Watch this and thank me later. You'll love it. 

DEVELOP A READING CULTURE

Good evening. It’s about 11:30pm and with lots of pleasure from my personal study, I have decided to edit this teaching that I did some time ago on one of my most cherished topics. I hope you piece together one or two phrases that will ignite your intellectual stick to further illuminate your path to dignity.

My last days in the University were rusty. I near called it a quit before graduating. While contemplating that, I came in contact with two books (and of course a friend) and then everything changed from my inside out! Simply I had an epiphany! A mental surge occurred that projected me at least a decade beyond my then immediate reality.

What happened differently? The magic wand: two books and a friend!

To buttress this insight I had gotten; I ran into this remarkable observation by Charlie Jones months later - “Five years from now you will be pretty much the same as you are today except for two things: the books you read and the people you get close to.” Boy! I hit another gusher!

Let’s focus on the books you read.

Open Books

One quick way to enhance your value is to develop a reading culture. And the quickest way to be valuable is to be knowledgeable. When you become more knowledgeable, you become more valuable. There is no more secret to self-enhancement beyond this!

It is not good for a soul to be without knowledge.

One of the greatest problems of any African community around the world is that we are not a book loving society; as the adage goes: we are not a book people. An average black man doesn’t like reading except for the sole purpose of certification. But as much as it is okay to read for schooling reasons, it’s best to study for mental emancipation or liberation. Mark Twain once remarked “I will never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

Through knowledge the righteous will be delivered.

True emancipation is mental emancipation. Opened books always provide the avid reader with the wings to engage in a flight. Beloved, you only realize you have the potential to fly, when you begin to access volumes. There is no alternative to what a reading habit can do to your mental health.

In the first year of his reign I, Daniel understood by the books…

A man once found his 15year old son arranging gym tools for his regular muscle building exercise. He beckon to him and said, “In as much as it is important to develop your physical muscles.” Then he added, “People who solely develop their physique always depend and work for people who have learnt to develop their minds.” Please, pencil down: The limbs will always serve the mind.

Really you can’t function beyond what you know. Unfortunately not even God or any deity can help you here! You have got to develop your mind. And the way to do it is to bury your mind in between pages! Imagine the looks of a chap that hasn’t eaten possibly for a month; his depleting energy and frail looks will definitely be obvious. So is it with someone that hasn’t read a book for a given period; his mind will be void of deliverables and the might for insightfulness will elude him. What food is to your stomach is what books are to your mind.

To live above the tides of the age, you have to improve your mental strength. You can’t solve problems at the same level they were created. To play globally, read globally. You will influence tomorrow by reading today. And when you know what kings don’t know, they will come and pitch tent with you.

So, you may be asking what should I read to begin with:

1. The Bible

Well, I am not being biased here; I believe the most impactful book to the human mind is the Bible.

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

Without spending further time here, let’s share the opinion of two famous American Statesmen on what they have to say about the Bible: Horace Greeley said “it is impossible to mentally or socially enslave a Bible reading people” while George Washington added that “it is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible”. Wow!

2.  Resourceful Books

You are a product of what you read. It’s a kind of garbage-in, garbage-out process. Reading is a kind of reproductive activity. A social intercourse, the fusion of two minds (reader and writer) that lead to production of ideas. Another leader remarked, “What is reading, but silent conversation!”

For me one way to experience all society: the ancient, the presence and the future is through the reading of books.

3. Area – Specific Books

You can’t be reading law reports and end-up as a surgeon. Neither will you spend all your time reading medical books and at the same time anticipate being a successful solicitor. No! It doesn’t work that way. In line with this, the poet Ralph Emerson exclaims “a man is known by the books he reads.” So train your mind for the anticipated ambition you have at heart.

To begin, I suggest the following:

1.  Tell Yourself it’s Inevitable

It is inevitable that to be relevant in this knowledge economy as they call it, then you must be a book fellow. Books liberate you. Once you learn to read, you will be forever free. As President James Madison said, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance.”

2. Seek to Know a Little More

Hunger precedes every feast. Most times all the difference is a little hunger; a little extra. You must crave knowledge to truly seek the succour of books. My advice: never again pass a book without at least admiring the cover. For the proof of desire is in the pursuit of it.

