Aides to Destiny

A man found Joseph wandering around in the fields and asked him, “What are you looking for?” He replied, “I’m looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they are grazing their flocks?” “They have moved from here,” the man answered. “I heard them say, ‘Let’s go to Dothan.’” So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan.

I have heard a lot of people speak up hoarding information of their specialized knowledge for fear that their ideas would be stolen. Many have a tendency of making sure they do not tell you anything pertaining what they do because they want monopoly of supply.

In as much as this perspective may do some initial good, on the long run it robs the world of productivity. I am rarely, if ever, afraid of telling what I did to get what I have. I think it comes from a healthy self-estimation. To replicate the success of a person goes beyond mere imitation to the point that you actually become the person in question. Success is the person and not just an act. If this is true then total imitation is not possible.

When I am asked how I achieved success in an area I count it an opportunity to point a person to a direction that may help in his or her future. Folks often need direction and I hate it when I cannot help out.

Nobody becomes a success on his own. There are always people that point you in the direction of success. Sometimes they do not even know that that is what they are doing! Why don’t you be that person in another’s life? Why don’t you point someone towards his or her success?

       The idea behind the Butterfly Effect is that when a butterfly flaps its wings the effect is felt in distant galaxies. I think this speaks more to people – as we are so intricately connected to one another – than to butterflies. Our actions, even when we do not mean them to, affect people that we have no clue exist. Now imagine if you, like that nameless man in the wilderness, direct a wandering Joseph to his appointment of destiny. How much good would you have done to the future of the soon famine-stricken world and ultimately the purposes of God? 

Awaken Your Dreams!

Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. “Listen,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me. – Joseph (the Prime Minister of Ancient Egypt)

There is a part I love in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, and it is the point Alice tells of how she believes in six impossible things. "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” she says. I like that statement because it summarizes the life of a dreamer.
The dreamer believes. He or she believes in some ideal that is non-existent at the moment – that is what makes it a dream! But what makes it interesting is the fact that many dreams dreamers believe in appear impossible.
Impossibility - this is what ensures that many sermons are not preached and many songs remain in song book and countless inventions remain in the mind and many ideas remain unheard of. It is the thought of impossibility that introduces fear in us and shuts our capacity to believe the dream-words we once boldly proclaimed. It is the attitude of impossibility that has left our multi-blessed continent centuries behind leading world economies.
The thought of impossibility must be killed! We must be like Martin Luther King (Jnr) who proclaimed in the face of grave impossibility that, “I have a dream…” Or like Eleanor Roosevelt who said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams,” Or reason like Walt Disney when he said, “No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dreams that you wish will come true,” Or be like old Jacob and reawaken the dying dreams that once burned in our hearts, with the question, “What is this dream you had?”
Dreamers move the world. They are the Noah, who dreamed of a holy world, and the Abraham, who dreamed of a land that milk and honey flows, and the Moses, who dreamed of liberating a whole nation out of bondage of the most powerful authority of his time, and the Joseph, who dreamed of becoming a great man, and the Jesus, who dreamed of saving us all.
We cannot live without dreamers. Are you one? I conclude with an excerpt from Alice in Wonderland:

Door: Why it's simply impassible!

Alice: Why, don't you mean impossible?

Door: No, I do mean impassible. (chuckles) Nothing's impossible! 

Who Do You Think You Are?

As a man thinks so is he... - A Proverb of Solomon

Whenever the question, "Who do you think you are?" is asked it is often connected with a bid to bring down or look down on someone. I have not seen several instances where the question is answered directly. Rather, it is given a sharp response of “Who then do you too think you are?” Of a truth this question can easily be described as rude but then let us really analyze it.

Who do you think you are? Your answer, howbeit nonverbal, is very important to how and when you succeed. This is so because what you think of you will define your life. A person is what he or she thinks about most of the time.

So, who do you think you are?

The answer to that is in as many variants as there are people on earth. Some think they are ugly others think they are beautiful. Some think their lives are not worth living others think there can’t be a better time to live. Some think they are meant to live poor, sick and sorry lives others think they should be rich, healthy and hyper-excited.

It is interesting that people produce the very results they think often about. I sometimes point this out to my students by bringing out the top three in the class and ask them if they ever think they may drop below the first five positions in class and in all occasions the answer is the same – “never!” They remain tops because they, first of all, think they should be tops.

You must change your thoughts to fit where you claim you will attain. Without changing our thoughts we cannot change anything else. Santosh Kalwar (a poet) once said, “We are addicted to our thoughts, we cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.” 

