Happiness

Welcome. It is how valuable and lovable you are in your thinking. It is your thought or idea of the type of person you need to be to win the love and respect of the people you care about. Since humans are attracted to others who have similar lifestyle like themselves, you tend to crave for qualities in the life of those you respect and love. Therefore the combination of these qualities and attributes in these lifes (living or dead) is known as self-ideal. The more explicit (and clear) you are about the person you want to be, the easier it is to set goals and plans to become such an individual and the more likely you evolve day after day into that person. Unsuccessful people have fussy self-ideal(s). The organisation's self-ideal is similar to the individuals and constitute these elements: vision, mission, values, ethics, etc. Self-ideal helps in providing guidiance and inspiration to all individual who possess them.  Nuggets for developing crystal clear self-ideal: 1) If you have a...

Welome. We have talked about how we can build our self-esteem, however could it be lost? If yes how do people with enviable self-esteem loose their strength? The best answer that we can give now is that: when you stop doing whatever it was that made you great, you will stop being great. It may not happen suddenly but over time, the person will diminish until he becomes timid or fearful. But there is an act that speeds up this mistrust, disbelieve process in oneself, it is called destructive criticism. Generally, citicism is a serious examination and judgement of something. Such judgements arises when something or somebody fall short of our expectation. This usually begins as complaints. Often we normally have complaints with people we spend time with either at the place of work or at home. But there exists some differences between complaints and criticism. Two types of criticism exists namely: constructive criticism and destructive criticism. When people give destructive criticism, the...

Welcome. The second way by which our self-esteem can be built is by consciously moving away from what we consider as painful into what we consider as pleasure. Sigmund Freud referred to this as the "pleasure principle". It has been observed that there is nothing good or bad but thinking made it so. Therefore it is important we evaluate and define what we consider pain or pleasure. Pleasure is what brings comfort or happiness to you while pain is discomfort. If you walk with four wealthy friends, you will become the fifth wealthy man--- Jim Rohn. Do not be deceived: evil communication corrupts good manners--- Bible (1 Cor. 15:33). All these wise sayings which we can call relationship laws do one thing: influence the way an individual thinks, his perspective or approach to life. Everything a man does beginning at childhood to any stage at adulthood such as socialization, eating habits, toilet training, etc. are all driven by his feelings about what he considered as good and ple...

Every child is born without an idea of what he can or cannot do. As a matter of fact no child is born with any ability. We are only born with potentials. All capacities or skills are learnt and become second nature with use. The more you achieve any goal concerning any capacity or skill you want to build, the greater your trust or confidence in that area of expertise. Every value, attitude, behavior, opinion, belief and fear you have today has been learnt. The fastest way to acquire a skill, behavior or value system is by immitating a highly respected individual in that field. Tidbits in getting the best from a mentor-mentee relationship: 1. Be humble to your mentor. This means you recognize that somebody is better than you in a particular field. This recognition will help you in complete obedience to this authority figure. Their superiority is not as a result of natural talent or privilege but of time, hard work and experience. All that concerns you at this stage of your career develo...

Welcome. Self-esteem means knowing the worth of oneself. It is a feeling of deservedness. It is the assurance in our ability to think, and cope with the basic challenges of life. To trust one's mind and to know that one is worthy of happiness is the whole goal or essence of self-esteem. High self-esteem is built over time, the lack of it also accumulates or occurs over time. Good feelings encourages people to attempt higher goals greater than the challenges that was overcomed when it (the good feelings) was formed. There is a continuous feedback loop between the "good feelings" (self-esteem) which motivated the action (attempted goal) and the action. The degree of our self-esteem influences how we act and how we act influences the degree of our self-esteem. The degree of self-esteem in an individual dictates the quality of goal he is comfortable of pursuing. People with high self-esteem commit their very being to any projected they choose. Whereas those with low self-este...

Welcome. There was a story of a professor of medicine in a leading German University who way teaching his students on the dangers of smoking. He initially told them jockingly of the "merits of smoking". He then proceeded to do justice to the topic. After the ninety minutes of the lecture, he lit the cigarette. People who enjoy high self-esteem have an active orientation to life instead of a passive approach. They take full responsibility for the achievement of their desires. Anytime they notice a situation they don't want, they ask themselves: "What can I do about this". They recognise that nothing is going to get better unless they change. They never see themselves as victim of their circumstances. But the real challenge is even when we know the truth or what to do, we sometimes never take action. Why it that we know so much about responsibility but we rarely act? Here are my thoughts: 1) Lack of balance: if you invest much in one area of life, other aspects of...

Welcome. We have already laid the foundation that the quality of our life depends on how much responsibility we embraced in every area of our life. Here is a little caveat, how do we take responsibility or control events, circumstances etc. that are outside the scope of our influence? Here is an example: I am a salesman for a heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and refrigeration (HVAC & R) company in Port Harcourt & environs, Nigeria but there have not been sales. I have made so much effort in convincing people, try various kinds of marketing and selling strategies yet no sales. One day, I met with the director of livestock and veterinary department of Rivers State Ministry of Agriculture. The director, in my opinion, is a man who wants to help people. He started to analyse the terrain and then give me some strategies through which sales have high likelihood. As he started highlighting them, I was writing them down. The first idea went down to my jotter. The next idea was ab...

