Time for Your Change

Change is and has always been a full part of our humanity. From the moment of conception we begin the process of change, which continues nonstop every day until the day we leave this sphere of existence.

Change tells us one thing – the future beckons. “Extra! Extra!” It shouts at the top of its voice, “That lovely future you longed for is here!” how would you respond to it?

Interestingly, we are hardwired with the ability recognize and hold on to the familiar good. We erect the structure of our lives around the favorable things that have happened to us and hence end up with the structure psychologist call “The Comfort Zone.”

This zone keeps us safe. It ensures we are not exposed to all the negatives beyond its boundaries. Unfortunately it also ensures we don’t experience all the exciting possibilities of the unknown. “The thing you don’t know won’t hurt you,” says its wrong voice. It inflicts a fear of the future: “The demon you know is better than the angel you don’t know.” Have you heard it before? That is the voice of the chains holding you back.

You know better than to put new wine into old containers. They would burst. New wine needs fresh containers. – Jesus

The effect of living in this zone is that we try to meet the inevitably changed future by doing the things we did in the bygone past. This will fail. The future demands new approaches. We must get into it in a different way – special way if you may. Our minds must be plastic enough to accept the truth that change is indeed inevitable. It is the only constant thing in life; it will come if we wish it, it will come if we pray it shouldn’t. In the lovely book, Who moved my cheese, Spencer Johnson outlines that to handle change we need to understand these 7 writings on the wall:

1.     Change happens

2.     Anticipate change

3.     Monitor change

4.     Adapt to change quickly

5.     Change

6.     Enjoy change

7.     Be ready to change quickly and enjoy it again

Rise up and welcome your change. Your lovely future beckons!

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You Can't be Beaten if You Refuse to Stop.

Growing up in a system that crowns competition is unfortunate but remains the story of every one of us. It is a daunting task to live up to the expectations of such a system as it forgets about your unique capabilities, capacities and talents but focuses on some goal set for every person in a particular class, peer group, or generation. How many times have we seen a young girl who may have been the greatest singer of her generation lose her dream because she is made to compete in calculus and algebra or a boy who would be a great scientist if allowed to explore his inquisitive nature only to be tagged, “destructive” and placed in the arts class? Competition simply does not bring out the best from us.

You can then understand the reasons behind my problems with the problem part of competition. Left to me I would create a world without competition. A world where you become all God has earmarked for you without struggling to outdo another person. Such a world seems perfect in my mind until I get to the field of sports and imagine how gutless football would be without competition. Competition gives it life!

So I have grown to the balance that the best way to operate in our competitive systems is to compete only with the one person that matters in the field – you. Stretch yourself beyond the limits of your last success story. Grow up and grow BIG within you. Increase your capacity; enlarge your coast. Don’t settle for good when best is just around the corner.

I am a slow walker, but I never walk back. – Abraham Lincoln

If you do find yourself in a field that encourages external competition set your mind that you are not trying only to do better than your competitors but to be the best you can be. The formula is: NEVER STOP! It is almost impossible to beat a man who won’t stop. Many give in for speed and outshining their peers when all they need to do is set their hearts on their goals and keep moving – no matter how slow – towards it. 

Keep On Hanging On!

We live in tough times. Human history has never witnessed a more complex time than now. Heartbreaks, terrorism (the most used word in present-day English), kidnappings, corrupt leaders and leadership, uncontrolled sexual expressions, racism, and assassinations summarizes today. In many ways, it isn’t fun to live but we live any way.

Since we are alive today – and will not take our own lives – we must make the best use of what we have at our disposal – our gifts and talents, our money and resources, our time and energies, our smiles – to build a world that looks something like the best picture we have in our hearts all the days of our lives. We cannot afford to drop our hands in defeat and live substandard and subservient lives.

If you submit to the trends of our age you would live through your life completely below the best of your capability. You will be discouraged to the point of throwing in the towel. You will abandon your goals program, desert the vision that once burned hard in your heart, and declare with your words, “I am tired and I give up!” even before half your life is over.

Tough times never last but tough people do! – Robert H. Schuller

So what can you do? First you must clearly understand the things you cannot control nor influence directly. Unfortunately these are the very things we spend the most part of our time bothering about – the weather, power failure, insecurity in the country, and countless others – that you can do close to nothing about on a large scale. Spend as little time as possible on these things and move on to your vision and goals program. If you reject this simple advice you will live your life fighting a battle you won’t win and lose the one right under your nose.

