Category: Motivational

P.U.S.H

Sometimes ago, I watched a particular Hollywood movie. I think the name was ‘INCEPTION’. It starred Leonardo Di Caprio. The plot of the film was interesting.

It had a lot to do with dreaming. Dreaming in a dream. Sharing a dream with numerous people. However, of all psychological jargon in the film, one made a mark in my mind. It was called The Jump. This was explained as a push or nudge that suddenly changes your altitude from a higher to a lower plane. It’s this change in altitude that causes one to wake up from a dream.

We all have dreams, visions, aspirations and goals. But we are always content to remain in the Theatre Of Dreams. It’s been said that any man who wants his dreams to come true must wake up. But, even while awake, many still remain in the dreamstate. There’s nothing wrong with dreams or visions. However, we must wake up to create the ideals we dream about.

To awake from our blissful slumber, we all have phenomena that nudge us awake. For some, this could be in the form of the activities of encouragers. Others aren’t so lucky, as they are rudely awakened by life’s harsh realities: unemployment, poor health, poverty, etc. In spite of these, we have a place we can all run to where we are in need of a nudge that would wake us up to bringing our dreams to the real state. That place is the place of Prayer.

Are you in a dire need of a nudge or a P.U.S.H? Praying Until Something Happens (P.U.S.H.) could be your best bet in creating the ideals that you waste time dreaming about. Try Prayer. It works!!!

Auto Mode

The basal ganglia is a portion of the brain that is respönsible for some of our especially unique behaviours in our day to day activities. For example, when we were younger, we found it difficult to perform the skilled movements of our hands when writing the different convolutions of the letters of the alphabets, as well as the numbers. Now, when we write, we simply think of the words or numbers that we write and not the individual complexities of each alphabetic or numeric symbols. The same phenomenon occurs when you compare the ball juggling skills of an accomplished player such as Lionel Messi and those of an unsporty person like myself. For Messi, controlling a football would almost be second-nature, while I would have a hard time staying on my feet. The only reason why you could write so well without stopping to think about how you actually wrote is due to the fact that you’ve kept on writing and writing over time. Also, Messi’s ball control skills are impulsive because he has continually played the ball on and on and on.

You have the capability of going into an automatic mode without consciously thinking of what you are doing. And during this automatic period, the character you exhibit is a product of what your habits have been over the course of time. For example, there was time I found myself in an awkward situation where I had to give a minispeech. I did not know what to say. I consciously thought of a few limes but they were not going to be enough to carry me through the speech. So, I just started talking! I was not actively thinking but I was just talking. Soon, I started listening to myself and I found out that I was making sense. What I was saying was acceptable. It could have been better, however, if I had been feeding my mind with more edifying materials than comic strips, novels and school books.

The basal ganglia is not the same as the mind, since the basal ganglia is only concerned with the subconscious performance of voluntary motor functions. However, they are both dependent on the principle which is our minds. Just like the evolutional theory of use and disuse, if Messi would suddenly decide not to play ball for a considerable period of time, ball control skills would no longer be second nature to him. The same applies to our writing skills. In the same vein, if we develop good/bad habits consistently over a period of time, whenever we enter our ‘automatic’ mode, we’d naturally ooze with good/bad, as the case may be.

The good news is that it’s never too late to pick a good habit or drop a bad one. Psychologists have discovered that it takes only 21 days to learn a new habit. So, why not purge yourself of all bad habits and make up your mind to feed yourself with positively edifying material. In the end, it would all be worthwhile.

Evil’s Open Secret

Just take a good look around you. What do you see in the health sector? What do you see in the educational sector? What do you see in World politics as at now? The international policy makers and top government officials are all confused because nothing seems to work. As it were, they are just moving around in circles, giving Band-Aid to the deeply ingrained cancerous problems the world is facing now. They hope that these problems would just go away by a placebo effect or something.

The whole world is waiting. Anxiously waiting. Waiting earnestly for the manifestation of the Children of The Light who would serve as problem solvers for this generation, for posterity and for the world at large.

But what do we have instead? We have Religion shifting its focus away from its old foe- Science, and engaging in a mortal combat with Spirituality. I’m not saying that it is bad to go to church or it’s bad to fellowship with other believers. But it is the Spirit that gives life, sheer muscle and willpower do not profit anything: if you spend a million years in a church building and you are not filled with the Spirit of God, you are only wasting your time, religiously. Religion is NOT Spirituality!

