So guys I took a leap of faith and decided to revamp and move this blog. Its the same me but I wanted to improve the experience of my viewers and make a commitment to excellence to myself.
Check out the new blog and join me there. Also I am still tweaking it and figuring out what I like in terms of presentation so please tell me what you think.
A few summers ago, I met up with an old classmate and we caught up on what he was up to and vice versa. With my background in the sciences then moving to global health, doing lots of traveling and also going on a literary tour in Europe to focus more on my writing, he found this too undefined. He finally answered me with the question , “So what exactly are you?”. I asked him to explain his question and he said you know like engineer, doctor, something specific.
I find these kinds of titles restrictive and I tend to reject them on an emotional level. However I grew up in an environment where this kind of thinking is pervasive. Right from when you start talking, uncles, aunties, teachers, and whoever has an emotional vested interest in you ask you what you want to be -engineer, doctor, pharmacist, pilot, lawyer- being the ones that got the most positive reinforcement.
I want to share about why I think this is a dangerous question to be asking kids, or even ourselves.
First off, we are moving further away from the Industrial Age and the thinking associated with it to an era where we value meaning and awesomeness over mediocre mass production. Think about the goods and services that are doing great in our times. They always have the WOW factor and a meaningful story informing them. If the Industrial Age is ending and we are needing less and less standardization why teach kids to be standardized?
Secondly, studying the truly great in any sphere of life, you’ll soon see how an intense emotional commitment to what they do separates them from the mediocre. That is why they persist even after failing over and over again. If you don’t figure out what you are borderline obsessed with, what you feel you can do with the WOW factor, you reduce your odds for greatness and mastery. Can you see how this is a more important issue to settle before committing to an ‘occupation’ – for happiness or even purely economic reasons?
So I propose a better way.
In an era where we celebrate meaning and excellence over standardized mediocrity, I propose that we ask questions that make us think about how we want to show up in the world everyday. These can be questions like – what kind of life do you want to live? Not only does this question put the whole of life in perspective it also aims at your unique blueprint and gives room for more possibilities. For example, I want to show up as courageous. I also value mastery. I value connection with people but more than that empowering people and in a way that keeps on giving. I value uniqueness. While the expression may change at any given time the most productive way to use my time will have to be at the intersection of these affinities.
Imagine if we helped kids to show up everyday in a way that helped them practice, refine and experiment with their innate affinities. By the time they have to choose careers they would have more clarity about what they are here to do and what they can be great at. Outside the box living has never been more possible so why stifle their creativity and capacity for independent thinking? Why put pressure on them to fit into straight jacket occupations that we are not sure will even exist when they are done school?
Let me give you an example.
In secondary school, when I heard that no girl had ever been the valedictorian in the history of the school, inspired by my affinity for excellence I did it. The occupation mentality would say that it proves I was made to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer since I was so intelligent. The mentality I propose would rather say it proved that I value mastery and then nurture me to own and feed this desire, while finding out how I can design my life to intersect it with the world’s current needs so I could make a happy living from it.
Which one is more empowering and gives me room to fly? I think the latter.
I think there would be so much more benefit to this world if kids were prepared to show up everyday in a way that represented the things they intrinsically enjoyed and given small platforms to use and strengthen their core gifting instead of just preparing them for careers, especially in the 21st century. Altogether I think this is a more empowering way to think and live life.
Starting my first full time job at the end of 2011, I was completely taken aback by the escape culture. Here’s a brief summary of what it looks like- we talk about the weekend Monday to Tuesday then plan the next weekend Wednesday to Friday.
Isn’t that a far cry from where we started? As kids we used to dream of changing the world. We wanted to be exceptional at what we did and happy. We didn’t dream of lives we wanted to escape from but rather lives we loved living. There is still hope though no matter what phase of life we find ourselves in. A simple change in mindset can move us from short term escapism to true fulfilment in life.
1. Take a good look in the mirror.
Take a look in the mirror (can be figurative too!)
