Comfort kills growth

January 2010 was a truly consequential month in my family’s life.

Our daughter, Audrey, was a healthy beautiful baby who was growing up with the full complement of her mom’s and dad’s love. I was a professor at the University of Georgia and my wife, an architect, had taken some time off work in order to spend more time with our baby. Sometime that month, my wife started preparing to return to work so we had to start searching for a daycare program for Audrey.

We visited a couple of programs in our neighborhood and couldn’t make a choice until we arrived at the Goddard Daycare Center in Buford, Ga. It was close enough to our house and I really liked the daycare program but we couldn’t afford it so we had to sign up with a lower-priced competitor.

That day, I got home and decided that I did not want to continue to make those kinds of decisions for my child for the rest of her life. I wanted to be able to afford some things that are slightly better than the basics of life for them. Luxury sometimes corrodes the soul so the goal was not luxury. It was mostly about being able to make good educational choices for them regardless of the cost.

That day, I signed up for the GMAT exam. I studied for 3 months and resigned from my job in September of the same year to study for an MBA at Oxford. The decision to let go of the “good” to pursue the “better” is responsible for everything I am today and for the wonderful OVERWOOD (overwood.ng) family that is making investments accessible to regular people across Africa.

Our time at Oxford was very humbling. I went from being the professor to just another student. We exchanged our beautiful 4-bedroom house for a one-bedroom flat at Castle Mill in Oxford, and left our two cars for a reliable but old bicycle we bought from a graduating student.

Our House in Georgia

Our flat at Oxford. Yes, that’s the whole flat.

I just want to use this opportunity to encourage you to continue to strive higher. Comfort is great but it is also the number one thief of destinies and visions. It’s easy to coast along once we attain a measure of comfort but sometimes a little bit of discomfort can trigger amazing growths in our lives.