RESET.
This word means different things to different people and I am pondering on why it came to my head right now.
In a world full of unending tasks, struggles and several things to do, humans tend to get stuck in perpetual movement.
The question is and has always been - What is the result of your 'busyness' (if the word exists)
Sometimes all you need to do is step back, take a deep breath, tell yourself that nothing good is done in a hurry and refocus on your strengths.
AHA! I just defined RESET in my own way.
How do you define yours?
POSITIVE ACTION : POSITIVE IMPACT.
Friday, December 15, 2017
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Impressions and Expressions!
'The me I see is the me I'll be'; so says an anonymous man(or is it woman?) who inspires confidence in being comfortable in your own skin.
All the motivation in the world will not change you if deep within you there is a dislike, disapproval or discomfort in 'who you are'.
My take on this is:
1.First Impression lasts very long(you may never have an opportunity to change it)
2.Habits form character and your character is you.
3.The right impression of yourself(from within you!) enhances expression, while the right impressions formed of you by others could bring you unbelievable possessions(believe me,it could!)
I recommend that you 'impress yourself', express yourself in more positive ways than one and ..
Its been a While
Yes its been a while because other pursuits have limited me to many years of an almost dried up creative juice ( I don't mean this directly)
Today as I have observed, it is easy to notice that people are so absorbed in self preservation that they will just about anything to get what they want.
I ain't that sort of guy and will never be.
I will do the good I can while staying useful to my self and my community.
After all I am about POSITIVE ACTION : POSITIVE IMPACT
I feel the juice building up.
More will come....
Thursday, March 12, 2009
The Paradoxical Commandments - Kent M. Keith
Irrespective of what people say or do, I guess altruism is doing things 'cos you'll find peace in your heart so take the following commandments to heart and be guided in your actions.
Read and lets have your commens
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
-
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
In the past months I have experienced some highs and lows in my life, the harshest realities of this period represent a long series of lessons that are aptly contained in the poem below. By the way the writer is a 1907 Nobel prize winner.
For all of you out there who are experiencing down times; read and reflect..
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master,
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
I DO BELIEVE IN YOU
For the first time this 2009,it occcured to me to pour my thoughts on this space and this time I will acknowledge a friend who wrote something I found really fascinating. Such talent:
Read on and tell me what you think.......
I hear the strength in your voice;
As reflecting fires in your eyes
dance in the light
I hear the echoes in your head,
the constant ticking.
I feel your need,
a need so powerful.
It must burst forth and spread........
Someday.
I smell the power on your tongue
and your belief.
You believe it all.
Now, its all in your hands
Pray, what is your driving force?
I believe in the tales you weave
the feel, the smell, its all there
Its so near.....
I can feel it.
I might not always tell you how i feel
and most times my thoughts go unspoken
but my fascination is clear for all to see.
I DO BELIEVE IN YOU.
Thanks a lot 'Biodun for this wonderful piece.
Monday, October 13, 2008
8 leadership lessons from Nelson Mandela
Hello Reader,
I would like to start this post by saying;sometimes we get a jolt of reality on certain subjects in the most unusual of ways. Our abilities (especially leadership) come under scrutiny and calls for more of the learning process. In my quest for more I came across some lessons from some of the greatest leaders.
Read on.
8 leadership lessons from Nelson Mandela
Richard Stengel , who worked with Nelson Mandela on his autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom” has an article in Time titled “Mandela: His 8 Lessons of Leadership”, these 8 lessons of leadership are:
1.Courage is not the absence of fear — it’s inspiring others to move beyond it. “Mandela was often afraid during his time underground, during the Rivonia trial that led to his imprisonment, during his time on Robben Island. ‘Of course I was afraid!’ he would tell me later. It would have been irrational, he suggested, not to be. ‘I can’t pretend that I’m brave and that I can beat the whole world.’ But as a leader, you cannot let people know. ‘You must put up a front.’ And that’s precisely what he learned to do: pretend and, through the act of appearing fearless, inspire others. It was a pantomime Mandela perfected on Robben Island, where there was much to fear. Prisoners who were with him said watching Mandela walk across the courtyard, upright and proud, was enough to keep them going for days. He knew that he was a model for others, and that gave him the strength to triumph over his own fear.”