Build a microcosm of the huge issues around you. A miniature of some sort and ensure you do things daily to make your microcosm work properly. If we would all build smaller worlds and ensure we control what we can and influence what we can then we would have ended up built a larger world filled with the values and principles we desire to see in the large world.

First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with speck in your friend’s eye. - Jesus

I repeat: You cannot afford to give up on your vision and goals program. The world desperately needs it. We will succeed in changing the rot in the system but we will only do this if YOU realize that you were made for great things and that relevance in embedded in your system!

How to Determine Chronic Problems

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What we see most times are acute symptoms of the real thing. The chronic problem is the cause, the underlying, and the root of the symptoms experienced. Unfortunately what we fight is often the acute and not the chronic. Fighting the acute is important but not as a permanent solution of the problem. You can pluck out the leaves of an unwanted tree all you want; it will grow new ones with every spring season. If you want to snuff out its life go for the roots!

If you desire to fight the chronic you must first be open to any possibilities. You don’t know what it may be and so you must assume it can be anything. Opening your mind to any possibilities throws a wide net and increases your chances of discovering and fighting the source. This goes hand-in-hand with your willingness to learn. Not everyone is teachable. It was Socrates that said, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” An open mind is an attitude that knows that knowledge is transient and progressive.

In addition, I suggest you isolate the symptoms. Don’t generalize all symptoms to mean a common cause. The tricky thing with symptoms is that many causes share similar ones especially at the initial stages. Pick out exactly what symptoms you are experiencing and isolate them. This immediately cuts down the number of causes. Remember not to assume from your experience the cause of a problem.  The fact that you are noticing similar symptoms to something you have handled in the past doesn’t make it that thing.

Finally, scrutinize what you have been feeding on – in this case information. What information have you fed your mind with? Just the same way your junk diet affects energy levels, contributes to poor performance and obesity, can damage your vital internal organs, and can lead to diabetes, junk information that gets into your mind will lead to havoc beyond your wildest imagination. The acid test which determines if information is junk or good is a run through the following questions:

1.     Is it true information?

2.     Does it demand your respect?

3.     Is it honourable - does it bring honour to you?

4.     Will it produce admirable results?

5.     Does it excel other similar information?

If you would take these three steps seriously and in sequence you would find the cause of every problem facing your business, family, faith, health, or mind.

My Two Kinds of Problems

It is easy to fight a problem all your life without recognizing you are fighting the wrong thing all along. The biggest problems that face us in life are only symptoms of the real deal. In an earlier article I wrote, Marvellous Pain, I made the point that pain in itself isn’t the problem, but the sign that there is a problem. So although an analgesic can reduce a headache, the headache was only an alarm telling you something else was wrong with you.

In trying to illustrate this I need you to understand the meaning of two words – chronic and acute – as they apply to medical science, church management, or your success journey. Chronic means underlying, causal, continuing. Acute means painful, symptomatic, debilitating. All of your problems fall in one of these two.

When dealing with problems we often go for the acute because they are what we can see. We attack them headlong and return victorious – for a moment – only to fight the same things (sometimes stronger versions) over and over again. Some examples may apply; you are fighting an acute problem when you use insecticides to kill mosquitoes in your bedroom but leave a gutter filled with stagnant water in your front porch. You are fighting an acute problem when you pray in church for God to forgive your indulgence in extra-marital sex but return to watch pornography when alone. You are fighting an acute problem when you send soldiers to kill child terrorists but leave their source of funding living and working with you.

The solution to acute problems is always a temporary one and should be regarded as such. It doesn’t serve for the long term. What I suggest is that you go for the chronic problem. Go for the cause, the root, its source of life, the reason for the problem. When you take it out from the roots it is permanent. Unfortunately it isn’t easy to identify the cause from face value. Merely looking at the problem would rarely tell you the exact cause. In the next article I will be writing on how to identify the cause rather than just fighting the symptoms.

Processionary Person?

Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into the ditch? ­– Jesus

A noted French naturalist, Jean Henri Fabre, studied the Processionary Caterpillar in great detail. What makes this caterpillar special is its instinct to follow in lock step the caterpillar in front of it. This behaviour, not only gives the caterpillar its name, but a deadly characteristic also.

