Signs that it's time to let go

Someone constantly expects you to be someone you’re not.

A great relationship is about two things: First, appreciating the similarities, and second, respecting the differences.  So be cordial, but don’t completely change who you are for someone else simply because it’s what THEY want, or because it’s what THEY think is best for you.

If someone expects you to be someone you’re not, take a step back.  It’s wiser to lose relationships over being who you are, than to keep them intact by pretending to be someone else.  It’s easier to nurse a little heartache and meet someone new, than it is to piece together your own shattered identity.  It’s easier to fill an empty space in your life where somebody else used to be, than it is to fill the empty space within yourself where YOU used to be.

Secondly, 

A person’s actions don’t match their words.

Be wary of people who only tell you what you want to hear.  It’s so easy to believe someone when they’re telling you exactly what you want to hear, but you have to watch what they do too.  Actions speak louder than words – actions speak the whole truth.

Honestly, everybody deserves somebody who helps them look forward to tomorrow.  If someone has the opposite effect on you, because they are consistently inconsistent, and their actions never match up with their words, it might be a good time to let go.  It’s always better to be alone than to be in bad company.  In the end, true friendship is a promise made in the heart – silent, unwritten, unbreakable by distance, and unchangeable by time.  So don’t just listen to what your “friends” say; watch what they do over the long-term.  Your true friends will slowly reveal themselves

Thirdly, 

You have a habit of moping and feeling sorry for yourself.

If you don’t like something, change it.  If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.  Being hurt is something you can’t stop from happening, but being miserable is always your choice.  No matter how bad things are, you can always make things worse.  Negative thinking creates negative results.  Positive thinking creates positive results.  Period.  The only limits to the possibilities in your life tomorrow are the “buts” you use today.  Things always turn out best for people who make the best out of the way things turn out.

Eventually you will realize that happiness is not the absence of problems, but simply the ability to deal well with them.  Imagine all the wondrous things your mind might embrace if it weren’t wrapped so tightly around your struggles.  Always look at what you have, instead of what you have lost.  Because it’s not what the world takes away from you that counts; it’s what you do with what you have left. 

Also, 

You’re clutching tight to an easy-street mentality.

Great accomplishments aren’t easy; they’re worth it!  So forget how you feel and remember what you deserve.  Right NOW is always the best time to break out of your shell.  Chances must be taken, mistakes must be made, and lessons must be learned.

Someday you will look back on your life and realize that everything worthwhile you’ve ever accomplished initially challenged you.  And that is as it should be, because big challenges often prepare ordinary people for extraordinary success.  Every struggle arises for a reason – either for experience or as a lesson.  A great journey is never easy, and no dose of adversity along the way is ever a waste of time if you learn and grow from it.

Remember, an arrow can only be shot by pulling it backwards, and such is life.  When life is pulling you back with difficulties, it means it’s going to eventually launch you forward in a positive direction.  So keep focusing, and keep aiming!

Another sign it's time to let go. 

You truly dislike your current situation.

In life, it’s always better to be at the bottom of the ladder you want to climb, rather than the top of the one you don’t.  So don’t let people who gave up on their goals talk you out of going after yours.  The best thing you can do in most situations is to follow your intuition.  Take risks.  Don’t just make the safe and easy choices because you’re afraid of what might happen.  If you do, nothing good will ever happen.

In addition, realize that it’s not always about trying to fix something that’s broken either.  Sometimes it’s about starting over and creating something brand new.  Sometimes you need to distance yourself to see things clearly.  Sometimes growing stronger means growing apart from old habits, relationships, and circumstances, and finding something different that truly moves you – something that gets you so excited you can’t wait to get out of bed in the morning.  That’s what LIVING is all about.  Don’t just settle for the default settings in life, when you can customize absolutely everything. 

Finally, you catch yourself obsessing over, and living in, the past.

Holding on to what’s no longer there holds too many of us back.  Some of us spend the vast majority of our lives recounting the past and letting it steer the course of the present.  Don’t waste your time trying to live in another time and place.  Let it GO!  You must accept the end of something in order to build something new.  So close some old doors today.  Not because of pride, inability or egotism, but simply because you’ve entered each one of them in the past and realize that they lead to nowhere. Even after the toughest of times, eventually you will overcome the heartache, and forget the reasons you cried, and who caused the pain.  You will realize that the secret to happiness and freedom is not about control or revenge, but in letting things unfold naturally, and learning from your experiences over the course of time.  After all, what matters most is not the first, but the final chapter of your life, which unveils the details of how well you wrote your story.  So let go of the past, set yourself free, and open your mind to the possibility of a new beginning.

