“It’s beauty in the struggle, forfeiting ain’t a success”. Those are my own words that linger on my mind as I reminicise the lyrics of a modern and most inspirational rapper I resonate to from his top single “love yourz”-Jermain Cole.

Those words lingered on my mind at around midnight on my way back home in an uber that was nipping by the clear old Bagamoyo road, front seated… I get drawn by my inner conciousness to draft what has happened so far in a year time since finishing college, dough. It’s a spine-chilled hell of a roller-coaster.

Within that year time frame specifically right after college, I had envisioned a smooth road( smooth as the silk used to make these astonishing clothes of ours) but reality played check, an absolute check mate just like chess.

Indecisiveness, unsettledness, bouncing like a merry-go-round were my bread and butter checklists coupled with the thrust and need to garner different experiences and learn new things. To some extent it looks like it is ideal but deep down it was a upthrust rock bottom with my all, I mean my mind and soul in existence.

I hit “point blank” at the most critical stage of my life, started questioning my inner core and existence( it happens), and it is a normal cord.

“It’s beauty in the struggle, ugliness in the success”- Jermain Cole

Ugly as it looks like, hitting rock bottom and getting point blank can take many shapes like depression, envy, varied discreteness and the likes, but one has to overcome them in their desired actions, I place my actions in terms called “virtues”.

By definition, virtues are traits or qualities that are deemed to be morally good and thus valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being. Personal virtues are characteristics valued as promoting collective and individual greatness, and within the year time within different struggles I faced with, I developed the following concrete and valuable virtues which you can use as best practices, these include: resilience, patience, solitude and prayer.( I will dive in to how each has helped me grow)

The virtues attributes get in as follows:

Resilience- Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. During my struggles upon the year time especially when I was uncertain about my career set future and how I could live by the world with all stumbles upon, I called up resilience by embracing “ The pursuit of Happiness”- go-getting by the process over and over again till I find a comfort point adopted from the movie, “The pursuit of Happyness” starring Will smith(Have a look unto the description. I have been drawing resilience from learning best practices about what went wrong and correcting it in the midst of also looking unto similar practices.

Patience- Patience is a virtue. This is a saying that I have particularly been exposed to hearing from time to time and it stands to be true, good things come to those who wait up and the art of waiting up is termed as “patience”. As a young person who is thirsty of opportunities and who wants to draft in changes in alignment with my career set, I was always in gold rush with an opportunity that would fit me much more quickly than expected not knowing that things take time to go with. Human beings were automated to flow with turbulence, not understanding this leaves you ousted in the “rule of the jungle”, learning to cope with the turbulences with perservance-a subset of patience to me has made me storm through challenges for a better thing to come than one that I’d vent about missing from others,just recently I also got insights from Napoleon Hill’s classic personal development story “Three Feet From Gold”.

Solitude- Aldous Huxley says, “The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.” Solitude is an art inclined towards being alone. As humans we are tended to be influenced by external factors such as human interactions which influence our behaviours and actions in all aspects. During my one year lane towards this memoir I have learned to cultivate the art of solitude to help me grow as a person without taking an extra loop in from physical interactions through inner cognitive meditation or complete abstenence, how has this helped me? It has helped me free the mind up from all the distractions of everyday life, including struggles and allows me to focus more fully on one thing. It allowed my brain to think outside the box and to come up with unique, extraordinary solutions to ordinary problems. I am not a guru expert at this but you can try solitude with meditation or relaxation in many different ways.

Prayer- We all answer our accordance of deeds to a “Supreme Being” who is above all will, the world has different denominations to answer to in relation to that “Supreme Being”. What I learnt is that prayer keeps calmness and comfort to relish against struggles to create a beauty in perservering and getting relaxed. Try it harder.

Challenges and Hurdles are truimphant and essential elements in driving the human race forward in interactions or even in looking for ways to create solutions. What I have learnt in my year time inked memoir to the current learning is to love mine and you should love yours, in supportive and elementary ways tailored for good, remember: “It’s Beauty In The Struggle, Ugliness In The Sucesss” or rather in my own way “Beauty In The Struggle, Forfeiting Ain’t The Success”.