Five Key Life Ingredients Every Graduating Student Must Know.

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Being great and successful in life is not a static activity; it is a series of processes and constellation of events and ingredients. The key variables that will always keep you progressing are your values, skill set, stock of social capital, innovation, abilities and wisdom!These ingredients must be fully conscientized and internalized in order to transition well in our endeavours. Let us take these elements one-by-one and discuss them extensively.

Values

Values are ingredients or things in life that are very dear to our heart. They are tools we really cherish, admire, respect and give more credence and attention to in life. We cherish them because they go a long way to shape our life patterns and character formation. The individual is said to be always in a constant interaction with the environment, and as the individual get socialized and internalizes those societal golden tools and virtues, he/she utilizes and applies them in life settings. People with strong value base are always assertive, principled, action-oriented,analytical, purposeful and fully prepared. In contrast, those with weak value base tend to swallow things hook, line and sinker. They are easily swayed away by storms and angry waves. People of this caliber easily fall prey to temptations and corrupt activities. No matter how wealthy or skilled you are, the most imperative ingredient that will spice, uplift, upgrade and make you transition effectively from one stage of life to the other is your value. They form and define greater part of personality structure.

Skill Set

Another tool worth mentioning is your skill set. Skills consist of a constellation of applicable ideas, concepts, and knowledge acquired through experiential activities and constant practice. They are knowledgeable ingredients that are refined, shaped, toned, and assembled to boost one’s fit in industrial, home and societal settings. Sometimes, the skills we possess can become obsolete, hence, we must always strive to understand contemporary issues and toe our stock of skills to meet the needs and demands of the world. Currently, industries have increased their absorption rate for innovators, initiators, creators, intrapreneurs and social mappers. As a student, you must aspire in varied ways to acquire skills that will enable you to either meet or exceed the expectations and demands of employers.

Let’s consider this scenario:

Adwoa and Asaabea were close friends in the university. Even though they didn’t know each other before, their meeting in the university paved way for better adventures, opportunities, connection and relationship. The two friends were from low income communities, with the vision of becoming an empowering image for the people in their respective villages. Academic excellence was deeply rooted in the mind of Asaabea while Adwoa always yearned of becoming a top-notch entrepreneur.

Most of Adwoa’s time was spent on companies, internet and other industrial giants – searching for competencies and resources to build her lifetime entrepreneurship city. She grabbed every opportunity that came her way – she learnt driving, swimming; attended several industrial workshops; built networks with quite a number of industrial pioneers locally and internationally; and acquired other world class managerial and industrial skills. Asaabea and other colleagues of hers were always in the library, lecture halls and study rooms learning and doing extensive research.

The graduation bell rang, and lo and behold, Asaabea received a standing ovation, with first class honours in Business Administration (Accounting). When Adwoa’s name was mentioned, she was no where to be found, even though she had second class upper in Economics. It was later realized that just a few minutes after the commencement of the ceremony, she received a call from her funding partners to defend her business idea/project. Just after her presentation, she was given an immediate employment alongside grants for her project.

While her colleagues were having fun at the graduation ceremony, she was justifying her stance for funding and employment opportunity. The following day, she called her parents, and invited Adwoa and other friends for special party in her house. All the people at the party were in great shock and amazement upon hearing Asaabea’s good news.

Wisdom

The last but not least ingredient we are going to discuss is wisdom. It is the rightful application of knowledge and values gained from God’s Handwriting, necessary to train and equip others grow holistically (spiritually, morally, socially, emotionally, religiously etc.). There are four types of wisdom every student must know aside the divine or spiritual wisdom from God.

The first type is wisdom of relationship building. This deals with your ability to welcome people, initiate relationship, build it, sustain it and strive daily to upgrade and uplift its image to an appreciable tangent point. Emotional and communication intelligence is the driving force of this kind of wisdom. It’s about being culturally sensitive and dynamic in your thinking, worldviews and communication. Your maturity level at this stage must be very high and even exceed people’s expectations and standards. However, in your quest of building relationship with people, you must strive to separate your personal world from your world of profession. Always know your boundaries and act accordingly.

With regard to love relationship affairs, if you truly love someone, calm your emotions down, be patient and approach the person with a humble heart. Be unique in your dealings with the person. People have different levels of Emotional Intelligence (EI), Intelligent Quotient (IQ), Communication Intelligence (C1), Financial Intelligence (FI), and Social Intelligence (SI). Take your time to have considerable amount of knowledge in diverse areas about the person.

EI, IQ, CI, FI, and SI are the pillars, backbones and foundational imperatives of every human relationship; therefore, how equipped you are in them will determine your success in every relationship you find yourself. In no circumstance must you take for granted any of these pillars. If you ignore them, it will either make you blind or immature in human relations, regardless of your age level.

