NEVER SECOND GUESS YOURSELF

This past few weeks have been the most demanding weeks of my life so far ‘cause I’ve learned more in 2 weeks than I ever learned all my life.

Almost a month ago, there was a job opening at my place, the position of Content Writing was up for grabs and the first name that came to my mind was my best friend’s. Nature brought her to my mind not because she was the best but because she would eventually be the best, that’s by the way. Fast forward to after she got the job and the team had our first official meeting with her. During this meeting, David Shokefun, the CEO of KWE4 Marketing Limited said something that will forever impact my life. He said “The tongue is powerful, yeah but the mind has twice the power the tongue has”, I wondered where that came from ‘cause that was not supposed to be the main topic of the meeting, “When someone wakes up in the morning and tells himself ‘This is not going to be a great day’, it’s actually not going to be a great day because that phrase is already stored in your mind and that’s what your subconscious will work with for as long as the thought is not tampered with”, he concluded. By the time he finished, I had comprehended that initial statement, the message he was just trying to pass across was ‘Think it and it will happen’. Reality had hit me then, I felt like that statement was meant for me because all my life I’ve always had these negative thoughts in my head and the highlight of those thoughts was that I had a short life span. After the meeting, I spoke to my friend about how what he said had touched me and she told me this expression, “Every morning, after saying my prayers, I always remind myself of who I am and who I want to be, I say positive things to myself, maybe you should try that too”. So the next morning, I was in the kitchen washing the dishes when I saw myself through the window glass and I remembered what she told me the previous day, so I said to myself “Hey dude, you are great man, I want you to know that and you are really going to go far in life, people are going to celebrate your legacy, all your dreams are going to come to pass and you’re not dying young, you are going to live old enough to see your great-grandchildren”. Immediately I finished saying those words to myself, I felt better than I had ever felt prior to that moment and I started seeing myself in a way I never used to see myself, I started treating myself with more respect and guess what? My self-esteem has since been at its summit.

One reason that makes people go back to their caves and call it quits on themselves is the fear of failing (in my opinion at least). People that are very close to me can testify to the fact that there was nobody on this planet earth who was curious about the future than I was, because when I looked at myself and the man I wanted to become and having it at the back of my mind that I didn’t have all the time in the world, I’d get discouraged because I always said to myself “Young man, how you gon achieve those things in a short while”. I doubted myself, my abilities, and my dreams and on top of that, I doubted God. There were days I thought my dreams were not realistic and that dreams like that could only be achieved in movies or anywhere else except NIGERIA. I always limited my breakthrough to Nigeria, I didn’t have a global mindset, I didn’t know there could be someone in the other parts of the world who could be interested in my abilities and when Nigeria started getting worse, so were my chances of making it in life (what a stupid mentality).

Thomas Edison, prior to the invention of the light bulb, had failed literally a thousand times and when asked if he wanted to give up on the light bulb and focus on some other things, he said “I have not failed,  I have only found a thousand ways that didn’t work”, his next experiment is what we all enjoy today. I know you’ve probably heard this a million times but it’s something we constantly need to remind ourselves that failure, just like death, is inevitable. Even if you have life on a platter of gold, hard times are somewhere lurking and it’s only a matter of time before they’ll pay a visit. Mike Tyson said “If I won a Nobel Peace Prize, I’d still have to deal with life on life terms”. He said that because he knew life had principles, principles that were made by a Man who is way smarter than the whole world combined.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world”, Jesus Christ said. Failure is not a plague, everybody will have a fair share of it but whether or not we conquer depends on how we deal with it so it’s either you fall back or you fall forward, I pray you choose the latter.

Adios!

Navas Magne