I firmly believe that the most difficult phase of anyone’s life is that period between graduation and when your career finally takes off. And that is mostly between the ages of twenty four and thirty.
At this point, you find yourself facing the most difficult decisions that you never really thought you had to make. In particular, this has been one of those things that have greatly affected the nineties and eighties kids. Why? Growing up, there is what your parents and teachers kept teaching you. You were told to study hard in primary school, get good grades and join a good school. In high school, they say that you must score high grades so you can have a ticket to university which will enable you to study the degree you want and get a good job soon after. And that is what most people did.
Unfortunately, you soon realise that there are some things that you should have been taught as a child. Things like financial intelligence, maintaining your balance and taking care of your mental health, entrepreneurship and wealth acquisition. These are very vital life skills that you are meant to have as an adult, but because the emphasis was on academics and good grades, you now find yourself in a limbo.
A lot of young adults now have good jobs but nothing to show for it. Money somehow seems to slip though their fingers. The culture that they are used to does not allow for growth from an early age. And to make matters worse, most of them look down on some of the best paying sectors such as agriculture.
However, it is never too late to turn your life around. I cannot tell you the number of times I have had to hold personal meetings with myself. Learning to change your own mindset, and redirect your thoughts from what was taught to you as a child to what you now know, is one of the most difficult things to do. But doable, nonetheless. And you have to start today if you want to make a difference in your life.
I am confident that those four aspects should be introduced in the curriculum. Having financial intelligence from a young age moulds you to grow and enables you to acquire wealth instead of wasting your money on drugs and alcohol because that is what all your friends are doing. Entrepreneurship is just as important as getting a job. As a matter of fact, an entrepreneur is part of the solution seeing as we are in an economy that is struggling to create job opportunities for the youth. There is very high unemployment among the youth and a greater majority of them are graduates.
We need to teach our children how to be self reliant. How to identify what they are good at and they can be paid for it. Growing a community starts from the basics; from home. It is a responsibility to the future generations that we change the narrative and the old mindsets to match the opportunities and levels of the present. Let us feel more encouraged than lost when things do not always go our way. There are a lot of things that you can do with the knowledge that you already have. You just need to find it.
Remember, they say that your purpose is always within you, you just need to figure it out. And you can do that by finding out what it is that you are good at, that you enjoy doing, that the world needs and you can get paid for it. Find it and make it your own.
You can be anything you want to be.