Was it Meant to Happen?

Some things are meant to happen - it just

takes us a couple of tries to get there. - J. R. Ward (Author)

“Seeing we have not gone far, let’s call-in the motor park for a replacement,” I suggested to other passengers after our taxi slated for a three-hour journey broke down after nine minutes.

“There is no need we do that,” they unanimously responded. “It is just a minor fault, and who knows, it was probably meant to happen”. I could have disputed their theory but I felt there was no need so I stayed silent.

One hour down we started out again.

Two hours into our journey, in the very middle of ‘no-man’s-land’, the car made a sharp sound and stopped. This time it obviously was a more serious problem for the car made no sign at all of starting. “I told you all!” my heart kept screaming with my mouth shut. I wondered if the passengers would have said it was a minor fault that was “meant to happen” if we were aboard a plane and not a car. I did not blame them much though - they live by fate.

It is a futile thing to rely on fate. Many people make clumsy decisions, take the actions accompanying those decisions and when the result of their poor decision-making and actions come out, they attest it to fate. How can a driver who decided not to put on a seat belt while driving say after an accident, “I was meant to hit my chest on the steering wheel and develop a complication”? It is absurd! However, many who rely on fate are doing just that.

People run to fate because it gives them a loophole to be irresponsible. They cannot be held responsible for whatever happened or is happening because the buck doesn't stop with them. “It was destined” or a better one is “God made it happen”. Have you heard such clichés before?

Take the driver's seat of your life - we are called to live by faith and not by fate! None who depends on fate has faith. Nothing just happens because “it was meant to happen”. God set nature to respond in a way that a prior happening causes everything that happens - a cause and then an effect. As long as we ignore faith and hang instead on fate, life will give to us whatever it chooses. If we instead take up the responsibility of the things that happen in our lives, we can then begin to change for the better whatever we do not like in our lives.

Developing Great Habits

                  Habits are cobwebs at first, cables at last. – Chinese Proverb

  Bukassa, Samora, Toby, Chyna, are some of the dogs we grew up with. A visit to our house was surely a visit to the family with a dog.

  Of all the dogs we had there was George which I fondly remember because of his rather strange habit of jumping over fences.

  It started when George struggled a little but eventually began jumping over our four-foot-tall fence. Soon it was second nature to him. We didn’t like it and wanted to stop him so we increased the height of the fence another three and a half feet. Within a few days George was high over it! For George, jumping over fences was now an irresistible habit.

  As it was for our dog, so it is with people. We are all creatures of habits. Habits are those little actions you take so often that they become a part of you. Though initially small, our habits eventually become big, sometimes to a point we can no longer control. Your life is a testament of habits- you were not born the way you are today- who you are is a result of the habits you practiced.

  So, the question is not whether you have habits or not. The question is whether your habits are positive or negative.

  We are the same with George in that we all adopt habits. We are the same in that habits once adopted are difficult to stop, even if it means raising the fences. Nonetheless we, unlike George, are not dogs. We can change our negative habits. To do this we need to keep three things in mind.
    Today is in your hands: every morning keep in mind that it is a brand new day. When faced with a decision know that whatever choice you make will influence your habits, strengthening or weakening them. Choose to strengthen the positive ones and not the negative.

  Start small: ALL things start small and grow big. All negative habits started that way. Building positive ones in their place will also have to start that way. Take small steps in the positive direction. When you succeed (and you will), celebrate it. If you later act otherwise, don’t sweat it, it happens. Simply start small again and keep at it.

   Believe God: God has the ability to “keep you from falling,” (Jude 1:24). Hang your faith on this and enjoy a “fall-less” life of positive habits!

Tired? ...take a LIFE-LEAVE

Somewhere it’s written, “God rested the seventh day, having completed his work,” but in this other text he says, “They’ll never be able to sit down and rest. – Paul (The apostle)

The world demands so much from us. Indeed the demands on today’s adult far outweigh those our parents carried. I guess it brings to life the words, “to whom much is given much is expected”. We have been given much and so much is expected from us.

So many eyes look to us to produce results that we know within us are presently unrealizable. Parents look to us to make “many” money and solve all the family problems, they look to us to produce children that will make them grandparents - grand parenting is a class of its own these days.

Our ailing society looks to us and groaning the words, “Save Our Souls!” so loudly that our shut ears can hear clearly.

Our workplaces set obviously improbable goals and make the prayers we said the preceding morning seem as though they had fallen on divine deaf ears.