The problem now is that despite the fact that we have numerous individuals who are filled with the Spirit of God and Wisdom, they prefer not to go out of their comfort zones. The world is like a battle field and the Church is more or less like the Barracks where the Children of The Light should be inspired and motivated to shine their lights into the darkness in the world. Instead, the Children of The Light prefer to stay in the Barracks and shine their Lights to each other when there’s thick darkness out there.

It is at this point that EVIL’S OPEN SECRET is being made manifest. The products of Evil are NOT kept in the warehouses. No, they are pushed into the various walks of life. They are made to infiltrate the entertainment industry, the health sector, the legislative, judiciary and executive arms of government. They are even made to infiltrate the so-called Barracks of the Children of The Light. So today, we have pointless and distasteful bills are are being passed into laws at the houses of parliament all over the world. Why? Because the Children of The Light would not go out of their comfort zones to shine in the darkness. Today, we speak of the evil music industry with more and more being led into the captivity of darkness. Why? Because Lights are busy shining and smiling to each other religiously in the Church while darkness is being enthroned in the world out there.

I’d conclude with this: Daniel was a very spiritual man of God in the Bible. He did not have a church, he didn’t heal the sick and he probably heard God audibly speak more times than we would ever hear in our entire lives. Yet, if he had lived in today’s world, he would have been a politician holding a high public office.

I’m being given a platform. I’m being given a voice. And no matter how shrill that voice may sound, I WILL TALK! Enough with the arguments about doctrine and let’s move out en masse and restore normalcy to the dark, upside down world that we’ve been comfortably living in. Let’s Shine!

Escapist Mentality

When I was in junior secondary school, my English teacher read a poem to my class.
I can’t remember the exact wordings of that poem but I know that the poet was describing the various ills that are faced on a daily basis in the typical Nigerian society.
However, what struck me most was the ending when the poem suddenly changed in tone and the poet started professing his undying love to one Maria- his mistress…

In the end, we are all humans. No matter how tolerant we might be to whatever is going on around us, we would still eventually get fed up with things we don’t like.

When situations and circumstances go adverse to you, where does your mind escape to? When you feel you can take it no more, what comes to you as a means of escape? What’s your escapist mentality?

v 2.0

‘Good, Better, Best,
I will never rest
until my Good is Better
and then my Better Best’

With time, personal records are broken, explosively
shattered into pieces as though they were China glasswares.
Awards and trophies are thrashed, nonchalantly
dumped on the ashheaps of life, existent only in memories.
That is Life, in its characteristically illogical fairness,
stubbornly unrepentant in its dealings with one and all.
Rewarding all: the discipline, the dedications and the pains
that reaching the unbroken and untouched took.

With time, the top of the game is attained and made one’s own.
At the pinnacle, the last rung of the ladder, it is heard in hushed tones
‘Nothing left to conquer’, the mind sadly mutters, finding it difficult
to accept that the taskmaster is now content with zero returns.
Left alone, the hero becomes seduced by success, who turns
his head, till he sees eye to eye with failure.

With time, the Best would eventually be bettered
‘By who?’- The timeless question that continually echoes
through the very essence of time itself:
the Best bettering himself;
or others giving a helping hand.
But the initial drive is no longer on seat and in exile,
the glowing coals of passion are finally extinguished.
Gain, and maybe greed, pokes the intuitive inner third eye.
Unemotionally cold and savagely inhuman,
they grin at the ensuing darkness within.

With time, the forgotten, like shadows in the early morning sun,
are remembered to be forgotten.
But when none except one is forgotten, in blind justice
why shouldn’t all be forgotten?
Like hitting on the reset button and kicking hard against the milestones,
Restarting the missions all over, so refreshing for the vision of old.
Update, and upgrade the drive, so passion burns unhindered within
As a beacon for posterity-
The Grammy winning swansong…

‘Good, Better, Best,
I will never rest,
until my Good is Better
and then my Better Best’

Substance Over Style

Let’s start from the scratch: The noise that a hollow container would make is definitely much more than the sound that would be made when a half-filled (or half-empty, depending on how you see it) container is struck. The rule is – The fuller the container, the deeper the sound and the lower the volume of the sound made. Apparently, this was what the observation of the English folk, when they came up with, ‘Empty barrels make the most noise’

Let’s go a little bit deeper now: The noise that the hollow container makes would also be quite similar to the noise that a fancy coloured container would make, so far as it is still empty. Though the amount of noise that would emanate from the empty container is dependent on the material from which the container is made, it is nevertheless also still relative to the fact that the container is empty.

