How To Get Anything You Want In Life
I failed high school, got expelled then awoke to the power of the human mind and learned a useful lesson on what it takes to get anything you want in life
I have always heard people talking about luck as some mysterious event that has to be in your favor to supplement your hard work if you want to be successful. I will call bullsh*t on that and here is my reason.
There is however one trait that is not a random serendipitous event that cannot be measured or controlled in our daily lives which is the case when it comes to luck.
This is one trait that does not care whether you have smarts or not. It does not care what circumstances surround your life. It is also trained and not like a “talent” that some people have and others do not. If you want to have this trait, you have to practice it. And this is the trait.
BOLDNESS
That’s it. This is what this whole article is going to be about and am also going to give you practical steps on how to develop it in you. But let me first tell you a quick story.
When I joined secondary school, the people I admired most were science students. I always dreamt that when I got to HSc., this is what I was going to do as well.
I finished my O-levels and it was time for my Hsc. (A-levels). I chose to do the sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Technical drawing). I did these subjects against the advice of my counselors. None of them wanted me to do sciences because I had failed them for most of my O-level years averaging about 20%.
I did them anyway and at the end of that year, I had failed to meet the pass mark since it was a continuous assessment and I had missed exams for one term. I was given an ultimatum by the rector.
I had to repeat the class or leave school.
At that time, I was a school prefect and I could not handle the shame of knowing that I would repeat a class in a school where everyone knew who I was.
I decided to repeat the class but not from that same school.
The school I left was not a top school. It was a seminary and although its academics were alright, it did not match some of the top most schools in the country. Kids who had been expelled from this seminary often ended up in small obscure and terrible schools most of which were the poorest performing schools in the country.
As I sat on my bed after getting my L.O.R from the rector that afternoon, I made 3 decisions.
- I was going to repeat the class and do the same subjects I had been doing. (sciences)
- I was going to do these subjects from one of the top 5 schools in the country
- I was going to pass these subjects so well so that I could do civil engineering from a university abroad.
These were my 3 decisions. But the second was the toughest. I had been expelled on academics grounds from a school that was not even among the top 15 schools in the country and I wanted to get into one of the top 5 schools.
Imagine this. Let’s say you fail to meet the education standards of Jigli-jaw municipal university so you get expelled and next to this you aim to use those results to get into one of the IVY League schools like Havard University for example.
This is what I was doing.
Everyone who called me asking what I was going to do next received the same reply. I was going to one of the top 5 schools in my country and I was going to get in without bribing anyone but rather being bold.
When I got to the school with my failed grades and L.O.R from my previous school, I handed my documents to the secretary who then took them to the Headmaster’s office. He did not waste his time. He just got a red pen and scribbled.
“Not Considered”.
The whole time from arrival to my rejection took about 2 minutes. I had traveled more than 150miles to get rejected in 2 minutes? That question stopped me dead in my steps. I couldn’t move. I started looking at this dream school that has a less than 10% acceptance rate and I decided that I had to be one of those.
I decided to politely ask the secretary if I could speak to the Headmaster in person. I was painfully shy and had extremely low self-esteem but even these were not going to stop me.
I did not know what I was going to tell the head of one of the greatest schools I had ever known. I just wanted him to tell it (the rejection) to me in my face not writing it on paper. At least that is what I thought of as the best reason to try again.
I am a naturally shy person. I am socially awkward and not very good at conversations. At least that was the case then when I was 18.
The secretary took pity on me and she tried talking to the headmaster but he wouldn’t allow her to see me.
He said that his school was not the type that takes on failures from other schools. And he was right. That school only took the best students around the country and even then, not more than 10% of them made it.
I sat there thinking to myself what I was going to do next. Somehow, I could not find an answer to my next move and I could also not stand up to go back home with a rejection. I sat there with only one thought in my head.
I just want one minute with the headmaster.
Four hours later as he moved out to have lunch, he saw me and asked me what I wanted. I greeted him and explained how he had rejected my application and asked for some time to explain myself.
He told me his word was final. I could wait all I want but he was not going to change his mind.
I started thinking about all the people that I had told about my new school. This school. All of them told me that it was impossible to get expelled for academics from the seminary and then end up in one of the best schools in the country and I had told them that I was already admitted and that this was me going to meet the headmaster and get my admission.
I could not handle the shame I was going to get with the rejection.
So I waited some more.
Two hours later, the headmaster returned and saw me sitting there and he said. “You man, I told you that I won't consider you for this. You are a failure and I am not looking for any of those. If I consider you, I will be in trouble with the school board and I will also be diluting the quality of students here. Go Home!!!”
This if-statement of his made me realize that he could consider me if he felt safe doing so… To me this was a win because I took this as a maybe.
I calmly asked him if he could at least hear me out for a minute. He said that he didn't have time to which I replied that I would wait until he had a minute to spare. He told me to wait until he was done with a meeting.
Another two hours passed before he gave me the minute I had been asking for. I explained why I failed and my strategies for becoming a good student. I also told him about my dreams of doing sciences and studying engineering abroad.
He seemed uninterested and there were also a lot of red flags with me. I was very tall(6'1'’) and had a lot of hair(an afro), and I was going to turn 19( way too old for my grade). That was the perfect combination for students who constantly fought with teachers in schools around my country. He didn’t want any of that. He asked me to leave.
When he gave that excuse, I told him to put me on a lifetime conditional admission as long as I was a student in his school.
