One of the first Christian books that I finished by the time that I decided to become intentional with my relationship with The Lord was ‘The Purpose Driven Life’ by Rick Warren, which, I have to admit, took me over forty days to read even though the advice of the author was that each of the 40 chapters were to be read one a day for forty days. The book opened my eyes to a question that I had never even thought of asking myself before, and that was the question of what my purpose was in this life.

Of course, throughout my life, I had thought a lot about what I wanted to be in life, and I had moved from wanting to be a medical doctor to a professor, and then somehow wound up studying law. A lot of what I wanted to be was hinged on the fact that I wanted to make a lot of money, and be, as I am sure every child has dreamt of being at least once or twice in his or her life, the richest person in the world.

In fact, when I was in secondary school, in one of my first journals, I wrote that as an adult; I was going to make 75 billion dollars, which of course, at the time, there had been no billionaires that had risen to that point. And with that amount of money, I was sure that I was going to be boosted to becoming the richest person in the world.

Never did I, during those years, think of what my purpose was based on what the Lord wanted me to do. 

That has changed, of course, and that happened, to a large extent, by the time that I was done reading the book. But it was not the only thing that made me go back to thinking about what my purpose was.

A few months ago, in a conversation that I had with a Christian family that I was a member of, a question was brought forth, and that was what we all wanted to be in our lives. Each of the people that I sat with was given the opportunity to talk about what we wanted to be and I got to sit and hear those that wanted to practice different areas of law, those that wanted to open studios, become businessmen, and kingdom wealth builders, those that wanted to open fast-food joints, those that wanted to study to the peak of education, those that wanted to become philanthropists.

During my turn, I have to admit that I felt a bit at loss for words. For one, I did not have as much as those that I had listened to had. As I listened to them, only one thing came to my mind.

But first, I set things out clearly. I did not know whether I was going to be practising the law that I was studying; I did not know whether I was going to further my education. In the next ten years, I said, I was not even sure that I had marriage and children in view. 

There were only two things that I had in mind. One was that I wanted to live the monastic lifestyle, spending months in solitude, away from the cares of the world, with a safe space to think, and I wanted to write, write words that would glorify the name of the Lord, books that would inspire change and a transformation in the lives of others, books like those of the renowned preachers and self-growth coaches, both fiction and non-fiction alike.

Also, I had it in mind, even though I was not sure of it at that moment, that somewhere in the near future, I wanted to be the one person who would bring about a mental illness awareness in Nigeria through my writings, as I realised that Nigerians seemed to heavily neglect that aspect of health more than others.

I felt as though what I had said was insufficient, given that it was not as fully fleshed out as some others were. And that felt wrong for me, given the fact that I do very much like to think of myself as very driven and ambitious but the key thing I had to note was that, not only were the things that I said the first things that assuredly came to my mind the first time that I heard the question of what I wanted to do with my life, but I also had the time, although it was limited, to think up more things to add to the list of things that I had in mind.

After the discussion, which later spanned to a teaching on how what the Lord may have planned for us might not be what we have planned for ourselves, we began to sing a song and a prayer over and over again, which went like this:

“Thy will be done.”

The song had only this as the chorus, with us inserting things to go with the song like:

“Even when I am weary, thy will be done

Even when it is not my plan, thy will be done

Even if it is difficult, thy will be done.”

I have a prayer book, and shortly after that, I wrote two things down in that prayer book.

They were

“Father please, I want to be ever focused, ever pushing on to achieve the purpose that you have set out for me. Father, please give me the grace to conquer and overcome every distraction that seeks to make this not to become a reality for me.”

And 

“Father, I do not know where you are leading me, what direction you wish for my life to take. But Lord, please open my eyes so that I may tow in that direction.”

After saying those prayers, there was no instant revelation that came to me as to what I was supposed to do. But that was not surprising. After all, I knew people that I considered greater leaders than I am in the faith that admitted that they were not sure of what it was that they were going to do. And besides, I was aware that sometimes, the Lord does not show you the end of the road. He just directs your steps. But when you reach there, you will know that you have arrived at the promised land.

But then again, there are people who are aware of their purpose, know clearly what path they are to chart in their lives, even those that may know there is a chance that the Lord will not come in and pop some surprise for them in their lives. But for a lot of us, I believe that we still have to keep treading on the paths that the Lord has set out for us, mostly unaware of where he is going to lead us to, unaware of where the final destination is going to be in. Sometimes, we may not even be aware of the fact that the Lord is charting a way for us in the first place.

I have found that for a lot of biblical leaders, that is usually the path that the Lord prefers. When the Lord told Hosea to marry Gomer, a prostitute, in Hosea 1:2, He told him what it was to represent, but not what the end goal of it all was.

When Joseph began to have his dreams and visions, which eventually led him to be hated by his brothers and be carried out to Egypt, he just followed the way that his circumstances forced him to, ensuring that he did not deviate from the ways of the Lord, without knowing that he was towing the way that the Lord had set out for him.

The Lord kept Abraham largely in the dark, even though he was knowledgeable about the fact that he was to be a father of many nations, of whether it was going to be possible given that his wife was barren. It took till Abraham was seventy-five before he even received a message that seemed to indicate that the Lord had plans to give him any children at all. 

Moses was largely in the dark until his eighties as to what he was saved for. He knew that he was a child that was saved by the Lord from death, but the Lord did not tell him what purpose he was exempted for until much later in his life.

But then, some people knew or rather had an inkling of an idea of what they were to be carved out to achieve from the Lord right at the beginning before they were to perform their tasks. Over the years, there have been people that have received the call, to be pastors, missionary workers, to preach the word of the Lord through their medical practice, law practice, etc. But I would like to believe that even in the midst of their knowledge, there still has to be a sense of uncertainty, they still have to contact the Lord daily to know if they are or are not going in the right direction.

THE WILL OF THE LORD VS OUR TALENTS

So more recently, I have had the vague sense of knowledge of the fact that whatever the Lord has called me out to be, there has to be an element of my writing talents that will be used for it. The Lord was the one who gave me the gift. What other reason would he have given it to me for?

There is this school of thought that believes that whatever our purposes are, it has to stem from what we like to do, what we are naturally good at, and what our talents are. If you know how to sing, then that must mean that the Lord has called you to be a singer. If you are an intellectual, then it must mean that the Lord has called you to be an academic.

And I believe that there has to be an element of truth in that. Most of the time, we do not know what we will end up doing, but most can hinge on the assurance that one way or the other, the talents that the Lord has given to us, the things that we are naturally inclined to do, will be what will determine what God has created us to do.

But is that exhaustive? Gideon was a coward, and yet the Lord called him to be a great war leader. Moses was a stutterer and yet the Lord called him to lead a nation. Most of the apostles were bereft of the education that would make one capable of being able to preach to a crowd of people, but they were called to do that. I know pastors, evangelists, and bishops, that have said that in all their life, there was no way that they would have envisioned that this was the path that the Lord had set out for themselves, that there was nothing that gave it away that they would have any talents or gifts that would lead them to be able to do the things that they were called to be. Many have testified to the fact that they cried and fasted even, when they received a clear sign of what the Lord wanted them to do, unable to understand why they had been chosen.

