Challenging Economic Times or A Blessing In Disguise?

Jackie’s dad died in a tragic road accident when she was in her final year of high school. It was the most painful time of her life. She could not imagine life without her beloved daddy. How would life be in the family without him? He had always been so important for the family that his death was a cruel blow to them. Would they recover? How would they fill the gap he had left?

Death of Bread Winners Turns Family’s Life Upside Down

The years following the demise of Jackie’s dad were a total nightmare. First, the family fell back on rent payments and got evicted from the house they had lived in for years. They were forced to move to a cheaper house that none of them liked. School fees became another nightmare. It became normal for Jackie and her siblings to be sent away from school for school fees, something they had never known.

For Jackie, her suffering with school fees was short lived because she had just a few months left in school by the time her dad passed away. Her mother was a teacher and she was really trying but providing for a family of 5 all on her own and in the city was very challenging.

Many criticized her for continuing to live in the city instead of asking for a transfer to the rural areas where life was cheaper. She looked at her family’s situation; one son was at the university in the city and he still lived at home. Jackie had just completed high school and passed and was waiting to join the university. Two of the children were in high school.

She thought of how the lives of all of them had become disrupted because of the untimely death of her husband and how disrupting them further by relocating them to an environment they were not used to would affect them even more yet they were already wounded and hurting. If they were to relocate to the rural area, where exactly would they relocate to; her late husband’s parent’s home, her parents’ home, hire a house in some rural village, or where exactly?

She made a decision that she would soldier on in the city. She and her children would make things work without necessarily relocating to some unfamiliar place. Jackie deferred her university studies before she even completed the first year. No matter how much the family struggled, they could not afford to maintain two people at the university. Her brother continued with his studies while she put hers on hold.

An Attitude of Gratitude Attracts Blessings

There are some very basic principles of life that we easily overlook. One of them is cultivating an attitude of gratitude no matter what we are going through. Sometimes blessings come to us disguised as misfortunes and we fail to recognize them because we do no look at them with an open mind.

Jackie deferring her studies was very painful. She was very, very unhappy and felt like life was too cruel. She wondered how she would ever become productive now that she could not complete her studies and get a job. What exactly was she going to do with herself? Was she going to continue burdening her mother who was already overstretched?

One day she met a former campus classmate purely by chance on the street. They were excited to meet and decided to take a cup of tea as they did some catching up. Lucy asked her what she was doing with herself and she said that she had tried really hard to get a job but no one was willing to employ someone without papers. Lucy asked her if she had tried self employment and she said that she had no capital to enable her start a business.

Lucy asked her what sort of businesses she had tried out and what sort of capital she was talking about. It turned out that what Jackie had in mind was traditional business, which in most cases require a handsome amount in start up and running costs.

“Have you tried working online?” Lucy asked.

Jackie had no idea what her friend was talking about. Working online, doing what? She had a smartphone that was given to her as a birthday present but how could that translate into income?

Lucy explained to her that if she wanted to get out of the pit she was in, then she would have to do things differently. She either had to be creative or her circumstances would remain unchanged. Lucy removed a laptop from her bag and proceeded to introduce Jackie to a world that she knew nothing about.

You Can Earn Money Working Online

Jackie’s head was spinning…. It dawned on her that technology has opened up the world and created opportunities that no one could have dreamed of years before. There were opportunities in blogging, online writing, creating and editing videos, photography, designing of websites and countless other fields. One can actually earn income working from home.

Ideas were flying through her head. Her brother was still living at home and he owned a laptop. He had never had issues allowing her to use it. But she had never known that she could use it as a tool to create employment for herself.

That evening Jackie sat her brother down and told him that they could kick out financial problems from their family if they decided to. She opened up the online platforms that her friend had taken her through earlier in the day. They checked out different online jobs and discussed them.

Jackie was interested in web design but she had no skills. Her brother told her that technology has made life easy. One can download tutorials from the Internet and learn whatever one wished to learn; anything.

“Do you know that even if you decided to assemble a bomb you can learn step by step from the Internet?”

That was like music to Jackie’s ears. There and then she decided that she was going to earn an income as a web designer no matter how long it took her. She started downloading tutorials and practicing whenever she had access to the laptop. Sometimes she worked overnight and only took a break when her brother needed to take the laptop with him as he left for campus in the morning.

Create Employment Rather Than Waiting For Someone To Employ You

It is now 5 years since that day when Jackie’s eyes were opened to the possibility of working online. She and her brother own a web design company that has 5 full time employees (and that includes Jackie and her brother). They have expanded their services to include online marketing.

The challenging times they faced opened their eyes to a world of opportunity. When misfortune comes knocking, maintain an attitude of gratitude no matter how tough the going gets. There is normally a silver lining to every dark cloud and a rainbow to every storm, if only we can allow ourselves to see it.

This article is written by Susan Catherine Keter,  Personal development and business Coach, Mentor and Blogger.
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