You as an achiever among other people

LIFESTYLE

By THOMAS HUKAHU
IN my previous article in Weekender, I shared with you some tips on how to help the children in your family to succeed in their lives.
This article follows on with a theme related to success, and particularly focused on you as the subject.
If you are an achiever, or someone who wants to succeed, then this article is for people like you.
Hopefully, you will be motivated to continue to achieve things in life, and advance yourself and those around you.
Everyone wants to succeed
Everyone wants to succeed, or achieve something in life, right?
How do I know this? Listen to what people are saying around you. Most conversations you hear will be about someone telling someone else how they excelled in this or that.
Like, a student talking about their easy-than-normal study habits, or work routines.
As a postgraduate student studying in a reputable university here in Australia, I hear this conversation a lot from students who are discussing their studies in the main hub where they gather.
One student will be telling others how she or he did something outstanding, or is coping with a challenge, like a tough project or assignment.
We all love achievers, right?
Achievement is great.
So, is it true that achievers are loved everywhere? No. Unless he or she is part of our team.
As in, if she or he is representing Papua New Guinea at the Commonwealth Games and wins gold, then you and everyone will be celebrating.
But, if s/he is in another team that beat your team in a competition, for most people, and possibly you, this would not be accepted.
Some people may feel unhappy for a day or week but then get over it.
But there are some who continue to be bitter about their team losing and they may bear grudges against the players of the winning team, who are the achievers for the moment.
Examples of achievers
When you talk about achievers, who do you think of?
Is it Ben Carson, the black kid who grew up in the home of a single parent who was illiterate, but then making his way from the bottom of the class to eventually becoming a well-known world-class neurosurgeon?
Or, is it Albert Einstein, the physicist, who came up with a new set of ground-breaking theories that still amaze those in the scientific world?
Or, is it Elon Musk, who is planning interplanetary travel and, in the process, pushing technology and invention forward by decades?
Who do you think of when you think about achievers?
If you look around, you will see some in your communities too.
They are the ones who may have succeeded in school, business or sports.
Who are the achievers?
Before we continue this discussion about achievers, let us consider the word “achiever”. What does it mean?
The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines an achiever as someone who achieves success especially through effort, or it can also mean a successful person.
So, as you can see, an achiever is someone who succeeds in something and does that with effort.
That also means that achievement comes from effort that is expended. No-one will achieve anything by just sitting down and doing nothing.
But if you look around, you will find a lot of people like that.
They spend more time doing nothing but talking about other people and those people’s achievements. They do not do anything about their own lives.
The football player who becomes a leading goal scorer in a tournament is an achiever.
A student who wins the English or maths prize in their class is an achiever.
A business person who starts off with K200 and grows their business into one that is generating K400,000 a year and employs 45 people is an achiever.
I will go one more stop to say that a true achiever is someone who continues to succeed year after year.
The success that they achieve is not fluke, or something that happened by chance.
The fruits come from honest labour invested in their field.
Now, let me make an important point here: Some people seem to be achieving things but they are not true achievers because their success is really dependent on someone else pulling a string.
The U12 football player who is the son of a famous coach may be selected for a representative side because of his parent.
Similarly, the businessman who became wealthy because his cousin brother is a senior minister in the government may be growing rich because of his connections, not because of his quality work.
Achievers may not be liked
As I was thinking about this theme of an achiever, one of the characters that came to my mind was a salesman who entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the seller of most cars in a year. In 1973, he sold 1,425 cars.
In a YouTube video, Joe Girard said he grew up in a deplorable ghetto in Detroit, Michigan, USA.
“There were no jobs, no food, no money and you had holes in your shoes,” he said.
He said he stuttered as a kid and his own father beat him down with negative comments and said he would never amount to anything.
But Girard, who passed on in 2019 at the age of 92, said that did not stop him from looking for ways to earn money and support his mother and siblings when their father was not around.
He worked as a newspaper boy and later started his own business before turning to selling cars for a firm.
I first came to know about Girard by reading parts of his book which was usually carried around by one of my brothers when we were growing up, a book that belonged to my father who was then a sales manager of a retailing and wholesaling firm.
In the book “How to sell anything to anyone”, Girard shared his secrets about how he sold cars to people.
He said when he won the record in the first year as the greatest salesman in the world, he was celebrated. However, when he started winning that award for the third and fourth times, he was getting jeers, not cheers, from his colleagues.
I thought that was odd, when I first read about that. But as time went on, I realised that that is true even today.
People generally do not like an achiever who wins an award year after year.
A true achiever like Girard does not mind the views of those around him though.
He knew the evil side of human nature and continued to refine his trade and processes and continued to top the sales record year after year.
Real achiever Girard teaches others
One thing I have noticed is true achievers teach others how to also achieve.
They do not hide their process or strategy as if it is an original and unique method that is too sacred to be shared.
And Girard is such a person, one who teaches others to become better sales people, as in writing books and giving talks.
He also states clearly that he read books and gleaned the best advice from reliable and credible sources, not just any Tom, Dick and Harry.
He said: “I bought (and read) books by people only that I knew had a track record.”
That is, he learned by learning from others to refine his methods to be better at the selling game.
Here are some of his interesting lines:
• When something is wrong, I don’t wait until it gets worse. I handled it yesterday. I am organised.
• If it is to be, it is up to me. Nobody is going to be looking out for you. Nobody.
• You are the captain of your own ship.
• Sales people are not born, they are made.
• When a salesman sells, there is no loser. Both the buyer and seller win if it’s a good sale.
Girard is someone who believes that work time should not be spent in talking about things not related to work.
He is also very creative with his methods and sends thank you cards to his clients, usually after a sale.
He is one who believes that the relationship built between the salesman and his clients will make it easier for the clients to revisit him for their next buy in a few years down the road.

Genuine achievements may take time
Let me end this article with an important point. Real achievement often takes time, just like vanilla beans take time to grow and sometimes you have to stay out in the sea longer to catch that big fish.
True, today, people want instant success, and often they cheat to achieve that, as in the case of world-class athletes who take illegal substances to give them an unfair advantage over their opponents in contests.
Some go into illegal business to make much more money in a short time. That is wrong.
Be reminded that when Google started in 1998, and it made no money for the first few years.
But now Google is worth $140 billion and employs 140,000 people.
Point: It often takes time for genuine projects to reach the success stage. And people involved must continue to work hard and keep their eyes on the job.
True achievement takes time.
Next article: Is your child a prodigy?

• Thomas Hukahu is an Australia Awards student in Adelaide