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Food for Living: The Value of a True Friend
By Henry Ukazu
Dear Destiny Friends,
Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer – Jean De La Fontane.
One of the best things that can happen to someone is to have a good friend. The value of a true friend is priceless. It cuts across all sectors of life. Whether you are a student, entrepreneur, married, politician, clergy etc, you need honest, loyal, and trustworthy friends as you journey through life.
The hallmark of friendship is loyalty, and one’s loyalty to another will always be tested. That is why it’s highly advisable to marry your friend with whom you can be vulnerable. It is noteworthy that vulnerability is one of the strongest tests of marriage, because one must trust the person he is vulnerable to when he lets his guards down.
We all want great friends, but most times, we don’t act like one. The best way to get a great friend is to be one, but unfortunately, some people don’t understand what the word friend really means. They just used it freely. In reality, your best friend is someone who brings out the best in you.
Good friends are medicinal. They help to increase one’s life span. They are very therapeutic. They help our mental health. They help to increase our happiness. It has been determined that people who value both their family and friendship enjoy greater health and higher happiness.
In our contemporary society, many people lose true friends because they are dressed like work. Yes, true friendship is earned. It’s easy to make an enemy, but it’s hard to make a friend. While poverty minds think a friend is someone who gives you money, rich means think a friend is someone who corrects you, looks out for you, and gives you an opportunity. The big questions we need to ask ourselves is, what are the traits of friendship? What are the characteristics of friendship? How do you know a true friend?
You cannot overestimate the value of friendship. Here are some characteristics and points to note before you confidently say someone is your friend.
Trust & confidentiality: You need to know the people you tell your secret.
Loyalty: This is the true test and hallmark of friendship because just like your marriage will be tested, your friendship must surely be tested.
A true friend is someone who accepts you the way you are. A friend is someone who respects you, especially when you disagree with them. Mutual respect is one of the most powerful traits of a good friendship, and a lack of it raises a red flag. A true friend is kind and shares with you. He plays with you, and is on hand to protect your interest.
It’s a well-established fact that nothing good comes easy. True friends take time to grow. Just like the journey of a thousand miles begins with a step in the right direction, true friends must be tested like a marriage to stand the test of time.
According to Beth Elkassih, there are four traits to look out for in a friend as follows:
Reliability: A true friend is a dependable ally as opposed to a fair-weather friend.
Listening: A true friend must have a listening ear without being judgmental. A friend is that person who knows all about you and still loves you.
Authenticity: There’s nothing that pleases a friend more than authenticity. The reason many friendships don’t last is because “supposed friends” are not authentic. They only speak what their colleagues want to hear.
Trust-worthy: This is one of the pillars of true friendship. In my calculated opinion, it is the foundation and cornerstone of all success because you can confide in someone without being afraid of betrayal.
Friendship does not mean absence of disagreement, or that everything will be rosy, no, great friends experience challenges in their friendship to come come out great just like gold must go through fire to become gold. What’s important to note is that a true friend will be your cheerleader as opposed to being a critic. If you are not getting it right, a friend can be your third eye, and constructively criticise you with love.
To put it in perspective, fans are critics who can woo or cheer you up depending on your performance, but a coach will always cheer you up regardless of your performance. A coach sees your potential and helps you become a better version of yourself.
Just like a critic sees your weaknesses and attacks your worst self, a cheerleader sees your strengths and celebrates your best self. Would you rather be a critic or a cheerleader?
The following are some of the rewards of true friendship – It helps to kill loneliness and social isolation.
Friendship helps to reduce stress. It provides emotional support, and helps us in the race of personal development. It also gives us a sense of belonging when we know people are always there for us when we need them.
If you really want to know whether someone is a friend, just ask yourself if the person is adding value to your life and making you genuinely happy.
I will conclude with some great quotes on what a great friendship entails.
There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship -Thomas Aquinas
A true friend is one who overlooks your failures and tolerates your success – Doug Larson
True friends are those rare people who come to find you in dark places and lead you back to the light.
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.
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