Why ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’ is a dangerous question to ask kids.

Psst: I’ve moved. Visit me here http://streetsideconvos.com. Maybe the new blog will be for you. Maybe not.

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.

Increase your fulfilment in life starting today.

Psst: I’ve moved. Visit me here http://streetsideconvos.com. Maybe the new blog will be for you. Maybe not.

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?

What is worse than suffering?

Psst: I’ve moved. Visit me here http://streetsideconvos.com. Maybe the new blog will be for you. Maybe not.

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?

You are an expert. Here’s why

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.

Living takes time.

Isn’t it interesting that every one of us is growing past something, pressing through, striving, making small but mighty progresses every single day of our lives?

Most times our hopes, fears, dreams, failures and successes are so much deeper than the surface and deeper than the expressions on our faces. But everyone of us has a story of growing and overcoming that actually deserves an applause.

Living takes time.

Just like our limiting beliefs don’t come overnight, positive change also doesn’t come overnight. No matter the mighty tree that is hidden in the seed the plant still needs time to be nourished and to grow.

It will take choosing everyday to move forward and also a good amount of time which can be quite frustrating.

Think about how we get caught up in a bad habit.

You start with the mental image, then thanks to your imagination you build a house on your head with it and before you know it, it becomes your own reality.

Same thing with positive change, we think of it, we take little steps everyday that move us consistently toward what is true and healthy and then over time we find that we have actually made a lot of progress.

Sometimes we may choose positive change and are taking the steps toward it but it will still take time for it to work its way out from our habits to our reality. In that in-between it is so easy to wonder- is this worth it? Who do I think I am aiming this high? Do I have what it takes? Am I okay? Am I normal?

Its so tempting to give up when we start doubting our ability to come out on the other end being who we want to be.

Here’s a life changing fact- change takes time; but if we invest everyday in the right habits, we are laying a solid foundation to build something massive in the future.

How much easier would we be on our selves if someone reinforced into us that change takes time though?

Change also takes us learning to dance to the rhythm of mercy.

No matter how much of the truth we know, being human we have the wonderful habit of self inflicting. Today I choose life. Tomorrow I choose every possible thought and thing that has nothing to do with life. There has to be a way we can come back and start afresh. Mercy gives us limitless opportunities. It is only through mercy, not through what we could do or what we cannot do that we could actually choose life forever. Mercy has found you and chosen you.

So everyday you attempt to live life courageously, don’t question yourself and wonder if you do deserve those dreams of yours. We couldn’t deserve anything we have. We couldn’t wish ourselves to life. Everything we could ever be and have is a gift. Mercy has given us life, new beginnings and infinite opportunities to make something of so we can give them away to others as well.

Here’s a challenge for us- to choose life no matter how many times we fail at it, to keep choosing those habits that bring us the most life, to take more generous helpings of grace and mercy and to know that we have it in us to live the life we have imagined.

Living takes time.

Don’t forget to leave me a comment, subscribe and come on over to twitter to continue the conversation 😉

Isn’t it a mystery

that mercy can break a heart

while justice can only break a bone

that we wish hard for signs

not knowing it is sight we need

that the wise can only be truly wise

when they dare to be foolish

that experience sees into our world

but a little child beyond it

that love will save you

from the ghosts caution will not

that we need faith

but faith needs doubt

that the all knowing spirit

inspired by mortals may have a change of mind

that perfection is the goal

but strength is in weakness

that we don’t choose to live

but must choose life everyday

that experts at reading words

easily miss the treasures between the lines

that in all the chaos

we live out some sort of order

that destiny is in our genes

yet the choice to claim it in our hands

that it is all in your head

but becomes real after a while

Don’t forget to leave me a comment, subscribe and come on over to twitter to continue the conversation 😉

Forbes Africa gets behind the camera for a change.

I had the pleasure of chatting with these men at the WOWe Women of West Africa event last week. I sat down beside them, we started talking and ended up doing a video along the way 🙂

Chris is the managing editor of Forbes Africa and was one of the moderators for one of the sessions.He moved to South Africa a couple of years back and he is loving his work. He said he would do it even if he didn’t make a lot of money out of it. I thought Chris sounded like Richard Branson but I don’t think he took it as a compliment haha

Frederic is the head for their work in West Africa. He has been living in Lagos for a while- 5 years- if I remember clearly. He is excited about investing in emerging markets all over Africa and media work in Africa as well.

I should have asked them to share their experience of moving and living in Africa but it didn’t occur to me then. It would have been nice since they’ve seen Africa from a much more nuanced perspective than people looking from the outside in. Oh well, next time.