With the fast pace of life, technology, deadlines in our lives, it’s always good to make the most of those windows of opportunity to look into our own souls. The more self aware you are the more useful you can be to the world and the more happiness you can find, as your clarity increases. For me, I grow toward self awareness by learning to question my emotions and thoughts. For example, the times we tend to want to escape are times we feel a sense of emptiness. We call this boredom sometimes, but it can be other things like insecurity, fear, comparing ourselves to others or just running away from our own intuition. When you feel the need to escape maybe through food, pleasure or whatever, you can ask yourself if there is something underlying it all that you need to address. Maybe you don’t always have to look outward for happiness. Sometimes you can look inward and learn to love and be at home in your own company too.
2. Move from escapism to a state of flow.
There is nothing wrong with doing things simply to escape and relax however true fulfilment and happiness is not cultivated through escape as a lifestyle but rather when most of our life activities are in a state called ‘flow’. This is a state where we are increasing our capacity for something but because we enjoy it so much it feels more like play than work. We feel a sense of achievement and yet we feel that we haven’t gotten there yet. We also feel like although there is more to learn we are making progression and confident that we can get there. This is the state where true fulfilment is found. What are those things you enjoy so much that they feel like play? Which ones are in line with your deepest dreams, strengths, passions, longings and vision of the world?
3. Once you have identified these you can then gradually direct your life in this direction.
If you are at a point where it is not possible to completely steer your work in this direction, it may have to start by using those times of boredom or free time to have fun in alignment with the values that are uniquely yours. For example I like to use my down time to work on my non profit, read a book on a topic I’m interested in, build my ideas, try out something new (recently yoga), write or to connect and reconnect with people. While I enjoy these things they are also in line with areas I want to grow and contribute to the world. That way my life doesn’t feel like a million disjointed pieces, rather it flows. Since I started living this way, I have felt so much more fulfilled and more self aware. It increases your clarity, contentment, confidence and the quality of friendships you make.
Question for you: How can you move from a disconnected life you want to escape from and move into a state of flow and purpose?
I spent most of my childhood in a city that some people have called ‘particularly aggressive’ haha. Lagos is a very interesting city to be in. It brims with life and this undeniable sense of hustle which I already wrote about here.
Everywhere you go someone is fighting to stay alive. The young girl is hawking groundnuts and walking long distances on foot so she can get by TODAY. A loved one dies, we mourn and then we move on because we must still put food on the table and find a roof over our heads.
Riding home in the keke napep. I prefer it to motorcycles lol
We don’t make excuses- we improvise instead. One day it was raining and I had to run an errand and I and my brother took a tricycle (keke napep) home. The tricycle rider had this improvised curtain thing that he threw over the sides of the tricycle so that he could still keep his business going even in the rain.
Life is so unpredictable so you have to be prepared- you have wake up earlier just incase there is traffic, it is flooded, or the roads are bad or something.
People are up as early as 4 or 5 to get to work because they want to beat traffic which is crazy in Lagos.
You go to the market, bargain for food, go to the gas station, buy diesel for your generator, turn it on and deal with the noise pollution because there is no power supply. By the time you come to the end of the day you are exhausted and ready to sleep and even then you may have to fight off mosquitoes if you didn’t spray an insect repellent or if you kept your doors open too late.
Get the picture?
Life is a struggle and that struggle is normal- nothing to complain about or blame anyone for.
You feel alive. You feel something and everyday feels new, and pregnant and promising and troublesome but fulfilling.
Then we come to North America or maybe another ‘developed’ country and struggle is not really something that is normal. You go through life pretty okay. Where your Nigerian counterpart would have to save money for months to pay cash for a house or a car, you just get a mortgage. Where someone else might be homeless if they lost their job, you could at least put it on the credit card for a while.
We become zombies. We can’t really say we are thriving but we are okay that’s for sure. Okay is worse than suffering. When you suffer you feel, and you activate that fighter in you. But when you are okay, anything that demands a little more out of you starts to seem like a chore and slowly your warrior instinct starts to die.
The instinct in us all for greatness and for survival is primal. Its raw and its intense and it can overcome anything.