Now it's your turn, if you feel like you need to let go of something, but you haven't been able to do so,know that you are not alone in this.

Accepting what is, letting go, and moving on are skills that all of us must learn when facing the realities of life, but these are also skills that take time to master

From the voice within

When trying to influence your fellow guy or gurl, or the society at large, put aside what you want, your personal interest and consider what they want, and also show him how to get it. For example, you go fishing, right, you cant bait with strawberries, that's what you want, not what those fishes want. When you bait with worm or grasshopper, you see them fishes, flocking around, in so doing, you have achieved your aim and satisfied them. If you desire change, you need to stop thinking of what you want first, and ask what the other party involved wants and then show him how to get it. If I am to relate it with our present government, they have been using force, yet no positive result. Now the question is what do they want, the boko haram, and the ogas at the top behind it? So we can end these tragedies for good and have a better Nigeria, not sayin we should give them, but let's understand, what is it they want then we can have a head way. We are all seeking for peace and security. Let the different heads meet, then they discuss on the advantages and disadvantages with the men incharge of these cruel acts and see ways in which they can help one another, it might not sound like the best plan but it is something worth trying. God is forever there for His people and He would bring peace and protected us. Let's do our part, our girls need us to be strong and start thinking of a better way of doing things in this situation. Henry Ford said 'if there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from his angle as well as from you own' . This applies in every area of our lives. Unfortunately, 90 percent of people on this earth would ignore. I was telling maliq sometime pass, we sincerely need to pray against this selfish syndrome in us. It has eaten deep but there is always another chance to do better and to seek better results. Remember, we all have a common interest which is peace, unity and security. Owen D. Young said 'the man who can put himself in the place of other men, who can understand the workings of their minds, need never worry about what the future has in store for him'.

Dealing with the everyday human

The only way you can get anybody to do anything is by making the person want to do it. Sure,you can make a man to give you his rolex wrist watch by pointing a gun to his head, you can make a colleague cooperate with you by threatening to blackmail him or her, a boss can make his employees to cooperate with him by threatening to fire them, you can make a child do what you want by using a whip or threat. But these forceful methods or rather crude methods have a bad repercussion.The only way I can get you to do something is by giving you what you want. We all have different wants, almost every normal adult want good health, long life, food, sleep, security, to be rich, famous, sexual satisfaction, well being of their loved ones, and so many others. But there is one that we deeply crave for, so deep and that is the desire to be great, the desire to be important, the craving to be appreciated. Believe or not, we all crave for it. It is this craving, desire, 'ginger' as maliq would say, that makes one to achieve greatness and success in life. Not forgetting , this same 'ginger' lures many guys and girls into becoming immoral characters. The drive behind your cravings and desire to be great and important and the plans you make to get your result, is what determines your character, your personality. Ask yourself this question, ' How do you get your feeling of importance?' Some persons, most especially women, go the extreme just to have the feeling of being important in their relationship. Naturally, we women love attention but not to the extreme. Understanding your man comes in. True but weird, some people who are insane find in that insanity, a feeling of importance which they couldn't see in the world of reality. I call it 'The hard to please syndrome.' Some due to failed marriages, and other different societal hiccups.
We need to learn to nourish our self esteem and that of the persons around us. Give kind words of appreciation. It works for even the meanest and smartest of persons. I don't mean flatteries, they are far from being sincere. General Obregon's philosophy 'dont be afraid of the enemies who attack you, be afraid of the friends who flatter you'.
When you appreciate someone sincerely, the person gets to do things from his mind generously.