Still hang in there. Now, the sound that would be made by a fully filled container would be dependent on the type of material that is used to fill up the container. For example, the sound made by a container filled with gravel would be different from the sound that is made by a container filled with engine oil.

Eventually, whatever that is within you would count!

If you’ve managed to come this far in this particular post, you might be wondering about what I’m talking about. I’m actually asking a couple of questions.
What do you have within you?
What do people see in you when the stakes are down?
Who is the ‘real you’ that people don’t know of?
I’m asking, ‘Is there an ‘animal’ within you that comes out when the pressure is on?’

And talking about pressure. Pressure is that phenomenon that allows people to see what you’ve got inside you. Whether you are just an empty vessel filled with HOT AIR. Empty within, yet on the outside, people see a well decorated, courteous container. Who do you think you are fooling? It’s high time you underwent a ‘self check-up’.

And for those who are glad that they’ve got something within, what exactly do you have within you? HARD STONES to pelt at people around you, and even yourself. Or FINE SAWDUST to sprinkle into the eyes of those who are watching you. Or maybe it is COOL WATER or better still a GRACEFUL PUNCH of VARIOUS EXOTIC FRUIT JUICES that people can’t just get enough of, even in the face of pressure! Yes, even when you are going through your own challenges, you are still capable of refreshing others.

This post was not written with anybody in mind. It is meant for everyone, including myself. I think it is high time we all examined ourselves to find out whether or not we can stand the FIRE OF TESTS AND TRIALS as it comes. And WHEN it comes, would we be happy with whatever we find within ourselves???

Limitations: Who sets ’em?

I needed the money so urgently. When I eventually got to the ATM gallery in front of the bank, I was discouraged. There was a very long, slow-moving queue in front of JUST two of the many ATM cubicles at the gallery. I was pissed to the marrows. So, after securing a space for myself at the end of one of the two long lines, I walked up to one of the ATM cubicles without a line in front of it to find out why this was so. Immediately I got there, I instantly wished that I had not gone through the trouble of walking up to the front in the first place. Not a few people snickered at me, probably wondering if I had been too blind to notice the fact that the other ATM machines were not working – that was the reason why there were just two long queues. I felt slightly embarassed but I chose to be unperturbed. I went on to the next ATM cubicle and I saw the same unwelcome welcome on this ATM machine too “OUT OF ORDER”. By the time, I sensed that the whole world was looking at me. What could they be thinking? Maybe, ‘Why isn’t this guy playing by the UNWRITTEN rule?’ or ‘Why is he so impatient?’ or maybe, ‘Does he think he’s smarter than us?’ ‘What point is he trying to prove?’ ‘Would he eventually come back to the end of our line?

I was now on the third ATM and I was met with the same, ‘OUT OF BOUNDS’ response. Within me, I instantly got a flash of intuition and I noticed that amongst all those on the long lines, probably a few, if any, managed to get to this particular ATM cubicle before concluding that all other ATM machines would not work. So, I went on to the next ATM cubicle…

I got inside the cubicle and I did not come out a minute later. There was a sudden hush that fell on all who were there. I came out about five minutes later beaming triumphantly. ‘It’s dispensing!’, I said.

So many people are of the opinion that limitations are ubiquitous. They feel that things are just not meant to go right. If they feel that others from time past have not been able to do something, then that thingy is impossible. See, limitations are a thing of the mine. To illustrate this point, follow this study: A line was drawn on the ground and people were given a small ball on one side of the line to throw in a very narrow cup at the other side of the line. Most of the individuals in this study stood behind the line to throw the ball to the narrow cup on the other side and all missed, when they could have easily walked up to the cup and dropped the ball into it. The power of the mind.

If you wholeheartedly believe within you that you lack the ability to get something, you’d probably never get it done.

So, what would you do? Renew your mind set. Think outside the box. Step out of the ‘what is’ and enter into ‘what should be’. Say NO to limitations of every kind and Believe – in God, your abilities and yourself.

Words Onwards

Confusion, fear and all its adherent complications all start from that small seed that we all tend to forget exists – a word. Peace of mind, sense of joy, happiness and fulfilment also spring from the self-same, almost negligible source – a word. The baffling issue, however, is why do we see more of the former around us than the latter, if they both are from the same origin. The reason is not far-fetched: We fail to recognize the tremendous amount of power that is latently existent in a word.

