The pace of change can be unnerving, disorienting, and fear-inducing. To successfully navigate to your chosen destination, you must understand what is happening in the environment around you and how to position yourself accordingly. Here are the top seven things, which are the symptoms of change, that you need to know and what to do about them to position yourself for success.
1. Noise: We live in a noisy world. Noise can be physical, mental and psychological. The noise can be so deafening that you can sometimes become trapped and disoriented. Take social networking, a term that didn’t exist until about twenty years ago, the noise on some of the most popular social networking sites can make you dizzy. According to statista.com, in 1918 there were around 2.7 billion active monthly social media users worldwide, a figure that is expected to rise to around 3.02 billion by 2021. If you follow all the noise threads on social media , you’ll get lost. However, on these platforms, there are huge gems of opportunity and learning. Amidst the noise, search carefully and you will discover nuggets of gold. For example, if you want to learn about e-commerce, look for e-commerce groups where you can learn whatever you want accordingly and you’ll be one step ahead.
2. Distractions: We live in a world of distractions. While noise is created to confuse, distractions take you off your chosen path. The most powerful distraction is porn. Viewing pornography, like alcohol, can be addictive. Next on the bar of distractions is advertising, the kind that follows you everywhere you go on the Internet. Big companies, using powerful algorithms, can track everything you do online and accordingly schedule their pay-per-click ads to follow you wherever you go. Be careful about the types of sites you visit. Also, carefully select the search engines you use. Select the ones that don’t use algorithms to track you.
3. Anything goes: We live in a world where anything goes. Have you seen those scary tattoos? Have you seen those huge boobs kept massive by implanting silicon chips? Have you seen those massive butts kept massive by implanting silicon chips? Do these things ground our humanity or are they rights? Do we all have the right to use our body as we want? Be careful, the anything-goes mentality can make you lose perspective. Do what makes you a good role model for your children and grandchildren and give up the path that seems easy, popular and licentious but leads to vanity.
4. Easy money: We live in a world where making money is like taking a walk in the park. Gone are the days when you needed to work for years before smelling your first million dollars or never in your life. Today we live in a world that mints millionaire per minute. A guy or girl in their twenties can discover an app, or eat a website for lunch, and before you know it, they’ve generated millions with or without an IPO. With all this fuss about how easy it is to make millions, you may think that hard work is no longer necessary. On the contrary. Earning millions today requires exceptional skills that are not evenly distributed across populations, countries, and geographies. It required? Learn new skills that can and will position you to earn millions.
5. Thieves: We live in a world full of crooks. For every person who plans to do good, there are ten who plan how to swindle you out of your hard-earned money. There are people looking for ways to steal your password, there are people looking for ways to steal your PIN, and there are people looking for ways to scam you. Although the long arm of the law is always there to bring them to justice, some have upped their game and are always one step ahead of the law. This calls for vigilance. Be careful about the type of information you post on social media. Keep the number of millions you have made or make a secret and not a bragging right.
6. Freedom: We live in a world that defends freedom and rights. Despite occasional attempts by anarchist groups from sixteen parts of some countries and territories to impose their will on the hapless, we live in a world that values freedom in all its splendor. From freedom of speech, freedom of worship and everything in between, you are guaranteed freedom. But there is the reverse of freedom. Some people turn freedom into a license to do what they like. Be careful. Choose your freedoms and rights carefully because your right ends where someone else’s right begins. Choose freedom and rights that are ennobling. Choose values and role models that point you in the direction of success and not those that lead you to self-destruction.
7. Knowledge: We live in a world permeated with knowledge. They say our smartphones have more computing power than the Apollo spacecraft that put a man on the moon in 1969. More knowledge is generated in a day today than was generated in a year just 30 years ago. However, there is a difference between knowledge and data, and there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Choose wisdom over directional knowledge and the world will recognize you.
There you have it, the top seven things you need to know about today’s world to position yourself for success. I will be the first to admit that they are far from exhaustive. And they clearly overlap. However, they are good starting points for judging yourself, as you aspire to success, however you want to define it. Thanks to technology, the world is becoming more egalitarian. The world is becoming more transparent and individually and collectively, we are becoming more informed. Live your life wisely and in no time you will be on the road to success. Success is not cheap. Invest in your future.