Soul Searching

So I am on the couch, reading and a thought came to me,'human interaction' yeah...we blame another rather than ourselves for virtually everything. For instance, a thief who murdered a person, hadly accepts his wrong, instead he would blame it on society or experiences. He would want to justify himself. Why is that? Cos of the selfish way of reasoning. Ok, take for instance, the insecurity issues we have in our country and the President plus the different parties, house of reps and senates, everyone keeps blaming them. Dont get me wrong, I never said the president and his associates are right, because sincerely speaking, I cant vouch for him, reason being that I dont know what sort of things they are involved in, I can only tell you that I get information from the news, newspapers, different opinions from persons around and social networking sites. But what I am trying to say here is, can we just think for a moment, who truly is to blame? Do not forget, we are Nigerians, we are responsible for our country, for each other. Lets stop blaming others but instead do a background check on our individual self. The change you seek starts from you, believe me and this applies to every area of your life. Everyone thinks for himself alone, the selfish syndrome. Criticism is futile because it puts a man on the defensive, and usually makes him strive to justify himself. When you criticise someone consistently, it is dangerous because it wounds the person's precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses his resentment. Our human nature makes us or the wrong doer in question, to blame everyone but himself. But remember, the person we are going to correct and criticize will probably justify himself and even blame you in return. Just deeply ponder on it. Even though you truly seek change either from the country, or your friends or one person really close to you that you are hoping for change from him or her, I am in favor of it but why not begin with yourself? Its more profitable than trying to improve others which is kinda dangerous. Dont you think? Browning said ' when a man's fight begins within himself, he is worth something'. It may take sometime to perfect yourself, then you can start the new year in seeking change. But start with yourself first! Confucius said 'dont complain about the snow on your neighbor's roof, when your own doorstep is unclean'. When dealing with people, let us remember that we are not dealing with creatures of logic but creatures of emotion, motivated by pride and vanity. It takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving. Instead of condemning people, let's try to understand them, let's try to figure out why they do what they do and doing this, breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. God never judges a man until the end of his days.

This quote was used in what movie?

''Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, 

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measures,

We ask ourselves,

Who am i to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?

Actually,

Who are you not to be?

We are born to make manifest, the Glory of God that is within us,

and as we let our light shine,

we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same''

7 Questions You Are Too Scared to Ask

It’s not about finding the right answers;it’s about asking the right questions...


1.  Based on my daily routines and actions, where can I expect to be in five years?

This is your life story and you are the only author.  If you’re feeling like you’ve been stuck in the same setting for too long, it’s time to start writing a new chapter of your life.  The plot structure is simple:  Doing nothing gets you nothing.  Doing the wrong things gets you the wrong things.  Doing the same things gets you the same things.  Your story only changes when you make changes.

If you have an idea about what you want the next chapter of your life to look like, you have to DO things that support this idea.  An idea, after all, isn’t going to do anything for you until you do something productive with it.  In fact, as long as that great idea is just sitting around in your head it’s probably doing far more harm than good.

Your subconscious mind knows you’re procrastinating on something that’s important to you.  The necessary work that you keep postponing causes stress, anxiety, fear, and usually more procrastination – a vicious cycle that continues to worsen until you interrupt it with ACTION.

Progress in life is always measured by the fact that you’ve taken new action.  If there’s no new action, you haven’t truly made any progress.

2.  Are the people around me helping me or hurting me?

A big part of who you become in life has to do with who you choose to surround yourself with.  And as you know, it is better to be alone than in bad company.  You simply cannot expect to live a positive, fulfilling life if you surround yourself with negative people.

Distancing yourself from these people is never easy, but it’s a lot harder when they happen to be close friends or family members.  As hard as it may be, it’s something you need to address.  To a certain degree, luck controls who walks into your life, especially as it relates to your family and childhood friends, but you decide who you spend the majority of your time with.

If someone close to you is truly draining you, be honest about it.  Be kind, but communicate your point of view.  Tell them you love them, and that you want to be around them, but you need their help.  Remember, most problems, big and small, within a family and close friends, start with bad communication.  If this other person is draining you, and you haven’t talked about it, they may not even know.

At the end of the day, you should surround yourself with people who make you a better person and distance yourself those who don’t

3.  How have I been draining my own happiness?

In life, you become what you repeatedly think about.  If your thoughts and behaviors aren’t helping you, they’re hurting you.  Other people and outside events can influence you, but happiness is ultimately an inside job.  You have to disconnect external influences and achievements from happiness and give yourself permission to be happy, in each moment, without the need for anything more.

This isn’t to say that you should be complacent.  You can still set goals, work hard, interact with others, and grow, but you must learn to indulge joyously in the journey, not the destination.

