READ! READ!! READ!!!

This week, I want us to briefly take a look at a very serious dying art...the lifestyle of reading. And not just reading, but reading of materials that have the potential to help improve our lives.

"Young people today are as bright and quick and potentially teachable as ever. The problem is they are no longer readers. They are watchers. Their most influential classroom is the TV screen. With each passing year, they know less and less about more and more." (BOB ORBEN)

How apt and frightening the above statement is.

Back in the day, when we were kids growing up, reading was very much important; pretty much important as it still is today. Unfortunately, the advent of technology seems to be taking more of a negative toll on the minds of many these days than making a positive impact. We all seem to prefer the quick glances at TV screens to get what we perceive as a faster and better way to learn, a more 'proactive' way of saving time and avoiding the rigors of sitting or staying in one place for a reasonable period of time with books to flood our precious minds with the much needed information capable of empowering us for life.

Technology has inundated us with several gadgets and devices that, I presume, were meant to help improve life; yet these gadgets and devices have more or less carried us to other realms of activities that seldom empower our minds, especially when it comes to reading, as we are too concerned with playing with these devices than learning with or through them.

Everyone's life is a direct reflection of his or her mind. And our minds must continually be in very healthy states and conditions for our lives to reflect the same. You will be in serious error to think that all you need in order to have a dream life, is to have the cars and houses and money in their millions or billions. You will be in serious error to think that all you need is to have a vast cache of acquisitions that can be flaunted before people and thus catapult you on to the stage of one of the best on the planet.  But at some point in time of your life, you will come to realize that nothing will ever compare to your having a healthy mind; a mind that can help you scale through issues and challenges because it has the capacity to do so. A mind that can make you stand out and thus naturally make you the attraction you probably may deserve. A very healthy mind.

For that to be possible, you will need to learn the art of reading. And am not just talking of you reading only to pass a class course or exam for academic grades, but you being able to expand the horizon of your mind by digging into books and reading materials that can empower you.

Our generation has really become very lazy. It's even the reason why many students continually make woeful grades during their SSCE and JAMB exams. And they even carry the lazy spirit into the universities and other tertiary institutions where, aside from exams malpractices, they don't have any hope of making it. It is also on the backdrop of this that some lecturers themselves have thrived in their quest to drain students of their pocket money or torment others for sex before helping them with grades for them to pass exams.

Quality reading is important for a quality mind to emerge. And such reading isn't ever possible if discipline is lacking. Good discipline is time-sensitive. You must be willing to spend good time reading good materials and books to help build up your mind.

Instead of the tons of man-hours we spend on social media every day (and am not saying social media is bad), we could actually spend a good portion of such hours feeding our minds with positive and healthy information; information that could see us become the best we can ever be tomorrow. 

Thirty minutes a day or even an hour of quiet reading can help develop your mind positively. Try to commit yourself to it and see the great impact it can make to your life. There is no alternative to quality reading if you 

want to have a better future. 

A healthy mind makes you an attraction and not a distraction. It empowers you to the point where your options of opportunities become vast and not limited. It boosts your confidence as you wake up each day to face it because you know you are prepared to face challenges. It helps you stand tall in the midst of others and takes away any form of intimidation from you.

Commit yourself to quality reading today instead of being distracted by the many excitements that abound all around us in many ways... and that end up not being of any good whatsoever to our lives.

You really should pause and ponder on this...

ORDER!!! (PART TWO)

This week, we shall continue on my thoughts about order, and I hope it would be most positively empowering for you.

ORDER YOUR LIFESTYLE

This is one area of our lives that most of us overlook or take for granted. I can't count the numerous times I've entered a new year with high hopes of changing my life and never really getting round to doing so. I'd say I must do this and this and this and this...to ensure my life is different this time around. I'd want to be healthier and fitter yet I can't get myself to be moderate about my eating habits or endure enough to carry out the little exercises that can help my cause. I constantly get into trouble because of the kind of company I keep, yet am not willing to make the hard but positive decisions to break free from that stronghold because of whatever misplaced loyalties I may have.

