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Food for Living: Nothing Good Comes Easy
By Henry Ukazu
Dear Destiny Friends,
“Nothing worth having comes easy”- Theodore Roosevelt
A one time Nigeria’s rave of the moment, Bongos Ikwue, in one of his hit songs said “Cause I’ve been searching for, for true love. I will keep ride on searching till I found. Nothing good comes easy, this I know. I will keep ride on searching till I found.”
Life is filled with so many challenges and twists. Navigating the hurdles of life can be described as the most “interesting” journey any progressive being must endure. This is because there are so many routes to navigate, just like a businessman who wants to sell or market a product to a potential client or customer must explore many skills. In some cases, the seller speaks untruth in addition to speaking the truth. All these go to tell that nothing is easy in life.
Did you know that what comes easy won’t last, and what lasts won’t come easy? Imagine buying a fake product, it will only serve for a short period of time as opposed to when you buy an original product. According to Israelmore Ayivor “Whatever you want is behind the mountain of struggles. Nothing great comes with ease.” The question is, are you ready to roll your sleeves and get dirty in doing the work? A great philosopher was right when he said, “Nothing in life that’s worth having comes easy… Money is work, love is work, life is work.” Just like Martin Rubin said, “If loving comes easy, nothing else seems hard.” Can you therefore see that you must pay the price for success because it won’t be handed over to you on a platter.
In school, you must do your assignments, and read to pass. In business, you must learn the ropes. In sports and entertainment, you must put in the work. Indeed, there’s no free lunch anywhere.
Nothing humbles a man more than failure. Most times we see failures as negative, but if we have a positive mind towards life, we will not see failures as distractions trying to prevent us from achieving our goals in life. If you have never failed in life, you have never tried anything new. Great minds are great people who have failed many times before they succeeded just like Harry Potter manuscript was rejected twelve times before being accepted.
In the journey of life, you will experience many setbacks and failures, but the good news is that all you need is one success for the world to celebrate you. Again, you may have felt rejected and disappointed by many people, but all you need is just that one person who will appreciate you.
In every sphere of life, nothing good truly comes easy. If you want to succeed in marriage, you must be ready to put in the work by tolerating your partner’s excesses, communicating, forgiving, and loving them the way they wish to be loved, in addition to other rules of engagement marriage offers. Many people want love but are not ready to put in the work that is involved in love. To succeed in marriage, you must see it as an investment, and you must continually invest by putting in patience, kindness, love, understanding, money, tolerance, patience, gratitude, appreciation, and more, so that you can easily withdraw from it when you need some. If you don’t invest in it, how will you withdraw from it? The mistake most people make in marriage is thinking they have soulmates, but failing to understand that you build soulmates because nobody and no marriage is perfect. You don’t meet soulmates, you build your soulmate
It is generally agreed that to get what you don’t have, you must do something different. With my little experience in life, I have come to the sublime realisation of the importance of adding value to my life in addition to helping people even when I have my own challenges. I say this because I strongly believe in the principle that says you will get what you want faster when you help other people to achieve what they want. When you share the little you have with genuine love, the universe has a way of blessing you in ways and manners you won’t expect. This principle has worked for me on several occasions. I will explain this principle with a story.
Last week, I was speaking with a prominent man in the USA, and he said to me “Henry, many years ago, I was on the verge of losing my apartment. While I was in court fighting a hard case, a distant friend who didn’t know what I was facing reached out to me for accommodation, I gladly accepted him. One day, he said t me, Mr. John (not real name), please give me some bucks, I’m starving. I gave him five dollars and instead of buying food he played the lottery with it and won one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He came back and thanked me for the blessing. In appreciation, he gave me half of the money. You can imagine the feeling I had that day. The moral of this story is that you will get what you want faster when you help other people to get what they want. Despite being in pain, he still stretched out his hand to assist. Truly, nothing good comes easy in life.
In conclusion, I will ask you, do you have any goals or desires you would like to accomplish? If yes, do you know that the difference between who you are and who you want to be lies in the sacrifice of the work you have to do to get you to where you want to be? That’s why Rihanna said, “nothing in life comes easy”. Everything comes with a sacrifice.
Henry Ukazu writes from New York. He’s a Human Capacity & mindset coach. He’s also a public speaker, youth advocate and creative writer. 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 info@gloemi.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.
