SHUT UP! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ME!

            I was engaged in a conversation with a friend recently and he was very passionate about how life is supposed to be run by everyone except him.  He appeared to have his game all packed as far as life should be lived and everyone except him is getting it all wrong.  I looked at him straight in the eyes and I pitied his condition.  He reminded me of the rappers who come from the Bronx area of New York whose rap lyrics reflect a world that is full of violence, guns and rough language.  As far as they were concern, that was the world and their songs cried for help because “the world has gone mad”.  If only the rappers took a trip around Wall Street or went to the Manhattan area before writing their lyrics!  

            Most of the time in our lives, we make conclusions at situations, people and events only on the basis of our view of life.  If only we took the time to investigate the reasons behind the events or the actions of the people we seek to judge, we could arrive at a more reasonable verdict.

            I have had occasions where people made statements about certain decisions I took and had to step backward and look at the situation again and wonder if these people were judging correctly.  This happens amongst friends, who do not seek to understand what a particular friend and going through before arriving at a verdict.  It occurs in churches were ministers make pronouncements about a person without seating down with the individual to understand his or her challenges.  It happens in politics where we judge a politician only on the basis of which political party he belongs to and not on the merit of the work he has done.

            There are several factors that people consider before arriving at certain decisions especially if they are destiny-driven ones and they are very personal.  Why would another person want to judge you for what you consider right for you when that decision has no direct bearing on him?  These are so many questions without answers.

Peculiar Priorities

            Our priorities are individuals are never the same and can never be the same.  Some people arrive at a decision on the basis of what their priorities are at that period in their lives.  If you therefore consider such decisions not right for the time just because it does not agree with your world-view of how things should be, then you are over-stepping your bounds and should be asked to stop or shut up!

Different Directions

            We are not heading the same direction.  I have always advised people to relate on the basis of what they have in common and where there are no common grounds, individual and mutual respect should come to play.  When I take a decision based on my defined direction in life and it has no bearing on where you are headed, as friends and buddies, I expect you to respect my individuality and personality and stay clear.

Individual Purpose Wiring

            We were put on this planet for different purposes.  We are not here to do the same thing.  Do not expect me therefore to agree with you all the times because our my unique purpose.

My Background is Unique

            You think you know me?  Not yet…!  Do you know how I came up to the point I am in life before we met as friends?  I guess not.  Do you know what I have survived and what I have endured?  You might have been born into an inheritance while I had to fight my way to the top.  We cannot understand things the same way.  We may be friends but we must concentrate on our common grounds of shared value and must respect our place of differing understanding.  That is the only way we can continue to be friends.

            Therefore, Shut Up until your understand me better!  I hope this helps a couple of people out there.  God bless you.

DEALING WITH THE ENEMY CALLED "YOU" (II)

This piece is about decision making.  A lot of times in our lives, we allow things to just take a free fall and this applies mostly in periods of decision making.  When we are expected to act on a situation, we contemplate a lot of options and at the end of the time, we miss the right timing and the consequences of such dilly-dallying is always not pleasant.

Decision making is one area of our lives that we take the toga of being our own "enemies".  You can never make a great decision from poor information.  Before you take a dive in making a decision, you must first of all gather all the necessary information about the situation.  Most of the times, we do not have any information at all and we go ahead to decide.  That is disastrous.  However, one other problem is the fact that many people gather all the information they could get and they never get to the point of deciding.  They keep contemplating the options for months and at the end of the day, they end of not deciding at all or deciding when the decision was not longer relevant.

Decision making is mostly tied to destiny matters.  Destiny decisions are critical and most of us shoot ourselves in the foot when we blow it.  There is always a second chance but it would have been great fun to have decided right in the first place.  

There are some common sense elements we must always apply in decision making.  Why should you be in a room filled with smoke, you feel the heat and you see exit yet you seat down and pray for God to rescue you!  What more rescue to you need besides the circumstances that is already sending you messages?

You are a lady; you live in an abusive relationship with a man determined to kill you, yet you go on living there and praying that God should save him... like my mentor and father in the faith, Bishop TD Jakes said, "that prayer is good, but if I were you, I would be praying that prayer from a long distance from where that abusive man is!"  The man may be your husband but the moment he turned abusive, he is ugly and must be isolated.  God does not reward suicide.

As a man, you want a wife.  You stumble on someone who looks pretty and good looking... you never check out the mind of the lady and are only interested in the hibs, libs and boobs!  When you are asked why you are making that choice, you tell us "I love her!"  That's ok.  But 2 years down the line, you may be speaking differently because you never checked her out.

Let's deal with the enemy of wrong decision making and our lives will be worth the while.

Dealing with the Enemy called "YOU"

This is very odd, isn't it?  An enemy called "YOU".  A lot of times we never realize that we are our greatest enemies.  It can be so subtle so its very hard to realize.  More than half of the troubles we encounter in live is caused by this close enemy called "YOU".  You may not accept this as a fact but it is the truth. 