A good life isn't lived carelessly. A productive life isn't arrived at haphazardly. Careless living is dangerous and has impaling effects. Get a journal or a diary and list out properly what you really want to deal with or achieve this year. Schedule your life on a daily basis with little targets to be achieved and see that you do all you can to get them done. Success in one gives you the joy, enthusiasm and encouragement to want to tackle the next one head-on. Try knocking off the things your life doesn't need as much as you possibly can no matter how painful it may be. Because your life must work this year and you owe yourself that much.

Eat right, exercise well, sleep well, walk and sit properly, avoid drugs and substance abuse, drive sensibly on our roads, be careful with whom you relate...etc, etc. You get the general picture, don't you?

ORDER YOUR IDEAS

Everything we do stems out from what goes on inside our heads. And the average human brain carries loads of incredible things that can benefit thousands and millions. Ideas constantly flood our heads and minds on daily basis but only the ones that we take out good time and effort to mine out will ever amount to anything valuable or positive.

We must stop wasting this God-given ability and start using it properly. It has been severally said that ideas rule the world. So, a very good and positive idea that you have will help make your life a very worthwhile one this year. Learn to put your ideas down frequently. Learn to brood over those ideas constantly. And learn to try accomplishing something out of your ideas passionately. You never know what that seemingly small idea can do in the long run. You never know the lives it can affect positively or the institutions or systems it may be able to positively change permanently.

Transform your ideas from mere thoughts into tangible projects this year.There are many people who are copyrighting or patenting their brilliant ideas all the time. Aren't you as special and as gifted as well? Such brilliant and wonderful ideas coming from your head are called Intellectual Properties and could be worth a great fortune to you and to our world. So, don't play with them anymore.

There's great power in that head of yours. Use it well this time.

ORDER YOUR FINANCES

A lot of us are great failures at this (please, no insult intended). We are very poor with our money cum finances, yet we continually dream endlessly for higher pay plus bonuses on our jobs, for better financial rewards in our businesses, and even expect an avalanche of miracle money one way or another to just drop into our laps from God-knows where! We want to buy everything our eyes see, spend on anything our hearts seek and yet wonder why our money bleeds. We must change something about how we handle our finances otherwise we will continue to cry out every year that we are broke or that things are hard.

Don't get me wrong, am not saying that the economy isn't harsh...am saying that we can still stay afloat if only we can be a little bit more disciplined than we've being in the past. We must handle our finances better by tightening up the various leaky areas through which we've constantly be losing money. We must learn not to allow ourselves to be put under undue pressure by the need to belong, and realize that when we lose money by spending on unnecessary things or items, we end up hurting ourselves and not the people we were trying to impress by the acquisition of that new car or dress or shoes or belt or wrist watch or whatever else. I will always say this....."Why should I spend money I don't have to buy what I don't need just to impress people I don't like?"

Unnecessary pressure, I tell you. When we spend carelessly, we can be guaranteed a sure result of financial gloom and doom. It's as simple as that. There are things that we can delay from getting until we really have enough to acquire them without stress. And the best way to guarantee that we don't repeat the sad mistakes of years and times past is to simply order our finances. Get a budget prepared, my friend. Don't be afraid of it, it doesn't kill! In truth, a good budget that's well prepared and optimally adhered to can save your life a great deal in future. Through your budget, you can have concrete financial plans laid out. It will help you cut down on non-essentials and help you face only the essentials. Through your budget, you can have a very good savings plan that definitely will come in handy in the future. I will not lie to you; the little savings habit that I've been able to practice in the last ten years has yielded positive dividends. And each time I look back at what it has helped me to get, there's always that wry smile of satisfaction and achievement, as well as gratitude to God that I used my head in that matter.

In another blog post in the coming weeks, I'll do my best to outline and detail for you easy steps on how to arrange a budget that is unique to you and that will work for you. But please note that it is very necessary for you, and that it will save you loads of headache this year if you can adhere to this one little advice.

ORDER!!! (PART ONE)

There are two definitions of ORDER that I like:

1. "The arrangement or disposition of people or things in relation to each other according to a particular sequence, pattern or method."

2. "Putting things into their correct place following some rule."

