Ezinne Akudo: Stepping out of mediocrity (30 days, 30 voices)

by Ezinne Akudo

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“One day, I got tired of living the life of the average human, I figured it was time to step out of my dominant culture of resignation and mediocrity and endeavour to create the life of my dreams.”

I’ve been staring at a blank screen for days now, wanting to contribute but not knowing where to start. So many thoughts crossed my mind and nothing seemed to work, so I gave up after figuring I couldn’t be compelled to do the article anyway, neither was I getting paid for it. Few hours later, I realized I had just reasoned like the average human, and that reminded me of certain decisions I made months ago and how they helped my success story.

Last year, I graduated from Abia State University where I studied Law; the obvious next step for me was enrollment in Law school. Unfortunately, we all had to wait for a year after graduation due to one of the strikes that set us back and I kept wondering what I was going to do with the idle year. Some of my friends found part time jobs, others took language courses, a few learnt certain skills and people like me decided there was no need to be stressed. I considered buying the form for the Miss Nigeria 2013 beauty pageant but I thought about it and changed my mind because I didn’t want to leave my comfort zone and I had no strength for competition and publicity, even though being a beauty queen had always been a dream. The year was long and everyday I lay in bed waiting for the next day to come, it was hard. All I did was blame ASUU for making me miss the Law school batch that year, when my mates were getting on with their lives.

One day, I got tired of living the life of the average human. I figured it was time to step out of my dominant culture of resignation and mediocrity and endeavour to create the life of my dreams. I stumbled upon a quote by the legendary underwater explorer and film maker, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, he said: “If a Man for whatsoever reason has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself”. That hit me and I purchased the form, got through various screening stages for the competition, and the rest is history. The process was very tough and several times, I thought of giving up but my parents were there for me and I had friends that constantly reminded me that winners don’t quit. While I thank God for changing my whole life in a second, it’s imperative that I share the one most important lesson that this experience has taught me: there’s only one person responsible for the quality of life that you live, that person is YOU.

If you want to be successful, you have to take 100% responsibility for everything that you experience in life. This includes the level of your achievement, the results you produce, the quality of your relationships, the state of your health and income! etc. Most of us blame something outside of ourselves for the parts of our lives we don’t like; We blame our parents,our bosses, our friends, the media, our co workers,our clients,our spouse,the weather,the economy… anything! We never want to look at where the real problem is – ourselves!

It’s time to stop looking outside for the answers to why you haven’t created the life and results you want. You are the one who creates the quality of life you lead and the results you produce. Never forget, you can’t hire someone else to do your push-ups for you because if you are to get any value out of them, then you must do it yourself. The world doesn’t owe you anything; you have to create what you want from it.

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Ezinne Akudo is Miss Nigeria 2013. She tweets from @ezinneakudo.

30 Days, 30 Voices series is an opportunity for young Nigerians from across the world to share their stories and experiences – creating a meeting point where our common humanity is explored.

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

 

 

Comments (3)

  1. Nothing beats the combination of beauty n brains put together. A lesson for other ladies to learn from, instead of sitting idly back and relying on your beauty to dazzle every man and get some money from him get up and make urself useful, men would respect u more. Thanks ezinne for this wonderful write up which is meant for both male and femalesalike.

  2. That was motivational. Until we leave our comfort zone and explore this world of unlimited possibilities, Success and self actualization will only exist in our dreams

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