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PUT YOUR THINKING CAP ON
Ask yourself the right why questions
THE POSSIBILITIES DURING any lockdown are often slim for good percentage of any population whether in America, Europe, Asia, Australia or Africa. If you’ve found yourself in one, the first question you may be tempted to ask is “why is the lockdown necessary?”
Lockdowns across the world in recent times have been because of the life threatening coronavirus outbreak. If there is a lockdown in your locality, you’ve probably heard the reasons necessitating it.
The fact that people have heard why they have to go under the harsh conditions of a lockdown doesn’t mean that they appreciate the reasons given for it. Some persons will certainly have doubts and will only believe there is an issue to avoid after they have become victims themselves.
The welfare of the general public however should not risked by governments failure to take the right decisions because of the few who don’t believe there is a need for the decision to be taken.
I hope you aren’t asking why the need for the lockdown in the first place. You are in already so finding answers to this question will be a waste of your mental resources. What you should rather channel your resources to is in how to make the best of the lockdown as well as how to come out strong after it.
Have you been badly hit by the lockdown? The first question you should ask yourself is: Why did you feel the harsh impact of the lockdown?
During the lockdown in my city, all forms of public gatherings were prohibited including religious, academic, social as well as cultural gatherings. This did not however stop some religious organizations and academic institutions from continuing sessions. They moved online, applying the internet, radio and television and they made the most of the moments.
You may be in a lockdown where only persons who are essential workers and have a pass are free to roam and you aren’t an essential worker so no pass. It can be very challenging.
Perhaps you run your personal business that has been hit by the lockdown, or you’ve been sacked of your job because your boss is taking precautions to keep his business. Or you are one of those daily workers who work part-time and have no job security and perhaps no savings. I understand your plight.
Why are you susceptible? Acknowledge this reality. Not everyone is having a bad time. Some persons are enjoying their best profits ever, certain businesses are flourishing and new kinds of businesses just found an outlet.
Answering this question helps you look inwards to see why you came down falling like a pack of cards. If you are sincere with yourself, you’d definitely find out that though the lockdown met you, you were actually unprepared.
I’ve had to talk to many persons about their lock down experiences. My friend Essine said she just realized her tailoring business wouldn’t survive the worst scenarios. She realized that those engaging in food related business prospered. I developed similar convictions too after my business came to a pause.
Mr. Polycarp, the rector of a polytechnic where I lecture part-time told me he realized that he needed to venture into a business line providing services that people really needed to survive like air. And he decided he’d be venturing into the production of packaged water.
You’d have realized that certain services called “essential services” thrived. It just means, that it’s time to tow your business towards “essential “status.
Maybe you didn’t have a business of your own but you are now considering starting a business because you lost your job due to your company laying off workers as a result of the lockdown, that’s actually a plus.
I think that the lockdown shows how vulnerable we are, how else we have to work and what technology at our disposal can be applied to put us at a vantage point.
The next question you should ask is “why didn’t I have a savings that would sufficiently take me during the period of the lockdown?”
I noticed that the lockdown got everyone unawares and quite a lot of us had no sufficient savings. We had to wait on government palliatives that weren’t even enough.
I’ve realized how important having a savings is. We don’t have to eat up all our capital no matter what happens. We need to keep some for the rainy day. How rainy can the day be? This lockdown has shown the extent we can expect things to worsen.
We are often tempted to think that we have a secure job so that we spend all our income in anticipation of the next paycheck. Except you work in the public service where workers salary is protected by hash labour rules, and they aren’t these days with the hash economic realities at the moment, you should know that your job is on a fifty-fifty line. You could be out any moment.
It’s good that we don’t live larger than life lifestyle on a salary. Rather, we should look at business opportunities to invest in which will improve our financial standing subsequently. This lockdown has exposed our frailties
Think about this question. “Why are you susceptible to the things that affect others around you?”
It’s true that we are in a chained world in which everyone depends on every other person. Buyers depend on sellers and sellers won’t have a great time without buyers. Imagine businesses shutting down because the customers were nowhere to be found.
One gold processor in China had to close shop because of the lockdown in his city and the effect on the Dubai business man who sold the gold was tremendous. He had no gold to sell so his business went down.
You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where you are left helpless because of how bad things have become for others. You want to protect your business or your life from suffering harshly from the backend negative impacts. You should be thinking about alternative routes.
I’ve realized that more businesses are going online because more persons are online to hide from the silence of the lockdown. It is important to be on top of the game applying up-to-date technological inventions that will put you ahead of the pack.
Now ask, “Why do you have to spend more even when you are getting less?”
You’d probably have discovered that you spend more money on necessities than you’d probably have spent under normal conditions and you are not getting more money. You probably are spending more on transportation, food and other necessities.
Because supply is less, sellers up their price so that they can keep ahead with the market dynamics. You’d want to be on top of this market dynamics so that you can get things to favour you.
Do you have a backup plan? You should ask yourself “why did I not have a backup plan?” and if you did have a plan “why did my backup plan not work?”
Do you have a backup plan? I’m sure you don’t and you aren’t odd. Almost everyone I’ve known does not have one. They just live their lives without thinking about other eventualities. They think things will always work out fine just the ways it’s always been. This lockdown has got many people thinking that they should have had a backup plan.
You are probably thinking now that you need to not just have backup A but also B, C or even D so that you can have several options to fall back on just in case things fall apart. This means you are also willing to invest resources in these back up strategies so that they become veritable subsequently.
If you had a plan which did not work because it got affected by the lockdown, you’ve probably have seen how worse things can go with the economy or your job. You’d be tweaking your back up plans to the worst case scenario.
The end result in asking yourself these questions is so that you are able to develop the right ideas and new templates for your life and business. You won’t want to continue life on the same platform like you did before the lockdown once this lockdown is over.
You won’t see the need to make the most of the opportunities that this lockdown presents and you may not even see the opportunities if you don’t put a thought process through the current situation.
You can key into the opportunities that finding their answers will give you, because indeed, they offer you an opportunity to see the things that you would not have ordinarily seen.
You must be optimistic as you think. You think that the opportunities in the future will be positive even if presently they don’t look great. This way, while finding answers to your questions, you will be doing it in the light of the positives that will be arriving.
The goal is to avoid the downtime that characterized your life during the lockdown. You can’t be finding a way out when you are stocked with why you were locked down.
I’ve observed personally that this lockdown has opened my eyes to a rush of new ideas that I didn’t think about before it arrived. Now, I know the right businesses to tap into. This probably wouldn’t have happened if I did not sit down to analyze my predicament and that of several people during this lockdown.
You will be able to develop new strategies, technics and ideas when you can think right. With all certainty, new ideas will be springing up from solutions people will be creating after this lockdown. I am certain no one wants to get into a well twice.
The above questions are only a few of the questions you may have to answer. You might have your personal questions too. Finding answers to those questions will certainly help you create solutions not just for you but for others too who will tap into the opportunities you will be able to create subsequently.
It’s all about self-examining yourself. If you can think, it’s a plus gift to get you into safe-landing for surviving life after the lockdown because certainly, there is life beyond it and you must survive it.