Imagine the various wars that have been fought on this planet and in fact are still being fought and what comes to your mind? Imagine car drivers driving on the wrong side of the road at terrifying and impaling speeds; what comes to your mind? Imagine the mayhem of customers all thronging against each other at the door of a supermarket heatedly aspiring to get inside because it has all the goods in its store on sale; what comes to your mind? Imagine the various coaches of a speed train coming off the rails as the train speeds on with thousands of people inside; what comes to your mind? Imagine you wake up in the morning with loads of things to do yet not knowing where to begin; what comes to your mind?

I could go on and on but am pretty certain you already get the drift of what am getting at.

Without order, things will never be very right in our lives. It is the one most important thing that enables us to sail somewhat accurately and assuredly towards a particular goal, target or destination. When I was in college, I do recall been taught in Mathematics that, "The shortest distance between two points is a straight line." Any other route one takes towards one's destination that isn't straight will mean one will get there pretty late, or possibly may not even get there at all. Order is that straight line that takes us from where we are to where we hope or expect to get to. It is a very key element, if not the most important one, in every person's life that we cannot afford to throw away.

Now we have stepped into a new year with all our usual expectations and high hopes and glamorous plans of success and victories, just like we did last year, and the year before last year, and the year preceding that too! Expectations, expectations, expectations; everyone of us eager for a better season this term around than the last one. But, in truth, seldom are quite a number of us actually ready for them. We often step into a new year with exactly the same mindset as the last and yet have the hope that things will be different somehow. How, my dear friend; how? Without order in our lives, we all have the potential to spill out of control. When things are not put in their proper places and perspectives, nothing moves or gets done well...and we all have to resolve to do what is necessary in order for us not to have the same unprofitable results like we had the last time. 

Proper order in our lives is the key. If we are expecting better results this year than last year, then we must assiduously and consciously put order into our lives because no one else is meant to do it for us and because it's the only way we can be assured of meeting our goals.  We must, therefore, order our minds, our time, our lifestyles, our businesses, our jobs, our finances, our health, our families, our education, our driving habits, our relationships, our ideas, our speech and even our legacies. In fact, the list goes on and on...but I don't have space to spill all. Yet this simple, practical step will save us loads of stress in the future.

Recently, I realized that my room has been in a serious mess; I just seem to have everything thrown anywhere I like in it. Even when I make a mental note to tidy up a particular area of the room later, I somehow never get round to doing so. Other important matters  find some way of stopping me from doing so. But see, it is my room!!!! Where I sleep and rest after a whole day of work and running around. It is the place where I lay my head and get recuperated for the next day; and if it's untidy, that's how I will meet it when next I want to sleep. This will affect my whole body system because I will end up not having a good night's rest. But once my room is all tidied up, I can sleep in peace and comfort and the tranquility of my mind is guaranteed.

ORDER YOUR MIND

Our minds are the engine rooms for every decision we make and every action we take. If anything will change in our results this new year, how our minds work will be key to that. We must, therefore, put our minds in proper order. Certain unprofitable ways of thinking must go. Everything that has not worked in the past we must drop and instead strive to re-arrange things for better results. This would mean reading more, studying more and doing all we can to educate and improve our minds because no one individual knows everything. If we can put our minds in order, we would put our lives in order because everything that goes on in our minds affect our lives.

ORDER YOUR TIME

The way we use our time this year has to be better than we have in the past. This is so because time is a very serious and essential matter and tool that, if utilized properly, will help us to attain growth and success. We must stop wasting time on non-profitable adventures and instead invest it in worthwhile ventures. We must take the time we have here on earth seriously because nobody lives for ever. We need to take our wake-up and sleeping times more seriously. We need to value our being on time to work and important meetings instead of this so-called African Time that is anti-order. We need to practice how to finish or accomplish certain tasks that we are saddled with at the expected time and not behave as though we own time. Because in truth, the fact that we have time (by being alive) does not  mean that we own it. I will never forget how I wasted precious time and years doing the wrong things after I left college instead of utilizing time by engaging myself in preparing for university. I had to write the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board (JAMB) exams five times before I could eventually enter the university. And of the five times, it was only at the fifth time of asking that I really was serious and didn't play with my study time.

Next week, we will continue in this line of thought as I'll reel out other areas that are important that we put order into.

SET-UP YOURSELF...

