How to Test Short-sightedness...

Read this somewhere and wanted to share with you. Amazing, isn't it?

xoxo
abydarl

EZE drops out of school; Makes it into the Forbes Billionaires List!

Recently, I had a steaming discussion with some friends where each of us probably related our tons of experiences – first-hand and otherwise – about paid employment and the myriads of factors militating against the outburst of entrepreneurial horsepower in most Nigerians, especially, the university graduates among us. When you ask a typical Nigerian graduate what he or she wants to do post-graduation, the common answer is, “to try and get a job, you know it is not easy.” but sadly, it is only about one in every 100 graduates that are gainfully employed in those ‘successful’ organizations. That’s a paltry one percent! What happens to the remaining 99 percent? They hope. And keep hoping.

Is there a solution?

Entrepreneurship may well be the answer that we need to reduce the depth of unemployment and the frustration that comes with it. What is entrepreneurship?  The term is a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist, Richard Cantillon, as the person who pays a certain price for a product to resell it at an uncertain price, thereby making decisions about obtaining and using the resources while consequently admitting the risk of enterprise. But entrepreneurship is not just about setting up one’s own business. You can display the skill of enterprise by recreating common things into very uncommon and profitable outputs. Perhaps, that is why renowned management guru, Peter Drucker defined an entrepreneur as someone who searches for change, responds to it and exploits opportunities. It then means that innovation is a specific tool of an entrepreneur, hence, an effective entrepreneur converts a source into a resource.

Few young Nigerians, who have been bold and courageous enough to dream up something, pursue them and constantly improve on them, have made serious impacts in the country today. Nairaland, bellanaija and linda ikeji are examples and there are still countless more. On a different platform, the individual who devised a means of packaging fried plantain chips in those lovely and colourful wrapping sheets that most of us currently buy while in traffic is a genius! Can you imagine how much money the business of plantain chips is making just because someone was responsible enough to think of a better way to package the product?

Quite understandably, the Nigerian business environment, the society and even our immediate families constrain a lot of us in many ways.  We are taught from a very tender age to grow up, get educated and secure a paid employment maybe as a doctor, lawyer or accountant. Not once in the growing up years did most wealthy parents or school teachers guide their wards into thinking that they could actually become a manufacturer, a cloth designer or a business owner of some sort. Even innate skills such as singing, dancing, painting, sporting etc. were equally discouraged, all in favour of studying to ace one’s school examinations. Inevitably, the training that a Nigerian undergraduate studying, for example, Mass Communication at a tertiary institution receives, only compels him to, upon graduation, ‘look for work’ as a reporter. The training may not sufficiently guide him to, perhaps, start a blog and commercialize it or veer into providing other ancillary services in advertising and public relations as an entrepreneur. This short-sighted approach makes me ask myself, “Who is the owner of that organization that I want to work for as an accountant or administrator?” Again, ask any banker who his biggest customer is; is he an employee or perhaps, even a self-employed illiterate?

A cursory look at the profiles of those who made it into the recently released Forbes list of world richest people revealed that most of them were self-made - Aligo Dangote, Walmart’s owner, S. Robson Walton and the world’s richest man today, Carlos Slim Helu & family etc. just name them. (Hey! I’m not talking about those who divert state wealth for their personal aggrandizement).

I guess it is now our choices to make – you and i. to be or not to be the next Afropreneur. And whether we want to keep on reading that Eze goes to school and thereafter became an accountant at a departmental store in the big city or that the Drummer Boy – yes, the blind one, who became the best musical producer, after studying music and pursuing his dreams. Go figure!

 xoxo

abydarl

Oxymoron of Civilization

Cock-a-doodle doo!

Distinct frenzied cries of excitement herald a glorious dawn

It’s the day of the New Yam festival

Little feet scurry about to complete their chores

Budding breasts swear at delaying cooking fires

Gray hairs converse in whispers as they hurry along

Man and nature peacefully crest along                                                                    

The Crown with twin elephant tusks has blessed and appeased

With charcoal-painted torsos, they pirouetted

Their leopard skins bobbing up and down to the flutes

While the red caps gladly dipped it in palm oil as they ate

Tapping their feet to the melancholic rhythm

Tonight! Water from the earthen pot is alu!

The milk from our gods flows for everyone                                                             

BOOM! BOOM!! BOOM!!!

Arrgh!!!

No longer are we roused by the familiar canorous cockcrow

Half-asleep children dragged to school at dawn

Hope we won’t fight in traffic today?

Why has the youth exchanged their hoes for guns?

Stories of bombings, massacres and kidnapping; dot the news                                             

cancer, global-warming, oil spills;

Politically and religiously motivated?         

How did we get here?

With sultry steps they landed on our shores

…with a Bible in one hand and a whip in the other                                                    



NOTE: I wrote this poem last year, please leave your comments

The Poodle and The Bulldog

Hi friends,

Its been pretty eventful during these past few weeks that I’ve been away. Many daunting issues came up but with sheer toughness and a conviction that I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me, I turned them around to be a piece of cake.