Even in ‘developed countries’ everyone I have met who is truly fulfilled with their lives had a lot of fighting to do. They had to fight all the limiting beliefs and the resistance within, then they had to fight without- and stand up for themselves, stand up for their dreams and discipline themselves to get there.
So you can choose to be fooled by the illusion of comfort and numb down that warrior instinct in you but it is a dangerous place to be.
When you come to the end of your life how will you convince yourself that living a complacent life was the best of use of your time?
There are too many zombies in the world- thinking what others want them to think, living their life how ‘normal’ people live it, letting people talk them out of the future they came into this world to create.
But the instinct for greatness is in all of us and we must resist the complacency in our culture that keeps us too comfortable to act.
Feel the warrior instinct in you- the desire for more, the desperation, the zeal. Stop trying to numb it down, instead feed it. Guard it jealously and instead of discarding it from fear- TRUST that it will find expression. I think that is one of the noblest things to do with our brief lives.
“You get in life what you have the courage to ask for- Oprah Winfrey”
On that note I leave with you the broadway version of Fela’s Zombie 🙂
Happy Monday.
Ps: Join the conversation by leaving a comment. Is your warrior instinct alive and well, dying, or on the way to coming alive again?
So when I hear people say things like- I am not creative- I sometimes wish they knew that creativity is a state of mind.
If you are human, you feel, think, you laugh, cry, sing, you are creative. It just depends on whether you will vote for yourself; and that’s the scary part, putting a little of your naked self out there for people to see, and poke at and possibly hurt. But that’s also where it gets fun.
I was thinking today about how creativity is interesting because it exists in that space where the world is not perfect.
If the world was perfect we would not need inventions, we wouldn’t feel the longing that we write poetry about. I guess we would still feel happiness, but without the longing for more wouldn’t even that be boring?
Its funny how your own unique perception of the imperfection of the world can be a starting place to find your life’s task. Whether it is the entrepreneur bringing a solution to a problem, a scientist discovering something new, or an artist capturing humanity in a way that touches you deeply. Its all about 1) taking life in and 2) imagining yourself as a solution 3) taking a little step in that direction.
It is not enough to experience and complain about life. After a while you come to that state of mind where you realize that maybe that longing inside of you, that angst, that discontent can bring something new to the table. Just what if…?
So if you think you are not creative, let me give you three challenges this week to prove yourself wrong.
1. When you find something that irks you, or maybe makes you sad, think about what you might do about it, however little, and do it.
2)You know all those ideas you had that you used to call stupid? Try putting words to them, writing them down, sharing them with someone instead of judging them before they even come out of your mouth or your pen. Try taking just one step toward that your ‘weird’ idea.
3) Do something little to take initiative to bring you closer to your dream self; maybe introduce yourself to someone new, notice someone looking lost and offer to help them, maybe rearrange your house, maybe compliment someone, maybe join a group that interests you.
Stop judging yourself for feeling. Even if it does not change anything at least it changes you.
Stop judging your fetal ideas, embrace the process of learning that the world is quite pliable and that your ideas have a place in remoulding it.
Its not about magnificent inventions and earth shattering prose, its all about the little things and voting for yourself in all those little ways.
So this week, step up to the plate and be a solution even if it is in a little way.
There are so many interesting things going on in our time in terms of how much more of a space there is for contributing creatively to the world versus back in the day when everything was about mass producing. In that sense I feel like there is room for us to all give our unique contribution to the world.
However truth be told, on the way to that there are so many loops and turns, and I am sure that at some point you can find yourself in a situation that seems so far from where you plan to be, and you just wonder, what am I going to do with all my ideas? Am I even any step closer to my dreams? I’ve been there many times.
I was reading about the example I gave in number 3 below that sparked this post and I thought I should share. So here are my thoughts on my tongue in cheek title 🙂
First of all, a boring job is a great way to know what you do NOT want to do with your life.
Most of us seem to be comfortable but not excited, possibly living a decent life but not our best lives. At least YOU feel something even if it is tedium or frustration. Sometimes we need that extra push and this can be just what you need to finally overcome your fears and take the risk of giving your dreams a shot.