So we yearn for holidays – weekends or work leaves or maternity leaves – it does not matter which because we want any. Unfortunately, we get them and they fizzle away in an instant leaving us with the same burdened disposition we had before they came.

What we need is a LIFE-LEAVE! We all need our lives to rest while we get to do ALL we have to do.

How? 

First, get this into your brain: you are NOT going to solve all the world’s problems! Trying to solve all the problems of all the people you know is the fastest vehicle to failure, dissatisfaction and burden.

Second, seek for peace in your spirit. Shut the noisy world around you and create an atmosphere of quiet and serenity for your spirit. The peace within will grant peace without.

Third, understand that God wants you to have rest. Mathew Alphaeus quotes him as once saying: “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest.” (The Message)

This "real rest" is the Life-Leave we need.

What Have YOU Become?

    It's never too late to be what you might have been. - George Elliot

I have noticed that most children have one thing or the other that they desire to become when they grow up. Can you remember those ambitions you had growing up? Mine was to become a Pharmacist. Now, I am a world away from that but I must admit that that ambition had its role to play in my life. What matters is the dream to be significant and it is OK to dream. The price you pay for dreaming is time and thinking energy. Since I have some time and lots of thinking energy at my disposal, I have always let myself swim in dreams.

A person’s ambition gives him a sense of purpose. It gives your life direction. When people go on with life without an ambition at heart, they are like directionless missiles. They could explode anywhere with great detriments to many.

Interestingly, there is in every person the belief that we can become whatever we choose. We all want to be successes in life. God placed that trait in us all.

        You need to determine exactly what you want: Such a clear-cut decision will make you an arrow in motion released from the hands of an experienced archer. This is important. Because people do not know what exactly they want, they move from one thing to the other.

You will also have to work with your strengths: make sure your ambition(s) align perfectly with your inherent strengths. This will first require knowledge of your strengths. Working out your ambitions based on this knowledge will equip you with the necessary tools required for the achievement of your goal. It will also make your goal fun to accomplish.

Make sure you break you ultimate ambition into smaller bits: one reason why we fail in life is because we are so troubled with the pursuit and immediate accomplishment of great ambitions. Every meal is easier to finish when eaten one bite at a time. Many things are impossible to accomplish with one swoop. Your ambition is one of those things. There is no need to fret though. Simply break it down into smaller, simpler bits and take one bit at a time.

What it is All About.

“Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”  - Albert Einstein

One of my students recently interrupted me while teaching and asked a question. He said: “Why do we do all this? Why do we wake up in the morning, get all set and leave our homes? Why?” With his question came sixty watchful eyes and attentive ears. They seemed more interested in the answer to this question than to any other thing I had taught in the last hour or so.

Lucky for me, I did not need to think too far to get what I hoped will be an appropriate response. This was because I had thought about this same question several times from my early secondary school days. I remember observing the early morning hustle and bustle of people and old vehicles in Kaduna and wonder why people needed to go through all these daily.

Why not simply sit at home and rest your life out?

The easy answer that presents itself is we do it for the money but I say no! I am not about to tell you that money does not play a part, after all it is popularly said, and believed by many, that money makes the world go round. But as writer, John Stainbeck states, “Anything that just costs money is cheap”.  My life should not revolve round only money and neither should yours.

We get up in the morning, take our baths and leave our lovely homes so that we can add value to the society. Without value everything is worthless. Indeed you must think in the direction of value for anything you do be worth your effort.

You are a nurse so that you can add value to the profession and society’s well-being. You are a policeman or woman to protect the lives of people, thereby adding value to the profession. You are part of clergy so that you can build people morally and spiritually, this adds value to the vocation and society.

It is always a sad thing meeting professionals that care little about the value they add daily to the society through their jobs. They would rather pray change comes by some divine impact than add their part of value, little as it may be, to the society through their fields. I dare say your little part of value is more important than your prayer. If you go the extra mile and combine the two you will have an explosive combination!

Lead NOW!

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled,they will say: We did it ourselves. - Lao Tsu

   
         You have all it takes to lead in our highly competitive world.

     People and performance are more often than not defined by the word, “Best”. All through our lives we have been pushed to outperform our peers and be better than they. This indeed has helped us to develop, improving from one state to the other, but it has also led to the under-utilization of personal potential. We may become the best in our class but never the best we can be.

     Nevertheless, to lead does not necessarily amount to being first. Indeed, to lead means many other things rather than what we have believed it to be for so long.

     To lead means to have vision. All visionary people are leaders irrespective of their position in the hierarchy. This also means that not every one occupying a position is a leader because it is possible to have a portfolio and lack vision.

