Introduction

How would you feel if you wake up in the morning prepare for the day work with a whole lot of smiles on your face, only to get to your office to discover that a sack letter is right before your eyes? How would you feel if you just bought a brand new car, and as a result of the joy you were filled with, you then decide to ride down the street for a cruise and suddenly the car just caught fire and burnt down to ashes right before your eyes? How would you feel as a businessman who just closed for the day sales, and went right home for having made a whole lot of sales, only to come back the next day to discover that everything valuable in the shop has been burgled? How would you feel as a parent whose child fell seriously ill, then you did everything humanly possible to make her survive, only to find out that right there in your own eyes that she lay dead and gone too far unwittingly?

However, I know that your intention right now is that, such a thing will not befall you. Well, no one goes out on the way to pray for problems and painful experiences. But there’re people whom some of these things have transpired to, but they just get up dust themselves and kept going.

Why? Because they have learnt to take whatever that comes their way in a good fate. But there are also those who as a result this will cry over and over again, roll themselves on the floor, and whatever you do to encourage and energize them, they just can get up from where they are. They have allowed such a situation to imprison and lock them up into the inertia tendency of life.

However, instead of moving forward and seeing such vicissitudes in a different perspective or as a steppingstone to success, they rather see it as a tombstone and fail to learn from it.

Similarly, Geologists and earth scientists have made us to assimilate that steppingstones are described as stones acting as footrests for crossing streams, marshes etc., and I wholeheartedly agree. And in the same vein, one may say that whatever that serves as an impediment to anyone in life not to achieve success is as well a steppingstone.

Perhaps it might be pains, setbacks, losses, mistakes, failures, disappointment, poverty, hardship, trials, abuse, subjugation, adversities name it. All belongs to the same order of hierarchy. Who says failure can’t be a steppingstone to success. Abraham Lincoln said that his greatest concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

He failed on several occasions in pursuit of his dreams and visions of life; but he didn’t give in. He pressed on till he won. So if you have failed now or have not succeeded now you have not failed. You still have the chance to prove your mettle and who you truly are irrespective of successive failures.

Similarly, Abraham Lincoln was later recorded as one of the greatest American presidents after suffering a good number of defeats and setbacks, to clinch his leadership position as American president.

Think of this book as a manual to use as you pursue the very best in every area of your life. It will give you the inspiration you need to keep putting one foot in front of the other when you grow weary on your journey and remind you over and over again, in a variety of ways: you can do it, if you faint not. It will give you strength to soar above life’s test and trials like a majestic eagle, reinforce your will-power, and teach you how to turn adversities into opportunities.

As you browse through the pages of this book, you will become acquainted with amazing people, people who refused to settle for less than the best and whose stories will spur and astound you. One of the primary reasons people give up in life is that they try things, don’t succeed, and they feel like “a failure”. The truth is that we are never created to be ‘specialist in failure’ unless we quit or give up. We all have times when things go awry or don’t go the way we hope they will, even though we do our best (Sod’s Law) but in spite of all that, I really want you to have in mind that it isn’t the end of the road for you. Everyone makes mistakes when starting out in the race of life, and it is this mistakes that worth the tales you will tell tomorrow.

Failing at some things on our way to success humbles us and teaches us lessons we need to learn in order to forge ahead. So rise up to your feet, make up your mind that you still have what it takes to get to your destination. Despite the odds you can still make it, only if you have a positive resolution about yourself. By realizing that any setback, be it professional or personal, can be turned into a step forward by you when you possess the right tools and mindset to turn your loss into gain amazingly.