You’ll Not Believe This Is What I Learned From Trade-Offs

Image credit Dan Burton, by Unsplash.

If you want to grow up to your potentials, you must be willing to give up some things you value.

I first learned the Law of ‘Trade-Offs’ when I was in primary school (I know you will argue, but relax), though I didn’t call it that at the time.

Back then, I loved to throw cashew nuts and rubber bands (this is a Normal business for any young chap who grew up in some villages of eastern Nigeria). Some days we would play cashews all during recess and break-periods. It was a lot of fun trying to beat friends and win their ‘Kodo’.

A friend of mine had a new, fresh, beautiful, salivating rubber-bands that I wanted very badly, but he wouldn’t play with it, so I never got a chance to win it.

He just held onto it and showed it to us. So I developed a strategy. I offered to trade for it. First I offered any quantity of my old ones I had for it. He wasn’t interested. Then I offered my ‘Kodos’ for it. he refused, I offered my cashew Nuts, and He bluntly refused.

I think he was finally willing to make the trade when I reached helping him solve his assignments also. He was happy because he had both cashew nuts and rubber-bands as well as his assignments solved. I was happy because I’d given up several average rubber-bands and some bad cashew nuts for some…