SORRY, I CAN'T FIT INTO YOUR BOX

                Have you realized that many people seem to have a “stake” in your life when it is absolutely not there business not to poke into your issues?  A simple observer may not be comfortable with my stance on this subject because subtly, it is almost like saying you should discount people getting interested in your affairs and offering their counsel.  This is far from it.  What I advocate and campaign for here is not in any way a devaluation of the place of counsel, sound advice and guidance.  I am myself a life-coach and a mentor of many.  The issue at stake is the aggressive micro-management style of a lot of people who after giving you their advice, counsel and suggestions want you to follow their style hook, line and sinker without taking into consideration your personal responsibility of decision making and your peculiarity as a person.  People can make suggestions but it is your reserved right and responsibility to make up your mind on what to do eventually.  That is the personal freedom I fight for people.  Away with the dogmatic, stereotyped way of trying to force people to do things your way all the time.

                I find that people who rarely know where you are coming from and where you are headed tend to call you all kinds of names because you are not towing their path and lane in life.  I have always said that people who are busy minding their business and pursuing a bright future have no time to poke into the intricate issues of others.  They may have time to observe one or two things about how the people around them are living and they may offer a few tips on how you can tweak one or two things to make what you are doing better but they do not bother you with the methodologies and minutest details.

               

                I have had very serious personal experiences in my life and still having them.  You have these sets of people who think you shouldn’t be doing what you are doing because no one else has done them around them before.  If I have to do everything that has been done before, why should I expect a different result?  Change is the best sign of progress in life.  Do not get stuck in doing the same thing over and over again.  I learnt a long time ago not to be around people who regard me as their champion from whom I may not have something new to learn from.  Penultimate Thursday, I was a guest of the dynamic youths of Living Faith Church in my city and I told them to get away from associations and environments where they have stopped learning new things.  If you are the one people defer to always and you have all the answers in your circle of friends, then that circle has expired for you.  You have become a local champion.  I like being with people who make me look foolish; people who make me want to learn more.  Don’t be a big fish in a small pond.  I’d rather be a small fish in an ocean, so I can have enough room for growth and expansion.

                I was speaking to an elder man who considered himself my mentor and guardian some few years ago and he said I shouldn’t be thinking of any amount of money above N500,000 Nigerian Nigeria at my stage.  I was an officer in a thriving Nigerian bank with a take home pay of a little less than N100,000 monthly and I was engaged in my freelance writing and just published my first book.  I was exploring other areas of investment and business expansion while working and here was this man telling I was being too ambitious.  I was 33+ at the time!  I was expected to think within the box of my monthly salary and that was it.  I rejected that counsel because it was running contrary to my avowed vision and understanding of life and progress.  He wanted me to be boxed in to his limited thinking for me.  The devil is a liar… I didn’t submit to that counsel and you should not.  Anyone who tries to run down your vision is not a friend and cannot be one.  Run away from such people.

                When I bought my first car in 1999, I was 27.  A good natured uncle of mine called me and asked me to sell the car and go buy a motorcycle!  Why was he proposing that?  He was in his mid 40s and had worked for more than 20 years but had an aging motorcycle.  He said I was being too ambitious and that it was not right for me to be using a car!  I saw a car as a mere necessity and not a luxury.  He was indignant.  He wanted me to operate within his worldview of life but I refused to stay down.  People who want you to do their bidding because they have not thought of higher things are dangerous in your life – be wary of their small talk.

                People who will get to the top should always do things different irrespective of what others thing about them.  Leaders operate outside the box, go against the current and stand out of the crowd.  See you another day.

               

I DON'T WANT TO IMPRESS YOU!

            One of the biggest challenges we face in our bid to get accepted as individuals is the desire to impress people around us.  This challenge is not a product of the New Age.  It has been here with us from the cradle of civilization.  It is rooted in the basic problem of self-esteem.  Funny enough, until you really accept who you are, you will continue to seek for acceptance from others and in the process, you will do crazy things, I mean really crazy things to get accepted.  The result has not always been a happy-ending story.  Frustration, restlessness and failure have attended such attempts over the ages.  Most people tired of trying to impress others ended up in suicide.  It’s that bad.  This is the reason why I decided long ago never to live my life to please anyone. 

            There are certain unwritten codes and rules that people gravitate towards which has never been result-oriented.  Someone buys a particular brand of car and may be, just maybe, he is associated with another friend who drives the same brand; you then want to buy that same kind of car so you can fit into that clique just because you are also associated with them.  You might not have the financial muscle to foot the bill of maintaining and servicing that car, but you are so driven by the desire to impress that you throw caution to the wind and buy the car anyway.  You don’t really care if that expense will put you in the minus – all you care is for people to see that you belong to a particular class, clique and social status.

