What you do with the first, oftentimes, will determine extensively what the rest will become. You cannot start on the wrong foot and expect to make it right in the long run. The only way you can arrive at your destination is by being on the right road. As a matter of fact, no matter how your are accelerating on the wrong road, you will not arrive at your desired destination. This is obviously because speed will be an added advantage only when you are going in the right direction. So in life, for everything you want to do, you need to lay a solid foundation for it.
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I once listened to the legendary Hussein Bolt, who has held a couple of gold medal both in the Olympics and other games, and has also remained, up till now, the fastest man in the world. He talked about his training routine and I was wowed by it. He would train for hours daily and would run for miles. It became part of him and it was what built him up for his professional competition. You could see that he laid a solid foundation for himself. It is not surprising that he was able to achieve so much honour in the world of sports.
If you want to become an academician for example, you have to first understand that you have to read extensively for it and start from your first degree, then to a higher one and so on. Imagine someone that does not have any foundation in education coming to become your educator, which knowledge will they pass on? Life will give back to you what you have invested into it. If you want greatness from life, then you must put greatness into everything you do. The prices you pay today and the sacrifices of today are like the foundation you lay for your tomorrow.
No great building stands on its own without a foundation. And the depth of the foundation will determine the height and durability of the building. You cannot dig a foundation meant for a bungalow and expect to build a skyscraper on it, because it will collapse even before the building is completed. So the kind of building you want will determine the kind of foundation you will dig. In the same way in life, what you want to achieve will determine to what extent you build up yourself and how you invest in yourself.
Now one may ask what are the solid foundations that one needs to build that will help them achieve what they desire? The first and very important thing to build on is your knowledge-base. There is nothing that builds one up as knowledge. You will be surprised the level of achievement you can get by simply gaining extensive knowledge about a thing. Not just that, there is also a level of ease that you get when you are doing the things which you have in-depth knowledge of. So you need to invest extensively into gaining knowledge and you will discover how valuable you will become.
The next foundation to lay towards success is human relationship and interaction. The way you interact with someone will determine how they will respond to you. In the process of building friendship for example, how you interact with them will go a long way to either sustain them or repel them. What you need to know is that no matter what you want to achieve and how independent you are, you will still need people. It takes a high level of maturity to be able to relate with people fairly even when you may disagree with their opinion. Of course, you can still disagree with someone and do it fairly. Remember that the same person you met on your way out might be the person to help you on your way in; so do not burn bridges.
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The final foundation you need to lay for yourself is persistence and continuity. There are times you may need to try a thing more than once to deliver. So you have to learn not to give up at the first attempt. If you have not built up yourself to remain resolute in the pursuit of your dreams, then success might just be a mirage. The people that have made it to the top have one thing in common; continuity even in the face of failures. Failing does not mean that you should give up. It may just be the next attempt that will deliver your breakthroughs, so do not give up.
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