New Directions by Maya Angelou is a riveting short story about how even when we struggle, we can create a new path and thrive. In the story, a woman named Mrs. Annie Johnson decides to separate from her husband since both of them are unsatisfied, and Mrs. Johnson gets the house but her husband gets the money to go to Oklahoma. Mrs. Johnson is an African American woman, who is six feet and big boned, and not fit for working as a domestic, or as a maid. This forced her to have to get creative if she wanted to be able to support herself. She prepared to do hard work, and created a new path for herself. She carried rocks and placed them down, and also baked meat pies. She walked a long distance to the lumber mill, and sold the pies for a nickel to the hungry workers coming to break. Later, she came to the cotton gin and sold the meat pies at a price of three cents since the pies weren’t as hot. Mrs. Johnson alternated the order she visited every day, so it would stay balanced. After several years, when the workers relied on her for hot food, Mrs. Johnson created a store that offered many items, and let the workers come to her. New Directions shows how through hard work and ingenuity we can devise great solutions to problems.
Working hard and being determined is crucial for allowing ourselves to succeed, in business and in life, especially for women. When we keep on trying and put in lots of effort, this enables us to figure out new information and to keep on progressing, eventually allowing us to succeed. In New Directions, Mrs. Johnson carried all her supplies every day and spent lots of time and effort cultivating a relationship with the workers, and she had to carry rocks, bake pies, walk long distances, and more. However, after all the time she put in and the effort, she managed to become a success and create her own, successful store. When she traveled to the lumber mill and then to the cotton gin, she had a strategy in mind, and she charged prices that matched the quality of her goods. She put thought and energy into her business, and this was what caused her to succeed. It is pivotal that we always put as much of our effort as we can into everything we do in order to benefit everyone and to help ourselves succeed. Being determined and putting thought in is necessary to succeed, especially for people of minorities like African American women.
Having creativity is necessary to allow ourselves to succeed, because having new, innovative ideas gives us an edge over the competition. By using our imagination and coming up with useful ideas, we can use our intelligence and find a way to be successful. Innovation benefits us immensely in business and in life. In New Directions, Mrs. Johnson had decided to be a business woman instead of a maid or a domestic like most other women. She came up with an idea that fitted her skills, and could make money. Her idea was to sell tasty, hot, aromatic food to the exhausted workers on break, and she prepared. When she sold the meat pies, she charged a nickel for fresh, hot pies, and just three cents for the colder ones. This made the deals seem fair to the workers and made them really dependant on some warm meals everyday. She came up with an idea that no one else had come up with before, to create a stall selling hot food everyone there wanted, and managed to reap the benefits of having the business of the workers all to herself. Her creative idea gave her lots of profit and success in her business. By utilizing our innovation and creating new, original ideas rather than boring, overdone ideas, we can amass wealth from our own hard work and our intelligence. Innovation and creativity gives us the ability to recall and remember important details that end up being our success.
Having intelligent business plans that allow us to maximize profits, which enables us to expand our business and become wealthy through our own ingenuity. Using our own strategy to create a method of making more money while continuing to offer good deals gives us the ability to make profit margins higher. Inside of New Directions, Mrs. Annie Jackson made a plan before starting it, and she made sure that it would work. She accounted for lots of small details, and found counters to all the problems. When she was ready, she implemented her ingenuous plan. Her plan was to create a business of selling meat pies to people who would definitely be nearly starving and aching for some hot food. She made reasonable prices that would allow her to profit but also give food to those who wanted it. She charged five cents, or a nickel, for the hot, fresh pies, and for the warm pies, only three cents. This was very fair and she had planned it all out beforehand, leading to her success. Our success is determined by how far we plan ahead and how much thought and care we put into each and every one of our actions, combining to make a success.
New Directions is an amazing book that teaches us the importance of working hard, the necessity of having creativity in our lives and in business, and finally how crucial it is to have smart, strategic business plans that allow us to prosper when we try. Working hard and being determined gives us the ability to succeed by forcing us to continue and making sure that eventually we begin thriving, having creativity lets us come up with smart, innovative ideas and new, imaginative inventions, and finally, planning ahead gives us knowledge and more room for small errors by eliminating the ones we’ve already thought of. Persisting even when times are tough lets us continue onwards through hard challenges. Utilizing creative ideas as opposed to simple, boring ones gives us an edge, and a business plan gives us the wisdom for what happens in the future. New Directions is a great story that shows how anyone, even those who already have disadvantages, can survive and thrive.
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