3.  Begin with Less Voluminous and Interesting Books

You don’t learn to chew with bones, you begin with fleshy parts. Start the reading adventure with books that have less volume and enticing content.

4.  Own a Library

A library begins with a table, a chair and a book. It is an intellectual crime to live in an apartment without having a study space. As wardrobe is to the body so is a library to the mind; books cloth your mind.

5. Share the Dividend

When you empower others, you are naturally empowered. Don’t hoard what you have come to know, share and the desire to grow will be unquenchable.

POINT TO RUMINATE ON: Blessed are they that read for they shall lead.

Authored by: ANOINTED ENOH

The Moment Will Come (Part 2)

Hey there! It’s a pleasure to have you on the other side of the divide reading this article – happy reading! 

If you were opportuned to read the first part, I ended the article with the quote: “there is nobody whom fortune does not visit once in his life, but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, she goes in from the door and out of the window.”

Well, the excitement remains that the moment will come! The moment of honour, the moment of glory, the moment of dignity…will most definitely come to every life.

The Briton’s Statesman Winston Churchill calls the moment – man’s finest hour. That fine hour…that moment of glory is in every man, but it is also fair to say that he must be ready for it when it comes.

Breakthrough

So to make the moment pay dividend, then you have got to identify, capture and nurture it when it comes. It is only when you learn how to outgrow small businesses will life reward you with great enterprises. You have got to show that you are capable of managing fortune when it shows for it to abide with thee.

Opportunities abound in every life, but we seldom recognize it, because it always come disguised as something insignificant. Those hidden moment of personal discipline determines the outcome of other fortunate events.

That discreet moment of personal concentration, being a bit polite to a stranger, an extra effort beyond the agreed payment, that agonizing moment of conceptualizing an idea, that sacrificial service, just that period of selflessness, and that could just be the talisman needed to become more fortunate.

So you have to cultivate the capacity to recognize and take advantage of those golden moments.

Henry Thoreau puts it this way, “It’s not what you look at that matters; it is what you see that counts.”

Orison Marden says it another way; “He who cannot see an angel in the rough marble can never call it out with mallet and chisel.”

My advice is: don’t wait for extraordinary opportunities seize common occasions and make them great.

The preacher E.W. Kenyon in his book – ‘Signpost on way to success’ narrated a story of a young artisan who had an unusual gift for dressing windows; and though this chap worked in a store as an artisan for a long time without directly making any curtain, but always gave useful suggestions to the window dresser who was his immediate boss. Few weeks later, the artisan became the artist. But the window dresser never told the business owner who did the current art-work. Men came from different parts of the city to look at the windows. Then one day a man from another city came to visit the shop and asked who did the curtains. The business owner introduced him to the window dresser but the man was disappointed because his words didn’t resemble the work done. Later the young artist was introduced and from henceforth, fortune began to smile on him.

“You cannot hide trained genius. You cannot hide trained ability”. People may use you for a time, but you will break the bonds sooner or later like this young man did.

You’ve got to be ready! You’ve got to train! You’ve got to hone those talents to become skills. You don’t start preparing when the moment is at hand, you prepare in anticipation of the moment. Just like you don’t start training during the tournament, but before. Benjamin Disraeli added “that the secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.”

A sage remark: “that the good Lord didn’t create any one of us to be ordinary, nor have common moments.”Instinctively, every life is designed to be set apart in honour at some day or time!

A biographer writes of Winston Churchill that: “It seems Churchill’s previous career had been a preparation for his heroic wartime leadership…he seemed to have been nursing all his faculties so that when the moment came he could lavish them on the salvation of Britain from the bloodthirsty fist of the Nazis…”

And then he Churchill in 1940 to the House of Commons as part of his speech said: “To each, there comes in their life time a special moment, when there are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents; but what a tragedy if that moment comes and finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”

Once again I say, “Opportunities! Every life is full of them.” To every life, there is always the finest hour!

POINT TO RUMINATE ON: "Opportunity has hair in front, behind she is bald; if you seize her by the forelock you may hold her, but if you allow her to escape, not even Jupiter himself can catch her again."

Authored by: ANOINTED ENOH

The Moment Will Come (Part 1)

Hey! And thank you for visiting this blog. Let me begin by asking you some empowering questions: “Within the days and weeks that have passed, would you say you are making any form of progression? How have you been fairing with your goals? What setbacks are you experiencing and how are you routing your way out of it?

