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Food for Living: Distance Yourself from Negativity
By Henry Ukazu
Greetings Destiny Friends,
It is a well established fact that in life, there’s time for everything. A time to sow, and a time to reap; a time to cry and a time to be joyful; a time to be born and a time to die; and a time to succeed and a time to fail. The list is literally endless. Amongst all these, the gateway of overcoming this challenge is having a positive mindset. When you diffuse your mind from negative thoughts, you give yourself the positive energy to live again.
In the journey of life, sometimes we are too complacent. We sometimes hold onto sentimental attachment with our fellow human beings due to vested interest. Most of us kind of play along or flow when it comes to who we surround ourselves with.
Having a positive mindset is priceless. A positive mindset tells you that despite all the bullets that is thrown at you, it shall fade away if it’s definitely not for you. A positive energy tells you that regardless of what is said about you, they don’t decide your fate. A positive mindset tells you that when they go low, you go high. A positive attitude empowers you to raise the price so that detractors will find it hard to rent a space from your mind.
You cannot underestimate the power of positive mindset. However, before you are able to appreciate the strength of positivity in your life, you must keep negative people out of your life. The question now becomes, how do I kick off negativity from my life? Kicking out negativity does not only involve distancing yourself from friends and associations, it also entails distancing yourself from negative thoughts. This is because that is where all negative thoughts arise.
Just like how success and failure arise first from the mind, distancing yourself from the world starts from the mind as well. You’ll have to conceive the idea first before acting on it. It should be noted that if you don’t weed out negative thoughts and people from your mind, they’ll hunt you. Let’s take a case study of a farmer who plants a crop. He has to constantly weed the farm in order to allow the crop grow and mature very well before he/she can harvest. In the same way, we need to separate our self from the chaff.
As human beings, we all have one form of chaff living in us. It’s up to us to weed out all the chaff in our life. This chaff can be friends, family, insecurity, associations, habits or even blind spots which you are not aware of. It’s high time you shook off any chaff of disappointments preventing you from possessing your passion. You are in charge of your life. Has it ever occurred to you that you are the landlord of your life? If yes, then it’s imperative for you to raise the bar so that cheap people can’t rent a spot in your mind. Don’t allow people with no value to occupy a space in your brain which you can use to create ideas and solutions.
As human beings, sometimes, we always think human beings are the cause of our failures, but in reality, the reason is simply because we are still hanging out with negativity, free yourself by separating yourself from the crowd.
How to distance yourself from negativity
There are several ways to distance yourself from negativity: Avoid negative people because they literally have no value except envy and doubt. Set boundaries from strangers and people you are not comfortable with in order to keep your sanity of mind. Look out for solutions and not problems; and finally, don’t take things personally and always practice self-love.
When you distance yourself from negative people, your thoughts become positive. When you’re surrounded by other people’s negativity, you may find it harder to regulate your own positive and negative reactions and emotions. When you are surrounded by negativity, it will hard to find reasons to feel happy or positive. However, once you distance yourself from negativity, your positive emotions will start to show themselves again.
According to a Life coach and author, Tandee A. Victor, “Complaining can completely ruin your life by taking all the happiness out of it. When you constantly complain, you develop a negative mentality about everything. That leads to discontent and inner turmoil.” This is simply what negative thought brings to the mind. It’s easier to think, feel and stay positive when you’re surrounded by such happy, good and positive energy. You’ll be surrounded by good people and good things, rather than an endless feedback loop of negative energy.
Sometimes, a lot of people don’t notice that they’re surrounded by negativity until they start to distance themselves from it. Therefore, in order to separate or distance yourself, you must detach yourself from the crowd. And finally, ask yourself why? Ask yourself why now? Ask yourself what? Ask yourself how? Ask yourself when? You can do this by finding the root cause and start looking at how it affects you, the people around you. Look around you, look at yourself. Food for thought: The one thing that happens immediately after distancing yourself from negativity is a shift in the way that you’re thinking.
