When a Step Backwards Becomes a Step Forward.
And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction. – Kurt Vonnegut
How the year 2017 unfolded for me made me question the concept of progress in life. I started the year with great aspirations and clear goals of what I wanted to do and achieve. You may be surprised (or not) to know that everything I planned for the year didn’t go as expected. Typical, right? Not sure about you but there are somethings in life that will not just go as planned. This year’s experience taught me that planning does not guarantee a problem-free journey, but prepares you to handle them. A failed plan is not a failed purpose. When the plan fails, don’t give up on the purpose. Unexpectedly, one out of my many goals for the year took almost the entire year to materialise. The year was characterised with lack of financial capacity, moments of self doubt, and me thinking I may have wasted this year without any ‘great’ goal accomplished. The small nagging voice in my head is telling me I have not made any progress this year and I have been wrestling with the thought for the last 3 months. The concept of making progress in life may have been wrongly demonstrated to us, especially in today’s contemporary lifestyle where performance and getting ahead of others is the norm. It all starts from day one, when you squeeze air out of your lungs and scream the all-important first cry to signify you are alive, otherwise the parents and all medical practitioners attending to your delivery would worry that something is wrong. I have been privileged, blessed to experience this precious moment of childbirth twice and watch both of them grow. Though both living in the same environment with similar conditions, their growth and progress in life is strikingly different. My daughter started walking at 9 months old, talking before she was two. My son on the other hand walked a day to his 1st birthday, had delayed speech, started talking after his 4th birthday. He was referred to a speech therapist who confirmed there was no problem. And truly, when he started talking, he had (and still has) a good command of English. As a matter of fact, he has the better vocab in the family at age 9.
A failed plan is not a failed purpose. When the plan fails, don’t give up on the purpose
There is an unwritten or unspoken expectation for our lives either from our families or the systems we opt to live in. Growing up in Nigeria, my parents, like any other parents, automatically expected me to attend primary school, secondary school, university, and if possible, straight to pursue a masters degree without any form of work experience. That’s progress as far as my parents are concerned. Contemplating retaking a class, or a subject or taking up an apprenticeship instead of going to university would be seen as regression/failure. This perception of progress in life has caused me a lot of pain in dealing with my own failures and setbacks. I had been very fortunate and blessed that almost everything about me had been fast-tracked, not necessarily by design. The battle began when I started to experience some level of delay, setback, failure in life, business, and career. Rather than slow down, reassess what I did wrong and learn from it, I was spending my depleting energy on forging forward until I reached rock bottom. The rock bottom in itself is a blessing, an opportunity in disguise and I came to the realisation that forward movement does not necessarily equate progress. C.S. Lewis rightly captured this in his book, Mere Christianity. He wrote, “Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.” It is safe to say true progress in life is measured against life’s purpose – where you are headed and what you believe you were born to do, to contribute to humanity. If you are yet to discover your ‘why’ in life, you will end up comparing yourself with others who surely have a purpose different from yours. Everything you do or don’t do in life should be guided by your reason for living.
There is an unwritten or unspoken expectation for our lives either from our families or the systems we opt to live in
Towards the end of last year, I was concerned that I was not making ‘progress’ at work. In one of my sessions with my career mentor at work, I shared my frustration and what he said transformed my perspective and perception of progress. He said, ‘Promotion may not necessarily be progress.’ Improving and mastering what you currently do is definitely progress and development. Many may have viewed and assessed progress in terms of physical, material things or other achievements, but I have discovered the best kind of progress you can have in life is the unseen, internal, not obvious progress where you have improved and developed more mentally, socially, financially, spiritually. More like a holistic progress where your life and work complement each other without one suffering at the expense of the other. Real progress is that which is experienced in the intangible yet important aspects of life, those areas money cannot buy or that you cannot lose easily. You can lose a house you bought within 24 hours but cannot lose who you have become in the process of getting to the season of buying the house. We celebrate and focus on materials things that are simply symbols or physical evidence that we are making progress. Those things are not progress in themselves but by-products of progress. True progress does not look like what our society tags it to be. You may be going through hell at the moment, with everything working against you and ironically may be making progress at the same time. I know, that’s very hard to accept. Losing your job or business, experiencing rejection and betrayal may be progress in disguise. Troubles and problems in life are never designed or intended to be bad things. Every kind we face may be telling us something – something we may need to improve or pay close attention to or that is crucial to the next season.
You may be going through hell at the moment, with everything working against you and ironically may be making progress at the same time
I remember the biblical story of a teenage boy who conceived a dream/vision to be a national leader in the future (full disclosure: Joseph’s story is my favourite biblical story ever). The problem was, there was no precedence he could build on, nothing in his family background to suggest that what he conceived was possible. Frank Zappa, an American musician, composer, activist, and filmmaker once observed, ‘Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.’ Jo was willing to risk everything and deviate from the family tradition of becoming a local farmer. Neither his parents nor siblings understood his audacity to conceive the idea of doing something different from the norm. For Jo, the following 13 years didn’t look like what he dreamt of; they were characterised by betrayal, disappointment, rejection, fear of tomorrow, questioning his faith and values, learning new skills and an unorthodox leadership training. He was jumping and hopping from one trouble to another. After every small break would come a bigger trouble. He must have thought, ‘Why am I taking one step forward and two backwards all the time?’ ‘Why do I attract trouble everywhere I go?’ But unknown to him, every trouble was a training platform and a step closer to his dream/purpose. He must have questioned his life over and over again, doubted himself and possibly gave up on his lofty dream but unknown to him, all the experiences were progress in disguise. His character, value, faith, strategic thinking, consistency, compassion, leadership skills were developed and shaped by all of his heartbreaks and disappointments within those 13 years from hell.
