False Beliefs All?

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What is Life?

As I lay here trying to sleep, the images of the plane crash wreckage in Lagos earlier today refuse to leave the shadows of my closed eyes.

We go to bed everyday with almost one hundred percent confidence of waking up the next day. We go through each day with concrete plans (articulated or not) for the next minute, hour, day, week, month, year, even decade – like we have a guarantee that we would live to see those times. Rarely do we stop to think how fragile our lives actually are. And in a country like Nigeria, the fragility of our lives is amplified maybe tenfold. You go to church to worship, you are likely to be killed by a terrorist bomb; you travel by road, you’re robbed and killed or you die in a car crash; you travel by air, you crash in a plane that had faults with its landing gear just two weeks ago; you sit at home, a plane with a faulty landing gear comes crashing into your house.

I believe we cannot find satisfaction in hoping for longer lives. After all, the length of our lives is largely out of our control. We should focus more on the quality of our lives. That is something we can control. And it doesn’t mean material wealth or financial affluence.

It is the intangible things in life that give it meaning. Love, friendship, understanding, knowledge, wisdom, philanthropy, etc. These are the things that can make a even a short-lived life a successful one. Keep positive relationships. Smile genuinely, talk to the old, aid the sick, advice a child, forgive easily, apologize quickly and sincerely, love unconditionally, be abundantly patient with the tentative, plant a tree, grow a garden, keep a pet, read good books, write, communicate with friends and family, etc. In the end, these are the things that can give you a smile when your time is up. Fortunately, we do not have to live to be ninety to achieve all these. They are things you do continuously every day and they give you fulfilment.

In the end, it is not how long you live but how well you live that matters to you and others – which is a direct consequence of the quality of our relationships with other human beings and with nature. This, I believe, is the meaning of life.

Knowledge of self.

Here’s a proverb I just came across and liked:

“He who does not know and does not know that he does not know, is a fool. Shun him.
He who does not know and knows that he does not know, is a child. Teach him.
He who knows and does not know that he knows, is asleep. Wake him.
He who knows and knows that he knows, is wise. Follow him.”

Very wise words if you ask me.

Failure and Success

Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. We do not fail overnight. Failure is the inevitable result of an accumulation of poor thinking and poor choices. To put it more simply, failure is nothing more than a few errors in judgement repeated every day.

Now why would someone make an error in judgement and then be so foolish as to repeat it every day? The answer is because he or she does not think that it matters.

On their own, our daily acts do not seem that important. A minor oversight, a poor decision, or a wasted hour generally doesn’t result in an instant and measurable impact. More often than not, we escape from any immediate consequences of our deeds.

If we have not bothered to read a single book in the past ninety days, this lack of discipline does not seem to have any immediate impact on our lives. And since nothing drastic happened to us after the first ninety days, we repeat this error in judgement for another ninety days and on and on it goes. Why? Because it doesn’t seem to matter. And herein lies the great danger. Far worse than not reading the books is not even realizing that it matters!

Those who eat too many of the wrong foods are contributing to a future health problem, but the joy of the moment overshadows the consequence of the future. It does not seem to matter. Those who smoke too much or drink too much go on making these poor choices year after year after year… because it doesn’t seem to matter. But the pain and regret of these errors in judgement have only been delayed for a future time. Consequences are seldom instant; instead, they accumulate until the inevitable day of reckoning finally arrives and the price must be paid for our poor choices -choices that didn’t seem to matter.

Failure’s most dangerous attribute is its subtlety. In the short term those little errors don’t seem to make any difference. We do not seem to be failing. In fact, sometimes these accumulated errors in judgement occur throughout a period of great joy and prosperity in our lives. Since nothing terrible happens to us, since there are no instant consequences to capture our attention, we simply drift from one day to the next, repeating the errors, thinking the wrong thoughts, listening to the wrong voices and making the wrong choices. The sky did not fall in on us yesterday; therefore the act was probably harmless. Since it seemed to have no measurable consequence, it is probably safe to repeat.

But we must become better educated than that!

If at the end of the day when we made our first error in judgement the sky had fallen in on us, we undoubtedly would have taken immediate steps to ensure that the act would never be repeated again. Like the child who places his hand on a hot burner despite his parents’ warnings, we would have had an instantaneous experience accompanying our error in judgement.

Unfortunately, failure does not shout out its warnings as our parents once did. This is why it is imperative to refine our philosophy in order to be able to make better choices. With a powerful, personal philosophy guiding our every step, we become more aware of our errors in judgement and more aware that each error really does matter.

Now here is the great news. Just like the formula for failure, the formula for success is easy to follow: It’s a few simple disciplines practised every day.