But in the end, they showed, despite the assumed lack of talents, that they had what it took to do what they were assigned to do. After all, whomever the Lord anoints, he equips.

So maybe it is not a question of personal talents or what we love doing but what the Lord has equipped us to do. Sometimes, it may align with what we think are our talents and what we enjoy doing. Sometimes, we might not have been able to figure out that we were equipped for the purpose until after it has been revealed to us.

I was listening to an audiotape by a preacher once when I got something that I knew had to be reassurance from the Lord as to what direction my purpose was to take me. The preacher had mentioned something about the fact that the entertainment that we have in the world has been polluted by the devil and that he uses it to trap the souls of men. And that was when I heard a still small voice inside of me tell me I was to make an impact for the Lord in the entertainment sector. I do not know exactly what I will do, but I know that by this, my purpose is to cause a turnaround in the entertainment sector of the world through my writing. 

I do not have a clear map as to where I would have to go, but that is of no concern to me. For I am assured of the fact that wherever the Lord tells me to go, I have prayed and asked for the grace to be able to go. But I do know that I will make use of my God-given talent for writing.

THE WILL OF GOD VS OUR PLANS AND DREAMS

When we were having that meeting, a woman that decided to join us in the retreat camp that we went to stopped us in the middle of the discussion. And then she proceeded to mention something that I believe is worthy of note.

Her message was simple and clear. She made it known to us that stating plans for our future and dreams the way that we stated them were things that were meant for the secular world. As for us, we should never fix our minds rigidly on whatever plans it may be that we may have made for ourselves.

Therefore, there is a chance that every vision and dream that you have been working towards by God could be upended by the Lord because it may not be what the Lord has set out for us.

After all, our purpose supersedes our ambitions, the plans that we have made for ourselves, and where we see ourselves in the nearby future. Our purpose is not meant to come from within, but from whatever that the Lord has set out for us. After all, He alone knows why he created us. He alone knows the good plans that he has made for us according to Jeremiah 1: 5.

So, does that mean that we are not meant to have plans, dreams, goals, or visions for our future? Does that mean that we are not allowed to plan our lives, and make career choices because the Lord may have other plans for us?

I do not think so. But there is a bit of condition precedent to making any plans for our lives as Christians, a condition precedent to having dreams and goals for our lives.

According to James 4: 13-15

13. Look here, you who say, “Today or tomorrow, we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.” 

14. How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog- it is here a little while, then it’s gone.

15. What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.”

That is the condition precedent. We are allowed to make plans by the Lord, we are allowed to have dreams and set out goals for ourselves. In fact, to be successful in life, we have to do these things, otherwise we will roam about listlessly, not knowing what we are doing with our lives. 

But whatever plan that we are making, whatever dreams that we have, we should have in mind that the ultimate plan is to achieve the purpose that the Lord has created us to do and we should always seek the help of the Holy Spirit to ensure that we are working according to the plans that God has set out for our lives.

THE FIVE PURPOSES THAT THE LORD HAS SET OUT FOR US

According to the book by Rick Warren, there are five purposes that we should always have in mind as we set out on our day-to-day activities. These are the core reasons that we have been created on this earth and we should never ignore any of them.

1. The centre of our lives - Worship

2. The community of our lives - Fellowship

3. The character of our lives - Discipleship

4. The contribution of our lives – Ministry or Service

5. The communication of our lives – Mission or Witnessing 

All in all, to discover our purpose, we should always seek the face of the Lord through prayers, the study of the word, meditation, and retreats. And if we have been working according to the footsteps of the Lord, we should be assured that even if we do not have a clear picture of where the Lord is leading us, we are heading in the right direction, in the direction of our purpose.

What views do you have on the topic of purpose? Have you discovered what purpose the Lord has for your life? Please share in the comments.

During the month of May, I spent a lot of time reading different genres of fiction to widen my perspective as a fiction writer. However, I was able to get out some time to study self-help, productivity, and spiritual books to ensure that I never lost track of what I was focused on attaining, and that is, becoming the ideal person that I would like to become. The books that I read in May were as enlightening as they were inspirational, and as a result, I would highly recommend that you look at the books to tap from the wealth of knowledge that I could sift out of them.

 

1.      SECRETS OF THE MILLIONAIRE MIND BY T HARV EKER

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This was the first book on finances and wealth creation that I read in a while. The book is written by a man who had made his fortune by opening a line of fitness stores and it has quite a few tips on wealth making and the difference in mindset between those that make and properly manage their wealth and those that do not.

The first thing that the author mentions is something that he refers to as a ‘money blueprint’. Part one of the book is fully dedicated to the analysis of this concept, which, in essence, can be explained as the thought and behaviours that we have around money which are formed by our childhood experiences, particularly in line with what our parents’ attitude towards money was. Some people, depending on their childhood experiences, usually ended up patterning their attitudes towards money similar to that of their parents, while some revolted against it. He spends his time explaining it and then stating, with examples, that no matter what money blueprint anyone may have, it can be changed.

Part two of the book deals with ‘wealth files’, in which he lists seventeen ways that rich people think and act differently from poor and middle-class people. Some of the seventeen points which resonated with me are:

· Rich people choose to get paid based on results. Poor people choose to get paid based on time.

· Rich people manage their money well. Poor people mismanage their money well.

· Rich people constantly learn and grow. Poor people think they already know.

· Rich people act in spite of fear. Poor people let fear stop them.

· Rich people focus on opportunities. Poor people focus on obstacles.

Some of the other tips that I got from the book are:

· Without passive income, you can never be free.

· The only time you are actually growing is when you are uncomfortable.

· Training and managing your mind is the most important skill you could ever own, in terms of both happiness and success.

· The secret to success is not to try to avoid or get rid of or shrink from your problems; the secret is to grow yourself so that you are bigger than any problem.

· If you want to get paid the best, you have to be the best.

Whilst the book had a vast array of knowledge to share, I have to say that I found some issues with it. For instance, I found that several parts of his text had a lot of new-age religion teachings that had to do with ‘The Secret’ sort of manifestation, aligning your vibrations with the universe, and other pseudo-science. In fact, each of the chapters ended with affirmations and after some time, I got tired of seeing the instruction to repeat “I have a millionaire mind!” repeatedly. There were also weird instructions such as the one to pick stray money off the road and shout, “Thank you, universe, for sending me money” and stuff like that and I found it to be a wee bit hilarious.

Also, I felt that there was just too much self-promotion in the book. Sure, a bit of self-promotion is not bad, but in each chapter, it appeared he found his way to keep hounding the fact that I could only get more if I registered for his courses and that what was written in the book was just the tip of the iceberg.

All in all, I would recommend it for those that are fresh in their study of books on finances and such. It does not have as much depth as some other books out there do, but it has bits of advice that could change the mindsets of some people out there.

2.      THE WORK/LIFE BALANCE MYTH BY DAVID J MCNEFF

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This book debunks the saying that life is divided into only work and life and lists seven aspects of our lives or slices that we all need to focus on to achieve harmony and balance in our lives.