These kinds of engagements will spark personal resolves to further improve your personal capacity.

A recent incident prompted me to come up with the topic we will be sharing today: THE MOMENT WILL COME.

Found Treasure

Everyone always ask secretly, “when will my turn (moment) come? As a matter of fact most people hold the myth that “those” glorious moment are the exclusive privilege of a few persons.

A leader once remarked: “No man is born into this world whose job is not born with him.” Meaning nobody is without a moment of great opportunity where he or she will showcase inherent competence.

A sage once said and I paraphrase, “that the good Lord, he believes didn’t create any one of us to be ordinary, nor have common moments.”

Instinctively, every life naturally craves for that moment – the moment when he or she is set apart and adored with the priceless gifts of life.

Listen! That moment always comes – that’s if it hasn’t come already.

‘To every life fortune will definitely visit at least once’, says Orison Swett Marden.  But your daily transactions inches you closer or further away from those fortunate moments.

The problem is that we fail to recognize it when it appears, because we are ill prepared for it.

There never was a day that did not bring its own opportunity… the true remains that all our actions are either drawing us closer or further taking us away from that moment.

“Opportunities! Every life is full of them.” What seems ordinary may be the extra-ordinary moment you have been seeking for all alone.

‘The lack of opportunity’ they say, ‘is ever the excuse of a weak and un-deciding mind.

Here is a story that shows why people miss out on opportunity: A visitor once got into an art studio and was shown many human-like features. When he saw one whose face was concealed by hair and which had wings on its feet. Then he asked, “What is its name?” “Opportunity,” replied the artist; “Why is the face hidden?” The visitor asked, “Because men seldom know him when he comes to them,” was the reply. Again he asked, “Why has he wings on his feet?” “Because he is soon gone and once gone, cannot be overtaken.”

That moment always comes. Maybe because of the masked face and sift feet, you (we) often never capture it and it quickly goes just like it came. So I advocate that just as we are eager to achieve success, we should equally seek to sharpen our ability to recognize opportunities and seize them; because ability without opportunity will definitely lead to frustration.

Look around... that common situation may be all the lead to that uncommon achievements that you so long to get. Again I say, opportunities! Every life is full of them.

POINT TO RUMINATE ON: 'There is nobody whom fortune does not visit once in his life, but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, she goes in at the door and out of the window.'

Authored by: ANOINTED ENOH

Encourage Yourself

Hey there! How are you doing? Trust you started the week on a good turn. Hopefully you will end it on a most adorable note.

Quietly, recently, I have been meditating on a subject that I have come to appreciate as one of the key components of a successful life.

With all the global, national, local and even domestic challenges that we are daily confronted with, you will admit this as a virtue when am done.

Well… it’s no rocket science, just the ability to encourage yourself! It is a skill you must develop on your success adventure.

Encourage Self

There is an interesting account in the Bible of the great king David that found himself in a desperate situation where he nearly lost his kingship and even his life, but amidst his plights, it is recorded that the king David ‘….encouraged himself …’

Note! It is impossible for you to lead others or even yourself without developing the inherent capacity to consistently encourage yourself.

Unfortunately - if I should say so, at the long run nobody will be more effective in encouraging you than you – yourself.

When you fail to lead yourself, then directly you fail to lead a generation and when you fail to carry on, you equally fail to carry on a generation.

To encourage yourself is a grace you should never undermine! I believe from encouragement comes courage. And courage is advancement in the twist of fear and uncertainty.

Let me advice: Leadership is often a lonely adventure, so amongst the plenty qualities to enhance success as a leader, you need to learn to practice the art of self-encouragement.

Can you believe this! The multi-billion dollar company Coca-Cola only sold 25 bottles the first year of operation. Wow…! Just wondering what the founder Asa Candler was thinking when he realized that 25 bottles was all he had sell for an entire business year. He must have been exercising himself with numerous encouraging techniques!

To support this narration, Oliver Wendell Holmes quips, ‘What lies before you and what lies behind you are tiny matters compared to what lies within you.’ This meaning, that your internal disposition is more potent than your external effects and happenings.