What you need to realize is that all you ever truly have are your thoughts towards the present moment.  Every moment is very similar; the details are just details.  If you say something like, “If I had more than what I have now, I would be happier,” you are sadly mistaken.  Because if you are not at all happy with what you have now, you will not be any happier if it were doubled.  It’s just more of the same.

The bottom line is that you have everything you need to be happy or unhappy right now.  It just depends on how you think about it.  Will you be grateful for what you have, and find joy in it?  Or will concentrate on what you don’t have, and never, ever feel like you have enough?  The choice is yours to make

4.  What excuses am I making?

As George Washington once said, “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”

Truth be told, if you are good at making excuses, you will never be good at anything else.  No matter what the obstacles are that you see in front of you, the only thing truly standing between you and what you want is the excuse you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.

When something is a priority, it gets done.  Period.  And it’s not what we claim are our priorities, but how we spend our time each day that reveals the truth.  You can make excuses.  You can always try to wait for the perfect moment, the perfect this, the perfect that… but it won’t get you anywhere.

To get where you want to go you just have to start DOING.  It makes all the difference.  Making excuses takes the same amount of time as making progress.

5.  What mistakes do I fear most?

As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”

When you find your path, and you know what needs to be done, you must not be scared.  You need to find the courage to make mistakes.  Mistakes lead to disappointments and defeat in the short term, but they also teach you what you need to know in the long-term.  Mistakes are the tools life uses to show you the way forward.

Someday when you look back over your life you’ll realize that nearly all of your worries and anxious fears never came to fruition – they were completely unfounded.  So why not wake up and realize this right now.  When you look back over the last few years, how many opportunities for joy did you destroy with needless fear about making a mistake?  Although there’s nothing you can do about these lost joys, there’s plenty you can do about the ones that are still to come.

6.  How have past rejections lowered my self-confidence?

NOT believing that you CAN is the biggest trap of them all.  If you don’t know your own greatness is possible, you won’t bother attempting anything great.
 All too often we let the rejections of our past dictate every move we make thereafter.  We literally do not know ourselves to be any better than what some opinionated person or narrow circumstance once told us was true.  Of course, this old rejection doesn’t mean we aren’t good enough; it means the other person or circumstance failed to align with what we have to offer.  It means we have more time to improve our thing – to build upon our ideas, to perfect our craft, and indulge deeper in to the work that moves us

Don’t let old rejections take up permanent residence in your head.  Kick them out on the street.  Realize that you sometimes you have to try to do what you think you can’t do, so you realize that you actually CAN.  And sometimes it takes more than one attempt.  If ‘Plan A’ doesn’t work out, don’t fret; the alphabet has another 25 letters that would be happy to give you a chance to get it right.  The wrong choices usually bring us to the right places, eventually.  You just have to believe in your own potential to get there.  

7.  When did my life fall so far out of balance?

Be diligent and committed to what you’re trying to achieve, but also make sure you leave time for pleasure and exploration in other areas of your life as well.  It is not enough to succeed at one specific goal or to conquer one particular area of expertise; you also have to take part in the different, beautiful dimensions of your life… while you can, while there’s still time.

Lift your head up from your work every now and then and take a long walk, hold hands with your beloved, go fishing, spend time with your friends, swim, bask in the sunlight, try something new, meditate, breathe deep, or sit quietly for a while and contemplate the goodness around you.

In other words, balance yourself – work diligently toward your goals and dreams, but don’t ignore every other aspect of your life.  Keep your mind fresh, your body active and alive, and your relationships nurtured.  Do so, and the things you want most in life will come more naturally.

*Life is filled with unanswered questions, but it is the courage to ask enough of the right ones that ultimately leads you to an understanding of yourself and your purpose.

You can spend your life wallowing in fear by avoiding the obvious, or asking negative questions like, “Why me?”  Or you can be grateful that you’ve made it this far – that you’re strong enough to breathe, walk and think for yourself – and then ask, “Where do I want to go next?
 Now its your turn to err your view. Please pick one or more of the seven questions above and leave a comment below with your answer.thanks...

Enough is enough

Enough is Enough! The night time misadventures of Abuja females 

 

At 2 am on the 3rd of June, 2011, Abimbola Ojo, a female corper had just emerged from a friend’s birthday party in Wuse 2. She stood on the road and hailed a cab, ostensibly looking for a ride home. As she negotiated with the cab driver for the fare, she suddenly found herself in the air. An unknown man had lifted her and was carrying her in the direction of an un-marked vehicle.