Release
You can distance yourself from the crowd by releasing yourself and your mind from any distraction. You need to let it out whatever has been disturbing you. It would greatly help if you release feelings. The longer you keep it in, the harder it will get.
Forgive
Pride can make you do things you’ll regret. Pride will make you say words that can leave wounds deeper than any blade can ever do. Forgive them and forgive yourself. This will help you have peace of mind. And wouldn’t it be calming to think that nothing else is holding you back from moving on, from detaching yourself from the things that aren’t good for you. Forgive. One word, six letters, and a lifetime worth of work, forgiveness takes time..
Be grateful.
Be grateful for the pain and sorrow. Be grateful for the joy and hope. Be grateful for the memories. Be grateful for the smiles and scars, and the wounds and tears. Be grateful for realizing the reason you’re detaching. There are so much other things, and many other people that you can be grateful for.
Amazing things happen when you distance yourself from negativity
The simple question I have for you today is what’s your own chaff?
Henry Ukazu writes from New York. He works with the New York City Department of Correction as the Legal Coordinator. He’s the author of the acclaimed book Design Your Destiny – Actualizing Your Birthright To Success and President of gloemi.com. He can be reached via henrous@gmail.com
By Henry Ukazu
Dear Destiny Friends,
The importance of timing cannot be overemphasized. Timing is everything in life. It is critical to one’s success. You can lose your money and get it back in many folds. You can even lose your health and get it back all things being equal, but when you lose time, you can hardly get it back again.
The importance of timing can be seen in crops. Every crop has a season, a good farmer won’t plant maize when it’s time for oranges, nor will he plant pears when it’s the season for mangoes.
Time is very instrumental to the success and failure of anyone. Imagine having a meeting or interview at 9:00am and you arrive at 10:10am, it will take the grace of God to be interviewed. As an employee, apart from one not being able to diligently do his job, one of the fastest ways for an employee to lose his job is by being late to work.
When I was in New York Law School studying Taxation law, I did a course titled, the Problem of Timing. During the semester, I learnt about cash and accrued income. Let me do some academic exercise here. In cash income, just like the name entails, one is paid in cash as soon as the work is completed. It’s just like going to the market to make a purchase. One can either pay directly with cash or with debit or credit card. But Accrued income refers to revenue a company has earned by providing goods or services, but for which payment has not yet been received, one will have to do the work first before getting paid. This is applicable when one works in either a public or private organization where one is paid either weekly, bi-weekly or at the end of the month depending on the stipulated mode of payment.
It’s important to note that before the money is paid either in cash or accrued, one would have earned it. It’s just like one learning g before earning, and one will have to update to upgrade. These are just the practical principles that will work with life.
In the same way, in life there’s a seed time and harvest time. It’s a universal principle of life. Whether as a parent, entrepreneur, student or employee. As a parent, if you don’t train your kids very well, they will grow up to reflect the opposite of what you desire. As an entrepreneur when you invest in your business, you will get the reward in due time. As a student, if you take your studies seriously, your grades will improve, and as an employee, you stand to get promotions and opportunities when you add value to your work. In summary, one will have to put in the work before recognition comes on.
To understand how seedtime and harvest work, imagine where parents tend to like one child more than others just because they see potential in him, or he’s smart, hardworking or even creative. They fail to understand that every child is different and as such their timing can be different. Some kinds take time to develop.
I personally believe there’s something so unique about each individual which God has deposited in everyone of us. It’s just a matter of time for it to manifest. Your timing of manifestation is different from your siblings and colleagues.
Personally, I didn’t mature fast with my contemporaries. Overtime, I have seen much improvement in my personal and professional life. Maybe because I have added value to my work with the assistance of mentors and good friends, or God had to humble my colleagues and mentors . Why do I say this? During my formative years, I had little or nothing to show for it. I was looking at my contemporaries as mentor and seeing my mentors as small gods whose feat is unattainable, but now, the reverse seems to be case as I have developed capacity some of my colleagues are yet to attain, while I have even surpassed the achievement of my some of my mentors in some quarters.
