An African adage says a man’s morning begins when he wakes up. It doesn’t matter if it is at 7 am or 6 pm. Whenever you wake up, your morning starts. You go throuh the process you should have taken if you woke at the break of dawn. All the work for the day sits waiting for you. If you don’t finish them today, you will see them again tomorrow.

So wake up.

You don’t just wake up once. You wake up at different times of your life when you realise something. My earliest memory of a wakeup call was realising my parents were human beings. Because they are human, they can fail me. Understanding this has helped me manage the people in my life far better than I used to. I teach this lesson to my children daily. All humans can fail, don’t overrate them.

Another wakeup call came the day I internalised this saying; If it’s to be, then it’s up to me. No more passing the buck and saying if only person X had done this then incident Y would not have happened. I’ve made more progress with this understanding. It is up to me. So I move!

One more wake up call, when I realised talent alone cannot get me where I want to go. Many more things are involved, like faith in God, organisational skills, people and time management skills, self and professional development… Work, work and more work. But it has been paying off.

Talent alone cannot get you where you want to go.

What is the pattern to waking up? Waking up means coming to a realisation about something in your life. Something you need to do or stop doing. It involves personal introspection on a level that hurts today, but pays off tomorrow. I find that I take things people say about me, and then I ponder on them. I study these words, until I come to my own conclusion on them and how well they describe me. If I like the description, fine, if I don’t, then I try to change. If the words are really not for me, then I toss them out.

We are entering into a new year. Wake up!