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| The Difference a Virus Makes. Credits: Sunday Alamba/AP |
Blessing in the Darkness
What a month? Another one in the lockdown season. How many do we have so far? I guess 3 or so. This started for us in Lagos, Abuja, and Ogun (in Nigeria) at 11pm local time (22:00 GMT) on Monday 30th of March 2020, and is still in place to various degrees. There is still the 10 pm - 4 am curfew; the churches and mosques are still shut down, possibly for another four (4) weeks, or so; international flights are still restricted; mask-wearing in public places are enforced, and so on.I am getting more and more convinced I am the reason God allowed this shutdown. Call me crazy if you care, but it has given me so much opportunity to catch up on things I had left undone in the last two (2) years or say three (3) when I allowed myself to go through a season of life. A walking through the valley of the shadow of death they call it. Truly God says He'll give people for us. Call me crazy if you want, but I think He is doing that just for me.
I sure commiserate with everyone going through one hardship or the other, or that might have lost one relation or the other. Trusting God you'll pull through. Like it is said, such is life. It happens to every one of us. It is up to each of us to ensure it does not have the last say. Japanese would counsel, "fall down seven times, stand up eight." You must always stand up more than you fall. Make sure life never has one on you.
"Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous." (Albert Einstein)
Life Happens to us All
Life happens to us all, It comes to differentiate the wise from the foolish; the prepared from the unprepared; the strong from the weak. It is a test. It is not meant to knock us completely out of the game. It comes to test or bring reality to bear on what we claim to have, or been building. It comes to ensure we are not fooling ourselves. It comes to test our foundation. On what is it standing?
It's intent again is not to take us out of the game. It is just a checkpoint. It is a mere comma in the sentence of life. How we respond is what determines the punctuation mark it eventually wears, leaves us with, be it a period, semi-colon, full colon, and the like. We make the difference. We have the power. Life on its own beckons on our curiosity. Nothing just happens. As Albert Einstein so rightly stated, "Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."
There are no coincidences in life. Nothing just happens. Everything happens for a reason and serves a purpose. Our place is to be students of life, and people. Students, and not mere followers playing the “follow the followers” game. It takes being a student to become a master in the act of living. Just as it takes remaining a student to remain a master in the act of living.
It's intent again is not to take us out of the game. It is just a checkpoint. It is a mere comma in the sentence of life. How we respond is what determines the punctuation mark it eventually wears, leaves us with, be it a period, semi-colon, full colon, and the like. We make the difference. We have the power. Life on its own beckons on our curiosity. Nothing just happens. As Albert Einstein so rightly stated, "Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."
There are no coincidences in life. Nothing just happens. Everything happens for a reason and serves a purpose. Our place is to be students of life, and people. Students, and not mere followers playing the “follow the followers” game. It takes being a student to become a master in the act of living. Just as it takes remaining a student to remain a master in the act of living.
“Formal education will make you a living, self-education will make you a fortune,” (Jim Rohn)
Self-Education...Real Education
“Formal education will make you a living,” Jim Rohn says. “Self-education will make you a fortune,” he concludes. Formal education gets you a certificate, cardboard, which is truly useless in the marketplace. It is your streetwiseness that will differentiate you. The cardboard only vaguely attests to the possibility of you being streetwise. That will be tested, and proved, or disapproved.
It is what you are able to extract, interpolate, extrapolate, separate, add, divide, multiply and synthesize from what you see in nature, in life, and in people that will differentiate you out. Today, they call it by several different names, but no single one catches it all. So, we'll simply call it "Streetwise," or "Native Wisdom." That is where our self-education lies, the world is our classroom.
“It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.” (John Wooden) After you are done filling your head with knowledge and passing all that formal classroom exams, it is now time to face the real world. As Robert Kiyosaki so rightly said the rules are different. What you make, or can make of what you know far outweighs the fact that you know it.
It is what you are able to extract, interpolate, extrapolate, separate, add, divide, multiply and synthesize from what you see in nature, in life, and in people that will differentiate you out. Today, they call it by several different names, but no single one catches it all. So, we'll simply call it "Streetwise," or "Native Wisdom." That is where our self-education lies, the world is our classroom.