Fabre demonstrated this unusual behaviour with a simple experiment. He took a flowerpot and placed a number of caterpillars in single-file around the circumference of the pot's rim. Each caterpillar's head touched the caterpillar in front of it. Fabre then placed the caterpillars' favourite food in the middle of the circle created by the caterpillars' procession around the rim of the flowerpot. Each caterpillar followed the one ahead thinking that it was heading for the food. Round and round went those silly insects – for seven days! After a week of this mindless activity, the caterpillars started to drop dead because of exhaustion and starvation. All that they had to do to avoid death was to stop the senseless circling of the flower pot and head directly toward the food – less than six inches away from those ever-circling crawlers. However, the processionary caterpillars were locked into this lifestyle and couldn't extricate themselves from this mindless behaviour.

As it was for the caterpillars so it is with some people. Some of us act like processionary caterpillars. The person who acts like one:

1.     Has no personal vision and goals.

2.     Has not developed his potential.

3.     Does not think for himself.

4.     Pays no attention to where the leader is headed.

5.     Mindlessly follows a crowd.

6.     Is afraid of change.

7.     Does not take initiative.

8.     Is a slave to company (is afraid of being alone).

9.     Is only comfortable with people “like him”.

10.           Is comfortable with a mediocre average result.

Does any of the above summarize your personality? You may just be a processionary person.

How to Set Your Soul

Guard your heart will all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life ­– King Solomon

The settings of our souls are of immense importance. Our life – the actions we take, the ways we react or respond to stimuli, and how we see the world around us – depends on this setting. Two questions arise; how did we get our souls set as they are at the moment and how do we completely set it otherwise (or improve its settings)?

The answer to these questions is one – information. The information we have fed our minds with over the years have set us. All our prejudices, perceptions and paradigms come from the information. For example, I discovered while growing up that I had stereotyped ways I thought about different ethnicities in my country. I felt the Yoruba were all dirty, the Ibira were all wicked, the Igbo were all disrespectful and selfish, the Hausa were all power drunk, the Tiv were all promiscuous, the Jaba (my ethnicity) were all drunks, and much more “alls”. It was not until I got into the university and met several young people like me, who were from these ethnicities and far from any of my settings, that I knew something was awfully wrong with my soul. I met young people that completely did not exhibit the traits I attached to their mother-ethnicity.

Why was my soul prejudiced toward them? Information. The information I received while growing up labeled people thus. I no longer wanted these settings and so I decided to re-set my soul with information that redefined me. Now I find that I befriend a person for months without seeking to know his or her ethnicity or ever caring to categorize people based on that.

It is possible to be wrongly set in different aspects of your life – family, work, or church – and to get yourself straight you must reset. A reset of the soul begins with an open mind. You must accept that you are a work in progress and inner change is the only permanent thing. If you entertain the possibility that you have no other improvements to make you will remain wrongly set.

In addition nothing does a more complete work in setting your soul in the right way like the word of God. Newspapers, social media, entertainment will stimulate you for a moment but the word of God will transform you inside first and create a change outside.

Setting Your Soul

What shall a man give in exchange for his soul? ­– Jesus

There is an unspoken thing that determines if a person will yield or refuse to yield to anything – good or bad, wrong or right. It is the setting of your soul, your hearts disposition. This determines to extents that cannot be estimated what happens to you. It determines how you react or respond to stimulus. It interrupts the cause and effect process and gives you the power to determine the direction of your life.

Let’s say the president of your country decides to lift the ban on imported leather. You will interpret his move based on the setting of your soul. If your soul is set on the need to empower the shoe making industry and creating employment you will celebrate it. If on the other hand you are a manufacturer of local leather I would suppose that your soul will be set on the opposite. We all see the world and every single thing that happens to us through the lens of our soul settings. These settings determine how we see ourselves, our environments, the world, and what we get out of our lives.

In the Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles, there are two famous (infamous in some cases) doors. One is labeled, “PREJUDICED,” and the second, “UNPREJUDICED.” The second doesn’t open. The idea behind the two doors is to show that there is nothing called an “Unprejudiced Adult.” The museum designers recognize that we all have set our souls.  

The American writer and poet, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, summarizes my thought line well when she wrote:

One ship drives east and another drives west

With the selfsame winds that blow.

‘Tis the set of the sails,

And not the gales,

That tells us the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate;

As we voyage along through life,

‘Tis the set of a soul

That decides its goal,

And not the calm, or the strife.

How have you set your soul?

Transition Person II: How To Be One

No matter what has happened, is happening, or will happen, there is a space between those things and our responses to them. ­– Stephen R. Covey

It is important to be a transition person. You get to stop any unwanted trait in your family, work, church, or community. In addition you have the privilege of starting new paths and traits for the next generation. In a way you become a definer of the future.

