By Olubunmi Adebayo
*Most great men and successful people are certainly not easy to live with.*
*While people are highly impressed by their successes and achievements, most people who are close to them are aware that such people are difficult, and not quite easy to live with.*
*Why is this so, you may want to ask?*
*This is because most successful people are highly focused. They are uncompromising. They operate a rigid schedule. Most of them are sticklers for time, and excellence. And are known for their uncompromising stands, especially on integrity.*
*While people who are not close to them note the lists of accomplishments, impacts and exploits by these sets of great men and women, the family members, close associates, working staff and their immediate team members know that such fellows can be difficult to work with or get on with.*
*Please consider the following examples :*
*1) Winston Churchill : The most accomplished Prime Minister in the history of Great Britain was not an easy man to work with or live with :*
*He interrupted everyone around him, and carried an ego large enough to fill entire rooms. And beneath the confidence he wore lived something darker — the depression he called his “Black Dog.”*
*Working with him requires a readiness for endless arguments.*
*History has it that he was harsh and dismissive towards his staffers. You needed a thick skin NOT to resent him.*
*Yet, history remembers Winston Churchill as the leader who refused to surrender. Who stood up against Adolf Hitler during the Second World War and mobilized the world to ensure success for the allied forces.*
*2) Margaret Thatcher, another former Prime Minister of Britain was also not an easy person to live with.*
*Her personality and working style were hard driven. She was quite uncompromising, and had a low tolerance for dissent once her mind was made up.*
*Former colleagues said she “took against people” in Cabinet, and once that happened it became very difficult to work with her.*
*Disagreements with her could turn personal, with briefings in that direction against such a fellow.*
*She had a reputation for “favorite and non-favorite” people.*
*If you were an equal or a rival against her, you had to look after yourself.*
*At the same time, people who worked with Margaret Thatcher said she ciuld be very kind and thoughtful to staff and people she considered as being vulnerable.*
*3) Jesus Christ : Am sure you will be surprised about this example too. But wait until you are done reading this piece. Am sure you will be excited if you were the junior brother of Jesus Christ. But look at the scenario below as it played out :*
*Luke 8: [19] “Then came to him his mother and his brethren, and could not come at him for the press”.*
*[20] “And it was told him by certain which said, Thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to see thee”.*
*[21] “And he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it”.*
*How would you have felt if you were James or Jude, the junior brothers of Jesus Christ and you were part of the team that came visiting our Lord Jesus Christ? Bad? Please don’t be.*
*Note that Jesus wasn’t being rude to the mother and the brothers, but He was just trying to use the presence of the mother and his brothers to place emphasis on fellowship with God as being supreme to any other relationship within our social setting.*
*We are not writing this to show that these people are “bad people”, far from it. But to let you know that successful people operate strict principles that may be hurtful, but helpful in assisting them to forge ahead and get through the challenging terrains of life.*
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©️ Olubunmi S Adebayo.