Secondly, your boring job just might be freeing up your mental energy for your passion.
While waiting for something more fulfilling, this is the perfect time to redirect your mental energy into creative expression. Since your emotional energy is not being fully tapped by your job, you have more than enough of it to focus on the things you are truly passionate about.
Albert Einstein did the exact same thing. When he graduated in 1900 at the bottom of his class, he could not get a job as a teacher for obvious reasons. However his father offered him an engineering job, and he also had the opportunity of getting a lucrative job in insurance but he turned both down because he didn’t want that to drain his mental energy (isn’t that interesting?).
Instead he took a boring job in a patent office where he would just be analyzing applications. Doing this sharpened his reasoning skills; also because it was so mundane he was able to do it quickly and then focus on his own ideas while at work. It was while working this boring job that he did most of the work that would be his theory of relativity.
Maybe there could be an opportunity for your own personal learning goals while working a boring job? Something to think about.
Thirdly, a boring job might be an opportunity for fresh insight.
Remember the boring article I was reading? It was about the history of public health. I don’t like history BUT, I read about an interesting story from the 1700s. Back then scientists were still arguing about what causes food to go bad. A scientist called Lazzaro Spallanzani discovered that you could prevent things from spoiling by keeping them in air tight conditions and applying heat. While scientists were still debating this (then they didn’t believe microbes were in the air), a distiller and confectioner in Paris took this idea and applied it to his business in the food industry to preserve food and wine. While the scientific world was catching up to reality a Parisian businessman was using this discovery in the food industry.
Sometimes staying stuck in one field keeps you narrow-minded. Getting out of it even if it is due to a mundane job can give you fresh inspiration. Think about it; sometimes the most creative ideas come from people completely out of the field.
So there you go. Even though you might feel stuck and stifled in your creativity or personal fulfilment, maybe there is some value in the mundane if you look closely enough. Your boring job might just be watering those seeds of greatness in you. Maybe the question is not about your circumstances but about whether you will still go to work in pursuing those things dear to you that the world just might be waiting for.
Do you have any more reasons to add? How did you get something generative out of a mundane circumstance?
I have been trying to get on top of my fitness lately so I joined a gym nearby and I had a fitness assessment with one of the trainers. During our chat I discovered the importance of rest to our productivity.
The trainer told me the importance of working out just to the point where your body feels challenged but can handle it. If you try to work out and push your body even when its tired, you might feel like you achieved something, but your body will not learn from it because your body is now using the anaerobic stores of energy.
What you want to do instead is to consistently work out your body just to the point where you feel like you are doing work but you are still focused and then take a break. That way you are training your body to be able to learn to do more work while in the aerobic phase.
Now in between all of these comes the importance of rest. The trainer helped me understand how rest works for the body.
Rest is when your body learns and does better. So if you are overexerting yourself everyday in order to build muscle but don’t give your body maybe a day in-between every other 3 days, your body will not have enough time to learn from this exercise in order to build the capacity that you need.
Same thing with gaining inspiration or learning a new skill or being creative. Rest is a very crucial phase for inspiration to happen.
History is filled with people that got inspiration during times of rest. Paul McCartney was said to get his song in a dream, Stephen King the writer was said to get some of his stories in his dream, a dream helped Kekule the scientist figure out the structure of benzene, Frankenstein the popular novel character was inspired by a dream. The pianist George Gershwin got his inspiration for his composition not just when he was writing but out and about- from taxi horns in Paris.
Last but not the least, Otto Loewi got the inspiration for his experiment on neurotransmission from a dream and ended up winning a Nobel-prize for it. The list goes on and on but I’m sure you get the point by now.
The key is to first of all work that idea or skill you are trying to build to a point where you are challenged but not exhausted, then take some rest and let your body learn and translate this information from bare information to insight.
Working out yourself mentally, physically or emotionally to the point where you lose focus and skill is counterproductive. Not challenging yourself either and just having a breeze is also equally counter productive. The key is to toe that line in-between.
So if you have worked so hard and now you are feeling stuck, do yourself a favour- rest, sleep, or just get some down time and you might be surprised to find that aha! you have been looking for when you least expect it.
