The Changemaker

The great British army officer and one-time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill, once said, "The price of greatness is responsibility."  We may not be able to decide the course of life's daily events or circumstances, but we can change our attitude to each of them. As a youth who aspires to reach the highest level of leadership and service, I have learnt through interactions with teachers and mentors, that taking responsibility is a key rung on the ladder of success. One of the qualities that makes a great leader is his ability to take responsibility for his actions as well as occurences on his team. The speed of a man's life journey can be measured by the actions he takes. Things do not just happen out of the blues - they are the end results of human actions. One of the reasons why countries, companies, institutions, families and other relationships suffer setback and major crisis, is due to the ability of the leaders to ta

"All glory comes from daring to begin.” – Eugene F. Ware When I was fifteen, I had a vision of starting an organization that helps poor secondary school students. I envisioned my dream organization going from school to school, meeting needs. But for a whole year, my vision remained in my head, basically because I felt I was not ready to birthe such an idea. I mean, I didn't even have the money to register the organization, I hadn't found the perfect team members yet, I hadn't even found someone who bought into my idea. So why bother? These thoughts bugged my mind continuously, slowly pushing aside the entire vision.  Then one day, I met a man, Raphael Stephen, Founder and Executive Director of Fashioned And Made For Excellence (FAME) Foundation. He told me something that  changed my orientation forever.  He said, "Goodluck, if you keep waiting for the perfect time and situation before you work on your vision, you will most likely never see it come to reality.

"You’ll go far in life” has got to be one of the most rendered prayers by Nigerian elders when blessing a youth. An average Nigerian receives this blessing each time he satisfies an elderly person. Yet, I believe that its not only the rendering of this prayers alone that will take us far in life. If it were, we would not have any youth wandering aimlessly around Iwo Road Motor Park, neither would we have any girl on the queue that forms on Premier Hotel road every Friday night, in readiness for their nocturnal businesses.  There are certainly a lot of factors that will contribute to the making or marring of one’s life. Let’s take a look at six of these factors, shall we? MINDSET “The more you let a single belief define you, the less capable you are of adapting when life challenges you.” - Paul Graham You are what you think you are. No man can ever be greater than his thoughts. The Holy Bible, attests in Proverbs 23:7 that “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” Going

“It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment.” ― Bram Stoker, Dracula   You might be wondering why I love to talk about resilience so much. Well, as it is said, "experience is the best teacher." Throughout the few years I have lived, resilience is one virtue that I have had to imbibe in order to survive. In fact, this blog is a product of resilience because I wrote it despite the fact that my body was threatening to succumb to malaria. So you see, we live and breathe each day by resilience. We all have stages in life when things seem to be going against us, when life issues seem not to be going our way. People often try to give us reasons to doubt ourselves, or pull out of life’s game. What you do with such people will determine what you'll actually turn out to be. Gever Tulley once said “persistence and resili

THE DEVIL CALLED COMFORT “You never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone.”   ― Roy T. Bennett I met a girl from Spain two months ago, Jade (fictitious). We met on Facebook and from our interactions; I got to know of a massive idea that she had. It had to do connection with web designing and to lift the idea off the ground, she had to enroll for any training that would give her the skills needed for her vision. But Jade had a problem; she couldn’t find any training centers close to her home – the nearest being about ten kilometers from her house. Being a teen from a wealthy family and having had all she wanted within her easy reach, Jade felt that she didn’t need to go that far to learn an “ordinary skill” when she could simply watch some videos on YouTube.   However, when the frustrations started creeping in, she was forced to abandon her big idea. Jade began to believe that she was working on the wrong

QUIT THE AIMLESS JOURNEY “There is no greater gift you can give or receive than to honor your calling. It’s why you were born and how you become mostly alive.” – Ophrah Winfrey Every action taken by a man must be backed by purpose. The evidence of man’s existence is in the fulfilment of his purpose on earth. Most people go through frustration in various aspects of their lives because they have not discovered their purpose in life. One of the reasons why Nigeria is experiencing major setbacks in major areas of her economy (e.g. education, commerce, e.t.c.) is lack of purpose by many of her citizens. Most students do not have a drive that propels their desire for education. Many are riding on the wings of “normalcy”, in that their reason for education is to “fulfil all righteousness”. What we fail to realise is that normal actions produce normal results while extraordinary actions produce extraordinary results . Benjamin Disreali once said, “The secret of success is consta