     To lead means to influence. Many people have titles without influence. I have seen many instances where the person people truly follow is sandwiched somewhere in the hierarchy. Such a person is the leader without being the boss.

     To lead means to grow. Everyday progress is made in every field. The prevalent information in all fields is overturned with fresher ideas and concepts every few months. To lead in your field will require you grow with the progress made in your field. The person with the fresher information and concepts automatically leads the flock, and he or she does not need to be the boss to achieve this.

     To lead means to take initiative. Most people, including those in highly placed positions, do not take required actions unless prompted by someone higher up the stack. Such a person is not a leader. To lead you must learn to take initiative and act!

     To lead means to follow. If you must lead then you must learn to follow because it is in follower-ship that you find your leadership path. Benjamin Disraeli said: "I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?" Many would-have-been leaders failed here! They assumed since they should be leaders then they do not need to follow anyone. They were probably never taught that the way up is down.

     So, you can lead! Do not wait for an office or portfolio. Have vision, influence positively, grow, take initiative, and follow. This way you are a leader already.

180-DEGREES TURN TO YOUR SHOKOTO (Concluded)

         All you are looking for in Sokoto is in YOUR shokoto (trouser pockets) - Yoruba Proverb

“Much food is in the tillage of the poor…”, (Proverbs 13:23). Did you see it? Every time I read those words I grow goose bumps. The proverb says the poor man has all he needs in his land!

     Are you asking the question on my mind? Why in heavens name is he then poor?

Well for one he was obviously too familiar with his field. Familiarity they say breeds contempt. And so he looks at his field and says: “What is my talent compared to great talented people?” Or he says: “This thing I have is too small to make any difference”. Or he scoffs and says: “This thing? No it can’t be any better.”

     On the other hand, he may just be a lazy boy and say: “Nobody succeeds in this type of business, there is no need trying.” Or, “I am a Christian; God will do it for me.”

     Our poor man may just be someone who lacks discretion; he is unable to make responsible decisions. It was the fault of his wife that he didn't go to the field in the last week.

Finally, but not conclusively, he may just lack the necessary skills to manage the deep needs of his husbandry. He took the leap of faith and went to farm even when there were no rains, but does not have a clue what to do next.

     It really does not matter which among the above ails our poor man or if he is plagued by a combination of all of them what really matters is rather than run away from his field, he takes a 180° turn to the opposite direction, and plough. This he must do if he will not have the same destiny as Ali Hafed.

     You must recognize that YOUR field has diamonds! You must discern how to mine it. You must be diligent to plough your field. You must be discreet and learn how to manage the intricacies your own vocational-husbandry. Then, and then alone will you ensure you are not the poor man we just spoke about.

STOP! It's just a mirage!

For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, And hewn themselves cisterns--broken cisterns that can hold no water. Jeremiah 2:13

I once watched a movie of a lost desert traveler anxiously in need of water. To his great pleasure he sees a pool of water up ahead of him. He mustered up his last bit of strength and ran toward it. When he got to the point that he could swear he saw the pool, he discovered it as perched and dry as any other place in the desert. He then realized he had been deceived by a mirage.

As it was with this traveler so it is with young folks in life. The things we most desire and pursue earnestly are just mirages – they don’t exist!

We are all prone to pursuing mirages – I have pursued some of my own. Mirages look real and so folks pursue them with all their strength and resources only to get to the spot they thought they would see it and discover they never were there.

The funny part of it is mirages are easy to identify. A mirage is the 30-year-old man that earnestly wants to be like Lionel Messi, or the 4-foot tall man who wants to be better than Michael Jordan. I came across a research some time ago that says young Africans have 1000-times better chances of becoming successful professionals in the likes of doctors, engineers and pilots than great singers, actors or sports celebrities.

The confusion between mirages and visions arise because they are just one step apart. Whilst a vision has logical steps that bring them to reality, mirages just hang in up there in space without any real way to actualize them.

Are you pursuing a vision or a mirage?

Let me build a scenario. A young Nigerian can have a desire to be great and influential in America. He would be pursuing a mirage if all he is concerned about is meeting someone who would do him a favour and get him a visa or if his plan is to follow a group of miscreants who could take him with them to America through whatever means possible. On the other hand he would be pursuing a vision if he decides to go to school, pass all his examinations, becomes a professional in a field and apply for jobs in America while he works in Nigeria.

So check within and ask yourself if you are pursuing a vision or simply chasing a mirage.