Is this your Best Life?

When you look back at your career choices, have they led you to where you want to be today? If not, what are you doing to ensure that you get a chance to live your best life?

Sometimes it takes a traumatic event to force you to reconsider where you are. Sometimes it just takes a few wrong words from your manager or spotting the perfect job advert to make you realise that you are in the wrong place and pursuing the wrong dreams.

As we go through life, our priorities and values continuously undergo a shift and when these become unaligned to what we are doing, we feel bored, unstimulated and without direction. That is when it is time to focus anew on identifying your changed priorities and developing new goals. The starting point to finding your way to your best life is to take stock of where you are, what you have achieved, what matters to you and, perhaps most crucially, what is no longer important to you. Being able to ask – and answer – these tough questions will help you sift out what matters and to make a plan that works for you. There is no guarantee that you’ll get it right first time and you may have to keep researching and re-writing your life plan until it feels right to you.

The only certainty is that if you are not living the life you want and you choose not to act, you will simply continue to dream about what your best life could have been while it passes you by. To paraphrase the late John Lennon, ‘life is what happens while you are busy making no plans.’

In this Issue – Editor’s Pick

In this issue, I have selected some of my favourite articles from previous issues of ReConnect Africa. I hope our newer readers enjoy them and that our long-time readers will have fun reading them again!

First, however, we bring you the latest round-up of business developments around the continent and other news from Africa and the rest of the world. We also look ahead to the forthcoming Africa Business Leaders Forum taking place in Ghana in October and share David Christianson’s report from the 2006 Leadership for Growth conference.

Leading the Editor’s Pick is Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf’s take on leadership in Africa today and what the continent needs from its leaders in order to flourish. The role of the media in safeguarding Africa’s democracy is critical and we review the training workshop held in Kampala to strengthen ethical reporting during elections. One of the most inspiring entrepreneurs I have ever encountered is South African Stephen Larkin and in this interview, he shares his vision for leveraging South Africa’s potential. For entrepreneurs living in the West who want to do business in Africa, a change of mindset is crucial. We report on the advice given by some of Africa’s leading business people at the London Business School Africa Day.

The role of Human Resources professionals in Africa is key to the success of any business and we report on the training by Interims for Development in Nigeria to assist the transition of the HR function to that of a strategic business partner. HR practitioners need to look to future trends when planning for future business success and we revisit Paul Bridle’s look at the Employee in the New World.

The critical role played by Africa’s Diaspora is highlighted in the article on the African Foundation Stone in Cameroon and in the sterling efforts of the alumni of Ghana’s Achimota School and their Capital Campaign to restore their alma mater to her former glory. My personal role model, Dr. Thomas Mensah, shares his life lessons in the ‘5 Minute Interview’ and, finally, we bring you the best of this month’s events in Dates for your Diary.

We hope you enjoy this issue of ReConnect Africa - and don’t forget to write in and share your comments on these articles.