No Glory Without Sacrifice

This morning while attending a monthly departmental meeting at my workstation I happened to be among those listening to our guest for the day – a recruitment officer with the company I work with.

To say the least, her story was inspiring let alone motivating.

Every sentence from her mouth broke forth through the still air with such wisdom, energy and gusto that knows no bounds.

Though hard to admit, companies /organizations once in a while undergo restructuring to either lay off some of their employees, expand their operations while minimizing costs.

In most cases, the former reason is always the case, where organizations lay off their staff as a cost-cutting measure in a bid to operate on very low costs while expanding their operations.

However, when such incidents occur in an organization what matters most is on what side of the divide are you. If you are an employee like me currently, that means that you will be on the receiving end of the company’s boardroom decisions.

On the contrary, if you happen to be the CEO or owner of the company, you will be more than happy to implement such a decision as long as its helping your company cut on costs while making profits.

It is such a point in time that our guest was called in by the department management to help shed light on internal job hiring process and issues that need ironing out.

Surprisingly, it turned out that many of us were not aggressive enough in getting the job opportunities that were being made available to us. Evidently, it is true that when you stare at the abyss the abyss stares back at you. The point I’m trying to make here is that if you constantly surround yourself with negativity, sooner or later you will become negative.

Surprisingly, it turned out that many of us were not aggressive enough in getting the job opportunities that were being made available to us. Evidently, it is true that when you stare at the abyss the abyss stares back at you. The point I’m trying to make here is that if you constantly surround yourself with negativity, sooner or later you will become negative.

I will say this without fear of contradiction that most new employees who join an organization usually come in full of positive energy and with a skyrocketing zeal to outperform their resumes.

Nevertheless, along their career path something within them gets twisted and a bend is created. Their zeal, passion and positive attitude towards their job dissipates and evaporates into thin air and behind is left an empty shell of a human body who comes to work not because he/ she loves it but because he/she has to. To them, there is no growth, things will always remain the way they are and there is nothing to look forward to.

Precisely, that was the atmospheric temperature in the room when the invited guest trooped in. The once innocent souls with a hunger to work and serve while building their career lives were now seeing this as a waste of time and energy, their hearts demoralized by an organization that seems not to care about their work life.

Interestingly it only remained so until when our guest changed the tune. She gave her own personal life experience on how she used to be lazy and not aggressive enough in searching for jobs that matched her skills and qualifications.

She hilariously narrated how she could write a CV once and use one and the same Curriculum Vitae to apply to all the job opportunities that came knocking at the door. All she needed to do was print her long written CV from her desktop and send to the whatever job she was applying to at any given time.

Alternatively, she could simply upload one and the same CV while doing online applications and simply click send. At the end of it all, none of her efforts converted into getting her a good job but regret emails and phone calls that never came.

It emerged that she was her own worst enemy and was doing more harm than good to herself. She admitted she was lazy back then something she was quick to point out amongst us. She lamented how sad it was that someone had strong skills to sell to the highest bidder yet did not want to take the time and effort to tailor-make her CV suit a particular position he is applying for.

The challenge is: To the many successful people you see outside there, there is something out of the ordinary that every single one of them did to merit their success status.

Unfortunately, too many of us do not care to ask how did they make it in whatever field of success or line they are in but all we do is get edgy with them, call them names and accuse them of being devil worshippers in some God forbid secret societies.

It’s only when we get positive, refuse to be among the bottom crowd mentality and choose to do something new and positive out of our normal routines that life will have began.

No glory without sacrifice.

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