Communicate With Yourself

“To set us on a clear path, it is important to communicate well, at least with ourselves–to know what we want, to know what we mean, and to learn to express ourselves clearly, with as little confusion as possible. If you are confused about yourself, you can expect to be misunderstood by those around you. You have to set your mind straight, and that is a task that no one else can undertake for you.” – Rosemary Altea

Communication is a skill that few of us have developed strongly. We tend to believe that because we know what we’re trying to get across, others will understand also–even though we often aren’t completely sure just what we want to communicate. And when we’re communicating with ourselves, it’s especially important that we do so clearly and precisely.

Love And Forgive Thyself

“Be gentle with yourself, learn to love yourself, to forgive yourself, for only as we have the right attitude toward ourselves can we have the right attitude toward others.” – Wilferd Arlan Peterson

I knew someone once who was really down on himself all the time. He constantly criticized himself and his actions, and I do not remember ever hearing him say something good about himself. He always used to wonder why people did no want to be around him, though to me it was pretty clear–he treated other people in the same ways he treated himself. He criticized them and cut them down, had great expectations of them and became very disappointed with them if they did not meet his expectations. His kids did not like to share anything with him, and they avoided him as often as they could.

Unlock Your Potentials

“A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mohandas Gandhi to come back — but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.” – Marian Wright Edelman

There have been many human beings who have been able to bring hope to others. They have lived their lives trying to right wrongs and bring justice to the world, and then they have passed on. And when they do pass on, their passing leaves us in a kind of paralysis, a state in which we are sort of frozen, waiting for someone else to come along and thaw us.

Possibility And Potential

“We are always surrounded by doors of opportunity. That’s the way life is. Often, opportunities do not come in packages wrapped in the colors we expected. When an unexpected surprise happens, we refuse to see it and so we miss the opportunity. Sometimes we are so focused on a goal far out in the future that we do not see what is right in front of us, or we get so busy hurrying and rushing around that we lose all perspective.” – Anne Wilson Schaef

Possibility and potential–this day and every day are full of both of them. The number of opportunities that we have in our lives is amazing, yet most of us rarely see even a small percentage of the opportunities that life throws our way. There are of course the obvious opportunities such as having the air we breathe and the food we eat to keep us alive, but there are many other opportunities that are just so unexpected that we never even see them. They come our way only to be ignored like a twenty-dollar bill laying under a leaf. It’s there, but the leaf blocks our vision so that we don’t see it and can’t take advantage of it.

Prayer Is Connection With A Higher Power

“The minds of people are so cluttered up with everyday living these days that they don’t, or won’t, take time out for a little prayer–for mental cleansing, just as they take a bath for a physical, outer cleaning. Both are necessary.” – Jo Ann Carlson

Somehow or another, prayer becomes some sort of a chore as we grow up. It’s something that our parents make us do, and because it’s usually highly formalized, it has little appeal to young people, who instinctively know better, I think–they know that the more we formalize anything, the less personal and valuable it becomes.

Let Your Past Help Your Present

“We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not…. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.” – Joan Didion

I used to be a lot different than I am now. And I can honestly say that the person I was five years ago definitely wasn’t the same person I was fifteen years ago. I live, I learn, I change. And as I go on living, I somehow keep on forgetting lessons that I learned before, and I find that I have to make some of the same mistakes, sometimes worse and sometimes not as bad as before, just to relearn lessons that I’ve already “learned.”

How annoying is that?

You Can Be More Glorious Than You Are

“The greatest thing is, at any moment, to be willing to give up who we are in order to become all that we can be.” – Max De Pree

How simple it is to keep going on in the same ways in order to avoid the unknown, and the different, the changes that life offers us all the time. Most of us get to liking who we are, if for no other reason than it is pretty safe and comfortable. And we ignore the cognitive dissonance when it arrives, causing tension between what we are and what we know we could be if we were to take a few risks and make some important changes. We argue that in the turbulent oceans of life, it is often easier for us to remain on shore, as an observer, than to hoist the sails and ride the winds.

Nigeria 2015: Shun Regional Dichotomy

All this malarkey about power shift and the region entitled to occupy the presidency in 2015 is not only out of order but really, really reckless. For a nation that prides itself on being the unifying presence in Africa, for a country whose white stripe on the flag represents the desire for peace and unity, the recent obsession by the political class on this issue stands as a stark contradiction. The concept of being a Nigerian is meant to be superior to any given ethnic, regional or tribal concern. As one nation, we are supposed to place the interest of Nigeria above and beyond any sectarian and parochial interest. But, from all indications, Nigerians seem blasé about the fact that their future could invariably be navigating towards a very dangerous trend, towards a form of tribal politics.

Are You Not A Leader?

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” – John Quincy Adams

It is really quite astonishing to me to find out which of us do not consider themselves to be leaders. I know others who are wonderful role models of honesty, courtesy, integrity, love, and compassion, but who do not think that they have any effect on others at all. I know teachers who inspire children to accomplish anything they want, yet they fail to see themselves as being leaders. The simple fact is that we all have the potential to be leaders, whether we are leading people to think differently by sharing a different perspective, or teaching them to do something differently or more effectively, or showing them, or guiding them–or any combination of each.

Nigeria 2015: Our Common Enemies Lurks Around Everywhere!

I am not the spokesperson of the chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, but I suspect the former vice-chancellor of Bayero University, Kano, is very conscious of his mandate and that of the commission he is heading. Evidence: In the last few weeks he has consistently raised the alarm over certain conspicuous factors that are likely to slow down the promotion of sound democratic election processes and knowledge in line with Section 2 (b) of the amended Electoral Act 2010, as we move towards 2015 – the year many sadists and evil-thinking-politicians have described as “year of political Armageddon” in our country. He had advised the National Assembly to quickly address it through further amendment of the Electoral Act. Jega was particularly interested in the areas of internal democracy within the political parties, especially in the processes of electing candidates for the general elections and the recurring election violence in our politics.