I have decided to pencil down two quick points that will help you learn the art of self-encouragement if you so will:

      1.  Practice Positive Self-Talk

‘…and David encouraged himself…’ Pep talk is an attitude that you must cultivate, if you are going to stay on the winning edge of life. 

Fortunately and unfortunately the most effective individual that can encourage you the most is yourself.

More than any other word, the words you alter to yourself are most efficient.

Speak to yourself words of power and you will live the life of power and might.

Independent of external variables, you have to consistently speak the language of hope and courage to yourself.

You begin to loss the substance of hope when you begin to loss the substance of positive pep talks.

      2.  Hold a Positive Mental Image

If images of defeat reside in you, then you will live a life of defeat.

To ascend the ‘posture’ of a better life, then the picture of a better life must never elude your mind.

It is difficult to frame what words to say to yourself when you haven’t seen where you are headed for.

By principle, you reach first in your mind before you eventually arrive in the physical realm.

So, see clearly in the mind your aspirations and soon it will cease to be an illusion.

POINT TO RUMINATE ON: “The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.”

Authored by: ANOINTED ENOH

The Virtue in Consistency (Part 3)

Hello friend! Trust you are having a fabulous season so far? Engaging all the graces and efforts to ensure you are fostering the course of destiny. To borrow the sermon of Confucius: ‘fear not that you are moving slowly; but fear that you are not moving at all!’ So let your creed be – no retreat no surrender, by all means I must advance the course of my life!  

Let’s look at the part-3 of the teaching we have been dwelling on this brief period:  The Virtue in Consistency. Hoping you draw inspiration from a line or more to help you further engage your elements on your journey to El Dorado.

Another virtue that a consistent personality communicates is a life-style that is governed with integrity.

A lifelong business and multi-billion dollar investor, Warren Buffet advises thus on the subject of integrity: “There are 3 qualities you should look out for in the life of a prospective employee or business partner – skills, energy, and integrity but if the last is not found, then you should as well forget about the initial two.”

Okay, at this point I decided to consult my dictionary for the meaning of integrity. Amazing definitions I found there:

     1.  The quality of possessing and steadfastly adhering to high moral principles or professional standards.

     2.  The state of being complete or undivided.

Wow! I so love these definitions. I strongly believe life should be considered a character profession, one where morality and right values are upheld.

A matured life should strive to attend state of indivisibility; where your ‘yeah is yeah’ and your ‘nah is nah.’

A point where your reputation is not distinct from your character; that is the personality known in public is not different from the one known in private.

This is what I consider the state of wholeness; where your reputation can walk into a dark room and still recognize your character in there.

A state where there is potency even in your sigh and men are certain that they can hinge their destiny to your promises and you won’t turn back at them.

Believe me, an integrity oriented personality may not be popular in contemporary society, but he or she will always be respected for his or her moral standard. Such individual will always leave a trail on legacy. History always acknowledges men of truth.

For this fellow, time always reveals the potency of such character and their traits are often associated with eternity. School books teach about them, adults seek to emulate them. Constitutions are drafted with their timeless wisdom as a core reference. In summary, they belong to the immortals!

An integrity infested life has enormous influence that doesn’t stem from position or title, but rather from the kind of life they have or are living.

In closing, one leader says: ‘your reputation and integrity are everything. Follow through on what you say you’re going to do. Your credibility can only be built over time, and it is built from the history of your words and actions’.

POINT TO RUMINATE ON: ‘Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.’

Authored by: ANOINTED ENOH

The Virtue in Consistency (Part 2)

Hey there! So nice to have you peeping into this article, hope you are doing great.

My goal is that some letters will leap from this page and connect with you in the most radical way that will launch you to your dreamland.

Still discussing the subject: The Virtue in Consistency!

I ended the first part of this discuss with the Jewish proverb - ‘Truth is heavy, so few men carry it.’

Well, my hope is that you will enlist yourself amongst the few desiring to carry it, because it has a rewarding effect after bearing it.

One element that consistency communicates is reliability or in other word - dependability.

Are you a reliable personality? Are you a fellow that one can risk believing in and not just exercising hope that you will abide by the constitution of your utterances?

