Striving for the Best: Reflections on Effort, Results, and Life Lessons

As someone who always strives to get the best of life, I ensure that I put in my best while I hope for the worst; this way, I will not get disappointed if things do not happen as I envisioned. We all have good days and bad days; the key to enjoying a great life is to keep going regardless of what we might be going through. This week's theme will let your readers know how tough things have been in my life and how lucky I have gotten at times. Also, I will be answering some of this week's theme questions to enlighten you all. So enjoy the piece.

Has there ever been a time when the amount of effort was worth the result?

I have always been a firm believer that hard work pays, and in areas when it does not pay, you learn something along the way which will make the next phase of your life a bit easier. I have achieved many things in life, and most are always through hard work; I will share a recent event that fits this description nicely. The event was the just concluded leofinance campaign using the zealy platform. This contest brought out my best spell on the Hive and Leofinance platform as I was gingered to be more active and create more content. I was always staying up from around 2 am to 5 am for shows and also to have access to keywords which earned me more points on the leaderboard. I had to do away with shyness and positioned myself in front of a camera to make videos of me talking on numerous topics I had no in-depth knowledge of.

However, through the contest, I was made to do a lot of research and learn to work in a team and engage with others better. Working in a group was tough as you had to look out for others and carry their weight to ensure the team did not sink. It involved lots of sacrifices, adequate time management, and also ensuring that I balanced my offline job with the numerous tasks mandated to be done to rank high on the leaderboard. It was a tough time, but the effort was worth it as I grew my Hive account from just 140 Hive power stacked to over 400 Hive power at the moment. Aside from that, I got a Leofinnace NFT, and I also grew my Leo account from 300 Leo power to over 700 plus Leo power. I was rewarded with 50 USD paid in Leo tokens, so it was worth it.

What about when the effort put in didn't justify the result?

Being career-driven, I have seen lost efforts going down the drain as they failed to produce something meaningful. I say this because I have been there and experienced it, and I sure know how it feels. An example was when I was hoping to get a job with Guinness, I put in so much effort to get that job, but I was rejected in the end, and it was the most painful thing I had experienced career-wise. Before applying for the job, I paid someone to help me optimize my cv, and I applied with my optimized CV. The CV stands out, and I was scheduled for an interview.

I had never prepared so much before for an interview as I did for this one; I prepared for a whole week despite being someone conversant with most interview questions, as I have been in lots of interviews before this one. However, I wanted this job badly as I have a friend who worked in a similar role and earned way above 400k monthly, and he told me to do all I could to get the job and that it would be worth it in the end when I do. So I passed the interview, and I spoke to my line manager days after passing the interview. The next stage was testing my driving school, as the role I applied for came with a car. I was not much of a driver then, so I paid over 60,000 naira to learn to drive a Manual car well, and I did learn fast. I did the driving test and even gave the supervisor something for his trouble, but in the end, I did not get the job. I was hurt, broken and stranded as the effort did not yield the desired result.

What did both experiences teach you? Please share with us.

I have learnt that life goes on regardless of what the result of your efforts amounts to. You should celebrate your success when you win, and when you lose, learn from it and take failure as a lesson. Also, we win some, and we lose some. That's the way life is, and without contentment, regardless of whatever you achieve through your effort, you will never be happy with it.

Thanks for reading, and I appreciate the honest feedback.