The World as I see it.

I had a really bad week this week and the only thing that saved me was positive thinking. Words are very good at explaining things but never exact at conveying the essence of the real thing – not even close. Having an issue play on your mind – night and day – can be a killer. You can’t sleep, you can’t smile, you can’t eat, you can’t play, you can’t read, you can’t listen, you can’t relax, you can’t have fun in fact you cant do all the things that you normally do with ease. But you have to live. You have to go on living as if it was business as usual. After all, there you are and over there is the war zone. You still have a job, a roof over your head, an assurance of 3 square [meals] a day, a girlfriend/wife/whatever, full use of 4 limbs, fully functioning organs while others are out there - dying. After that thought, I just knew that even going on about this is pathetic. At times like this I wished I could switch to happiness at the snap of a finger. If only. As everyone who has gone through one of those episodes, the feeling sticks around like an irritating shadow.

At work recently, I went to hell. It came to my knowledge that I was in the thick of some shit.  I will face the music next week. Do I let the anxiety overwhelm me or do I contain it? If so, how so? The thought alone was getting to me. It was beginning to have an impact on my work - over promising, under delivering, demotivated – the lot. The work was just not flowing as it used to. I was not as sharp as I used to be. Also, someone at work was really getting the upper hand in all this.  I just had to swallow it all. I had the option to make a big deal out of it, like getting other people involved, but decided against it and stuck it out. It will get very messy if I choose that route. Give me a few days I said, – and I will be back to normal. In the heat of the moment, I needed help. Men are not supposed to cry remember? Talking to work colleagues was out of the question – I am well past 18. I had to dig deep. A good read never fails me. The only problem was finding “a good read”. Even on good days I wander into bookshops browsing for a good read. This time – I needed it. At times you find yourself wanting a lift-up like a crack addict looking for a quick fix. I gave into my temptation and spent all yesterday evening in the self-help section of my favourite bookshop – Foyle’s at Tottenham Court Road.  I have, to date, read my share of self-help books and even though I should not knock them, some of them are just written for Orwellian proles, Epsilon semi-morons and Huxleian Deltas [those opposed to the philosophy of TH Huxley] blind to the back of their brains. Even in the depths of my sorrows, I refuse to be one. I never touch them these days. The only one I recommend is “Self-Help” by Samuel Smiles. Compared to what they churn out these days, this is the business. Anyone used to the “this or that for dummies” or “how to do this or that in 30 days” should be warned – this is not the usual dimwit dummy waffle. For them it will be like progressing from reading Roald Dahl to James Joyce or like progressing from Stephen Law to Immanuel Kant. Enough said.

Anyway I needed this fix, and I needed to stay fixed. In the end I walked out of the bookshop after looking at a few titles. I managed to convince myself that I didn’t really need a book, I needed to feel good. As I was walking home I started thinking. The first thing that came to my mind was to picture the performance I would put on on the day. The second was to meditate. Meditation as far as I am concerned is just to have time alone locked in deep controlled thoughts. I was deep enough as it was so that did not appeal to me. I started writing this and “Bingo” – I felt better. Every bad thought was just leaving my system like a balloon letting go of trapped gas. It was unbelievable.  I actually saw myself dealing with the situation. Just then, my speech, my excuses, my pitch came rolling down like waters and confidence like a mighty stream.

To switch from anxiety and anger to real calmness and happiness just like that is something that, if only I would master, I would definitely rule the world. I remember when I was younger when I used to be locked in a state of seething anger for days. Now I just write. It was not positive thinking in the end but just plain writing – positive writing [but then again, you need to think to write!!]. If in the next few weeks I do not get my P45, then look forward to reading much more.

By Believing we become willing,

By willing we become driven

JIDEOFO OBIANYIDO 2007

As someone who - for a very long time – has watched and wondered from the sidelines why certain people achieve success “no matter what” while others seems equally incapable of making good of themselves in similar circumstances, cracking the code very late in life is such a relief.

These feelings started to awaken in me ten years ago when I dropped out of university. I now conclude that for some reason which I can only attribute to a very personal “family experience”, I assumed that success was, in my case a birth-right waiting to happen.