            This craze to please others breeds insincerity and falsehood.  I find a girl I like to go out with and rather than be my true self and get friendly with her, I wind up pretending to be someone I am not.  After getting her to agree to a date, I go rent a limousine to pick her up from her residence, call the restaurant ahead of time to give me some special treatment when I arrive with her, like asking the guys at the door to open the door specially for me and my guest; get me an exclusive table outside of the normal one and get treated like a VIP.  At the end of the evening, I might have succeeded in making my date feel she is in with some special person with so much money, but I have only shot myself in the foot.  By the time she finds out I am not who I claimed to be, the relationship that should have been built on truth and sincerity would crash like packs of cards with so much bad blood.

            Many ladies have ended up with so much regrets because they pretended to be who they were not.  Families have run aground because they wanted to be like other families.  A wife bought a new set of furniture on hirer purchase because she was scheduled to host some friends of hers on a particular weekend meeting which was supposed to last only 2 hours.  By the time the meeting was over, no one commended her for the new furniture but she had put the family in red financially.  She wanted her friends to know that her house was some kind of special place.  The question I kept asking was “to what end was such an action?”

            My life is not subject to some warped understanding of success crafted by a society that is yet grappling with where it’s going.  I see people getting married and running into indebtedness to foot the bill of the wedding ceremonies.  My experience reveals that one hour after most wedding receptions, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, most of the invited guests never spare a thought for the couple’s well-being.  Ask them about the wedding and you hear statements like “ah! That wedding was cool”, or “those guys weren’t really prepared… can you imagine, I didn’t even taste anything at the reception; couldn’t they have postponed the wedding until they were prepared?”  These are the people you seek to impress!

            Your life is totally your business.  What you do with it is up to you.  Why should you impress people who don’t even care about you?  My house is mine and I don’t need to make you like it.  I like my car the way it is because I am the one who drives it and you must not ride in it with me if you don’t like it.  My job is not for people to like me but to do what I know is right within the context of my assignment and purpose on this planet.  Learn to die to public opinion.  We should talk more about this some other time.  Keep your comments coming.

I DON'T WANT TO BE LIKE YOU!

Its still about people using their worldview of issues to look at others and expecting them to be copy-cats of themselves.  It simply isn't going to work as long as we have diverse human beings with very unique peculiarities based on their personality types and God-given purposes.  

I am a firm believer in universal principles that should guide us as a race, a people and world citizens but when it comes down to methodologies, we must learn to respect the uniqueness of individuals.  There is a general principle for how we must relate with one another as a people with the instrumentality of love, but when it comes to likes and dislikes, love does not force its way here. 

Let me narrow this discourse to three critical areas of life and I will get out of your way.

I am a doctor - My son must not be one

In Africa, there is a tendency for people to take their passion so far to the point of trying to force their family members to like them.  A University don might want his kids to be teachers because obviously he must have been seeing the world from that point alone.  Let those kids be; let their uniqueness and innate potentials show forth.  That boy might just want to be a great drummer!  Support that lad and he might just be one of the greatest drummer on the face of the earth.  Why do you want him to bury his gift just because you want him to be like you?

Your dad picked your wife - don't match-mate your kids

I expect parents to come down heavily on me for staying with them in this discourse.  I am not necessarily talking to parents alone but these are critical issues in sub-Saharan Africa.  You may wonder if this is still happening today - that parents hand-pick spouses for their young children who are ready to marry.  Yes, it does happen - and subtly too.  It happens in homes and even in Churches!  

You must remember that you are dealing with individuals who have their lives more or less figured out.  There is a place for counseling on a general basis but you must leave the specifics of choice to them.  If your counsel is sound and principle-centered, trust the individual to stay on track but leave the ultimate choice to him.

Our paths in life are not the same

Conflict are rife between people because they fail to understand that they are headed in different paths in life.  We may have identical personality and agree on a wide range of issues but it is not an indication that we are headed the same direction.  We might just have these similarities just for the purpose of getting connected for the purposes of our relationship which should be defined but we must respect and value our differences.

These kinds of conflicts happen in families all the time.  You might find an elder brother desiring to have his siblings tow his kind of paths but they might not have been wired that way.  The best way to relate with them is to understand their peculiarity, their gifting and passions so they can be helped to fulfill their purposes.  It is very frustrating asking a natural left footed striker in the game of football to play on the right flank of the field where it is required that he shoots with his right foot!  When we force people to do things they are not wired to do, that is the frustration be bring on them.  Frustrated people can never be fruitful and productive.

Let's continue this discussion next time from another perspective.

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.