One Strong Belief

I believe that where there is no way, make your own. Too often, we are discouraged by what we perceive as lack of opportunity but opportunity exists wherever you create it. Sometimes the psychological barriers to success are as insurmountable, if not more so, than the physical ones. I believe what inspires me most in my thinking on this particular subject is the experience and example of my own parents. They arrived in the UK with not much to their name, but more than some, and built for themselves a life that benefitted not only themselves but their family and the community. They had aspirations that were modest but worked and pursued them as if they were big. And, in fact, for the time, for people of their background being first generation immigrants, they were pioneers in their own little way.

The will to succeed for myself and the world is inherent in me. It comes from always being conscious of my heritage. It comes from knowing that there were those before me who died for the opportunities that we waste today, failing even to recognise them as such because we have too much as a result of having done little. Thanks to our ancestors, whether they perished crossing the Middle Passage or in the trenches of the Somme or on the cotton fields of America, we live better than ever before. It’s time we recognise that and take up the revolutionary mantle.

Opportunity is where you take it or make it. This is my belief. So when one door closes, which it inevitably will, carve out a nook and keep on chipping away until there’s nothing left standing between you and the other side.