The second on the list is marriage wisdom. Marriage is a very interesting, dicey, attractive, complex, lovely and risky institution. It’s one of the most reputable and cherished structures of society, because of its emphasis on promotion and advancement of history, language, cultural traits, norms, values, and continuity of generational ties and procreation. Though attractive and lovely, if you violate its rules and principles, it may uproot your tree of happiness and progress. Just as every course has its style of communication, so is marriage. Your intonation and non-verbal behaviour must exhibit an element of respect, sincerity, trustworthiness, calmness and genuineness. Always remember that you are two people, who jointly related from diverse background, to accept, appreciate and work on each other’s weaknesses for a better outcome.

Your skills and experience may fail you sometimes, but the most sustaining drives are your level of emotional intelligence and stock of understanding and knowledge in the Word of God. The Scripture is the source and solution of man’s problems and challenges. No matter how knowledgeable you are in marital issues, never ignore the essence and power of God’s Handwriting. All the sociological and gender roles; family boundaries, relationships, homeostasis; as well as the family resilience curve and its application are embedded and rooted in Scripture.

Wisdom in marriage is the ability to let understanding and patience rule over feelings and emotions at all times, no matter how difficult situations may seem in the marriage.

Another type worth mentioning is societal wisdom. This is very critical and imperative in everyone’s life. Anyone who lacks this type of wisdom is often regarded as “good for nothing” in society, because they believe that at least your family must socialize you to internalize and conscientize it for exhibition of better and appropriate behaviour. This serves as a very powerful compass for us to thrive well in our businesses, school life, church activities, social projects, traveling endeavours, relationships, marriage and other life events. Young people, especially needs this antidote to ply the right route in life.

Last but not least is educational wisdom. This is about being vigilant and having a third eye to read in between lines and juxtapose appropriately with regards to what is taught in school and what is actually needed by the world. It’s about the rightful application of knowledge and skills acquired in the classroom to meet the needs and demands of society at all times. Two categories of people graduate from the university every year – problem solvers and problem generators. If you belong to the second category, then you lack this type of wisdom. Some refer it as smartness but in reality, it transcends that. It rather comprises three elements: smartness, uniqueness and practice-wisdom. Any nation that is lacking this type of wisdom will never experience growth and development. It’s high time we started developing a paradigm that focuses on training citizens to become wise educationalists, rather than just school goers who can’t even resolve their personal challenges, than to talk of tackling societal problems.

Those who subscribe to this type of wisdom have unique pattern of communication. Their speech is spiced with sensitivity, diversity, empathy, respect, tolerance, friendliness, gentleness and humility.

Innovation

Innovation deals with the rightful application of scientific concepts, ideas, and knowledge to produce a product, good, or service for societal benefit – either for profit-making or nonprofit making. Innovators are regarded as industrial giants because of their strong ability to convert a need or problem into a product, good or service. Problem solvers are always in constant demand by industrial organizations. In your quest of advancing your scope of innovation, you must position your yourself to welcome new waves of ideas, criticisms and competencies. Resources and opportunities are all around us, therefore it is our responsibilities to make optimum utilization of them for generational benefit. So far as you are a student, an element of innovation has been installed on your brain, hence, it is your job to figure it out, use it and upgrade it for your own and societal growth and development. Wherever you find yourself; be it home, church, school, community, work place, social function, etc., you will need a wave of innovation. This means that you must at all cost integrate innovative ingredients into your life patterns.

Abilities

Every individual is endowed with innate potentials and capabilities. Having a feel of your true self is a prerequisite for advancing one’s steps and direction in life. People with strong self-concept and identity are able to drive, engineer, control and sustain their life decisions and patterns. Abilities are inherent efficacious energies, powers, talents and potentials freely given by God to every individual.

Stock of social capital

Social capital refers to the constellation of people with reciprocal relationship ideology, strong support system, similar value drives, and clear conscience on divergent perspectives. It has been argued by psychologists that your perceptions and thinking capacities are partly shaped and determined by the people around us. In the same vein, if you find yourself around people who always strive you bring you down and kill your dreams, it’ll affect the rate at which you climb in life. You are your own architect; hence you need to screen and determine the range and categories of people you want them to be in your circle of life. It is prudent to be in the world of people you share similar dreams, goals and vision with.

Exploring beyond your territorial scheme isn’t a bad idea though, but you must strive to link up with people who have a very strong level of expertise in their field of operation/study. There are trillions of opportunities, services and resources in the environment, however, we can only make maximum utilization of these assets when we have adequate knowledge, skills and network of competent people around us.

Author: Theophilus Quaicoe

Contact: +233544902287/[email protected]