Dear Destiny Friends,

“Nothing worth having comes easy”- Theodore Roosevelt

A one time Nigeria’s rave of the moment, Bongos Ikwue, in one of his hit songs said “Cause I’ve been searching for, for true love. I will keep on searching till I find it. Nothing good comes easy, this I know. I will keep on searching till I find it.”

Life is filled with so many challenges and twists. Navigating the hurdles of life can be described as the most “interesting” journey any progressive being must endure. This is because there are so many routes to navigate, just like a businessman who wants to sell or market a product to a potential client or customer must explore many skills. In some cases, the seller speaks untruth in addition to speaking the truth. All these go to tell that nothing is easy in life.

Did you know that what comes easy won’t last, and what lasts won’t come easy? Imagine buying a fake product, it will only serve for a short period of time as opposed to when you buy an original product.  According to Israelmore Ayivor “Whatever you want is behind the mountain of struggles. Nothing great comes with ease.”  The question is, are you ready to roll your sleeves and get dirty in doing the work? A great philosopher was right when he said, “Nothing in life that’s worth having comes easy… Money is work, love is work, life is work.” Just like Martin Rubin said, “If loving comes easy, nothing else seems hard.” Can you therefore see that you must pay the price for success because it won’t be handed over to you on a platter.

In school, you must do your assignments, and read to pass. In business, you must learn the ropes. In sports and entertainment, you must put in the work. Indeed, there’s no free lunch anywhere.

Nothing humbles a man more than failure. Most times we see failures as negative, but if we have a positive mind towards life, we will not see failures as distractions trying to prevent us from achieving our goals in life. If you have never failed in life, you have never tried anything new. Great minds are great people who have failed many times before they succeeded just like Harry Potter manuscript was rejected twelve times before being accepted.

In the journey of life, you will experience many setbacks and failures, but the good news is that all you need is one success for the world to celebrate you. Again, you may have felt rejected and disappointed by many people, but all you need is just that one person who will appreciate you.

In every sphere of life, nothing good truly comes easy. If you want to succeed in marriage, you must be ready to put in the work by tolerating your partner’s excesses, communicating, forgiving, and loving them the way they wish to be loved, in addition to other rules of engagement marriage offers. Many people want love but are not ready to put in the work that is involved in love. To succeed in marriage, you must see it as an investment, and you must continually invest by putting in patience, kindness, love, understanding, money, tolerance, patience, gratitude, appreciation, and more, so that you can easily withdraw from it when you need some. If you don’t invest in it, how will you withdraw from it? The mistake most people make in marriage is thinking they have soulmates, but failing to understand that you build soulmates because nobody and no marriage is perfect. You don’t meet soulmates, you build your soulmate

It is generally agreed that to get what you don’t have, you must do something different. With my little experience in life, I have come to the sublime realisation of the importance of adding value to my life in addition to helping people even when I have my own challenges. I say this because I strongly believe in the principle that says you will get what you want faster when you help other people to achieve what they want. When you share the little you have with genuine love, the universe has a way of blessing you in ways and manners you won’t expect. This principle has worked for me on several occasions. I will explain this principle with a story.

Last week, I was speaking with a prominent man in the USA, and he said to me “Henry, many years ago, I was on the verge of losing my apartment. While I was in court fighting a hard case, a distant friend who didn’t know what I was facing reached out to me for accommodation, I gladly accepted him. One day, he said to me, Mr. John (not real name), please give me some bucks, I’m starving. I gave him five dollars and instead of buying food he played the lottery with it and won one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He came back and thanked me for the blessing. In appreciation, he gave me half of the money. You can imagine the feeling I had that day. The moral of this story is that you will get what you want faster when you help other people to get what they want. Despite being in pain, he still stretched out his hand to assist. Truly, nothing good comes easy in life.

In conclusion, I will ask you, do you have any goals or desires you would like to accomplish? If yes, do you know that the difference between who you are and who you want to be lies in the sacrifice of the work you have to do to get you to where you want to be? That’s why Rihanna said, “nothing in life comes easy”. Everything comes with a sacrifice.

Henry Ukazu writes from New York. He’s a Human Capacity & mindset coach. He’s also a public speaker, youth advocate and creative writer. He works with the New York City Department of Correction as the Legal Coordinator. He’s the author of the acclaimed book Design Your Destiny – Actualizing Your Birthright To Success and President of gloemi.com. He can be reached via info@gloemi.com