You see, a word is capable of triggering an idea which in turn provides a reference point for our emotions and thoughts which would invariably govern our actions. The power of a word, whether spoken or written, is more or less like a dynamite – use it wisely and you might get some form of natural resources from a rock, or use it wrongly and you might just inflict injuries on yourself and others around you.

Now, if a word is as a see, there’s nothing more qualified to serve as the fertile ground than our minds. The mind is unique in that it processes information only in the form of pictures. This is why you would enjoy reading a novel more than watching the movie adaptation of the same movie. Furthermore, we know that when someone speaks to us, the words we hear are not seen or perceived as letters in our minds but as pictures too.

Pay attention now, I’m heading somewhere: If what we read and what we hear are seen by our minds’ eyes as pictures, then our thoughts and emotions are more or less the products of what we see or hear, and what we say or write is simply an expression of our thoughts and emotions which would invariably govern our actions.

So what am I saying? In order to possess that sense of peace, joy, happiness and fulfilment within and around you, you have to choose to make words work for you. For example, if you keep on reading positively edifying literature, over time, you’d see desirable changes in your thoughts, emotions and actions. Conversely, if you keep on giving your mind non-edifying material to consume, there’s no chance of you not having deteriorations in your thoughts, emotions and actions. The same applies to the spoken words. Definitely, you do not have a choice in determining what you hear but you can choose whatever you listem to. So selectively choose wisely. You could also speak out positivity continuously into your own hearing and with time, you would only be wishing that you had started the practice earlier.

Words are the sources of the ideas that could make you or mar you. Make words work for you as you push onwards in life.

The Real McCoy

Shhh!
I’ve got a little, teenie-weenie secret for you. I’m not flattering you, but I’m telling you the gospel truth.
So, here goes:
You are special and you are unique. You are the only one of your kind. You are the only one with your specific combination of genes. You are the only one with THAT combination of talents, experiences, abilities and personality. There has never been anyone just like you and there would never be anyone just like you. Oh yes, you share some similarities with certain individuals (past, present and future) but you are not quite exactly like them. As it were, you are THE REAL McCOY!!!

For those of you who are quite familiar with my write-ups, I’m sure that by now, you know that I’m a lover of history and I also love retelling stories. So, in this particular article too, I’d be keeping true to style (A leopard can’t wash off the spots on its skin, can it?).

I’m very positive that not many people, even die-hard boxing fans, have the faintest idea of who Norman Selby was. Well, he was an American professional boxer in the early 1900s and he went by the pseudonym KID McCOY. It happened that Kid McCoy had a very colourful and stellar career in the boxing ring; and his life outside the ring. Such was his interesting lifestyle that he became the inspiration for so many legends amongst the Americans. Kid McCoy, however, had a messed up life at the end and he ended up ending his life by suicide (pun intended).

One of the many legends about Kid McCoy went as follows:
It happened that while Kid McCoy was a lion in the rings, he was a man with a slight build. One fateful day, when he wasn’t having any fight, Kid McCoy decided to take a stroll to a nearby bar and get a few drinks. He had hardly settled down at the bar when a heavily drunk man staggered towards Kid McCoy and started disturbing him. But our hero, ever the gentleman, gently warned the inebriate man to take a walk. The drunk man refused to leave in peace but continued to piss Kid McCoy off. People nearby started warning the drunk man that the fellow that was being disturbed was the American Boxing Champion- Kid McCoy. At this, the drunkard laughed and scoffed and continued brewing a brouhaha at the bar. This went on for a long time until our ‘gentlemanly hero’ finally felt that he had been pushed to the wall. Kid McCoy got up quietly, walked up to the drunk man and taught the guy a few lessons in practical boxing (Actually, he gave the drunkard an upper cut to the jaw!). The man who had been drunk only a few seconds ago instantly sobered up and testified, ‘Wow! It’s actually THE REAL MCCOY!!!’.

Now, no one’s telling you to roll up your sleeves, flex your muscles and start punching people left, right and centre, just to prove a point. No, but it’s high time you started comporting yourself with the knowledge of who you are. I keep on repeating this, ‘The fact that you now in THAT uncomfortable position you currently find yourself does not mean that that’s all there is to write about you’. No, that’s not the entire picture. Your best is within you and it is yet to come forth. You are original, you are unique, you are one of your kind. Later on, you’d look back at all those low points of your life that eventually shaped and refined your person and just start to shed tears. Yes, tears of joy!!!

In conclusion, I could easily mumble something about a decoy and the real mcCoy, but instead, I’d leave you this quote by Hermann Hesse, ‘Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again’