naijagogetters

—If you think you are beaten, you are. If you think you dare not,
you don’t. If you like to win, but you think you can’t, It is almost
certain you won’t.

—If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost.
For out in the world we find, success begins with a fellow’s will-
It’s all in the state of mind.

—If you think you are outclassed, you
are. You’ve got to think high to rise. You’ve got to be sure of
yourself before you can ever win a prize.

—Life’s battles don’t
always go to the stronger or faster man, but soon or late the man
who wins is the man who thinks he can.
—Anonymous

One of my favorite cartoons as a kid was Aladdin. Other than the genie’s great personality, what I liked the most about the movie was that the main character was able to wish for something and it was guaranteed to happen. Over time I have come to realize that everyone of us has a personal genie. The genie in Aladdin was hidden in a secret lamp. In order to find the secret lamp, Aladdin had to travel far into the desert and deep into the ground to a secret cave. Finding our personal genie requires the same type of effort. We have to search deep within ourselves and get in touch with that voice that tells us to do the right thing and that we can be great. The same thing in us that makes us dream of greatness is the same thing that tells us to do the right thing. Unfortunately often times we ignore this voice and it becomes smaller and smaller until it is not in control of us. In order to achieve our dreams, the positive voice in us has to get back in control. In other words we first have to achieve self discipline before we can start working towards our dreams. Once the positive side of us is in control we can start creating our ideal world. Almost everyone knows the right thing to do, and we all know that the right thing would make us better off. Once we empower the positive side of us we are more apt to take actions that would make our dreams come true. Our dreams come true because we are able to consistently take action towards its attainment. We empower the positive voice in us by obeying it. Discipline yourself and start creating your dream.

Recently, I had a $500 phone bill. My initial reaction was to ignore it and act like the problem didn’t exist (lol). How many times do we try to ignore our problems away? It doesn’t work. Anyway, I eventually summoned the courage to start fixing the problem, so I called the phone company to enquire about the bill. I am told I did in fact incur the costs, and that I had a month to pay it. I got off the phone without asking if there was any way they could help me reduce the bill. Even though I had nothing to lose by asking, I was hesitant to ask. A few days later, it occurred to me to ask. It turned out that they were able to reduce my bill by 50% which they did. This incidence reminded me of an important principle, which is that we miss 100% of the shots we don’t take. There was a certain possibility of success and certain possibility of failure. Most likely the possibility of failure was higher than that of success, so let’s say for argument sake there was a 30% chance of success and a 70% chance of failure. If you don’t make the attempt you reduce your 30% chance of success to 0. If I didn’t ask, I would definitely have lost the $250 credit. As long as there is a chance of success, please take the shot, because you might score. Remember, you miss all the shots you don’t take.

Love the end of this clip, “life=risk”

Everybody at some point has had to depend on the leadership and guidance of another person. As kids we had our parents and teachers, then our professors and eventually for some people their Boss’s. This idea of being guided and supervised by someone else is perfectly normal in human societies. It won’t be strange to see a 45 year old manager under the guidance of a CEO. This General dependency on the leadership and guidance of others makes stepping into a leadership role an adjustment for many. Leadership is a different game entirely, and requires a different mindset and set of skills. Most people would however tell you that the adjustment into a leadership position isn’t impossibly difficult, especially with the right guidance. However, I would like to make a slight distinction in leadership. There is leading other people and there is personal leadership i.e. leading you. Both could be challenging and are important to entrepreneurial success; however I would like to focus on personal leadership in this blog entry.

Personal leadership is the most critical to entrepreneurship. An acceptable definition of entrepreneurship is “being your own boss”. When we decide to become entrepreneurs we implicitly accept the responsibility of being our own Boss. We decide to manage our time, results, input, attitude and a whole range of factors which determine success. There is no one to ensure you make deadlines, or no one to punish you if you fail to perform. This task of becoming one’s own boss could really be a challenge, especially for many of us who have being under the guidance and supervision of others for most of our lives. The CEO plays a very important role in the success or failure of a company. It is his or her responsibility to ensure that all that is required to make the business succeed is in place. Often time’s people would tell you the difference between good and bad companies is the CEO. As your own boss, your effectiveness is essential to the success of your business. It is possible to get an experienced CEO to manage your company for you, but many entrepreneurs can’t afford to do this at the start. Most entrepreneurs have to step into the role of CEO, and do a good job at it for them to succeed. If you were the CEO of a company of 20 staffs, would you condone your staff chatting or watching TV all day at the office? My guess is probably not. So why do condone your slacking in your business? My point is, it could be harder to lead yourself than it is to lead others. Have you defined your working hours? And do you stick to it? You probably think letting your staff watch TV in the office is bad for business, so why do you as your only employee do it? I.e. if you do