In all these, they are all surprised how it happened. Some are yet to comprehend or articulate the feat. It’s just like watching a film where everyone slept and woke up to see the game and tides have changed. The secret behind it is the seed time and harvest time. I was probably learning the trade while in the wilderness, and when the training season matured and ripe enough to be harvested, I became attractive to almost everyone who loved the seed I was producing.
There are litany of examples of people, who have been in the wilderness during the seed planting season. Let’s take a case study of Joseph in the Bible, his journey to stardom took a little twist. Despite the travails he experienced in the hands of his siblings who sold him, his experience while in the jail, and with Portiphar’s wife, who tried to seduce him; they were all set ups for success. The moral here is Joseph seed time and harvest time was quite different, it wasn’t a smooth journey. Ordinarily, one would have cursed his siblings or his friends who were with him in prison and forgot him after they were released. But at the end of time, everything worked out for his favor. Joseph’s seed days were his dark days while in the wilderness.
Another inspiring story of note was that of Pastor Ibukun Awosika, the former board Chairman of First Bank of Nigeria. She once shared a pathetic story during her formative years of being in business. According to her, she sojourned for about 15 years. She cried because lines were not adding up for her and she wouldn’t do what her contemporaries were doing to get opportunities. At a point in her business, it appeared like she was in a race of own life because everything seemed to be against her, but at the appropriate time, lines began to fall in place for her. Appointments, business opportunities, favours and goodwill began to fall in place for her. Again, she had a fair share of seed time.
An interesting question I would like to ask you is, what’s your seed time? Have you ever been in the wilderness when you appeared to be fixed? It’s unfortunate many people are not willing to pass through the storms or experience seeds and harvest time. Amidst all these, one must do some work before they get opportunities. However, before such opportunities will come up, one will have to plant the seed.
In conclusion, seed time and harvest time is critical in the journey of life. Take a seat and determine what seed you would like to sow and what you’ll like to harvest.
Henry Ukazu writes from New York. He works with the New York City Department of Correction as the Legal Coordinator. He’s the founder of Gloemi. He’s a Transformative Human Capacity and Mindset coach. He is also a public speaker, youth advocate, creative writer and author of Design Your Destiny Design Your and Unleash Your Destiny . He can be reached via info@gloemi.com
By Eric Elezuo
The Senate has suspended Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghen for six months over her sexual harassment accusation and other disputes against the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio.
The Senate also withdrew her salaries for the period of the suspension, as well as her security details.
The chamber however, soft-pedaled on the salaries and allowances of her aides, who it was argued would not have any source of livelihood within the period.
Globacom is welcoming new customers on its network with the introduction of the e-SIM. The e-SIM activated in any Gloworld shop or Dealer outlet comes with an introductory free 5GB data when the customer buys a data plan of N1,500 or more.
Customers already on other networks can now join the Glo network with e-SIM as an additional SIM. Existing Glo customers can also enjoy this “SIM-less” freedom.
With the e-SIM, customers no longer have to worry about space for a physical SIM on their phones. The e-SIM is a software-based digital chip built directly into smartphones or wearable devices, thus eliminating the need for a physical SIM card for customers.
The use of e-SIM enables customers to have seamless switching between phone numbers without a physical SIM. It is ideal for upwardly mobile people who travel frequently. The e-SIM also guarantees security, as unlike physical SIM, it is harder to remove from devices. It is also eco-friendly and reduces plastic waste.
Globacom’s launch of the e-SIM enables enables it to cater to high-net-worth individuals and enterprise customers, and it also reinforces the company’s commitment to providing seamless and future-ready services to its customers.
A customer seeking to activate the Glo e-SIM needs to check the compatibility of the mobile handset by dialling *#06# on his or her phone. If an EID number reflects on the mobile screen, the device is e-SIM compatible.
“The customer can then proceed to the nearest Gloworld shop or Glo Dealer outlet to migrate to e-SIM. The process takes only a few minutes and the customer can thereafter begin to enjoy the use of an e-SIM”, the Marketing Department disclosed.