It is important but not easy to be a transition person. It takes the intentional development and use of several virtues to break a chain. A chain breaker must be disciplined, courageous, focused, creative, and consistent – among other things. Without these virtues developed in a transition person effective transition wouldn’t be possible.

Effective transition is only actualized when the people coming after you actually take to your reformed path. People may like your path, or speak positively about your ideas but they must get to the point where they actually take the steps you require of them before you can consider your transition as effective.

So how do you bring about effective transition? You must be:

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1.     Open to instructions. The person that will effectively transit must be open to new instructions he isn’t used to.

2.     Obedient to instructions. You don’t know it all. No one person does. When you receive the right instructions obey.

3.     Willing to change. You cannot be an effective transition person if you remain uncomfortable with change. Be willing to leave your comfort zone.

4.     A sower. You must sow to reap. It is a principle for growth.

5.     Patient. You should remain patient with the process. Don’t expect immediate results. Your target is the future not the present. Remember.

6.     Unafraid of being tagged a nonconformist. All transition persons are called names. Nelson Mandela was called, “The Black Pimpernel,” Jesus was called the Agent of Beelzabub. You won’t be different.

7.     Willing to pass down the baton. You will be an incomplete transition person if you don’t pass down the new baton to the next generation thereby starting a brand new change. It is said, “There is no success without a successor.”

Transition Person I: Don't Continue the Rusted Chain

No matter what has happened, is happening, or will happen, there is a space between those things and our responses to them. ­– Stephen R. Covey

 It is easy – much easier – to react to things rather than respond to them. We are taught in physics that action and reaction are equal and opposite and so we internalize that and give back what has been given to us.

In the same way it is easier to continue the chain of what we see around us rather than break it. In our desire not to be the weak link we become blinded to the fact that the chain we are protecting is rusted. A rusted chain is the family in which mummy got pregnant out of wedlock, first daughter, second daughter and third daughter let's it "happen" to them. It is a business in which boss is verbally abusive, manager verbally abusive, supervisors verbally abusive. It is the home in which father beats mummy, sons beat girlfriends.

We all have had (or still have) our share of rusted chains. The easy thing to do is ensure the rusted chain doesn’t break with you. For example, my Dad gave himself to alcohol for much of his young life and I found myself with an alcohol bottle every evening in my early youth. Not only that, I initiated my younger brother! I had to get to the point where I spoke sense to myself to not continue the habit I so hated in lovely daddy.

It is only when you decide not to continue the rusted chain that you become a transition person. A transition person, in the words of Stephen R. Covey, is “one who stops unworthy tendencies from being passed on from prior generations to those that follow.”

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          The transition person is a chain breaker. He doesn’t sit back and allow life happen to him but makes life happen. He doesn’t react to stimulus, he responds to it. He recognizes that he has the power to determine how his life turns out and decides daily to take only the steps that ensure the rusted chain breaks.

Transition persons are priceless to the future. They are the hope we have for a better tomorrow. They are the reasons we will not have better yesterdays. They set a different example for the next generation to emulate. Do you want to be a transition person? Sure you do! Follow my next article as it shows how to be one.

Kingmakers

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The spirited horse, which will try to win the race of its own accord, will run even faster if encouraged. ­– Ovid

In our world plagued with celebrity worship syndrome and an “I did it” obsession it is difficult to get people to cooperate to achieve a common goal. We all want to do it ourselves – all alone – because we erroneously think that’s the only way to be relevant in this world.

Islands may be beautiful for vacations but are ugly as people. I read a quote some years back which says, “Talent is developed in isolation, character in the stream of life.” I like that: stream of life – you want to be a better person you need people around you.

Contrary to much teaching you can be fulfilled in making another person’s vision come to pass. In fact many purposes are actualized only in working to actualize the purpose of another. There are some people’s visions I have totally bought into and am working every day to see happen. That doesn’t make me less of who I am but, in fact, more.

When you help a broader vision actualize you become a kingmaker. Kingmakers are people who identify a large vision, believe in it, and work to see it come to pass. They accept that someone else may be seen to receive the glorification rather than they because they believe in the vision.

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          A kingmaker doesn’t look out only for himself. Enough of starting tiny businesses that cannot compete beyond three years when you can merge your ideas with another person’s and hit it big. Enough of fighting to see your name hanging at the “top” when it doesn’t have to be there. Leadership isn’t the same thing as headship. Being a helper isn’t another name for being a failure. What matters is that you have found your place; and if your place is that of a kingmaker then so be it!

          Interestingly as Zig Ziglar beautifully puts it, “You will get whatever you want from life if you would help enough people get whatever they want from life.”