Watch to know them a bit better and get into their heads about life, success, passion, and making the world a better place. Also- when you get really successful and interviewed by Forbes Africa make sure you tell Chris and/or Frederic that you met them on streetsideconvos first:)

Don’t forget to leave me a comment, subscribe and come on over to twitter to continue the conversation 😉

Creating the life of your dreams

This weekend I went to a business/leadership conference with some friends and my brother . It was so amazing. I actually underestimated how much fun it would be and I learnt so much from different people who have been able to create the life of their dreams. I would like to share some of the stuff that I learnt with you.

My biggest take away was how important it is to live life on purpose and to invest some time and discipline into creating the life of our dreams.

Why is this important?  We are all after the expansion of life- being more, doing more, finding fuller expressions of the life within us- our gifts, desires, goals, personality etc

Putting some thought into your life gives you the opportunity to do this, as well as a greater capacity to help others, give more, serve more, build on your accomplishments for even greater success and get more out of life in general.

Here are some tips I got from the weekend on doing that.

1) How do you want to live versus what do you want to do.

We grow up being asked what we want to do and very quickly we find the ‘right’ answers to tell all the people who ask us. Most times the right answers are just the things that have been done before. We think in terms of a ‘career’.

Ditch the short term ‘job’ thinking for a bigger picture ‘life’ mentality.

Instead of thinking in terms of what you want to DO, instead think of the bigger picture- the life you want to live.  How much time do you want? How much money do you want to make? What kind of schedule do you want? What are the things you get fulfilment from? What are your values? Is it creativity, independence, competition, collaboration, uncertainty, etc

So instead of following a career path blindly, instead work backwards from the picture of the life you want to live, to what you will then do to make that life possible. It could be, but doesn’t have to be a defined or popular path, it could be a combination of income streams, it could be different things in different seasons, it could be anything; after all it is not the defined ‘career’ box you are after but after the life you want.

Working backwards from your values and the things important to you will give you a better chance of living a more fulfilled life since you factor in life and lifestyle and create a life unique to you. For me it is quite a shift because we grew up thinking we had to decide on the same old careers every other person did.

2)You don’t need to be good at everything.

Isn’t that a relief? You don’t need to be a perfect person. You are a unique person with a unique set of stronger points, weaker points, and make up. However, altogether you are still a gift because there is no one quite like you. Instead of focusing on the things you don’t think you can do, focus on your gifts.

What are your gifts?

When you understand that you are a gift, then everywhere you go you see yourself as royalty, giving the gift of your presence, your time, your love, your thoughts, your beauty and kindness to everyone you meet.

Focus on your positive points and drop the negativity- things you can’t control, pain, unforgiveness, low self image, comparison, intimidation, fear, procrastination, worry, concern. Be a better leader by using your unique set of gifts and cultivating them. It is not a waste of money to invest financially and otherwise in developing your gifts and unique leadership and communication potential. As you focus on being better at your gifts, you can use them to your advantage in making a living and a life.

3) Define yourself 

We have that wonderful power of choice. By using it to our advantage in deciding who we want to be, we automatically go from followers to leaders. Who do you want to be? What goals do you want to achieve in this phase of life?

We can best define ourselves not by what we say, but by what we do. Our actions show our priorities in life.

Your time and expenses show your priorities in life. Do they currently reflect your vision for your life or are they filled with distractions?

You want to prioritize your life so that your time and expenses show the things you have decided to prize and demonstrate a laser accurate focus on the goals fixed on your mind.

4) Give up to win

Life is full of choices and there are always other tempting alternative uses of our limited resources.  To succeed we must learn to make the best bargain for our limited resources and this involves using trade offs wisely. What are you going to give up in order to win? Achieving success in your goals means giving them laser sharp focus and the only way you can do that is by streamlining your life and disciplining yourself to make some hard but necessary tradeoffs. What things can you give up now so you can have them in abundance later?

5) Mentally win first 

Winning starts in the mind. If you don’t win in your mind first, your might work and work and work, however your limiting beliefs have already set you up to subconsciously self-sabotage. You change your life first on the inside and then the outside will follow suit.

One of the ways we can change our life is by thinking of our life stance.  Our life stance is basically the vantage point from which we view and interpret life. It is the sum of your daily attitudes, assumptions, expectations  about yourself, others and the world.

Our life stance is very important because sometimes we don’t even pay attention to our thought patterns and just go on auto-pilot. Our thought patterns are very addictive since they have been ingrained by experience, upbringing, personality, and association. We need to take a step back and actually think about the conclusions we make rather than just leaving them to happen automatically. Changing your life stance enables you to win in your head and once that happens, strength, enthusiasm, creativity, follow suit.

