Irrespective of our callings in life, we all, each, have opportunities as well as face various challenges. As an entrepreneur, you will frequently get pulled back by headwinds as well as some push from tailwinds. Both can become opportunities or constraints depending on how you respond to them.
Scientists generally agree that our ‘ancestors’, the Homo erectus, first appeared on the Earth some two million years ago. On the other hand, based on recorded history of about five thousand years and estimates from the Scriptures, we may not have been around for more than some ten thousand years. No matter the estimates we decide to accept, it can be demonstrated that the challenges we all face as individuals do not go beyond a few categories that may include health, financial, relationships, professional or career and perhaps a few more. For the thousands or millions of years that we have been around, these categories of challenges remain the same, changing only in specificity, degree and scope. Similarly, the fundamental strategies of resolving our challenges remain the same with only changes in required tactics as a result of social, technical and other environmental imperatives. Therefore, even as onerous as our personal challenges might seem to us, the truth is that many people have gone through and are going through the same thing or much worse! Equally many of them have successfully navigated through and some are right now navigating through with successful resolution looming in the horizon.
Luckily for us, many of the people who have successfully turned around unimaginable challenges, have written their stories. These stories serve at least a few purposes. They make us realize that others have gone through much bigger challenges than ours and have come out of them successfully. We also learn how they went about handling what they faced and see how we can adapt their methods to fit our situations. Most of the times, our problems persist because we have failed to understand and/or do something. Biographies have a way of bringing out our ‘demons’ as well as how we can confront them. Interestingly, biographies also have a way of ‘simplifying’ what had, hitherto, seemed insurmountable to us.
Whether your challenges are financial, medical, relationship, or career, look for a few relevant biographies, preferably autobiographies, and read them. they can help you in contextualizing your challenge as well as in successfully resolving them.
Start reading biographies and make it a habit.