2.Lead from the front — but don’t leave your base behind. “For Mandela, refusing to negotiate was about tactics, not principles. Throughout his life, he has always made that distinction. His unwavering principle — the overthrow of apartheid and the achievement of one man, one vote — was immutable, but almost anything that helped him get to that goal he regarded as a tactic. He is the most pragmatic of idealists.”
3.Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front. “Mandela loved to reminisce about his boyhood and his lazy afternoons herding cattle. ‘You know," he would say, "you can only lead them from behind.’ He would then raise his eyebrows to make sure I got the analogy. As a boy, Mandela was greatly influenced by Jongintaba, the tribal king who raised him. When Jongintaba had meetings of his court, the men gathered in a circle, and only after all had spoken did the king begin to speak. The chief’s job, Mandela said, was not to tell people what to do but to form a consensus. "Don’t enter the debate too early," he used to say. … The trick of leadership is allowing yourself to be led too. ‘It is wise,’ he said, ‘to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.’”
4.Know your enemy — and learn about his favorite sport. “As far back as the 1960s, mandela began studying Afrikaans, the language of the white South Africans who created apartheid. His comrades in the ANC teased him about it, but he wanted to understand the Afrikaner’s worldview; he knew that one day he would be fighting them or negotiating with them, and either way, his destiny was tied to theirs.”
5.Keep your friends close — and your rivals even closer. “Many of the guests mandela invited to the house he built in Qunu were people whom, he intimated to me, he did not wholly trust. He had them to dinner; he called to consult with them; he flattered them and gave them gifts. Mandela is a man of invincible charm — and he has often used that charm to even greater effect on his rivals than on his allies. On Robben Island, Mandela would always include in his brain trust men he neither liked nor relied on.… Mandela believed that embracing his rivals was a way of controlling them: they were more dangerous on their own than within his circle of influence. He cherished loyalty, but he was never obsessed by it. After all, he used to say, ‘people act in their own interest.’ It was simply a fact of human nature, not a flaw or a defect.”
6.Appearances matter — and remember to smile:“When Mandela was running for the presidency in 1994, he knew that symbols mattered as much as substance. He was never a great public speaker, and people often tuned out what he was saying after the first few minutes. But it was the iconography that people understood. When he was on a platform, he would always do the toyi-toyi, the township dance that was an emblem of the struggle. But more important was that dazzling, beatific, all-inclusive smile.”
7.Nothing is black or white:“Life is never either/or. Decisions are complex, and there are always competing factors. To look for simple explanations is the bias of the human brain, but it doesn’t correspond to reality. Nothing is ever as straightforward as it appears. Mandela is comfortable with contradiction. As a politician, he was a pragmatist who saw the world as infinitely nuanced. Much of this, I believe, came from living as a black man under an apartheid system that offered a daily regimen of excruciating and debilitating moral choices: Do I defer to the white boss to get the job I want and avoid a punishment? Do I carry my pass? …. Mandela’s calculus was always, What is the end that I seek, and what is the most practical way to get there?”
8.Quitting is leading too:“Knowing how to abandon a failed idea, task or relationship is often the most difficult kind of decision a leader has to make. In many ways, Mandela’s greatest legacy as President of South Africa is the way he chose to leave it. When he was elected in 1994, Mandela probably could have pressed to be President for life — and there were many who felt that in return for his years in prison, that was the least South Africa could do.…. ‘His job was to set the course,’ says Ramaphosa, ‘not to steer the ship.’ He knows that leaders lead as much by what they choose not to do as what they do.”
I would like to start this post by saying;sometimes we get a jolt of reality on certain subjects in the most unusual of ways. Our abilities (especially leadership) come under scrutiny and calls for more of the learning process. In my quest for more I came across some lessons from some of the greatest leaders.
Read on.