I won’t go into the real story now but I want to share with you all, the mindset with which I confronted the issues. The events remind me of the story of a poodle and a bulldog that got into an argument. They squabbled ceaselessly about which of them possessed superior strength and mental acumen until they decided to go into a contest. The competition was to test which of them could more speedily open their owner’s front door and get in.

And so they set out to execute this task. The bulldog went first. He stood on his two hind legs and leveraged on his size to place his fore limbs on the door handle and pulled and pulled. He did this for several hours but clumsily, his forelimbs would always slip off at the last moment and he would begin afresh. At long last, he gave up.

Very quickly, the dainty poodle scampered over to the door and scratched discreetly on the door. Moments later, the door opened and the owner of the dogs came out, bent down and scooped the poodle into her arms. When she straightened up, she beckoned on the bulldog to come on and step into the house too. Take a few seconds and imagine the smirk of satisfaction on the poodle’s dogface as she gloated in her triumph over the bulldog.

I took away several lessons from this simple story but the most profound is that physical size and strength are not always synonymous. Especially in this age and time, those who emerge tops are not usually defined by their physical strength but by their intellectual prowess. Others lessons are delineated below:

-    Always have the intellectual humility to bow to superior arguments.

-    Know your competitor’s weaknesses and capitalize on them.

-    The size of your head has nothing to do with neither the size nor the capacity of your brain. Your intellectual agility depends on how well you exercise your brain (by the way, human brains are similar in size and potentiality according to Dr Benjamin Carson).

-    Win the heart of your boss. Always deliver.

-    Build and nurture relationships. You will need them someday. The poodle sure knew how to do this.

-    Challenges are just that – challenges. Don’t fall back, give in or surrender to opposition when your self esteem is on the line.

In all, I’d say that the poodle had some balls. Interestingly, I found some other more poetic synonyms of balls. Take a look.

v       Chutzpah

v       Temerity

v       Impetus

v       Effrontery

v       Guts

v       Audaciousness

v       Audacity

v       Nerve

v       Impudence

v       Cheek

Incorporate some audaciousness in your dealings this week and tell me about it in the box below.

xoxo

abydarl

Why Can't We Be Friends With Benefits?

Do you sometimes feel like you're beating your head against a wall trying to get even the ATTENTION you deserve with your man - much less the COMMITMENT you truly want? And that no matter what you do or say, it somehow ends up pushing him away even more? 

  

A relationship consultant, Rori said to me: I know what that frustration and pain is like - it was the way I used to go through my relationships, one after the other.  It was like an endless pattern of intense chemistry at the beginning, and then he'd always sort of "drift away" and I'd be heartbroken.

I know now that it doesn't have to be that way for you.   You can shift this awful situation round completely - so YOU feel powerful, and his love starts flowing TO you, instead of AWAY from you.

Rori shared the secret of how she got around the cycle of rejections and despondency with me. Below are some of her tips that you can use, my comments are in red:

In her words;

1. I got busy doing activities that I am passionate about (i.e. yoga classes) and making new friends – I’m guessing your passion isn’t yoga, but it could be going for dance lessons (I could recommend you to a few places), learning the piano or starting a poultry farm.

2. I put down the oars in my relationship and leaned back – I’ve heard some of my girlfriends complain that their men complain that they behave like the men in the relationship. You don’t want to be so aggressive that your man begins to feel threatened. As my brother says sometimes, “a woman should let her man cheat her sometimes and vice versa – that’s what I call, compromise.”

3. I use only feeling messages to communicate with my relationship man (it took some practice, but it is getting easier) –try not to leave all the blame at his doorstep all the time. Tell him you feel hurt when he fails to keep a promise instead of telling him that he is insensitive to your needs. Also learn and adopt his love language but be ‘coded’ about how you show it.

4. I started dating other men casually and let my relationship man know ("my goal is to be in a relationship that is moving towards marriage, so I am not looking to be anyone's girlfriend... we can still see each other) – this works too! **winks**

5. I stopped driving to him... he has to come to me – obviously.

6. Finally, I stopped going to the last minute "meet me in my office, I got an hour" dates! I told him that he would have to schedule a date with me at least 48 hours in advance. – This is a must.

And the result?

"The most amazing thing has happened... when I first started this process I was totally focused on him... he was everything to me... he was the prize for me to win!! Well, 6 weeks later, I am focused on me and my life... I noticed yesterday that I am hardly thinking about him anymore and I am starting to not want him anymore...

"He has gone from calling me 1-2 times per week to calling me 1-2 times per day. Plus he sends me text messages every day. He finally stopped asking me to "stop by his office" and started planning nice romantic evenings that he sets up several days ahead. I can feel him moving closer to me, where before he was always moving away!”

 

There you have it! Get real girlfriend, if you're in love with a man who is SO HARD to pin down, who is "afraid" of commitment, and seems to always want YOU to do the work in the relationship,   let him understand by your actions – not words that you are priceless. If a man isn't sure what he wants from you or with you, why should he have ALL of you to himself while he's figuring things out?

xoxo

abydarl