Hard it is! But a Decision, You Must Make

Dear loving people,

Get a bit today about me – hilarious isn’t it? Ok to start with, Flora Whittemore says “The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.” And so though loaded with desire and energy to succeed, at one moment I was not moving things forward towards my dreams. Sad isn’t it?

When I left UNICEF after three years of dedicated service, I founded a nongovernmental organization and got into the business of managing development projects. Things started off well but just two years later, I got bitter with myself, the funding climate in Cameroon, the way NGOs are treated and trust me with almost everything else. I just decided to abandon all and withdraw. Believe me that was the easiest decision I ever made but one that brought me the greatest pain I ever had.

I would spend days shuttling between my bedroom and the sitting room, for weeks I would not get as far as my balcony and guess what? The bills were rising by lips and bounds; house rents, utility bills, medication, school fees and the list went on. My wife did all to motivate me to search for a new job and got tired, she brought in my entire family, my Pastor and even friends who talked to me and even insulted me at some point for turning into a good-for-nothing man yet this did nothing to spur me. It was an increasingly grievous situation I found myself in.

It downed on me one morning as I began to rethink things over that the time to make a decision had come if I still wanted to live what could be called a life especially as I could not believe the deplorable situation I found myself in. Then the words of Wilfred A. Peterson came to me "Decision is the spark that ignites action. Until a decision is made, nothing happens... Decision is the courageous facing of issues, knowing that if they are not faced, problems will remain forever unanswered."

From that instant, it seemed as though the doors of opportunities were suddenly opened, I felt as though Providence suddenly took over from thereon. I affirmed to myself using the words of Jim Rohn "It doesn't matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions."

Behold, a few months later, I was back on rails and on the way to getting out of indebtedness. However, it was not as if all of my troubles where written off at that particular moment but I was able to tell myself courageously that even if I made the best decisions possible with the information I had at the time, I'll still have to reconsider my choices from time to time, because life as I came to realize is about change.

One fact is for sure, whether you need to decide on quitting as I almost did, try to take a step back and objectively ask yourself if you're quitting for the right reasons, and if there are more rewarding opportunities for you out there, you might want to give your life more meaning by making the hard decision to restart again.