A few days ago, a friend and fellow colleague of mine walked up to me for advice with which he hopes to properly start up the new year. He was particularly concerned about not wanting to make either a wrong or poor start to this new season. And I understood why he had that concern.

Usually, the way you start may not necessarily mean you'll end that way, but it does really matter because it often helps to set-up the foundation for the rest of the journey. So, all things being equal, if you start well, there's a great possibility that you'll have a good journey and subsequently eventually end well. I don't know about you; but this year, for me, has to bring in better dividends than last year did, and am very eager to see that happen.

My eagerness, however, is one thing. How I go about achieving it is another. In my first blog for 2014, I did outline a few things I said I was hoping to achieve this year. And I know that am not the only one carrying dreams full of possibilities for the year. Still, except we take out time to properly plan, we most likely won't see anything positive happen.

I call the time for proper planning SET-UP TIME. It's a very crucial period when we should sit down and take proper stock of our lives, our potentials, our hopes, the possibilities, the constraints...virtually all the factors that could play vital roles in our march to achieving what we want and desire for the year. The Set-Up Time is actually the Thinking Time.

Quite a number of people hardly do this in the New Year. Yes, they are filled with expectations but such expectations are nothing more than mere wishes because there are no plans backing them up. We have to stop acting on whims and yet expect concrete results. Our outputs can never be better than the level of our preparation. I heard of a study that said, "Only 5% of the human race think. 15% think they are thinking, and the remaining 80% will rather die than think."  Now, that may sound a little bit too far-fetched to you, but do please calm down and take some quality time out to think through your expectations and plans for this year. It will do you a whole lot of good.

By setting up yourself properly for this year, you would actually be leading yourself right. A lot of the time we view leadership as "Me leading others,"  when in truth it has to be first "Me leading myself." Once am able to properly lead myself, I now stand in good stead to be able to lead others and also take charge of what I need to so that I can properly control and direct the affairs of my life. Living a life of chance is definitely not what I plan to do this year because an achievement is more fulfilling when I see the results I had planned for. Nothing beats that.

Take out quality time to plan your goals. But spend a good chunk of that time to do some very good thinking.

  You will definitely come out with a solid structure upon which you can now ride on for the rest of the year. Your mind is carrying the building blocks of all the success you can ever achieve in 2014 and am eager to celebrate with you when we all get to the end of this new season.

This is the year you and I have been waiting for, so let's take the necessary steps that we should and that will lead us gradually but definitely to where we want to be.

Set-up yourself for your success this year.

Take out some time to pause and ponder on this thought....

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!

Happy New Year, folks!!!! And welcome to 2014, a year a lot of us have been looking up to with great expectations. A year dreams and hopes are expected to come true for many. A year in which loads of happiness and joy are expected to flow. A year in which things are expected to work, where the failures of the past year or years are expected to be forgotten and success is expected to be embraced. A year we all hope will end well.

2014.

For me, I believe it's going to be one great ride of a year. The year in which my next set of books, IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE PERFECT, MIND YOUR MIND and GIFTED!!! finally get published and released. The year my radio programme, PAUSE & PONDER MOMENTS ON RADIO kicks off. The year my podcast and YouTube presence finally get to roll. The year my media outfit begins to make positive waves in the country. The year my investments become more stable. The year my vision and plans for an empowering seminar finally comes to fruition. And the year I take that bold step with her as she smiles non-stop into my eyes with everlasting affection (am smiling here.....hehehehehehehehehe).

Great plans, not so? Am sure you'd agree that they are. Am telling you, should they all pan out, I would be one of the happiest persons on this planet.

Hold on one minute though... As much as I do know that they are plans I so eagerly await to see all come true, am also conscious of the fact that if there's first of all no dream, I cannot possibly eventually get to the end. So, my friends, I implore you all to DREAM!!!! Because no dream, no hope; no hope, no expectations; no expectations, no possibilities; no possibilities, no effort; no effort, no results; and no results, no fulfillment.

And as the days and weeks go by, I will do my little best to show you how best to get the most out of this new year. And I sincerely do hope I do a good job for you all.

So, get your journals, pens and enthusiasms ready and up because it's certainly going to be a good year!!!!

Once again, welcome to 2014!!!!!!!