly. Learning and studying helps you to benchmark yourself. It further helps you appreciate that perceptions influence our worldviews. If your perceptions or understanding of the world and events happening in it are narrow and subjective then you become predominantly parochial. Ultimately you go around selling a dummy!

Trust Academy is convinced that one of the most important hence fundamental choices a person (you in particular) must make in life is to choose a career. Through that you make a deliberate decision to become a somebody in life. Through that you prime yourself to become a preferred person by employers. As Dr Charles Mugaviri appropriately observed in his book Know Yourself: A Solid Foundation For Career and Character Development Book 1 (2015: piv) the choice you make about your career “. . . has far reaching implications” hence “. . . it has to be an informed choice”. He further advises that “The quality of information you have determines the quality of decisions you make”.

Our combined experience at Trust Academy as we deal and assist O/A-level as well as university graduates and parents is that often times people make decisions as if “industries stand still”. People forget that industries keep evolving as operations improve, markets expand and players come and go. To help us exemplify this argument just look back several years and ask yourself how many industries, companies which were non-existent, unimagined or unknown are now in existence. Industries such as healthcare, cellphones, express package delivery, home videos never existed in a meaningful way some 30 or so years ago in Zimbabwe. This basically means that as these new industries come in existence and history remains a predictor of time more new ones will emerge in future hence the need to continue studying and upskilling yourself remains important.

Contributors to the Unisa Student Development Module 2 (2001: p3) advise that, “Nobody can build a house without finding a suitable piece of ground, drawing up building plans, estimating the cost of the project and finding the materials and builders to construct the building”. Equally in life you don’t just stay inactive and start hoping for things to happen as per your imagination. You sit and start imagining you were an accountant, a marketer, a journalist, a scientist or you had money and were rich. While that hoping is not inappropriate it is inaccurate if it is not followed through with an effective and implementable plan of action. Remember hope is NOT a strategy. Also life is serious to be lived through delirious hopes. Instead take appropriate action to cause things to happen the way you want. You need to show commitment to enable what you want to happen. This helps you to schedule your life activities and look for relevant information with a firm life goal in mind. Such an approach would help you prevent a good deal of time wastage through day dreaming and phantom thinking. It helps you to live assuredly.

Researchers and theorists on motivation have demonstrated that human beings are motivated into doing something. This motivation is either intrinsic or extrinsic. It is never terrestrial or extra-terrestrial. Intrinsic motivation refers to motivation that comes from inside a person such as a desire to learn new things, a desire to be the best and the abhorrence of wasting time. Extrinsic motivation refers to motivation that comes from outside the individual.

Different forms of punishment and reward such as bonusfor a job well done or an encouraging letter from the boss are extrinsic rewards. Unisa module contributors cited (2001: p8) argue that “generally intrinsic motivators are stronger than extrinsic ones but it does not mean that extrinsic motivators are not effective. Some of the extrinsic awards, properly applied and combined in the form of recognition, can be very powerful”. In the context of career guidance and counselling this could mean that as parents, employers, superiors or religious leaders the affirmative support we give to our children, employees, subordinates or church members could increase their desire to aspire to become better in life in every regard ethically and morally possible.

With proper guidance and counselling children can be easily influenced to take control of their lives. More so, because they don’t want to shame their parents’ efforts. They (children) become motivated to not “just be” but be “seen to be”. Through that they concentrate on their studies and begin to exercise self-control. It is my considered view that through that children ultimately become committed to their progressive lives . . . hence can afford to fill their lives with laughter! More so as the parents and children as well as employers being to realise certain evidence of exciting and positive change in the child or employee or church member. These changes will allow the beneficiaries (children, employees, subordinates, church members) as well as the benefactors (the parents, sponsors) to appreciate the local, regional and global economic and employment trends. That self-knowledge would allow them to positively and confidently job hunt or be head hunted. This positivity is important for purposeful laughter throughout one’s life.

So why despair, visit Trust Academy now for FREE Career Guidance. Alternatively listen to the Trust Academy Career Guidance programme on StarFM radio every Wednesday 10.30-11.00am. You could also get a copy of the weekly B-Metro or Friday H-Metro or the Sunday News to get yourself developed purposely. Bear in mind that with or without 5 O-level passes you can rise to greatness and fill your life with laughter — always!

Herbert Taruwona Mbindi is a passionate career guidance and counselling advisor. His key motivation is to help people make a difference in their lives. Feedback to: email mbindi@trustacademy.co.zw,WhatsApp 0773616665 or call 0712212179.