As March Approaches: Rise Beyond Excuses and Embrace New Opportunities
This year is running faster than the previous years. As March approaches, it’s easy to overlook that the third month is already here. This serves as a reminder to keep moving methodically and systematically towards set goals and prioritize alternatives.
As we move deeper into 2025, there are many reasons for people not meeting their expectations. Therefore, I empathize with millions of Nigerians facing economic hardships for various reasons.
However, some exacerbate the situation by viewing themselves as victims and making excuses like:
“If only my parents had done this or that for me, I would have been more successful. If my lecturer hadn’t victimized me, I would have achieved first-class standing and found a more rewarding job. If my parents had sent me to Harvard to study specific courses, influenced my promotions at work, or helped me enter the oil and gas industry, I would be a better person today.”
Nonetheless, I find some of these excuses interesting because many Nigerians have endured even worse hardships growing up yet still succeeded. This is a testament to the potential for success, even in the face of adversity. Excuses and lamentations won’t change our situations; they make us bitter, harm us, and lead to unproductive outcomes.
Such excuses keep many of us trapped in a victim mentality, and before we know it, we develop a mindset of comfort and entitlement that is difficult to escape. Remember that many successful people started just like us and never received help. How did they succeed?
Many succeeded because they didn’t give up on themselves.
They chose to pick up the pieces of their brokenness by taking menial or available jobs, learning new trades, seeking alternative pathways to survive, rising above blame games, taking responsibility for their choices, and leaving their comfort zones.
They soul searched and uncovered the remedy for what could hold them back in the future.
As we transition into adulthood, our productivity, marketability, bankability, and success stories depend solely on us. It’s our choices, actions, and decisions that will shape our future.
The good news is that, regardless of where we are today, we can certainly shape our future even if we cannot change our past. History is filled with individuals who achieved success or business breakthroughs at age fifty and above. If they could do it, so can we.
If your expectations in February didn’t come through, you are not alone because there are others worse than yourself who are determined to enter March as a conqueror. We, too, can. Let us rise and step out into a March full of opportunities.
Grace and peace!!!