Her immediate reaction was that she was being kidnapped. So she yelled and screamed and kicked. Crying for help. Her friend, Miriam Olofu was the first to react. But the abduction was too quick. No one could prevent Abimbola from being dumped in the waiting bus and driven off into the night.

Miriam got in her SUV and trailed the bus. About eight other friends got in their cars and followed as well. While in pursuit, Miriam picked up her cell phone and called someone she knew. It was the District Police Officer (DPO) of the Garki district. She didn’t know where these unknown men were taking her friend and she was calling for help. What started as a fun night had suddenly turned into a nightmare.

In the unmarked bus, Ms. Ojo would find herself in the company of some other women. One of them was naked. Her clothes had been ripped off her body, violently. Ms. Ojo was informed that she was a prostitute and she had been apprehended by a task force under the Abuja Environmental Protection Board. Despite having her NYSC identity card on her and protesting her innocence, Ms. Ojo’s captors would have none of it. The bus load of distressed and protesting women were driven to the AEPB Compound in Area 3, Abuja.

At the AEPB Compound in Area 3, aided by gun-totting mobile police men, the task force violently offloaded these women and barricaded them in a room. Just twenty minutes after leaving a birthday party, Ms. Abimbola Ojo would find herself in one of the most humiliating circumstances of her entire life.

A bunch of her friends would soon arrive, led by Miriam. Having established that this wasn’t a bunch of faceless kidnappers, but men who were under the pay of her own government, they would proceed to walk up to them, bravely and boldly protesting their friend’s innocence. It would prove costly. They were immediately beaten and  slapped and their car tires were slashed.

They were also detained, and prostitution charges were slammed on them.

Soon after, the DPO arrived at the AEPB compound with his men. What followed wasn’t a peaceful, gentlemanly resolution of the problem. According to Ms. Ojo, the mobile police men attached to the AEPB began to shoot indiscriminately, inflicting a few injuries. This stand off did not resolve the issue and Ms. Ojo and her friends were held in the compound into the next day.

During their detention, their captors would proceed to worsen their humiliation. One by one, each woman was threatened to confess that she was a prostitute or be taken straight to the prison in Suleja. To make matters worse, a plastic table was brought in, condoms were poured on the table and journalists were invited to take pictures with these, now powerless, women portrayed as prostitutes.

They were subsequently charged to court.

Typically, this would be where the matter would die. Helpless women, having been humiliated beyond measure, with no means to fight back will give in. But, Abimbola, Miriam and their friends would refuse to be convicted of a crime that they did not commit. And they were fortunate.

Dorothy Njemanze, a young entrepreneur who had attended the same party would rally her funds and her friends to provide legal assistance to these embattled women. Motivated by the fact that she could have suffered the same fate, she would dig in to ensure that these women found justice.

Following the ruckus caused by the shoot out at the AEPB compound and as the case progressed in court, the AEPB proceeded to sponsor a few media articles seeking to paint the occurrences of 3rd June, 2011 in their favor.

However, on thursday, 11th August, 2011, the Magistrate Court in Zone 2, Abuja threw out the AEPB case against these women. The Magistrate asserted that these women had no case to answer and were exonerated of the charges leveled against them.

To put the icing on the cake, in one of the image laundering articles that took the AEPB side, the Director of AEPB was quoted as saying that the board had been mandated to arrest women loitering around the streets of Abuja after midnight.

So, after being beaten, shot at, humiliated and treated like trash, it turned out that the only thing that these women did wrong was to be FEMALE and on the streets of the capital of their own country after midnight.

For all the dirt piling up in Abuja, the streets falling apart, the pollution beginning to rise in our neighborhoods, the priority of the AEPB is to oppress an already disadvantaged group in our society, women. …and they have been doing this since 2007!

So, to the things I have learnt about Nigeria, I will add this one. That a bunch of unproductive people, who have neither been elected nor chosen by us, but under the employ of our own government can, at their own whim, suspend the applicability of the constitution to a specific group of people… and get away with it.

Someone needs to send a message to these unpatriotic elements, hiding behind our established institutions to pursue hypocritical moral agendas:

Enough is enough!this has got to stop..>