6) Who are your friends?

The relationships we have have a huge influence on who we will be. Our relationships affect our thinking, our health and well being, our growth in life. The right people in our lives are very powerful in helping us blossom and be the best we can be.

Media is a powerful and quite cheap way to be in the company of great people. In whatever area of life you want to succeed and grow in, all you need to do is find someone who has done and learn from their wisdom in their books, cds, videos, blogs etc.

Good friendships are very important like I already said here.

Vertical relationships are also powerful. Some of the leaders I have interviewed on this blog and chatted with elsewhere have talked about the power of mentorship in helping you arrive at your goals faster. I find that people are generally willing to help in the area of their success, so just take the initiative to develop a relationship with someone with the success in the area of life you are willing to develop. It can give you a lot of insight and save you a lot of time.

A good rule of thumb in finding a good mentor is to get advice from people who have success in the area of life you want to develop. There is no use asking a nice but poor person for financial advice. If you are looking for help in developing an aspect of your character look for someone with great character. If you need help with academics look for someone doing well academically. If you need help in relationships look for someone with an admirable relationship etc. Take initiative to develop relationships and you’d be surprised how people want to support you.

7) The things you don’t do can hurt you.

The things you overlook due to procrastination, short-term thinking, fear, doubt etc can get in the way of your success. I read about a study that showed that less than 5% of people (I think it is somewhere between 2 or 3%) are actually financially ready by the time they retire. Think about the fact that most people do something before retirement. Most people work but it is the things they don’t do that mess them up big time. This is why it is important that we don’t think like everyone else. Be different and think long term. Think about what you want out of every area of life. Give us the gift of your uniqueness by putting a little more thought into making your strengths and personality shine in powerful and creative ways. Work hard to make it happen. Live a purposeful life.

Ps this blog was featured on timetradingguru.com here: http://timetradingguru.com/?p=1123

Do check it out.

Omolade, Dasola and Kelechi in Calgary

I hung out with Omolade, Dasola and Kelechi to plan a possible open mic/movie screening etc.

By the time we were done it was already too late to meet a stranger to interview so I asked (*cough*coerced*cough* 😉 ) them to do the interview (even though this isn’t the first time I’m meeting them).

This video is the longest! I had to break it into 4 parts in order to upload it.

What I enjoyed the most about this was getting to know them better. One thing I have to say is that the three of them definitely have a strong awareness of who they are.

For example Omolade always like to help. If you are around her she will assertively ask you what you want and offer you things to make you more comfortable. She doesn’t consider it tedious, its just her being her. She is always at others’ service and when she said that she wants to help others with her life I knew she meant it.

Dasola is always making things happen. He always take ownership when there is anything to be done- from a road trip to party to movie to career night etc and I understood why now- because he likes efficiency in every system.

Kelechi doesn’t like to do anything in half measures. He always revises over and over again till its as close as possible to perfection and when he said that he values excellence I appreciated why he does things the way he does.

Its cool because I got to know them more- what makes them who they are, what their values are, their heart, their future dreams and thoughts. I didn’t know Omolade loves change. I didn’t know Kelechi loves to make people smile. I didn’t know how much passion Dasola has for creating the Nigeria of his dreams. They all had one thing in common- a desire to create a better future for others.

It was honest, funny and deep at the same time.

One thing I learnt from this interview is that it is always good to still make room to discover and be surprised by the people in our lives. If they are anything like us then they are beautifully complex.  After sharing the same space or doing some routine activities together you might assume you have a good sense of who they are. When you connect to their essence however, you really admire their gifts and also have a stronger sense of respect for their own self-expression.

Sometimes its hard to have more than a superficial conversation but maybe we can start by sharing our authentic self with others. This doesn’t necessarily mean not using discretion or telling all your dirty secrets but rather being bold enough to wear your essence closer to your sleeve. Its scary but it also has a way of bringing the right people into your life.

What do you think? Yes? No? Maybe?

(Ps: On my previous post about passion- I will share my own ideas on how to get driven/passionate about things we may not presently enjoy. Still waiting for your comments though!)

7 lessons from talking to strangers

Hello everyone,

So I have good and bad news today.

Bad news is that I don’t have a video for today:(

I talked to a couple of people and they said no and I had to go and get work done. I thought I would be able to come out again but I was tied up and couldn’t unfortunately. I really tried my best to see if I could set up something virtual but it didn’t work this time. Let’s hope tomorrow’s will be fun and totally make up for today.

