Thinking Habits And Lifestyles Of Winners

On The Path Of Winners

BY BAYO OGUNMUPE

Thinking Habits And Lifestyles Of Winners

THE habits and lifestyles of winners are worthy of emulation. Those who by inspiration and perspiration have become wealthy have memoirs which can help aspiring millionaires. Sadly, the mediocre do not seem to want to emulate these rich people. Instead mediocres become envious, detesting the successes and progress of the rich. Granted that the rich are often obnoxious, lousy and arrogant, this does not change the facts that they are successful.

  For example, since the victory of the President-elect, Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari, they have been criticising the former Lagos state governor, Chief Bola Tinubu for sponsoring the merger of four opposition parties to form the All Progressives Congress, the platform which carried Buhari to victory. They say we don’t even question the integrity of Tinubu who, they say has turned politics into profitable business. We say, such envious attitudes don’t exist among the rich. It isn’t your business to question Tinubu’s morals. Those are provinces of God and the Nigeria Police Force. What aspiring winners do is to concentrate on their goals, work at them and succeed in them.

  Thinking on how Tinubu made his money does not add value, riches and substance to your existence or greatness.

  Those aspiring to replicate Tinubu’s greatness should focus on the strategies and skills deployed to produce success. Being resentful of those who have what you desire will only make what you desire move even further away from you. This is a reason why many fail to achieve the wealth and riches they desire. Their resentment will continue to drive wealth away from them. Resentment creates negative emotions such as anger, envy, bitterness and spite which clutter your mind preventing creative problem solving to enter into it. When you are building your wealth, you should research on the rich. You should read biographies and visit the abode of the rich.

  We have discovered the negative mindset of Nigerians do inhibit the realization of their goals. Instead of planning their own greatness, they are busy regaling themselves with the myths of how Tinubu obtained contracts to build a hotel or that Mike Adenuga must personally interview every manager before he is employed by Globacom. To me, the way we think and believe sentenced most of us to poverty. The Torah says: ‘‘Speak gracious words to edify and not words that wound as words fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver,” Prov. 25: 11.

   You cannot be great without knowledge. Which is why you should engage yourself in the acquisition of knowledge rather than vendetta. If  you desire wealth you should read the biographies of wealthy people where they will tell you how to make it. The secrets of wealth are in the stories and experiences of the rich. Peter Daniels, the richest man in Australia, is reputed to have read six thousand biographies. Bill Gates, the richest man in the world is known to read and review thousands of books every year. Moreover, a study of the wealthy revealed that rich people are voracious readers. No wonder, they are successful. As an aspirant to greatness, you have no excuse when memoirs of the great abound everywhere. You don’t have to repeat the experience of failure that others have undergone. You can simply avoid the mistakes of others through reading the testimonies of others.

  A recent edition of Forbes magazine captured the accounts of a Nigerian billionaire who recently bounced back from failure. The oil company of the billionaire in question was taken over by others owing to excessive debts. The essay was able to show the strategies this  billionaire applied to enable him bounce back. This article is replete with lessons for every aspiring entrepreneur that could save him from failure. Because riches start from the mind, driven by our attitudes and mindset, if you want to excel, you must nourish your mind with knowledge. You can only be as great as your knowledge.

  Our champion this week is Sir Vidiadhar Suraj prasad Naipaul (August 1932 to 2012), the Trinidadian writer of Indian descent who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. Naipaul is well known for his pessimistic novels set in the developing world which the Swedish Academy called suppressed histories. Descending from Hindu Indians who had immigrated to Trinidad as indentured labourers, Naipaul left Trinidad to attend the University of Oxford in 1950. He subsequently settled in England. His earliest books, The Mystic Masseur, 1957, The Suffrage of Elvira, 1958, and Miduel Street, 1959 are ironic and satirical accounts of life in the Caribbean. His fourth novel A House for Mr. Biswas, 1961, was a much more important work and won him recognition. In other books, Naipaul explored the personal and collective alienation experienced in new nations struggling to integrate their native and western colonial heritages. Naipaul was knighted in 1989 and awarded the Nobel Prize in 2001.