The seven slices which the author lists are: family, professional, personal, physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual slices and the author lists practical ways how to balance these slices plus real-life examples and stories of how other people were able to achieve the same in their lives.

The author promises that if one could learn how to make use of what he refers to as ‘the seven slice method’, while it would not make the stressful elements of one’s life vanish, it will improve the ability of a person to manage such stressful situations.

Furthermore, the author guarantees that by giving adequate focus to all the aforementioned seven aspects of one’s life, one would be able to achieve happiness and success in one’s life.

Some tips that I got from the book were:

· When you have a sense of harmony, your daily life feels more manageable, and you enjoy it more.

· Many take their bodies for granted, yet the state of our body’s health has a direct impact on every other aspect of our lives. After all, the body is the vehicle that carries you in each slice of your life.

· We should check in with our emotions every once in a while for our own benefit, given how easy it is to overlook them, put them aside, and then wait for the day they either implode or explode.

· Slowing down to self-access in a real and tangible way allows you to pay attention to yourself.

· Agreeing to too many requests comes with a price - by devoting so much time to others, you may lose a sense of balance in your life. You must be able to say when enough is enough, and that starts with effectively managing time and setting boundaries.

It was a good book and I recommend it to all that are looking towards being productive even as they do all that they need in order to ensure that they do not put every other thing on the line just so as to achiev career success. By the time I was done with the book, I realised I needed to invest more in my spiritual and physical life, checking what I was eating and making sure that I carved out enough time to invest in my faith. And I was able to also use the book as a guide to teaching some others about the benefits of ensuring that all the aspects of their lives were properly balanced as well.

 

3.      WHEN GOD DOESN’T MAKE SENSE BY DR JAMES DOBSON

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This was the book that was studied in the book club I manage this month. It is by a Christian writer who examines what goes on when it feels as though God has forsaken us as Christians and how we can hold on to our faith during periods of pain and distress as Christians. It was a really insightful book that helped me discern a lot of spiritual things.

According to the author, almost every Christian, at some stage in life, reaches the betrayal barrier, in which it seems that the Lord has forsaken us when we are in moments of crisis and pain. He states it is not wrong to try to discern the reason why the Lord lets us pass through such hard times, but that we should have it in mind that the ways of the Lord are unsearchable and past finding out, and hence, we should lean not on our own understanding in trying to discern the ways of the Lord.

The author also states that trial and suffering are part of the human condition and that they can be essential for the development of character. Also, he believes that the main reason why a lot of Christians are unable to handle pain is that they have been inculcated into the doctrine that having steadfast faith in God guarantees a happy, carefree life. He believes that this is firmly wrong and that looking at examples from the biblical martyrs and apostles, it appears our faith almost guarantees us some form of abuse from the world.

Furthermore, he states the adversity principle, which is that without adversity, no soul properly matures, giving examples of people like Stephen Hawking, who were able to grow strong and achieve all that they could achieve despite their disabilities, some of them even claiming that the disabilities and the challenges they have faced, as a result, have made them strong enough to achieve the things that they were able to achieve.

Another thing that he notes, is that if just being a Christian was all one needed to live a perfect life, then the entire basis of God’s relationship with man would be undermined as people would seek friendship with Him to gain the benefits, rather than responding with a heart of repentance and love and that the most greedy of humans would be the first to draw to the Lord.

Again, he notes that we should not neglect the fact that sin can play a key factor in causing us the pain that we suffer. According to the author, it is not that God sits in heaven and determines to abuse those that makes mistake, but that He forbade certain behaviour because He knew that it would ultimately destroy its victims. He states examples of sexual sins and the chronic diseases that have killed millions around the world as a result.

Finally, the author states that we should not forget the transitory nature of life. If we remember that after this temporary life comes permanent rest in heaven, then life’s frustrations would not be so frustrating. He also states though the pain could be terrible here on earth, we must never forget that soon we will be reunited with the Lord in heaven when our tears will be removed forever.

Some points I noted in the book are:

· God is present and involved in our lives even when He seems deaf or in an extended leave of silence.

· God’s timing is perfect, even when He appears catastrophically late.

· For reasons that are impossible to explain, we human beings are incredibly precious to God.

· If we were given all that we wanted here on earth, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next.

· The lord doesn’t always solve our problems instantaneously, and He sometimes permits us to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Eventually, we’ll all take that journey. But He is there with us even in the darkest hours, and we can never escape His encompassing love.

I would definitely recommend this book, not only for those suffering through hardship but to all people here on earth. There is a wealth of knowledge to be tapped from the book and it would go a long way in increasing your knowledge of the ways and the principles of the Lord, and why certain things here on earth are the way that they are. But the author says and is clear in stating that He is not out to get a cohesive answer to the problems of the world with his book, for no one can know the ways of the Lord.

 

4.      PROBLOGGER BY DARREN ROWSE AND CHRIS GARRETT

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This is a book written by two bloggers on how one can be able to prosper and commercialise the art of blogging. It focuses on blogging as a career path and not just as a hobby and gives various tips on how to get an audience, how to generate multiple streams of income through blogging, how to manage a community, and how to cooperate with other bloggers and so on. It is a splendid book for all that are hoping to get into blogging and I would recommend doing so as well as going on the blog ‘Problogger’ to get even more tips on blogging.

So what about you? What personal growth books did you study last month?

 

 

Being a productive, well-rounded person is hard. I don’t think there are enough people out there that are actually talking about this well enough.

It is difficult to get up in the morning, plan your day, and then try all that you can to manage your time to ensure that you optimally use your day, sometimes regardless of how you feel.

Sure, there are some days that you wake up and get a burst of energy that lasts for half the day in which you just want to perform, get all your tasks done on time, and genuinely will enjoy the feeling of grinding for a major chunk of the day.

For me, that happens about once a week, and often, I get that sort of energy after spending the previous day not performing to the best of my abilities and then wake up and, instead of acknowledging the guilt that is really the reason underlying my sudden burst of energy, I decide to overachieve the next day. Of course, one thing that I have learnt is that when I set out to over achieve, I do not end up being able to accomplish all that I have set out to do. As I explained in my other post on planning my days , I am almost a pro at setting out to do just too much in a day than is humanly possible.

However, most of the time, I wake up, and I hover around median energy, the sort of energy that I need to accomplish just enough sometimes, without particularly over romanticizing what I am about to do. So I wake up and I know I am going to work, I may or may not enjoy it, but I am going to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment that I get when I perform the tasks that I have set out for myself.

And then there are days I wake up and feel an intense headache just looking at my laptop, and feel as though I would rather do any other thing than actually sit down to work.

A few productivity books acknowledge days like this, the ‘hard days’, the days in which you do not have any atom of motivation left in you, in which your reserve of willpower is completely dried up, in which you want to do nothing but lie in bed and press your phone and watch movies and eat junk food, do any other thing than get up to do some work.

Sometimes, I have found that this also happens after a day of over exerting myself. I wake up then, feeling weary and sleep deprived, and then I look at my desk, and remember how hellish the other day was, how I worked myself up to a headache, and then just the thought of getting up and being as productive as I was the other day is enough to send chills running down my spine.

