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Food for Living: Time to Develop Yourself is Now
By Henry Ukazu
Dear Destiny Friends,
As fondly stated, change is the only thing that is constant in life. One of the best things that can happen to anyone is to continually improve himself. As a Human Capacity Coach, I cannot overemphasize the importance of personal and professional development. What most people don’t know is that, before you succeed in business, you must succeed in your personal life. This is because people will believe in you before they invest in your business. You may be wondering how this work. It’s very easy. If you are teaching people how to get rich, they want to see you as a rich person. If you are teaching people about leadership and service to humanity, they would like to see you exhibiting such traits. Even in social media, celebrities normally have more followers than their business pages. That goes to tell you people will buy into you before they buy into your product.
You may be wondering what self-development is. Self-development is basically adding value to yourself. This value can be by reading, learning a skill/trade, getting a degree, or improving yourself in an area of interest. In a nutshell, self-development refers to doing better than you did yesterday. The best way to develop yourself is by competing with yourself as opposed to competing with other people. The hallmark of self-development is improving yourself by engaging in any productive activity than you did the previous day.
The benefit of self-development is priceless. It enhances your self-worth, increases your value, and enhances your personal and professional outlook. I will share with you a personal experience. About a decade ago, I was a horrible writer, I used to have stage fright speaking in public and engaging people. Over time, I had mentors who were willing to groom me to be a great writer, public speaker, and awesome communicator, in addition to the fact that I was intentional in improving myself. The desire to improve my writing skill was the catalyst I needed to inspire myself. When I look back on my writing, speaking, and personal relationship skills, I do know a lot of transformation has taken place.
When you develop yourself, you are bound to develop self-confidence. Self-confidence has to do with what you know, how you do what you know and who you know. All these fuels your self-confidence. When it comes to attaining knowledge, the biggest danger is not knowing what you don’t know. So, in order to improve yourself, you must engage in activities that can help you to improve yourself in the area you are lacking.
How to develop yourself
To develop yourself, the first point of call is the mind. You must be willing to change and leave whatever has made you fail. In other to do this, you must have a growth mindset which helps you to learn by thinking out of the box.
Acquire knowledge
There’s no end to learning. We’ll continue to learn until we leave this sinful earth. The moment we stop to learn, we stop growing. It should be noted that you’ll have to learn first before you earn. Learning comes in several stages; it can be online or in-person. One can even learn a language. In our contemporary society, learning a language has become additional value to one’s resume, especially when applying for certain international jobs.
Learn a skill
You cannot overemphasize the importance of learning a skill. In this 21st century, we live in skill and knowledge-based economy. Every progressive and rational being is expected to have little knowledge about technology to compete favorably in the global space. In any capacity you are working in, your ability to be technologically savvy will give you a winning edge among your contemporaries and competitors, especially the knowledge to reinvent.
Build on your strengths
Another good way of developing yourself is by focusing on your strength and working on your weakness. The irony of life is that most people focus on showing the world their weakness instead of their strength. The world don’t care about your weakness, they want to know how they can engage with your strength. Hence, it is imperatively important, that you maximize your strength and work on your weakness.
Focusing on good habits
If you are serious about developing yourself, a critical area you need to pay attention to is your habit. Habits play a big role in the development of any individual. For instance, if you are a consummate alcoholic drinker, it will be difficult for serious-minded people to take you serious. If you are determined to achieve a set target, you are generally expected to wake early, and sleep late. And if you want to improve your physique, you are expected to go to the gym on a regular basis and work on your diet.
Write a letter to your future
Another area that can inspire you to develop yourself is to write a note or letter to your future self on what you would like to be in the nearest future. Place this note on your bed or at a conspicuous area you can see it every day when you wake, and before you sleep. Do yourself a favour and recite the note to yourself. Trust me, if you do this for a substantial period of time, you’ll subconsciously be inspired to work on it.
Feedback
The final, but not the least point in developing yourself is by requesting feedback from friends, associates, colleagues, mentors’ family members, and from the general public on how you can improve. Sometimes, constructive feedback helps us to improve our product and personality. If you are a writer, actor, leader, artist, etc., always endeavor to ask for feedback from people to know how you can improve. Trust me, if you do this, you will be surprised to see the kind of feedback you will get from people, who ordinarily might not be open to reaching out to you.
In conclusion, make a conscious effort to add value to your life or business by developing yourself because people will buy into you first before they buy into your product. When is the time to develop yourself? Now!
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.