Now here is an interesting question worth pondering: How can we change the errors in the formula for failure into the disciplines required in the formula for success? The answer is by making the future an important part of our current philosophy.

Both success and failure involve future consequences, namely the inevitable rewards or unavoidable regrets resulting from past activities. If this is true, why don’t more people take time to ponder the future? The answer is simple: They are so caught up in the current moment that it doesn’t seem to matter. The problems and the rewards of today are so absorbing to some human beings that they never pause long enough to think about tomorrow.

But what if we did develop a new discipline to take just a few minutes every day to look a little further down the road? We would then be able to foresee the impending consequences of our current conduct. Armed with that valuable information, we would be able to take the necessary action to change our errors into new success-oriented disciplines. In other words, by disciplining ourselves to see the future in advance, we would be able to change our thinking, amend our errors and develop new habits to replace the old.

One of the exciting things about the formula for success – A few simple disciplines practised every day – is that the results are almost immediate. As we voluntarily change daily errors into daily disciplines, we experience positive results in a very short period of time. When we change our diet, our health improves noticeably in just a few weeks. When we start exercising, we feel a new vitality almost immediately. When we begin reading, we experience a growing awareness and a new level of self-confidence. Whatever new discipline we begin to practice daily will produce exciting results that will drive us to become even better at developing new disciplines.

The real magic of new disciplines is that they will cause us to amend our thinking. If we were to start today to read the books, keep a journal, attend the classes, listen more and observe more, then today would be the first day of a new life leading to a better future. If we were to start today to try harder, and in every way make a conscious and consistent effort to change subtle and deadly errors into constructive and rewarding disciplines, we would never again settle for a life of existence – not once, because we would have tasted the fruits of a life of substance!

Adapted from an original piece of an unknown author.

YING-YANG OF RELATIONSHIPS

The perfect lover, if ever there would be such a person, is that one that knows how to imitate nature in effortless precision.

Having conquered self, he, ruling his spirit, is able to apply that healthy balance in supply & demand, giving satisfaction enough to leave the loved filled, and in that just enough to hunger for more & never so full as to tire of him; just as each season comes when the earth craves it the most & ends as it begins to weary the living & the earth cries ‘enough!’

How quickly the tap that never closes becomes an irritant to those who not long past happily drank from it till their thirsts were quenched & their needs for its supply were met.

Before satisfaction comes hunger & without hunger satisfaction cannot be enjoyed neither appreciated or tolerated with ease for long. Satisfaction without hunger is dis-ease.

Those who want are filled & live happy, and those that want not, though they live, feel as though they are dead.

The lover that tires not of giving will learn the hard way that man grows weary of receiving & when the cup is full, vanity pushes man to hunger for emptiness. Life after all is in a circle.

Love is about giving. Love is also about holding back from giving for a time & a season. The perfect lover shields himself from being repaid with contempt for the love he gives by the love he witholds.

Balance is emotion & logic, heart & mind, love & ‘hate,’ joy & sorrow, peace & war…
Sweet satisfaction is found in balance.

”To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”

Who Are You?

Popular question isn’t it? Simple as it sounds, I consider it to be the one of the most fundamental questions of our existence. “Who are you?” and you respond “My name is John, Mr. Doe’s son”, or “John Doe of XYZ Plc”, or “John, Amy’s brother”, etc depending on how you expect the person to recognize you. These responses suffice when the essence is just to elicit some form of recognition. However, when you sit down to ask yourself who you are, you see that you cannot be just a name.

So who are you? What makes you you? Is it the genes of your parents, your experiences in life, a pre-planned destiny or any other such factors? Proponents of these schools of thought will have you believe that these factors have made you who you are. So where does that leave you? A product (or by-product) of circumstances over which you have no control? Maybe. But maybe not, at least not for the individual who wants to take responsibility for his/her life.

The human being is more than a body that is capable of speech. The human being is a mind that is capable of introspection, analysis and informed choice. We are endowed with the ability to consider our situation and change the course of our lives not by instinct but by conscious intelligent choice. This attribute makes us architects of our lives and destinies and totally supersedes any genetic combination or social factors around us.

So, who you are is actually who you choose to be whether you are consciously making the choice or not. Ultimately, we are solely responsible for our lives.

I believe somewhere in your genetic make-up, your experiences in life, and all such external influences, the real you sits quietly, waiting to be discovered and expressed.

If you have not clearly recognized who you are, now is the time to define yourself. This is called Self discovery. It is not a one-time event. Rather, it is a never ending process and it must be actively pursued across our life spans. Knowledge of ourselves is the only way we can find meaning in our lives and purpose for our existence.

Success [Intro]

A life of success is a life of continuous study. Success in any endeavour requires having the right knowledge and applying that knowledge.