There are two things that usually happen to me when this sort of situation comes up. One is that I may actually laze about for a few hours before I finally guilt trip myself into working, or I remember people on YouTube, study streamers, who spend 12 hours daily doing nothing but sitting on their desks and studying, even one that was able to do so for an entire year, or the productivity gurus that I read books on who can achieve seemingly impossible feats and then I get hard on myself, and I force myself to get up and sit on that desk and open that laptop and work. I mean, I have read enough productivity books to know that ‘the grind never stops’ (but it can take some pauses though).

And then there are days it happens to me mid day. As a creative, there are bound to be times in which I get so frustrated with my writing that I just abandon it all and go to take a nap or go do something else to avoid staring at the jargon that I am conjuring up. But then, the problem is, the moment that I leave work that I am doing, it is terribly difficult to summon the energy to go back to continue, especially when I know that going back to it means going back to the hurdle that I know I am supposed to provide a solution for.

But that is just one of the problems. Because there is a reason there are scores of books on productivity and discipline and why, according to Market Research Blog, the self-help industry is worth over 10.5 billion dollars (according to a 2020 research). You see, this discipline is very difficult to accomplish and we humans are not very good at it.

I think one reason hard days are so, well, hard is because it is in those days that it seems almost impossible to practice delayed gratification. I mean, do you think it is easy to put away your phones and delete loved apps and movies so that you can actually work to become, you know, successful and accomplished in life? Of course not. You think there is anyone out there who, when given the choice between working out, getting up early, performing tasks, checking off to-do lists, being productive and just lying on the bed and streaming movies for hours on end, with the assurance of still ending up being successful would choose the former? I mean, the person would have to be half mad.

We all know that. We all have had situations in which we have had to let go of things that we would rather do just so that we can accomplish things that we have set out for ourselves. And we all know how much it hurts to do so. And one thing that I have learnt is that it hurts even more during the hard days.

I feel like one of the true reason it is so difficult for people to push through during the hard days, is because that you never really know whether you are even going to succeed, despite all that you put yourself through to ensure that you do. Have you ever had that moment, when, during the times in which you have lost all motivation, you find yourself thinking, well, this might not even work anyway, so why even bother? I know that I have.

There is a lot of difference between knowing that if you wait for sometime more and exercise will power, that you will most definitely get the second cookie and being made to exercise willpower on the grounds that even if you wait, there is no real assurance that you might get that second cookie.

This, I have found out, can be a major deterrent to even exercising discipline in the first place. I mean, it is really difficult to burn the midnight candle when there is always that knowledge at the back of your mind that you might not even end up being successful.

Are you reading on, hoping that I would provide some sort of tried and tested way of putting a permanent end to the pain and the uncertainty that is associated with discipline and delayed gratification, to push through the hard days? Because there is none. Trust me, if there were, I would have found it already somehow.

Sure, if you do your research, you might find some feel good articles or write-ups that would give you 200 things to do to ensure that you remain productive all the time and ensure that you succeed no matter what. But there is a chance that you might end up feeling guilty when you wake up some mornings and find that even after all you have done, you still have the hard days, the days when work feels like actual literal hell.

The point remains that this is a normal part of human existence, and we just have to deal with it. But there is one thing that I have found, and it is that, when you are properly equipped, it is easier for you to deal with it. Being properly equipped with all the right knowledge on habit formation, the ways to push through hard days, how to subdue the demon of procrastination and so on makes the difference between a person who gives in to his or her lack of motivation on hard days and the person who actually pushes through when such days come up.

This post is already long enough, and taking a proper deep delve into the different methods and systems used by the best productivity coaches will take quite a lot of words, so I think I will leave with just a few tips, nothing more.

First is this, realize that whilst there would be an uncertainty as regards success no matter how hard you work towards it, you can most definitely be assured of failure if you fail to put in the necessary work to achieve your dreams. Yes, sure, if we were in an ideal perfect world in which all things worked out just how we wanted things to go, we would not have to worry about failure after working hard. A good number of the time, we would face setbacks as we work towards our goals, but this should never hold us back from doing the needful in terms of our goals and dreams. And this should nevr be an excuse to give in during the hard days.

However, always remember to put the Lord into whatever you are working towards, so that at least, if you experience any setbacks, you can be sure that it is God’s instruction for you to keep pushing as it is not the right time to get the desired success and not a clear indication of the fact that you are not working in line with your purpose in life.

Again, I can never underestimate the importance of just starting. One thing that I have found is that even during the times in which I have felt as though I would rather do anything other than do a particular activity, the moment that I started, I would end up being able to do more work than I thought I would be capable of doing.

Of course, if it were easy to just start, a lot of us would have started doing the important things that we were supposed to do a long time ago, but it is very difficult to when you are not in the mood to. Some time later, I will write a blog post on the importance of making yourself bored enough that you have no other option than to work (and by this, I mean removing all distractions so that you can have nothing else to take your mind off doing the needful).

Another thing that is important is to understand your energy levels and how to optimize it so that you do not feel weak and lethargic when you are supposed to be active and productive. But this is something that I am still working on and researching on, so it would be a post for another day. One of the key methods that I have learned, however, is that understanding your sleep cycle, can help with keeping us at optimal energy and that we should all acknowledge the importance of knowing the effects that food, especially sugar and energy boosters like coffee, has on our bodies and energy during the day.

Another thing that I have noticed helps me to work for long periods of time is knowing the things that can keep me going. This includes music, snacks by my side, and being in a comfortable, well lit environment. A lot of productivity authors have found that the conditions of the environment that a person works in goes a long way in determining how willing the said person would be to do a particular work. Hence, that is why many people dedicate themselves to making sure that their work environment is as pleasant as possible and having all resources available within arm’s reach as they study.

Of course, there is so much more that comes with being able to exercise discipline and delay gratification. Otherwise, there would not be a million and one books on the topic. But if you are battling with starting on hard days, maintaining focus and delaying gratification, you can start with these little tips that have proven to work for me.

 

One resolution that I made this month of May, in a bid to take care of my physical body, which I was sure that I had been ignoring and taking poor care of, was to begin exercising. This was one habit that I had developed during the lockdown, but abandoned once I came back to school.

By the time I made the firm resolution that I would try everything that I could to ensure that I never missed a day throughout the month, which was something that I did not do even when I began it in 2020, I decided to think through how I was to execute what I wanted.

Even though I did not sit down to write my plans down, I used some tips that I had learned from reading James Clear’s ‘Atomic Habits’ to achieve the goal that I had set out for myself.

The first thing that I did was to draft out an implementation intention (a plan made before starting a habit on where and when to execute the habit) in my mind. To achieve that, I made use of habit stacking. Knowing that fixing a particular time of the day had never really worked for me all the times that I had tried it out, I decided that instead; I was going to pair it with a habit that I did every day. This, according to James Clear, is known as habit stacking, i.e. identifying a current habit that a person already does each day and then stacking a new behavior on top of the current habit.