“It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.” (John Wooden) After you are done filling your head with knowledge and passing all that formal classroom exams, it is now time to face the real world. As Robert Kiyosaki so rightly said the rules are different. What you make, or can make of what you know far outweighs the fact that you know it.
"It is the familiar that usually eludes us in life. What is before our noses is what we see last." (William Barrett)
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| The Journey of Life |
Unlike formal education where things might be made difficult to help you task your brain. Here, things are seemingly easily so plain, and in clear view, they are missed by many. We commonize the obvious and so its wisdom eludes us. Like it is in our formal education, we expect everything to be difficult and complex, and thereby miss the wisdom it affords us.
Nature writes its wisdom all around us in the things that we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, and sense. These are so obvious it is a shame so few lay hold of it. "Success is the study of the obvious," Jim Rohn says. "Everyone should take Obvious I and Obvious II in school." William Barrett adds, "It is the familiar that usually eludes us in life. What is before our noses is what we see last."
Our success in life is in our ability to rest and learn from the obvious lessons all around us, including the ones happening in and around our own life, the positives and the negatives just as well. Curiosity they say killed the cat, but you are no cat. You are a human being, a living soul, one with a functioning mind. You just need to switch it on and win in this game. You are nothing without your mind switched on.
Nature writes its wisdom all around us in the things that we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, and sense. These are so obvious it is a shame so few lay hold of it. "Success is the study of the obvious," Jim Rohn says. "Everyone should take Obvious I and Obvious II in school." William Barrett adds, "It is the familiar that usually eludes us in life. What is before our noses is what we see last."
Our success in life is in our ability to rest and learn from the obvious lessons all around us, including the ones happening in and around our own life, the positives and the negatives just as well. Curiosity they say killed the cat, but you are no cat. You are a human being, a living soul, one with a functioning mind. You just need to switch it on and win in this game. You are nothing without your mind switched on.
"Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask why me? Then a voice answers nothing personal, your name just happened to come up." (Charles M. Schulz)
There is a Purpose. There is a Reason
Life happens, but it is for a purpose. It is for a reason and behooves us to learn from the purpose and the reason. Every happening in our life ought to leave us wiser, bolder, and more knowledgeable. Every incident in our life ought to leave us better than it met us. If not, there is something amiss. We are due for a resit, and a resit we shall have. For life will not progress until we learn the lessons we are supposed to learn at our present station.
It is been an awesome month sharing on one of my favorite subjects, MONEY. It is a shame there are still a couple of people out there still playing the hypocrite as it relates to money. They are in need of money. They want money. They'll be the first to sell their conscience for money, but instead of opening their mind to learn are putting up a fence. How do you help such?
We will just keep preaching the same old message. I have been doing this for close to two decades now and glad to see the transformation. We might be fully there yet, but we sure have come a very long way from where we use to be.
It is been an awesome month sharing on one of my favorite subjects, MONEY. It is a shame there are still a couple of people out there still playing the hypocrite as it relates to money. They are in need of money. They want money. They'll be the first to sell their conscience for money, but instead of opening their mind to learn are putting up a fence. How do you help such?
We will just keep preaching the same old message. I have been doing this for close to two decades now and glad to see the transformation. We might be fully there yet, but we sure have come a very long way from where we use to be.
My Thanks
Well, thanks for lending me your eyes, your ears, and your mind to fellowship. I hope this is moving the needle for you. You are the reason why I do this. I might as well shut it down and go find something else to do, but what can equate changing lives. That is my joy, my hope, and my calling. Again, thanks for your hand of fellowship. It's been another month. It's been another June.
Goodbye June 2020. Thanks for the blessings you brought along and so freely shared. Our lives will never be the same again.
© 2020 Akin Akinbodunse
Goodbye June 2020. Thanks for the blessings you brought along and so freely shared. Our lives will never be the same again.
© 2020 Akin Akinbodunse
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