Nature Within Us

Discipline, Stability, and Acknowledging Your Financial Reality There is an interesting contradiction in the world of work: some people earn more money but experience greater financial hardship than people earning much less. Take a simple example from the construction sector. A skilled carpenter or mason here in Rwanda may earn RWF 15,000–20,000 per working day . With consistent work, that could translate into roughly RWF 300,000–400,000 in a good month . Meanwhile, a full-time employee may take home less than RWF 250,000 per month . Yet surprisingly, the employee earning RWF 250,000 may be paying rent consistently, buying food for the family, contributing to savings, paying school expenses and gradually acquiring assets. The casual worker who sometimes earns considerably more may still struggle with food, rent, emergencies and long-term planning. Why? The difference is often not simply how much money comes in. It is how predictable that money is—and how disciplined we become in...

People management is perhaps the most complex responsibility in leadership. Even the most experienced leaders have never completely mastered it, not necessarily because they lack knowledge, but because human beings are full of surprises. From the day a mother gives birth to a tiny baby until that person takes their final breath, human life is marked by continuous change. Our behaviours, ambitions, loyalties, emotions and priorities evolve through different circumstances. A person can become stronger through hardship, kinder through love, or more difficult after gaining power. These unpredictable changes are precisely what make it almost impossible to become a permanent expert in managing people. A ten-year-old child may guide ten mature cows using nothing more than a small stick. Yet a highly educated fifty-year-old person may struggle to influence even one individual, regardless of the authority or force available to them. The reason is simple: animals may be directed through routin...