So, I decided I would make sure that I had my workout done before I took my bath. A lot of the days, I prepared what I would use to take my bath, and then, with everything in place, I slipped into my workout clothes and began exercising. Eventually, I involuntarily did another form of habit stacking. When I could not exercise just before bathing, most of the time because I had somewhere to go first thing in the morning, I made sure that I exercised before I slept, even if it turned out to be the last thing that I was going to do before bed.

Again, I looked back on the previous times that I had tried to bring back the habit of exercising and see what made me unable to stick with the habit. I found that there was something that I kept on doing that made it almost impossible to go through with my plans to exercise every day. This was because, whenever I exercised, I forgot that my body had not been exercising for a while and needed some time to readjust to having an exercise regime and started out strongly. Hence, on my first day of deciding to exercise again, I was prone to overstretching my body so much that I ended up hurting myself, rendering me unable to walk upstairs or run without wincing for the next two to three days after the hellish workout regime that I put myself through.

Of course, what this meant was that I could not exercise during those two to three days and after that, because of the negative thoughts that would flood y mind calling me lazy for not being able to stick with the habit, even though it was impossible to do so, by the time I had gotten physically capable of exercising, I had lost all the morale to do so.

Furthermore, even if I did not sustain as much harm, even if I could do such exercises, if I could pull such off for about three days, I would wake up on the fourth day with an inexplicable dread for the torture that I was once again going to pass myself through and just the thought of spending the time that I set out to spend torturing my body was enough to make me give up whilst berating myself at the same time for not having enough willpower to do so.

So, I decided I was going to implement the two-minute rule. What the two-minute rule states is that when starting a new habit, one should make sure that it takes less than two minutes to do. Of course, for me, two minutes was too small to accomplish anything, so it was more or less three to five minutes for me. Hence, on the worst of the worst of the days when all the motivation I had to exercise was almost completely depleted, or on days in which the last day’s exercise left my body feeling somewhat sore, I was going to spend only about five minutes exercising. And not only that, my exercises on such days were going to comprise mostly simple yogic stretches, nothing that would leave me out of breath or sweating.

Of all the things that I decided, I think this one was the elixir that made me able to accomplish this mission that I had set out for myself this month. This was because, on days that I just was too unmotivated, or the stresses of the day made me feel incapable of carrying out the workouts that I had set out for myself, or on days in which, for one reason or the other, I was feeling unwell; I did not have to sweat out over the fact that I had to exercise that day. This was because I knew if the worst was to happen, I was going to do some stretching exercises from the app that I used.

In fact, after a particular day in which I had carried a heavy load for a long time and hence, had my shoulders aching for two days, for those two days, all the exercises that I did were merely targeted stretches meant to ease the pain that I felt on my shoulders, neck, and back.

Again, to make sure that I had all the physical cues that were going to push me to exercise, my exercise mat was always lying in the corner of my room and my exercise garments were always accessible for use. In fact, on some days during which I did only stretches, I did not even make use of the regalia, using only my mat and whatever I was wearing as long as it gave me enough leg space to do the exercises that I wanted to do. Again, the three apps that I used to exercise were always staring right at the home screen of my phone, next to some apps that I used almost every day, just like my music app and my bible app.

I have been able to actualize the exercise that I set out to do throughout the month of May. The exercises that I engaged in included power walks, full-body exercises, full-body stretches, thigh workouts, abs exercises, arm exercises, splits training, glute exercises, walking/ jogging for relatively long distances, etc. I did not set out the goal to become ripped because I was terrified of injuring myself and not being able to work out the next day. Hence, the longest amount of time that I spent exercising was about twelve minutes (minus breaks to stabilise my body taken in between exercises which, if calculated, would probably increase the time to about twenty to twenty-five minutes).

The goal for me was just to inculcate the habit of exercising into my life. My long-term goal is to spend about twenty to thirty minutes daily exercising (minus breaks) at least four times a week for the rest of my life and I think that with how I have started, I have garnered enough knowledge and strength of will to stick with the habit long term.

Workout clothes and mat

 

Another strike has fallen upon all University students in public universities in Nigeria for the past few months, with threats of it being extended for more months, even indefinitely.

Now, in case you are not Nigerian and happen to bump into this blog post; or are a Nigerian student in a private university, blissfully unaware of what is happening to your mates on the other side, I feel obligated to say what the strike is all about. It is, simply put, something that people have described as an annual festival in Nigeria in which students do not go to school for months – and then spend the few months that they are allowed to spend in school being shoved faster than they ought to by a school management that generates almost impossible curriculums just so that they can make up for the lost time.

The last time that we as students had such a long expanse of time to spend at home was in 2020 in which, as a result of the strike and the pandemic, we ended up spending almost a year at home – no kidding, and then ended up cramming four semesters in one year (aka two years in one year) last year in the university that I attend, just to make up for the lost time- again, no kidding.

And when we were just about to settle back to a normal school session after the hectic year that we had last year, boom, even before the year began, before we had spent a good month in school this year, another strike came upon us.

All I can say is; I do not want to think of what 2023 or the late quarter of this year, depending on whether or not an indefinite strike is going to be embarked on, would look for me academically. I think I may have a panic attack.

And by the time the strike began, our able government (get your PVC fellas, let's change things), as always, advised the students to engage themselves in quote-unquote productive endeavours. Now, I fully support and am a part of the group of people who agree that forcing students to go out of their way to learn skills during periods of time that they should be in school is nothing short of an insult to the entire academic system. However, the fact remains that we have to choose between either doing that or spending the entire time killing our brains by doing nothing. 

So, even without the ‘helpful’ advice that we have gotten, the knee-jerk reaction for students during a strike, at least since I became a student, has been to go and learn a skill. The last strike that we had, I used it to learn wig making and I have to say that during a short time after that, my wig making skills helped me make some cash in school.

Now, the moment I heard that there was going to be another strike, the first thing that I did was to sit and think of what I wanted to achieve during this strike. This time, I decided that learning new skills was out of the question for me. I had done that before, and I instead, chose to harness and work on the few skills that I had presently.

I decided that a huge chunk of my time was going to be dedicated to two things, reading, and writing. Hence, I was going to go back to studying productivity books, a habit that I had abandoned as a result of the hectic academic session that we had, was going to develop the habit of reading spiritual books, and I  was going to learn how to train my brain to memorize faster, develop my writing skills, write more stories, begin blogging, exercising and work on my typing speed to increase my productivity.

At that time, though, I believed that the strike was going to last for only a month. But it has been raging since February so I was very much in the wrong with my belief. However, I did have every intention of exerting myself, but not in the way that would be evident in the short term. 

What this meant was that I had no intentions of going after certificates, had no intentions of going for physical internships as I had resolved that I would do that later in my academic life, and was going to set virtual internships aside unless they were by firms and companies that had something to offer that I was interested in. I decided that I was going to be functional in the organizations that I worked for in school in whatever activities they were going to be doing online during the strike period, but other than the book clubs that I had founded, was not going to go out of my way to look for new positions in new organizations.