8 leadership lessons from Nelson Mandela
Richard Stengel , who worked with Nelson Mandela on his autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom” has an article in Time titled “Mandela: His 8 Lessons of Leadership”, these 8 lessons of leadership are:
1.Courage is not the absence of fear — it’s inspiring others to move beyond it. “Mandela was often afraid during his time underground, during the Rivonia trial that led to his imprisonment, during his time on Robben Island. ‘Of course I was afraid!’ he would tell me later. It would have been irrational, he suggested, not to be. ‘I can’t pretend that I’m brave and that I can beat the whole world.’ But as a leader, you cannot let people know. ‘You must put up a front.’ And that’s precisely what he learned to do: pretend and, through the act of appearing fearless, inspire others. It was a pantomime Mandela perfected on Robben Island, where there was much to fear. Prisoners who were with him said watching Mandela walk across the courtyard, upright and proud, was enough to keep them going for days. He knew that he was a model for others, and that gave him the strength to triumph over his own fear.”
2.Lead from the front — but don’t leave your base behind. “For Mandela, refusing to negotiate was about tactics, not principles. Throughout his life, he has always made that distinction. His unwavering principle — the overthrow of apartheid and the achievement of one man, one vote — was immutable, but almost anything that helped him get to that goal he regarded as a tactic. He is the most pragmatic of idealists.”
3.Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front. “Mandela loved to reminisce about his boyhood and his lazy afternoons herding cattle. ‘You know," he would say, "you can only lead them from behind.’ He would then raise his eyebrows to make sure I got the analogy. As a boy, Mandela was greatly influenced by Jongintaba, the tribal king who raised him. When Jongintaba had meetings of his court, the men gathered in a circle, and only after all had spoken did the king begin to speak. The chief’s job, Mandela said, was not to tell people what to do but to form a consensus. "Don’t enter the debate too early," he used to say. … The trick of leadership is allowing yourself to be led too. ‘It is wise,’ he said, ‘to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.’”
4.Know your enemy — and learn about his favorite sport. “As far back as the 1960s, mandela began studying Afrikaans, the language of the white South Africans who created apartheid. His comrades in the ANC teased him about it, but he wanted to understand the Afrikaner’s worldview; he knew that one day he would be fighting them or negotiating with them, and either way, his destiny was tied to theirs.”
5.Keep your friends close — and your rivals even closer. “Many of the guests mandela invited to the house he built in Qunu were people whom, he intimated to me, he did not wholly trust. He had them to dinner; he called to consult with them; he flattered them and gave them gifts. Mandela is a man of invincible charm — and he has often used that charm to even greater effect on his rivals than on his allies. On Robben Island, Mandela would always include in his brain trust men he neither liked nor relied on.… Mandela believed that embracing his rivals was a way of controlling them: they were more dangerous on their own than within his circle of influence. He cherished loyalty, but he was never obsessed by it. After all, he used to say, ‘people act in their own interest.’ It was simply a fact of human nature, not a flaw or a defect.”
6.Appearances matter — and remember to smile:“When Mandela was running for the presidency in 1994, he knew that symbols mattered as much as substance. He was never a great public speaker, and people often tuned out what he was saying after the first few minutes. But it was the iconography that people understood. When he was on a platform, he would always do the toyi-toyi, the township dance that was an emblem of the struggle. But more important was that dazzling, beatific, all-inclusive smile.”
7.Nothing is black or white:“Life is never either/or. Decisions are complex, and there are always competing factors. To look for simple explanations is the bias of the human brain, but it doesn’t correspond to reality. Nothing is ever as straightforward as it appears. Mandela is comfortable with contradiction. As a politician, he was a pragmatist who saw the world as infinitely nuanced. Much of this, I believe, came from living as a black man under an apartheid system that offered a daily regimen of excruciating and debilitating moral choices: Do I defer to the white boss to get the job I want and avoid a punishment? Do I carry my pass? …. Mandela’s calculus was always, What is the end that I seek, and what is the most practical way to get there?”
8.Quitting is leading too:“Knowing how to abandon a failed idea, task or relationship is often the most difficult kind of decision a leader has to make. In many ways, Mandela’s greatest legacy as President of South Africa is the way he chose to leave it. When he was elected in 1994, Mandela probably could have pressed to be President for life — and there were many who felt that in return for his years in prison, that was the least South Africa could do.…. ‘His job was to set the course,’ says Ramaphosa, ‘not to steer the ship.’ He knows that leaders lead as much by what they choose not to do as what they do.”
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