The relative difficulty of personal leadership is in my opinion one of the reasons many people find it hard to be entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship isn’t just about good ideas; it also entails personal accountability and leadership. This ability to effectively lead yourself is the product of a good character. I think the starting point for anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur is to develop a good Character. The topic of character isn’t something I can fully touch on in this blog entry. It would be a recurring theme on the NGG blog. There are various components of a good character, and of course this is a very subjective idea. I would like to briefly touch on one accept of a good character, which is, “personal integrity”. By personal integrity, I mean doing what you say you would do. A person with a high personal integrity takes themselves seriously enough not to fail to do what they have told themselves they would do. This way the CEO, which is you is getting more authority and can become more effective. If you have developed the habit of doing what you say you would do, then as your own CEO you tell yourself no missing deadlines and you are bound to stick with it. I consider personal integrity to be a skill, and just like every skill it is developed by practice. One way to develop this skill is by setting goals and ensuring you stick to them. Gradually one develops the ability and discipline to do what you tell yourself you would do. Setting goals is very important in developing personal integrity, because it gives us something to measure and be accountable to. Start today by setting small goals and ensure you accomplish them. It certainly feels good when you accomplish something you set out to do, but most importantly it is essential to being an entrepreneur.

All over the world, an increasing number of youths are becoming idle. The global economic recession has contributed to the global idleness by making it increasingly difficult to get a job, stay in a job and do profitable business. In the case of Nigeria, the recent ASSU strike left a lot very intelligent young people idle for a long time. The strike is extremely sad, for a country that seeks to be one of the top twenty economies by 2020. Vision 2020 must be the biggest “April fool”, if our government still puts such little value on education, as evidenced by the nonchalant attitude towards the strike. This blog post isn’t about criticizing the Nigerian government, even though I feel the need to make a few remarks. Rather this article is to warn against a very dangerous thing called Idleness. At the beginning of this post I hinted that a lot of youths had become idle because of factors outside their control (credit crunch and co). The truth is no one but yourselves can make you idle. Idleness leads to a lot of vices. I’m sure many of us have found ourselves idle for a prolonged period of time, and you can testify that it leads to mischief and negative actions. Not only is our capacity for self defeating actions increased, it also demoralizes and puts us in a rut. I would like to encourage that we try our best to never become idle. Even if the activity we would rather engage in is not available, we should take it upon ourselves to find work to engage ourselves. There are millions of opportunities to work for free. You are better of offering your services for free than sitting idle. Start taking some new classes, learning some new skills or volunteering with an NGO or for profit organizations. The most important thing is that you avoid the decay that comes with idleness, by not being idle. Equally important is our commitment to stay busy. Though you are doing the work to stay busy, do it like it’s the most important task. The time would eventually come when work you desire would become available, especially if we keep busy.

I came across this video about the same time I was thinking of writing a blog entry on fear. Fear impedes us from moving towards that which we want. It is as if there is a big scary dog between us and our desired goal. The logical thing to do when we encounter this big scary dog is to step back and away from that which we desire. In fact this is what many of us do and end up missing out on the success we are capable of achieving. I like how in this video clip the last lady who ran towards the scary wolf, ran right through it. When she decided to face her fear, it disappeared and she was able to continue on her journey. This is the very nature of fear, it often seems very real and overwhelming, and however it is a product of our imagination. Fear is one of the biggest challenges anyone seeking success has to face. If you set a worthy goal, fear would definitely come somewhere along the line and try to intimidate you. However if we persist in doing that which we are suppose to do, totally ignoring our fear, it would eventually disappear and we would very well be on our way to success.

