How you perceive your ability to find jobs in Kenya is crucial to your success

By Paula Thayrow – 4th December 2009
There are some things that are spoken of as though they are so real only to be revealed as unreal on further scrutiny.
In speaking of road accidents in Kenya, for instance, it is widely reported that ‘the vehicle lost control’. This gives the impression that the vehicle was no longer in control and thus lost grip of the road and thus the accident.
This is reported so widely that it is now perceived to be a reality that ‘vehicles lose control’.
That is an unreal reality. Vehicles never lose control because they never had it in the first place; it is the driver of the vehicle who loses control of it. Only a human being has the amazing ability to be or not to be in control.
These unreal realities are referred to in finer English as perceptions. A perception is not necessarily a truth; it is often a perceived reality that then becomes the experience of the individual who believes it.
That is how, when I was growing up, my mother would hold us all ransom to search for her car keys. It would be at that desperate moment when we all are ‘finally’ ready to leave the house so that we can get to school on time. Then mum would ‘lose’ her car keys and like a true general, she would gather all her brood to this great march to find her ‘lost’ keys.
Then after we had searched everywhere in the house (another perception) and it started to appear that we would surely be late for school, one of us would recall the last time this had happened. This brilliant individual would start to question the perception we all held up to that point. They would then ask the question that would set all of us free; are mums’ keys really ‘lost’?
At which point we would all pivot our eyes on mum’s hand, and there, tightly clasped would be my good mother’s ‘lost’ keys. (I now think it was her way of getting us to work, together, in one accord on a single project, at least thrice a year.)
‘There are no jobs in Kenya’ is a perception that is persistently true to the individual who believes it, but it is really just another unreal reality. Your perception of how difficult it is to find jobs in Kenya is true, until you decide to challenge it. The minute you change your perception, your reality changes too.
Dare to challenge your perceptions about the job situation in Kenya for your sake.