How else do you explain a situation where someone is driving at 120 miles per hour in a road that is littered with pot-holes?  Who do you blame when there is a crash?  Many people blame the bad road and others blame a punctured tire while yet others blame the cloudy weather that made visibility poor.  Very convenient but the truth remains that if you had observed that the road is bad and the visibility is poor, you should have taken your leg off the gas so that you cruise at a speed level that keeps you in total control in the event of a slip.

There was this story of a middle-aged man who had a car crash in a particular city.  He ran into another vehicle and he ended up in the traffic division of the police.  He was asked to write a statement about the incident and this is what he wrote:

"I was driving and minding my business when all of a sudden, a truck came from no-where and covered the road at an intersection.  I had to avoid it so I redirected my car towards the right side of the road even though the traffic light was still red allowing pedestrian traffic to take effect.  As I raced towards the people crossing the road, two elderly people heard the blare from my car horn but they appeared as if they were not decided on time, so I took a decision on their behalf and almost ran them into the embankment but they escaped by whiskers!  Just at that point, an electric poll just came running towards my direction and I had no option than to break it down.  That was how my car came to a halt and thank God I am alive!" 

That is how a lot of us are in real life.  We refuse to take personal responsibility for our own mistakes and look for other people and circumstances to blame.  The enemy in the case of the story I just related is inside the man and it is called "self-denial".  If you keep denying the reality of a situation in your life, there will be no solution in sight.  Come to terms with what the real problem is; admit it if you are culpable and make a 'U' turn.  That is decision in the face of an adversity and you will be back on track if you had deviated.

How do you deal with the enemy called "you"?  Some of the highlights of the enemy's activities include operating without requisite knowledge, venturing into a business without checking out the relevant statistics, going out with someone you hardly know and making serious commitments in the process, committing to do something you do not have enough knowledge about.

The activities are many and varied.  Many regrets would have been avoided in life today if people only spent a little time to do a "vital sign" check on the decisions they made.

In the next couple of days, we shall be dealing with HOW YOU CAN DEAL WITH THE ENEMY CALLED "YOU".  Stay connected and keep your comments coming.

Stop Looking for Jobs!

It took me 20 years of working from one place to another to realize that you can never be financially free if you remain an employee.  For shock effect, let me give you an idea of what I am talking about.  I started out working at a very young age of 15.  All of my educational pursuits after my High School was done on part time basis.  By the time I was 22, I had reached the first basic base of Higher National Diploma (HND) almost at par with a B.Sc. from a University. 

As far as I was concerned, the world was at my feet.  I was a senior staff at a multi-national company; Personnel Officer with many pecks.  A few years later, I was poached by a bank and I ended up in the banking industry for 8 years.  By the time I had logged in 20 years of hard labour working from age 15, I did an average check of my total income - all time.  Guess what it came up to: N2,700,000.00 (Nigerian Currency) and in US dollars it came up to $17,647.00!  That was what I was working 8 hours daily and over 40 hours weekly in 20 years!  I looked myself in the mirror and felt sorry for the person I saw standing there.  How was I ever going to become financially free?  At that point, I knew the best thing to do was to quit the job and use my skill set (and I have them in quantum) to create multiple streams of income.

I took a look at myself and I discovered I could write professionally (I had published 3 books and edited tons of publications for other outfits), I had the capacity to train people in management and leadership, I could speak, I have organizing skills and could become an event manager; I am a whizkid on the keyboard - I type more than 100 words per minute - that is a skill set all in a class of its own.  I had over the years acquired skills for professional proposal writing, feasibility studies and general consultancy on how to erect and manage a business.

These were enough to get me started and the first attempt I made at earning income was a consultancy job with a Church.  I was already an ordained minister and it was easy for me to fit into the system.  I had the task of starting their leadership institute and run it in its first few streams; it was done and I was on a monthly allowance for 12 months - the duration of the contract.  During this period, I maintained a client base for training, freelance writing and media consultancy - having also a skill in broadcasting.  By the time I was through with the Church contract, I found another stream of income to develop - eCommerce.  This is a whole world waiting to exploited in our climes and millionaires are being made in their numbers in the Western world.  I am at the moment positioning myself with relevant knowledge in this area.  

Why for heaven's sake should I look for a job again?  I didn't need a capital to do all these.  The best capital I had was the skill set I had developed over the years while working with the different organizations.  While I was an employee, I went beyond my call of duty because I had an inkling that one day I was going to be off the employee status and run my own show.  This made me a valuable employee even though it did not attract rapid promotions.  But wherever I had worked, I left a footprint and a vacuum that is difficult to fill.