Reliability

I once read a story that showed the beauty of being dependable. Permit me to share… In the 19^th Century, a British Parliamentarian travelled to Scotland to deliver a speech. On his way, his carriage got stuck in mud and left him in a hopeless scene. Then, a young Scottish farm boy appeared with a team of drafted horses and dragged out his carriage. Insisting on paying the boy for the help, the boy refused and said, ‘that it was a privilege to help such an important personality as him,’ then he asked the boy, ‘what he would want to become when he grows up?’ The boy replied, ‘I’d like to be a doctor, but I doubt that it will happen since my family doesn’t have the money for such education.’ ‘Then I will help you become a doctor,’ said the old politician.

As years went by the Member of Parliament kept his promise…

Fifty years later, another famous English statesman lay close to death due to pneumonia. Winston Churchill had become ill while attending a wartime conference and England desperately needed his leadership as Hitler threatened to destroy the nation. Churchill miraculously recovered because his physician gave him an injection of a new wonder drug called penicillin. Penicillin had recently been discovered by Alexander Fleming. And Alexander Fleming was the young boy who had pulled the stalled carriage from the mud. And the man who had promised to return the favour by sending him to medical school was Winston Churchill’s father, Sir Randolph Churchill.

Wow! The twist of life!

In an unknown place, to an unknown boy; he uttered a commitment to the hearing of just himself, the boy and probably his horses– ‘I will help you become a doctor.’ And the boy staked his destiny on these few lines of words and that was it.

And fifty years later, not just did the boy save his son’s life but the entire British kingdom from the evil adventure of Hitler.

Just come to think of it again: A little verbal exchange between none equal class sealed the fate of Europe fifty years after.

Aesop writes: a doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him!

Again I ask: Are you a reliable fellow? Are your promises as potent as a bank draft? Can people hinge their destiny on your promises? At the various corners of life when you make desperate promises with few watching eyes and listening ears do you stay true to it?

Being reliable or dependable is one of the virtues of a consistent personality.

POINT TO RUMINATE ON: This has depth! Please read…’for the shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends!’

Authored by: ANOINTED ENOH 

The Virtue in Consistency (Part 1)

Hello friend. How has it been so far? Have your dreams fallen into place or are you still anticipating?  May be a little more effort or endurance is all you may need for the difference to be visible; that demarcation between victory and defeat.

All the same, am glad you took out the time to open this article and am hopeful you will walk away with a life transforming phrase.

Pattern Chairs

Very quickly, try to imagine your last experience with your local cobbler or tailor, am sure it wasn’t a pleasant one. Why? If I may ask!

I hear a screamer – “Why?” your initial responses most likely will be and then you may begin to narrate:

“I missed out on a great opportunity because my cobbler refused to return my shoes on time as agreed.”

“I had an organization boycott a very important meeting with me because the tailor delayed to deliver on the material that had the dress code for the event.”

Well, I believe if we stay on this question of “why”, I will definitely get tonnes of unhappy responses from you.

Okay let’s do it the other way round;

Imagine a cobbler or tailor that keeps always to the deal. Gives you a pickup date and by the time you are there all is set and ready for pick!

Exercise your imagination a little further, what will happen to that fellow’s business or what will be the public perception of this fellow?

Overtime this fellow will be associated with the word - consistency.

You can write down as topic: The Virtue in Consistency.

Now imagine living a predictable or consistent life, where your “yea is yea” and your “nah is nah.”

A life where history seeks to engrave your character on the marble of ages…

A life where decades of public opinion are – “you can as well blindly deal with him, for he’s worth every pinch of his word.”

A life where people are not afraid of who you are because they already know who you are!

Once again, imagine what a beautiful and adorable personality this is. You know what – it can be you!

Listen; there is no virtue in being unpredictable. When I was much younger with bursting tendencies of puberty all evidenced around me; I used to think it was stylish or fashionable to front that attitude where I brag about - “people not knowing me” or “what am capable of doing” at the sight of a slight provocation.

Just a quick one, how does this sound? In my opinion, not really nice! Not someone I will want to transact a business with, recommend or make reference to at any given time.

Come to think of it, what do you assume branding is? Certainty, consistency, guaranty, etc. These are a few words to describe this virtue. So you see, there is virtue in a consistent personality. It’s just fine to be a predictable individual. 

                  

POINT TO RUMINATE ON: "Truth is heavy, so few men carry it." – Jewish Proverb

Authored by: ANOINTED ENOH