Wrong.

It is hard graft or nothing. And anybody willing to put in the pain will definitely get the gain. I am yet to meet a person who does not agree with but history always repeats itself. Some succeed while others don’t - period. As we are intelligent [ability to learn] beings it should be very shocking to us all that some people in this relative land of immense opportunity still fail to succeed. My joy today comes from actually realizing that agreeing with or knowing something that is accepted to be common sense is not enough. Knowing is very different from believing and knowing is worlds away from willing. For those of us with no blue blood, connections in high-society and simply with no skills and want to succeed in life, it is more of a belief and will thing than anything else. Majority of us are not believers and the same majority are not willing [in possession of little or no will power].

By believing you become willing, by willing you become driven.

Belief is very important because that is the only way you keep going [driven] when the going gets tough. To illustrate, consider yourself a boxer. If you believe you are a superior boxer to your opponent but he/she manages to catch a clean shot at you and actually knock you down in the first round, what do you do? Say he was lucky to get a clean shot and give up altogether or comeback to the second round with a point to prove. We have seen this over and over again. It is very likely that if initially you believe to be stronger, even if your opponent knocks you out in the first round, you will come back in the second round even more aggressive. If on the other hand if felt your opponent was stronger, chances are you will throw in the towel. Why carry on fighting with someone who will beat you up anyway? It is just like that with life and that is the difference with driven people and the rest of us. Most of us give up too soon or do not try hard enough. It is all about belief. All other attributes necessary for success will be added on to those of us that are willing and driven. All that nonsense about natural ability, talent, gifted, that-type-of-person, and whatever excuse mediocrity has used to describe personal triumph is nothing but signs of weakness and ignorance. Sadly there is a lot of that in society. I do not believe anybody will wish themselves failure if they knew success is very much within reach. They fail simply and squarely because they do not know any better.

Now question is, what do you know? And now that you know, what are you going to do about it?

Environment where one comes from is of the essence here minus the “very few greats” amongst us. People who do well academically for instance do “certain things” that make them good – they study more than the average. It is very sad that through out our formative years that for some reason, majority of us believe that we are not the type to succeed.

Naturally after failing to secure a job after dropping out of university, I started to wonder if there was something wrong with me. I assumed that employers would discover my talents and employ me anyway. But that never was the case. How that troubled and affected me. Logic should have told me that it is not what you are capable of doing but what you have done already. Put yourself in any employer’s shoes. Who would you employ if you were to – a graduate with glowing references or a university drop-out? That is it. Life itself is like that. Winner takes all. So the question is – Are you willing?

At the depth of my lows, I read so many biographies of men I so much admired. Martin Luther King Jr, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Wole Soyinka, Julius Kambarage Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela, Samuel Smiles, Malcolm X, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, Karl Popper, William Spencer Churchill, Bob Marley, George Soros, Milton Friedman, Booker Taliaferro Washington, and many more that I wont bother to mention and one thing becomes staggeringly obvious – self belief and hard work.

I must note here that not all human success stories follow this theory down to a T. For some people, success comes with little or no evidence or awareness of difficulty, struggle, courage, drive, confidence or ambition. They just cruise into it. Good luck to them. Now is not the right time to compare the relative ease with which some find their journeys in life. Let them be. You should only worry about yours. So bottom line is you got to believe in yourself. You got to be willing to succeed.

Are you really willing to believe?

It is interesting that I be this brave as to share with the world my plans for the next 12 months that constitute 2007. I decided to make this move not because I admire these resolutions that much or that I am in possession of so much will power hell no, stuck here celebrating the onset of yet another year in this massive foreign hotel room, I decided to do this because I feel it will help me by way of accountability.

Like you, I have so many plans.

1. Buy a Digital Camera – a Nikon D80
2. Learn Italian.
3. Enrol at my local Gym.
4. Learn to Swim.
5. Upgrade my rusty computer skills.
6. Read more [of certain] books.
7. Publish at least an article a week on my blog.
8. Go to bed by 10 o’clock Monday to Friday
9. Eat at least twice a day.
10. Smile more.

What say you?