Are you a graduate fresh from school?  Don't dream of climbing a corporate ladder, think of building a ladder yourself!  The beginning may be daunting and hard, but would you prefer the comfort zone of a salaried job than a future where you determine when you wake up and when you go on vacation?  Think of the future and pay the needed price today.  Are you an employee slaving it out for someone else?  It is time to put an exit date on the calendar.  

No nation's economy is ever built around salaried employment, but on the strength of the small and medium scale enterprises of that nation.  The GDP of every nation is predicated on the amount of entrepreneurial activities in the country.  Yes, we all cannot be business owners at the same time, but we must aim to own our lives eventually and employ others too.  Make that move today!

Keep Moving!

          It has been observed that a moving train is hardly stoppable by any external force.  However, the train standing still at the station can be prevented from moving if an object is placed in front of the iron steel wheels on the track.  This should teach us that it takes so much energy to get started but very little energy is required to keep moving.

          A lot of people are afraid of keeping a consistent pace because they cannot have the benefit of seeing beyond the next bend.  As a result, they stay in one place to contemplate, consider, analyze and procrastinate.  The journey of life is not like someone who has been to that future you intend to go and then comes back to give you an idea or a clue as to what you should expect.  You might have to stumble into a lot of discoveries yourself.  You have to necessarily discover some things for yourself since your purpose for life is unique and different.  Being scared of moving for not knowing what lies ahead is therefore a journey that may never be taken.  I once heard someone say that “over-analysis causes paralysis”.  

          In the living of a goal-oriented life, you must keep moving even though you might not say for certain what lies ahead.  You might have a clue but you may never be totally sure.  Most of your walk must therefore be by faith in the God in whom you trust and in the reality of what you seek to achieve.

          Sometime in the summer of 2007, I embarked on a journey of 1,550 kilometers to cover Abuja-Makurdi-Kano-Abuja in just two days.  My schedule was to get to Makurdi from Abuja on Saturday morning to visit my father who was bedridden after a minor surgery, speak to a students’ body at the Benue State University for 2 hours and see my siblings in my family house in the same town before hitting the road for Kano the same day.  I left Abuja on schedule and got to Makurdi at 9.15 am.  I sat for half an hour with my dad in the hospital and headed for the family house and spent only 30 minutes there.  I drove to the University campus and spoke from 11.45 to 1.30 pm.  Had a whistle stop over at the hospital to tell my dad I was on my way and eventually left Makurdi at 3.30 pm.  My destination was Kano, nearly 800 kilometers away.

          By the time I arrived Akwanga, a town in Nassarawa State, just 170 kilometers from Makurdi, the car developed a major mechanical problem.  The water pump was leaking, but I never knew what was happening as the temperature kept rising.  I had to keep a jerry can of water in the car to constantly refill the empty radiator.  The speed at which I was travelling had to drop to avoid over-heating the engine.  But I kept moving – even against the advice of a concerned Road Safety Officer who upon learning that I was heading for Kano advised that I pass the night in Akwanga.  The time at this point was 6.00 pm.

          Sensing that traveling through the thick forest road of Southern Kaduna would be disastrous if the car eventually stopped in the middle of nowhere, I decided to take the Jos route and entered Jos, Plateau State in Central Nigeria  at 10 pm.  

          At Jos, comfort zone sense demanded that I pass the night in that city and continue the journey the next day but purpose sense said, “keep moving”.  I had to travel through the lonely Jos-Kano road between 10.25 pm and 2.15 am when I eventually arrived Kano.  If you are familiar with the Jos-Kano trunk road in Nigeria, you may remember the famous Falgori forest known for high profile robberies and stray wild beasts straying from the Yankari Game Reserve just across the border in Bauchi State.  I had to go through tens of check points mounted by security forces to achieve my dream of entering Kano that night.  All these happened because I refused to stop but kept moving.

          You will get to your dream place in life faster than you anticipate if you keep momentum.  Refuse to give up; don’t give in; don’t give out; keep moving towards your goal.

          There is no doubt that you are going to face obstacles, but no barrier is powerful enough to stop a determined and purpose oriented individual.  The force of purpose brought under a determined and focused person will always prevail over any barrier put in front of it.

          Are you being harassed and intimidated?  Keep moving.  Do you have men talking down on you?  Keep moving.  Refuse to get distracted.  Is your business up against some strange attacks by competitors?  Keep moving.  The intention of all these distractive activities are all geared towards making you to abort your journey, but if you keep moving, sooner or later, you will become a celebrated icon and we all shall begin to call you a celebrity.

PS:  The piece is a chapter culled from my yet to be released book "BUSY STANDING STILL - getting rid of organized emptiness".  If you require an advanced e-copy of the full book, I can make it available to you at a token amount.  

Kindly send me an email @ goba_ogwuche@yahoo.com and I will supply you with the payment details you need to make to obtain a full version of BUSY STANDING STILL.