We all have dreams as kids. As a child I wanted to a soldier, in retrospect I think the movie “Rambo” had something to do with this. As we grow older, we let go of our childhood fantasies. In my case I am very positive I don’t want to be a soldier, though I still think it would be pretty cool to have military training(be a super badass marine kind of guy, that doesn’t have to go to war). However as we become older and more aware of our unique personality, most of us find a new more realistic dream. By realistic I mean not based on a movie or something that fascinated us as kids, but more based on our passions and personality. However I have come to realize that the real world is quite a big bully. Many people start out adult life trying to pursue their dream and the “big bad world” just bullies many out of it. The world (reality) scares our dreams out of us in many ways; it could be through the fear of bills to pay, or the inevitable initial challenges and failures we face. However, I have come to realize that whether we like it or not, our dreams our meant to be challenged. We have to have a battle mindset when it comes to our dreams, knowing that everything that can challenge our dreams and visions would, and it’s our duty to protect them. The unfortunate truth is, if you wake up in 40years disappointed because you abandoned your dreams, it would be your fault and no one else’s, not even that really difficult situation or person. I believe the reason many people let go of their dreams is because they don’t realize it’s their duty to keep their dream alive. I have only spent a short time in this world, and I can’t tell you much about what it’s like to live without a genuine dream, but from what I hear its one of the great tragedies of life. If you have let go of your dream, this article is not trying to rub it in your face. I want to let you know that we can always put on our gloves and start fighting again. This is one of the most worthy battles in life. The whole of humanity is depending on us to make our unique contributions to human existence. There seems to be this pervasive idea that chasing your dreams and fulfilling your potential is meant to feel natural and be easy. I think this is a bloody lie. It is a battle from the beginning, there will be weeping, gnashing and heartache involved. But I understand it’s most rewarding. Most times we hear about the results of someone who pursued their dreams, and not the numerous nights they doubted themselves or the hurting of being doubted and mocked. The path to true success is narrow and rough, however the result of not taking this path is perhaps more tragic. Peace out.

Earlier today I was thinking about fear and how it hinders us from success.Hence I decided to write a blog entry about fear. In the process of writing this article, it occurred to me that fear isn’t something many people understand enough, including myself. It is such a powerful emotion yet due to its camouflage nature it can often go undetected. Some people argue that fear is one of two most powerful human emotions, the other being love. It is a very powerful emotion in the sense that it has the ability to control us. I have come to understand that fear has the ability to determine how we perceive our world and also the decisions we make. How many times have you made a bad decision simply because you were afraid? Or, done less than you were able to because of fear? Well, at this point I have good news and bad news for you. However I would start with the bad news, which is that, everyone one of us will be confronted with fear at major points in our life. Also the fear we face tends to be bigger when we challenge ourselves, or strive for something big. The good news though is that fear can be beaten and the more we learn to face fear and beat it, the better we become at it. Many people have faced great fears and have overcome it. Personally I have come to realize that when I am afraid it is either a sign that there is danger ahead or my mind is playing tricks on me. Hence I assess the situation to see if there are any potential dangers; if none seems apparent then I keep going. This process of acting despite the fact that I’m afraid is the only way I know how to overcome fear. My mind tends to stop the games when I persist in doing that which I am afraid of. If you persist in doing what you are afraid of, the uneasiness of mind (fear) tends to stop or get better with time. However it is a tragedy to let fear stop you. This is a major reason a lot of people accomplish less than their able to. Would you let your mind cheat you out of the good things in life?

So, I go running every day, and for a few days I had been trying to increase my speed. At the end of each run, I usually found myself panting and walking like someone they just brought out of the oven. Being that I have been running consistently for about 2years, I knew it wasn’t my fitness; it seemed to be a mental block. With that puzzle in my mind, I read something today that reminded me that tension often militates against our effectiveness. So, I realized what I had been doing wrong. Somehow, I forgot how much easier I was able to complete tasks when I was relaxed. This is a strategy the best athletes in the world use. There is a superior strength that seems to be available to us when we relax. This idea of relaxing to achieve more seems to apply to almost any activity. How many times do we work against our success because we are trying too hard and consequently are tensed? It is possible to work hard and long but stay relaxed. In essence, ease or relaxation is a state of mind. So, when I went running today, I tried to keep a calm mind and wow! I was on fire. This was the fastest I had been in about 3months and probably the least worn out I was. I guess the problem was my state of mind. I was just suffering myself because of “gra gra.” If you find yourself trying too hard, step back, RELAX, and try again with less pressure.