Hard work pays, it is your only choice to success

As I recall my memory bank on my past experiences during my childhood days, it made sense for me to work hard, which helped to build my personal strength too.

My progress in my life today was because of the ingrained believe from my younger years that nothing comes easy without any effort.

My family could not afford to buy a house and of course now I understand it was because of my father’s financial illiteracy and his mindset was the main cause. My parents found the cheapest house to rent that was located in an area with low mentality social surroundings. I must say grace for I never became one of them.

The poor surrounding was a blessing in disguise for me as I began to understand the need for money. Drug addicts were stealing stuff from their own homes and selling it from house to house to get money for their self-destructing habit.

The owner of the house that we rented from was a lorry driver but a man of principle. He came to Malaysia from Pakistan. He had to put so much hard work to make a living in this country since he had no other choice. He explained to me, when I was 12 years old that only hard work will bring income. Money is a requirement to buy food, to buy things in these modern days.

One day, he asked me if I wanted to earn some money as he had some work to be done but he couldn’t do it due to the fact that he works 7 days a week. I was excited because I could earn money to buy myself some stuff which my parents couldn’t buy me. I would say we were poor because there were times that we only white rice porridge.

At 12 years old, the work given to me was to cut the lawn around the house, plus I have to clean the drainage around the house using the hoe. The deal was, upon satisfactory completion of the work, I will be paid RM 5 in total and I agreed to it. (In 1981, RM 5 was big money for me.) This was one of my first achievement which took a week to complete as a small-time contractor.

After this first project, there were other work which is beyond anyone’s imagination. The easiest job which I had done for the same RM 5 was to dispose a bucket of human waste from the toilet. The government had outlawed the use of the bucket system toilet and the cost to install a simple sanitation system was quite expensive. The owner took another year before finally installing the modern sanitation system.

Growing up was an adventure to me. I wanted to make more money so I started finding jobs which pays more during school breaks. In my personal experience, I had worked as a caddy at 13 years old, looking for a cleaner job but it was still hard work when you have to carry the gold bag around 18 holes. Other jobs that I took are working on a garbage truck, working in the housing estate construction, working as a carpenter, a guard and so on.

My big break came at 20 years old when I became a deck cadet in the merchant navy. Today, I am a Captain. Many other would have had some similar experiences but the point here is that, without hard work, progress is not possible. Nothing works without effort from you.

Wherever you are right now, decide for yourself, to be where you want to be in the future, hard work always yields its’ profits.