The Battle Against Mediocrity: Lessons From Abraham Lincoln

“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you use. One man gets only a week’s worth of a year, while another man gets a full year’s worth of a week.” Charles Richards.

There is no doubt that the greatest capital that an entrepreneur has is time.

What a paradigm of effective time management and rejection of mediocrity was Abraham Lincoln. Affectionately named Abe, Abraham Lincoln practiced reading and writing every night. He had attended “quack school” for less than 12 months in his entire life. There were no books in which students repeated the teacher’s words aloud. Robinson in his book, “Lincoln as a man of words” referred to him as a self-taught man. His mother, Nancy Lincoln, said of him: “The only time Abe loses his temper is when he doesn’t understand something he reads or hears.”

The farmers and merchants, attorneys and litigants he associated with in Illinois’ 8th Judicial District had no magic with words. But Lincoln did not waste all his time with his mental equals and inferiors. This attests to the fact that those you spend your time with determine the kind of leap you get in life. Decide if you are still plagued by information shortages or if you are going to fly away with a flood of ideas. Ideas rule the world, remember. He made fellow blessing of the minds of the elite, the singers, the poets of all ages.

Carve your nitche big and you will definitely end up being great. Keep in mind that if you mix with those whose mental capacities are equal to yours or seem less, you have begun to plan for your mental drift.

He could repeat all the pages of Burns, Bryon, and Browning from memory. Even when he was in the White House and the tragic burdens of the Civil War were sapping his strength and leaving deep furrows in his face, he often found time to take a copy of Hood’s poems to bed.

That is why Professor Williams James, a man I respect so much, had this in his words;

“Let no young person worry about the result of his education, whatever the line of it. If you keep faithfully busy every hour of the working day, you can safely leave the end result in your hands. You can with complete certainty: Count on waking up one good morning to find yourself one of the most competent of your generation, in whatever activity you have singled out. “

Professor Emerton soothingly described Abe: “He was no longer in school, he was simply educating himself by the only pedagogical method that has ever produced results anywhere, that is, by the method of his own. tireless energy in continual study and practice. “

Be a time thief. Master your seconds, learn to steal the moments. Abe read books over and over. It was engraved in his mind that a moment of carelessness could end his life.

Earning 31 cents a day on Indiana’s Pigeon Creek farms, once he read about John Bunyan and made the decision that he would not end up in the woods. He said to himself: “I too can be extraordinarily useful.” You make a firm determination about your success and you push yourself out of bounds.

It is heartbreaking to see how many people have settled for mediocrity. John Mason once said, “Life is too short to think small.” He also wrote that “the answer to your future is off limits you have now.”

Lincoln had a burning desire to outdo himself. He loved the woods, but he didn’t want to spend his life cutting down trees. When he read George Washington, he got emotional and etched these words on the floor: “The good guys who apply to your books will all be great to me in time.”

If you have followed it, you will have noticed that Lincoln reads a lot. I once asked an acquaintance to read widely, but he was like, what’s the need and he just cared about his academic success. Manage your time well and develop all your man.

He disciplined himself to produce clear, crisp, and simple sentences. He once wrote to a friend, “Always keep in mind that your own resolve to succeed is more important than anything else.” That is why the Rev. Sam Adeyemi said: “You cannot change a person’s life without changing his perspective.”

Your life of dissatisfaction is worth emulating at your current level. Always be hungry.