I told him that if I failed to make the pass mark in any exam in his school, or if I was involved in any form of indiscipline behavior however small, he was free to expel me from his school immediately. He asked me whether I was willing to sign on that to which I immediately agreed.
It was a Monday then and he told me that since I had come alone, he needed more responsible people that were to be witnesses to this. He told me to go home and bring my parents on Wednesday. My mom is dead so I returned with my aunt and my dad.
He explained all that had happened and the agreements that we had come to should I break any of the conditions that I had set for myself.
My dad and aunt served as witnesses to that and he asked for my papers again. He erased the “Not Considered” mark on my applications, replaced it with admitted, and handed me my admission form.
Within 3 days, I went from being expelled from a mediocre school because of poor grades to using those same grades to get into one of the top 5 schools in my country.
Following my admission, I managed to perform better than just the pass mark and when it came to university, I refused to apply to any universities in my country and focusing all efforts on finding universities abroad.
I applied to about 20 universities worldwide. Most of them rejected me but I ended up getting admitted to Warwick University, and the Vellore Institute of Technology. (VIT). In hindsight, I should have applied to the IVY League schools as well….but hey, I can always do that sometime in the future.
VIT university’s admission came first and my sister told me about the one from Warwick months after I had joined VIT. Both were offering me civil engineering the difference was that Warwick University was giving me a dual degree but VIT wasn’t.
VIT University, Vellore, is in India and Warwick is in the United Kingdom. I got into them differently as well. VIT was easy because there were education consultants who helped me with that but not Warwick.
From signing up on the UCAS website to receiving my admission, everything was done by me. I had to apply to several universities in the United Kingdom through UCAS. Many rejected me, some never responded but one. Only one. The one that I actually wanted to go to respond with positive feedback.
To me, even if I did not go to Warwick since I had already started school in VIT, that was a win I was proud of. Not bad for someone who averaged 20% on grades in O-level and got expelled once due to poor grades.
Many years have passed and I have already graduated with a B-Tech in Civil Engineering from VIT University but am not done yet.
There were many people much better than me in school who never became what they wanted to become. It was not because they were unlucky, or any of that nonsense.
It was because they settled.
They were not bold enough to go for what they wanted.
All of my schoolmates who were expelled with me in 2011 from the seminary went to substandard schools even though most of them had better marks than mine and this made them have an overall substandard education experience.
I have also compromised on some things as well. There are places that I would have been if I had been bold but I am not there because I settled. Just because you are bold in one area does not mean that you are going to be bold by default in everything you do.
Some things are going to scare the life out of you but if there is sense to what you want, you just have to consciously become bold as I will tell you below.
Today I am an engineer because I was bold enough to go for what I wanted between my 13th to 18th years. My 18-year-old self created what I am experiencing as a 27-year-old now and the 27-year-old now has a duty to create the 37-year-old. These decisions are made in being bold now not tomorrow.
Being bold is not all roses afterward. I wrecked the friendship of someone I had a crush on for a long time just because I was bold enough to tell her how I feel about her.
You must know that being bold has temporary defeats but Long term wins. If I had taken a simpler path when I was 18 and gone to a substandard school, I would have probably been married now with no college degree and maybe 5 kids. There is no problem with that reality if that is what your ideal was but it wasn’t mine.
But if it were my reality yet my dreams were different, it would have meant that I failed to be brave enough to go for what I really wanted and ended up settling for something else.
I am a 27-year-old civil engineer now and those three decisions I made when I was 18 have all been achieved. But this does not stop here or else those years were all meaningless.
I have to keep exercising my boldness muscles to not only get rid of as much fear as I can but also boldness forces me to grow whenever it pushes me into uncomfortable territories.
This is how I practice being bold and how you can too.
Practicing boldness is not going to make it easier for you to approach tough situations.
It will instead reduce your tendency to settle for less when you are at crossroads between your hard-to-reach goals and society’s basic expectations.
Practicing boldness is also something that you have to actually practice at the same time as using it in the real world.
The situations that make you very uncomfortable are at the same time your practice grounds. This is not like an exam you prepare for one night and do the exams the following morning. Here, you do the exams and practice at the same time.
This is the mindset that you need to understand if you are going to practice being bold.
Look for situations that make you uncomfortable. Among everything that makes you uncomfortable, you will notice that you care about some of them more than others.
I cared about getting the best education more than I cared about just moving on to the next grade which is why I chose to repeat my education from a top institution.
You should also be able to choose what you care about and focus your boldness towards making it happen.
When you are bold with what you want, a lot moves out of your way and so much aligns for you to make that happen so you just have to trust that if your mind and heart are fixed on something, there is no way you are going to fail.
There is no start nor end to being bold. There is no exercise that is going to be easy so you have to start with what is presently in your mind. If you aren’t in a relationship and really want to, ask out someone that you really like not just an individual who you think will say yes but when in actuality you do not like them that much. Ask for the raise you need or the position you want in your workplace and trust that you will give a respectfully compelling enough reason for why you need what you are asking for.
Audentes Fortuna Iuvat — Virgil
If you enjoy reading stories like this one and want to support me as a writer, Please sign up to become a Medium member. It’s $5 a month, giving you unlimited access to not only my stories but also other stories on Medium. If you sign up using my link, I’ll earn a commission and you have no idea how happy that will make me. Thanks.