It has been a very eventful month for sure. Do you know we are already halfway into January? In the absence of a video I wanted to share with you 7 lessons I have learnt so far from a few weeks of street-side convos. That is the good news by the way 😉

Lesson 1:

Suck it up. On Sunday I really didn’t feel like going out and I called my friend Pelumi to see if she would help me find a good reason not to. (Un)fortunately she just told me- well you said you were going to talk to strangers everyday so just suck it up and go. Tough love right? I was expecting some more feminine validation 😛

That’s the truth though. If you want to get something done, then regardless of how you feel, suck it up and go do it. Enough said.

Lesson 2: 

Be consistent. Most people must think I am very bold to have talked to so many strangers so far. The truth is, sometimes I get nervous and I don’t feel like doing it but when I take it one day at a time, before I know it, a week will be over and I think, wow, look at all the people I talked to! So its all about just putting a little bit of effort everyday.

In the popular book ‘The Slight Edge’ Jeff Olson puts it this way;

‘The right choices and wrong choices you make at the moment will have little or no noticeable impact on how your day goes for you. Nor tomorrow, nor the next day. No applause, no cheers, no screams, no life-or-death results played out in Technicolor. But it is precisely this very same, undramatic, seemingly insignificant actions that, when compounded over time, will dramatically affect how your life turns out’

What huge goal do you have? Start today. Little by little.  Be consistent even though you are yet to see results. Have faith in the process. The secret is in those little undramatic things we consistently do.

Lesson 3: 

Proactive planning is everything. I got a huge package today, a belated christmas gift from my lovely sister and because it was so huge, I wanted to go and drop it off, do some work, then come out and meet people. If I had decided instead to pick up the package later in the day after I had met people, then I might have met someone today for the video but because the package was gigantic I couldn’t carry it around and had to go and drop it, then from there I had to work. A little more proactive thinking would have helped me meet my goal before it was too late.

Lesson learnt: Whenever you have a goal, you have to plan in advance how you will take control of your time to create those results. What situations do you need to be in to achieve your goals? How are you going to meet the right people? How will you use your time to make sure you meet a certain goal ?etc. When you spend a few minutes planning to hit your goal and charting the course of action it can dramatically improve your outcomes.

Lesson 4: 

Don’t prejudge people. To be honest I like to evaluate people I am planning to talk to. Does he look friendly? Does she look busy? Is he going to be rude to me? Is she going to think I want to steal something from her? etc

Most times some people I expect to be mean end up being so much fun and people I expect to be fun end up very unadventurous. So now I just shoot.

No need to over think things, you might as well save time by taking your chances and seeing what happens.

Its a lesson for life in general. Its always good to give people a chance. You might be surprised at what comes out of it and to find the resources you need in the most unlikely people.

Lesson 5: 

Have fun. Sometimes we get so caught up in what we have to do that we forget that we should try to enjoy whatever we are doing in life since its taking up -well-our lives! When I make up my mind to have fun, it doesn’t matter how anybody reacts to me, I am having fun in my world and if you say no, its your loss. When I have fun, I also get to connect better with the people I interview and in exchange they are more fun and open. When you have fun at whatever you do, people connect with your enthusiasm, you become believable and its easier for people to want to follow you in achieving a certain aim.

Lesson 6: 

Don’t take rejection personally. My first day was my day of the most rejections coincidentally. You should have seen how sad I was. I thought- wow I had this great idea and now they’ve crushed it:( And I thought- who do I think I am trying to be all curious and creative? Maybe it is not actually a good idea.

Guess what I have learnt? It is not always about me. People may be busy, they may be having a bad day, they may be shy about being on camera, they may be a bit insecure, they may be private, they may be afraid to be randomly approached, and if they are a lady they may be too self-conscious if they don’t have makeup on. There are so many reasons why. Now when I get a no I just mentally say ‘next’. No offence taken. I love that I have been able to come to this place.

When people tell you no, it doesn’t mean its the end of your goal, it simply means they are not the right candidate to achieve it with!

Lesson 7: 

Its always worth the extra time to get to know a stranger. 

People are actually exciting with their dreams, hopes, wisdom, place in their life journey, etc. Talking to strangers really opens your mind to other people’s worlds instead of being stuck in your little world. It also helps you connect more to place because you get to learn about the different people sharing the same space with you and how they create their own life and joys and passions out of the same place. I love it.

“Life is a transaction between you and others.

People are indispensable. For most goals you need in life you need people- to love you, to lead you, to follow you.You are always exchanging goods- material ones like food, services etc and immaterial ones – like love, wisdom, friendship, time etc.While you are at it, you might well as make sure that both parties make the most from the transaction” – Me 😛

There we go. I am sure by now you would have realized that these lessons can be transferred to anything else- life, friendships, ambitions. Try applying them and I am sure you will get more out of your goals in life.