Have you ever had any great ideas while doing something completely different?
Leave me a comment.
Oh and here is George Gershwin’s composition I talked about to jumpstart your rest hehe;)
Maybe that is one of the questions we should ask these days instead of the boring “what do you do?”.
Without sounding dramatic I am surrounded by broken dreams. By these dreamers fighting not to be disillusioned but not knowing what to do with the heaviness that comes from dreaming.
“Why do I dream too much?” I asked Emeka in frustration.
“That’s what I love most about you” was the response.
So many hopes, so many ideas, so many blueprints for the future.
Yet all we have is today and no idea of what tomorrow will look like.
Listen in and hear the broken dreams all around you. The hopes getting sore from lifting reality-sized weights.
I hear them.
I also hear hundreds of millions of people in my age range are unemployed.
Suddenly it seems the map the teachers and parents and uncles and aunties gave us aren’t enough for navigating a complex world.
No this is not blaming. This is owning.
Owning all the little broken dreams that I once cried over (in retrospect they weren’t even mine).
Mourning and celebrating simultaneously the journey to embody the new dreams I’m now pregnant with.
I’m not a very realistic person and somehow that has worked for me.
So back sore from trying to push back against “reality” I hold on.
This must be spiritual, emotional, mental strength training.
My tribe mourns together. We confess our losses. We face the rejections that keep us up all night crying but we’d dare not admit because what if we came off as depressed? At least we have ourselves to confess to.
In one breath we talk changing the world and in the other our job search. In one phone conversation we talk being broke and in the next creating value. In one moment we are so scared in the other we are so courageous.
We celebrate too. Those little ways we are dropping the fear. That tiny step forward that no one else may see. In the midst of our broken dreams, there is something in us that knows so well that we are making the future with those broken dreams. That they are stepping stones not stumbling blocks. After all they didn’t die, they broke – wide open to set us free to dream closer to the centre of ourselves. They set us free to soften into more humane versions of ourselves. They set us free to learn grace.
We move forward into a future that may not applaud us for anything. We applaud ourselves; we’ve come a long way. There’s a long way yet. We’ll cry some more. We’ll laugh some more; and something about it all will have us all saying “it’s all good”.
To my tribe of dreamers.
You are one of them.
Here’s another : http://thetruecornerstone.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/fear-of-the-unknown/
Earlier this year, I decided to live off my hard earned savings- slow down, meet great people, take some time off to restrategize- relax, be flexible, travel and drop all the things I was holding onto to actually take the risk of trying out the ideas in my head.
After I realized my savings were reducing (like duh!) I still didn’t want the rigidity of a full time job so I decided to take part time tutoring as a source of extra income. I ended up tutoring a lot of Chinese people who were learning English as a second language as well as college students and high school kids. It turned out to be a great experience.
Along the line I decided to try my hands out at making similar content so I put out my course (https://www.udemy.com/become-excellent-at-analytical-writing/ ) and now my students are in the hundreds. While I still have a lot of work to do in getting the course out there, it was so encouraging to see the numbers increase and see that truly what I thought would be useful to others was indeed useful.
So what do I know about you that you don’t know? It is that your life experiences have made you an expert at something and you probably don’t even realize it.
So many times we are waiting for something to happen before we can live life. We are waiting to be more educated, be more experienced (whatever that means), more confident, more beautiful, etc.
Truly, when it comes to it, we are probably just afraid that we are not really enough. We are afraid of failure&rejection. We think that maybe if we can find more titles to mask our insecurity then we will be more confident to proceed in the direction of our dreams.
What you don’t realize is that you already have something that people want to know. You are probably taking yourself for granted thinking you have no value to add.
I don’t mean this post to motivate you. I mean it to be factual. You are an expert at something that other people don’t know and you are hiding it because you think everyone knows it already, or that you need even more experience.
What have you picked from your life’s experiences? Struggles? Lessons? Relationships? Share your gift today. There is always time to refine it. You cannot get experience without putting yourself out there and experiencing all life has to offer anyways.
Street-side convos 