Sat, 30 Dec 2017 13:10:51 +0000
WHAT goes up must come down. Every beginning must surely have an ending. It’s about that time when we all close yet another chapter of our lives. And as I always advise in my articles, we all must take stock of what kind of year we’ve had. It’s review time.
How did your year begin? What was your story in January, 2017? Where you coming out of a frustrating 2016 and you vowed to not have another such poor showing come rain or sunshine?
Or did you have a great 2016 and all you could do was thank God and hope for the same or even better in the year 2017?
Did you write down New Year’s resolutions for 2017? How did you fare in accordance with your resolutions? These are some of the questions that we must all ask ourselves as we take stock of another year gone. The year has bypassed us and it is not coming back.
I have said before and I shall say it again that as people that want to be organized, we must always plan for our future. Some people like the saying failing to plan is planning to fail.
I know for a fact and from experience that whatever work we do, including in our regular day jobs or answering questions in an examination session at any level, there is the element of planning. And generally speaking, those that plan well, tend to tackle their work better than those that just wing it.
If at the start of this year, you did not set up written goals against which you can evaluate yourself now, you needn’t worry. This can be your starting point. This is actually a very good time of the year to finalize your plans for next year.
Gap analysis. Management accountants will tell you that gap analysis is analysis of the difference between the current position that an entity occupies and the position that the entity aspires to occupy. In other words, it’s the difference between what you have and what you desired to have at a given point.
We could all use a little gap analysis in our lives. If at the start of 2017, you planned that you will no longer be paying rent and move into your own home that you have been building, but today, you are still in the rented home, you need to analyze what went wrong.
Gap analysis will not always reveal that you failed because you performed poorly, there may have been certain unforeseeable circumstances that came to bear.
For example if there was a tragedy whereby someone fell terribly ill with an expensive condition that required evacuating them out of the country at huge cost and you diverted your resources for completing the building of your home towards the same, that is a situation that should not allow you to be hard on yourself for not meeting your target. As it turns out, you did a good deed and may well have saved a life.
However, if on the other hand, every time you wanted to allocate towards completing your building project, there was yet another family trip to South Africa, Zanzibar, Livingstone that got in the way, you may wish to review your spending habits this coming 2018. Somebody likes to say financial intelligence is not how much money you make so much as how much money you keep and how well you invest it in turn.
Speaking of financial intelligence, take the time to analyze how prudently you managed your resources in the last one year.
If you were coming from serious challenges in 2016 and your financial position changed in 2017, I can understand if you chose to enjoy yourself after the blood, sweat and tears of last year. However, I should hope that the honeymoon period is over.
In 2018, get to manage that money so as to begin to multiply it. Next time the jaws of poverty come to grip you as tightly as they did in the recent past, you want to be better positioned to beat them back.
Start saving and investing now because this life has a tendency of throwing a crisis in our direction every now and again; of course the tricky part is there is no telling how and when the attack will come.
Did you find love? On a personal note, this year, I married the love of my life – Hluphekile Zimba whose name I changed to Hluphekile Mukuni. It is now undoubtedly the biggest day of my life. We are now united as a family with our daughter Liseli Margaret.
Of all the good things that have happened in my life in 2017 following two challenging years in 2015 and 2016, nothing has made me happier than the process of uniting in holy matrimony and beginning family life. My closest friends equally found love as Chishimba Stephen Mvula married Kakulubelwa Muyunda and Mpande Kankasa married Valarie Ndambo – I was on both their wedding lineups. I hope many of you out there found love or renewed your love for your spouses.
I do hope that as we leave 2017, many of you dear readers out there are satisfied with your station. I do hope that your taking stock can reveal that in many ways you were successful and therefore you are sitting pretty getting ready to move on to even bigger things.
If at all, you had it rough, I shall salute you for making it to the end of the year. There is nothing like getting through a horrendous episode, a real nightmare of a year.
LLWhat’s of paramount importance now is to appreciate that it is darkest before dawn and 2018 offers an opportunity to wipe the slate clean. I always say that for your success story to make the league of legends, you must have downs and disappointments. A story is always worth a premium when it involves rising from the ashes to claim a glorious victory, coming back from a real beating by the harshness of this life and overcoming the odds. Having been someone that was chewed up and spit out by just about everything and everybody to someone that people give respect – cite as an example to follow – must be on the agenda for 2018.
That is the stuff that legends are made of. Those that had a difficult 2017, you must look to 2018 to rise in such a manner.
Share your views: muyangwamukuni@gmail.com