In 2013 BBC performed a documentary about some teenagers who have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and monitored their progress as they altended intensive therapies to get rid of their unwanted thoughts and repetitive behaviour. A seventeen-year-old girl, Imogen who had a compulsive need to tap surfaces as she strolled around is one of these teenagers. If she fails to tap these surfaces, horrible thought of her family dying floods her heart. Imogen was told the truth that tapping surfaces cannot stop deaths. She was convinced of an unfortunate accident victim who died on the spot while his family member's effort to rescue him from the autocrash proved abortive. The only way to conquer fear, she was told, is to face it. Imogen greed and started some disciplines or work by restraining herself from the act. Although, OCD is a terrible genetic and neurological disorder that cannot be curred, by the help of psychiatrists, she gradually started to manage this disorder. It was not easy...

Welcome. Responsibility is the prerequisite for freedom--- Myles Munroe. Responsibility and fault are sequential words. One comes as a result of another. One is burried as a result of another that has received justice. If there are no wrongdone.., misdeeds or fault, nobody will be accused of not taking responsibility. Blames only comes when there errors or faults. Blaming others doesn't change the outcome of what has been done or left undone in the past that resulted into faults. Faults sometimes may not be attributed to people, it may be due to genetics (eg human height, human facial achitecture etc), it may be due to mother nature (eg loosing your investment(s) such as the real estate to eartquake, tsunami etc). At these times, who do you blame? We cannot change the seasons, or the wind or circumstances but we can change ourselves, we can change what we do --- Jim Rohn. Tidbits of taking responsibility about what has happened: 1) Never pitty yourself, 2) Accept & embrace your...

Welcome. There is only one person responsible for the quality of your life.That person is you. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons or the wind but you can change yourself. Therefore you must take responsibility for the quality of your life--- Jim Rohn. Your willingness and capacity to discipline Yourself to accept personal responsibility for your life are vital to success, happines, health, your personal progress and leadership. One of the hardest components of discipline is accepting responsibility but without it, no progress or success is possible. Failure to embrace responsibility and impose it, for things in your life that make you happy, on external circumstances such as other people, institutions weakens your resolve and character. It takes very great self discipline for you to accept total responsibility for everything that happens to you. Even if you are not directly responsible for what happens, you are responsible for how or what you do in response to what happen...

Welcome. It is absolutely necessary to carefully choose what you devote yourself to especially when the sacrifice required is very high. Psychologists such as Leon Festinger, Theodore Newcomb and Fritz Hieder, etc. have observed that we tend to stay true to our previous commitment good or bad. Devotion requires making choices. Each of these choices have their pros & cons. If you devote yourself to a course whose demerits are very high compared to the advantages, there are every tendencies to always choose that path. Here is a story to buttress this point. Joy, a nurse, lives with her boyfriend, Mich, who's is a salesman. Mich at a point lost his job and eventually became a chain-smoker. Joy wanted Mich to stop smoking and equally marry her. Mich never made any commitment to any of the above. At a point Joy quit the relationship after all her efforts on her desires were not successful. Joy got a call from Peter one evening. Peter happens to be Joy's boyfriend while at the co...

 We shall continue where we stopped last time on commitment. It's necessary because our ability to keep the promise we made to ourselves improves our lives, raises peoples' confidence in us, and ultimately makes us good team players. It's equally essential to differentiate interest from commitment. When we are interested in a thing, we do it only when it's convenient but when we are committed to a course of action, we accept no excuse but only result(s). Here are some tidbits an elder gave me in helping me to stay glued to my commitment(s): a) A burning desire: unquenchable burning desire is required to help us stay glued to our commitment. We all have limited resources: time, energy, imagination, etc. to achieve anything we put our mind to but once these resources are wasted or deflated on an incompatible course of action, it becomes difficult if not impossible to stay glued to our commitment(s). A student who is committed to getting better grades should not at the sam...

 The dictionary defines it as a state of binding yourself intellectually or emotionally to a course of action or a trait of steadfast fixity of purpose. An elder once told me this: for you chose to become all you want to be and attain your deepest desire or goal, you must be committed to such a goal to make it a reality. Warren Buffet once told his pilot to list out 25 things he wants to become in life. He told him to highlight the 5 most important to him out of these 25 listed desires and goals. He then advised him to avoid the rest 20 desires at all cost. These other 20 will drain away from your energy, time, resources required to achieve the top 5 he noted. This rule is known as 25/5 today. The elder gave me some tidbits to commitment as stated below: 1) Identify your life's top 5 goals and write them down, 2) Learn or crystallize what to do to achieve these goals and then do them, 3) Devise a means to measure your progress to achieving these goals and then measure them.