I know, I know. If you are the sort of person that values the certificates and the internships and whatnot, and there is nothing wrong with that, I still do, you might think that I have been wasting my time ever since the strike – I mean, no internships? No new skills learnt? No certificates gotten from webinars and workshops? None? None at all? As a law student? The abomination! What are you going to post on your Linkedin then?

And for some time, I did believe that you had to be lazy not to be actively looking out for those kinds of things. For a while, I thought that this was the right way to go about things, and I still do to some extent now. But I had had a few experiences that made me snap in my head one day and decide that I was tired of what I termed the "Law (or University) Student Rat Race”. I was done with it, done with the fact that I kept doing stuff that I neither liked nor even got any value from because I wanted to get that, you know, shiny certificate to post on Linkedin just to get people to send me already suggested comments from Linkedin ‘Congrats on your new post!’.

Now, before I begin my rant, I believe I should share a few things about myself. Now I believe that I am something called a Type A personality, as most law students and lawyers are said to be. This means that I am very career and productivity-oriented, a bit of a workaholic, and I hate having nothing to do, hate feeling lazy and unproductive.

During my first year at the university, I came a bit naïve and not so aware of things. And by the time the pandemic came and I began my productivity journey, one of the first things that I practiced was something called Digital Minimalism, in which I drastically reduced the amount of time that I spent on the internet, most especially on any social media except Youtube for my ‘Study with Me’ videos and relaxation.

By the time I came back for my second semester of Year One, I found that I had missed out on a lot of webinars and moot court competitions and whatnot. Since I still believed that all I had to do was work towards my grades, I was not an active member in any organization except for one.

But then, all around me, people were doing stuff, stuff that I could not do, stuff that I was confused about, stuff that I was beginning to realize that I should want to do.

Of course, now that I am very much actively involved in those things, I realize that I greatly exaggerated the knowledge of the rest of my peers and felt depressed for nothing, but at that period, I felt grossly inadequate as a student, confused and stupid at times even.

And so I did what I still believe was the reasonable thing for me to do; I began to participate. I made friends with the right people, and spent a lot of my time in the faculty- the faculty was essentially more of a habitation for me than my hostel. And by the end of the second semester of my second year, just a few months after, I had become an active person in moot court, even became lead counsel for some cases (law stuff kindly ignore if uninterested), had joined several clubs and taken executive positions, had done my first physical internship and had applied for some virtual ones, had participated in a Model United Nations Conference, had participated in several essay competitions and had gotten awards in few, had become a part of the executive in both my faculty and my fellowship. 

Essentially, I was on a roll. If there was any activity to be done that I felt was worthy of note for you know, my ‘CV’ or just to feel as though I was doing something others were not doing, something that would make me stand out, I did it. My CGPA was also decent and I had also begun a part-time job in writing that promised good pay.

Now, I also had several burnouts during my second year in the university, did literally no fun activities as the little time I had outside of school activities were solely dedicated to my academics, and I generally operated at a very low energy level. I had also completely abandoned exercising and other leisure activities that I was engaged in. One time I complained to my friend that I could not wait for the year to end so that I could have even a little bit of fun and he was like, “Why not do it? it only takes a few hours.” To which I truthfully replied that I just did not have a few hours to spare. 

I was performing amazingly in my second year at the university. But I was not the top performer, especially when it came to extracurricular activities.

And that lay the problem, or at least what I thought was a problem. Type A that I was, it greatly bugged me that I was not the top performer and the ‘great’ thing about today’s world is that if you are not the best performer in any aspect of life that you are interested in, the world just has a way of shoving it in your face that you are not. As for me, apart from the peer pressure that came with seeing my friends doing things that I was not doing, the real madness began when, acting on the advice of a senior colleague, I opened a Linkedin account.

Now, Linkedin is a good space, and it is good to have the pleasure of creating the best profile out there and talking about all the great things that you have done. You worked for it. If you choose to share your successes with the world, I would be stupid to bash you.

But the thing with Linkedin, at least the thing that I noticed was that even if I did not follow these people, the algorithm was carved out for me to run mad with the feeling of suboptimal performance. 

Yes, I had a good CGPA and was the executive of several organizations but so what? This person in my timeline interned in five of the top law firms in his first year, won a scholarship, won first prize in ten essays, started his or her organization, has thousands of followers and thousands of studio pictures wearing a suit with hands folded tightly on his or her chest and an expression that screamed top performer and this other person over here in my timeline? Well, he just graduated with a 4.99 CGPA in law. First-class has levels, my dear.

And at first, any time that I saw someone say anything negative about Linkedin and the performance obsession or toxic productivity that it tended to create, I was always the first to see them as lazy and unserious with their lives at best or just plain envious of other people’s accomplishments at worst. While they were busy complaining about the pressures of the app and the toxic productivity culture that it promoted, I was busily screenshotting the profiles of other students that had amazing profiles and trying to get to know what and how they got to where they were, asking questions, doing research and whatnot, essentially trying to find out ways to copy them, to be just like them. Yes, I had done a few things but then so what? I was not good enough. I did not have twenty experiences and job positions. I had not gotten hundreds of thousands off an essay competition. I was not the best compared to my peers over there. And I wanted to be the best. 

Healthy competition?

At a time I thought that it was, but not quite.

This was because, I was so interested in getting and being, performing, and over-performing, that I did not even notice that I had begun to work on autopilot. I jumped into every opportunity that I saw without even thinking, taking the time to ask God if it was the right way for me to go or even seeing if I enjoyed what I was doing. I believed that despite the fact I had not yet found an area of interest in law that appealed to me, I still had to grind, still had to do things that I had little to no interest in, because that was what the top performers were doing.

If I missed out on something that I would have been able to get, I beat myself up. If I noticed that something had happened that I would have played a part in, I felt bad. If I noticed that some of the top performers had secured a position, even though I didn’t have much interest in that position, I got angry at myself for not getting the same. I was obsessed with doing and doing and doing, regardless of whether I even knew what it was that I was doing. 

Why? Because that was what I was told I had to do. I was told that good results were common but what stood out was having that jaw-dropping resume. I was told that I had to keep performing, had to keep getting more of everything. More positions, more awards, more titles. I aspired for things I did not even like, ignoring the fact that I was abandoning so many things I liked doing as a result.

And thank God that I had gotten a few experiences that made me reevaluate what it was that I was even doing.

First, because I was in some organizations, I began to notice a certain phenomenon among students.

All of the top performers wanted to be a part of something. Every single one of them wanted to lead an organization. But I realized that what a lot of people wanted were the titles but not the knowledge to be acquired from the position or to even to do any work at all.

By the time that I started joining organizations, receiving appointment letters and whatnot, I began realizing that probably up to half of the student organizations that I was a part of did little to nothing, and a lot of them had executives who were just executives by title. Most of the time, an organization died when someone managed to secure his or her way to the top with no intention to do anything with the position he or she has acquired.

And I feel ashamed to say this, but there was a brief time that I kind of liked those kinds of organizations. Because I was already doing so much, they were my avenues to doing even more without actually doing more. There were some that I would get appointment letters and certificates of appreciation from after the tenure had passed without having done any single thing there, not because I shirked from my duties – in fact, I hate when people do that and hence strive not to- but because there were no duties for me to perform in the first place.

But did I use the names of the positions and the pictures of the certificates to garnish my Linkedin profile and posts? You bet I did. 

And at first, I thought it was a rare phenomenon until I asked about some other organizations, curious to learn all that was being done there, only to hear someone mention something along the lines of, “Well, we are not very active, you know.” I would see even the highest of leaders of the student organizations doing nothing but identifying as being leaders. I would see people struggle to get positions not because they intended to do anything, but because they wanted to bask in the glory of getting those positions. Now, this did not happen in all organisations, some had shown themselves to be very effective and functional. But the number of organisations that were like that was alarming. As I said before, many people only wanted the glory of the title and nothing more. 

In fact, I had participated in an online internship in which people just wrote their names as present for the zoom meetings, sometimes even begged someone to help them with it, without actually participating in anything, just so that they could receive that shiny certificate to display on their social media. 

And I realized that I was not the only one that was caught up in this web, I was not the only one doing things that I did not want to do simply because it was being done by the quote-unquote top performers.

I have come to resent that mindset. What is the purpose of doing things, and engaging in activities if you are not getting any value from them? What is the purpose of acquiring titles that you do not even enjoy having? What was the point of letting school pass through you if you were not even having a good time while doing so?

Now the strike is before us and another wave of madness has set in, just slightly different from that which I noticed during the academic sessions. Now, every young student is under the pressure of acquiring skills, not just any skill, but certain preferred ones like digital affiliate marketing, UI/UX, copywriting, forex, crypto, graphics design, and the likes. There are dozens of both paid and free webinars and advertisements that seem to urge students to perform, get, learn, and make them feel as though they are wasting their time if they are not busy learning a skill or two.

And then there are the internships. Not every faculty takes this as a priority, but for my faculty, this pressure begins to mount up whenever there is a break, a strike, or a holiday, a feeling that you have been wasting your time if you are not engaged in an internship or a certificate course at the moment. Some even engaged in three virtual internships running at the same time, a physical one, enrolling for ten courses, and are still looking for more. 

And because of this pressure, there have been times that, even though I have set out my priorities for this strike, I begin to feel a bit inadequate all over again because I know that I am not doing a lot of things that my mates are engaged in. But I have tried and am still trying my best to fight this mindset.

I know that just like I used to feel, there are certain people out there who are under this pressure to do something, anything, so as not to feel lazy and unproductive.

And I want to say this, it is necessary to spend this time doing something productive – in fact, if you have not been, then I am shocked at how someone has been able to spend about 80 plus days doing absolutely nothing. But if you are not among those who honestly enjoy doing what they are doing, who are learning these skills and participating in these internships because they are honestly curious about them,  but are among the group of people that are not very thrilled with what they are doing, stuck in the web of the pressure of having to perform, then I have a bit of advice for you. Step back. Breathe. And think.

If you have been engaging in something, learning a particular skill for a while, or any other thing and you hate it but are still doing it because you think that the best of the best are doing so, I think it is time to leave. There is courage in knowing the time to stop and leave something that you do not enjoy doing. You have no one to impress and you have to realize that this life is not one big competition.

If you are about to enter into something not because you think you would enjoy it or because you are genuinely curious about it but because of social pressures, then don’t. It is not worth it. Go and engage in that which you would enjoy even though it appears to be less glamorous than the other.

And, despite all that I have said, do ensure that you are productive, but use your own measure, not that of any other person or a system. No one knows how much longer this strike would last, and if you have been using it as an opportunity to one-up your peers, you need to slide back and realize that you are probably not much better than the person that has been wasting away his or her time.

If you have abandoned something you enjoyed because it did not appear as glamorous as what you saw on Linkedin, or because you felt that it would not make you look much different from your peers, then go back to that. Life is short. Do that which you enjoy.

But if you have been doing all that and loving every ride of the way, fuelled intrinsically and not extrinsically by the pressure of social media or peer pressure, then go on. Reach for the stars but remember that the ideal person that you want to become should be the only person that you measure yourself up against.

This is difficult to do, I know. Social pressure is difficult to resist and I know that the only reason why I have been able to be as laid back as I want to is that, due to the strike, I can prevent myself from seeing that which I do not want to see, can simply switch off my phone and do not have to see those achieving feats physically as I would once the session begins. But please note, and this is something that I am working on making my mantra,  that never should you let yourself be swept up, forget your achievements, and feel like a failure because your level of success is perceived objectively as lower than any other person. You are running your own race, on your own track, and spending your time trying to be like some other group of people is a terrible way to waste life.

Recently, I saw a flier that asked, ‘What are you doing with your ASUU time?’ and I have to say, after a relatively long time, I am finally using it to do what I actually want to do, not just what I feel pressured to do, and being very productive at it too.

I hope you have been doing the same as well.

                                                                                                                 

 

I am not only a writer; I also like to identify as an avid reader. I love reading across several genres of books. And for some time, I have taken it as a personal resolution to ensure that I substitute the time I spend on social media and television for books. Because of that, I spend a lot of my leisure time reading books.

Furthermore, because I am the director of a book club; and because of the time afforded to me as a result of the strike, I have had a lot of time to burrow into books and spend a lot of my time tapping into different sources of information.

Here are the books that I read in this past month of April.

1.     The Productivity Project by Chris Bailey:

This book was written by a man who, after college, decided to reject two job offers in order to pursue his passion for productivity. He then decided to dedicate a year to conducting different productivity projects, which he documented in his blog, once titled ‘A Year of Productivity’ and now called ‘A Life of Productivity’. While he writes on most of the experiments in his blog, in his book, he shares various tips that he learned throughout the time that he spent doing the year-long experiment.

 

Some of his most memorable tips are:

• Take some time off work to meditate and reflect to ensure that you are not working on autopilot.
• Ensure that you build up your attention muscle when working and protect it from external distractions so that you do not end up working longer; just to achieve less at the end.
• Cut down on the amount of time you spend on the internet and your devices.
• Ensure that you engage in single-tasking to build up attention muscles and carve out more attentional space around the task you are tackling at the moment.
• The food you eat plays a huge role in determining the energy that you have for the rest of the day, so ensure that you watch the food you eat daily. Eat more natural healthy foods and avoid stimulants like coffee or alcohol, or sugar.
• Exercise is vital in building up the energy that you have in a day and it also stimulates the brain so, incorporate exercise into your day etc.

The book was an easy and enjoyable read as the author used simple English and vivid illustrations, most from the experiments he carried out, to spice up his book. I found it a very enjoyable read and I would highly recommend the book to anyone who wishes to start his or her productivity journey.

 

2.     The Shallows by Nicholas Carr

In as much as the internet has some undeniable benefits; there has been a rise in authors who completely reject everything that the internet stands for, most basing their arguments on the new wave of internet addiction that seems to have swept through the entire planet and the fact that one of the core components of the internet, i.e. social media, has been one of the main factors that have led to the rise in narcissism and depression amongst the people of the world.

In this award-winning book, Nicholas Carr brings about a new perspective on the effects of the internet. And he argues that the move from the analogical to the digital has not just brought about a change in the way the world functions; it has also altered our brains.

 

According to the author, 

“Over the last few years, I have had an uncomfortable sense that someone or something has been tinkering with my brain, remapping my neural circuitry, reprogramming my memory. My mind isn’t going – so far as I can tell- but it’s changing.”

 

He then tells his stories of how, before the rise of the internet, he used to be able to immerse himself in lengthy books and articles but seems to have lost the ability to do so, and gives examples of several others who have suffered from the same issue as well.

 

He bases his arguments by talking about the rise of other technologies, such as the clock, and the map, and how they altered the way we as humans thought. For instance, with the rise of the clock came the rise of industrialization, as we as humans began to take strict note of the time and began to fashion our lives according to the tickings of the clock. This was unlike before, when we just lived and let the days pass on. 

 

According to the author, just as the rise of the map and now GPS has caused the part of the brain that is meant to be able to take note of spatial locations to shrink, he believes the internet has made us lose our abilities to concentrate and focus our attention, has rid us of our ability to make proper use of our memories, and has generally made us unable to do certain things that our predecessors learned how to do with their brains during the time before the internet. 

 

He knows that this will get worse, as the creators of computers and search engines are continually on the hunt to ensure that everything is made completely easy with the internet. But he warns that the easier way is not necessarily always the best.

 

The author warns that we should not allow the glories of technology to blind our inner watchdog to the possibility that we have numbed an essential part of ourselves.

The book was a very insightful one, but I have to admit that it was quite difficult to read as, unlike the books that I am used to, it was very scientific. Sometimes, the author also talked about things that I was not very interested in; even spent chapters giving historical facts that did not interest me in any way. But I do advise those who wish to read and tap from the vast knowledge contained in the book to do so.

 

3.     The Christian Life is Exciting by Demos Shakarian

I did not begin this book in April, but I read the last part of it and finished it by the end of April.

The book is a Bible course written by the founder of the Full Gospel Business Men Fellowship International, with twelve lessons dealing with topics such as commitment to Christ, the Dynamics of Faith, Prayer, Sharing Christ with the world, God, and His relationship to man, etc. 

It is an amazing book for anyone who wishes to begin the person’s journey with Christ on a solid foundation and I do recommend the book to all Christians, especially those who are looking for books that will aid them in their spiritual growth.

 

4.     Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

This book deals with the issue of procrastination and the author says that the best way to effectively get rid of it and get things done is to ensure that every day, a person does the biggest and most important task(frog) first. According to him, if the first thing you do in a day is to eat a live frog, you can spend the rest of the day knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.

 

He offers other useful tips such as:

• Planning the day the night before so that your subconscious mind can work on the list all night long while you sleep.
• Think long-term when working and setting goals.
• There are only three core tasks that you do that contain most of the value you have to offer. Identify them and ensure that the bulk of your time goes into achieving them.
• Ensure you ask yourself three questions regularly to ensure that you focus on your biggest frog at all times

What are my highest value activities?

What can I and only I do that if done well, will make a real difference?

What is the most valuable use of my time right now?

• If you choose to procrastinate, ensure that you procrastinate on small tasks or low-value activities. Decide to either procrastinate on or delegate the activities that don’t make that much of a contribution to your life in favour of those that make more of a contribution to your life.

All in all, it was a simple and quite interesting book to read. If procrastination is something you have been battling for some time and you wish to overcome it, I would highly recommend this book.

 

5.     How Successful People Think by John Maxwell

This was the book that was reviewed by the book club that I manage. It was written by an American pastor whose main focus is on leadership and self-growth. 

According to the author of this book, the main thing that differentiates successful from unsuccessful people is the way they think and we have to work towards developing the sort of mindset and thinking the way that successful people think. He lists out some of the ways that successful people think. They think big, can focus and concentrate for a considerable period of time, are creative, are realistic when setting their goals, make use of strategies and plans to achieve the goals that they have set for themselves, understand the importance of having a community of thinkers, are generous, and do not flow in line with the popular thought patterns of others, etc.

It is a different book from the kinds that I usually prefer reading in that it does not do much to offer practical steps to take in my opinion. But it is a concise book and hence, was a good read for me.

 

6.     Amongst Ourselves by Tracy Alderman and Karen Marshall

If I were not studying law, I believe that I would have studied psychology and gone on to be a therapist. Right from time, I have always been interested in mental illnesses and what goes on in the minds of those who have the worst of the mental illnesses, the most absurd of them. 

Over the years, I have carried out my research to understand certain mental disorders like bipolar disorder, chronic depression, borderline personality disorder, etc, and one of my favourite ways of conducting research is reading books on the disorders.

This month, I decided to research Dissociative Identity Disorder which used to be known as Multiple Personality Disorder, a disorder that occurs when a person has two or more identities or personalities, each with its way of being. It is a response to trauma which usually occurs when a person is a child. More specifically, it occurs in individuals that have suffered from an extended period of abuse, such as ritual or cult abuse.

When a person dissociates, they leave their bodies to get away from the pain and trauma. When this defense is not strong enough to protect the person, different personalities emerge to handle the experience. These personalities allow the child to survive; in the sense that when the child is being harmed or experiencing traumatic episodes, the other personalities take the pain. This allows the child to return to their body after the bad things have happened without any awareness of what has occurred.

Now, DID is such a rare disorder that I have read that there are certain therapists and mental health professionals who do not even believe that such an illness exists. There are even others who believe that it is demon possession as I once used to think that it was.

It is a strange disorder and I am still trying to grasp how the human brain can go so far as to enable a person to create distinct fragmented personalities as a response to trauma. But I have to say; it has been interesting studying the disorder. 

The book was more of a manual written by two people on how both people with the disorder and those around them can handle it and while I would have preferred a novel as there were some parts of the book that I did not read because they were not for me, I have to say that I learnt a lot from the book. I still am not satisfied with the knowledge that I have gotten, so I am still going to read other books.

 

7.     The Selection Series by Kiera Cass

I did not want to add this here but oh well. This book series was somewhat of a guilty pleasure for me, enjoyable to read, but just a simple story written in simple writing with no true insights hidden in the wordings of the book. It definitely cannot be put within the ranks of Kafka’s works or those of Achebe but it was really exciting to read.

It has a Disneyesque storyline, written the simple way that Disney stories are written. The series follows a 17-year-old girl who is part of the 35 girls that have been chosen to participate in some sort of game that can be said to be similar to The Bachelor, in which the prince gets to select one of the girls to be the queen of the land.

As I said earlier, it is the sort of book that you know offers no real value but is so interesting, that you ignore some of the plot holes and just keep reading

The series has more than four books, about eight or so if you include the novellas, but I stopped after reading the first three books and a novella in the series.

 

As someone who is very interested in growing as an individual, I have found that reading books that expand over multiple genres is a great way to open my eyes and stimulate my brain. As a result, I would encourage anyone that wishes to grow to read vast and wide, expand your knowledge base, and make yourself a well rounded individual. I hope to squeeze out the time to read even more books by the end of this month.