Category Archives: Blog

In early 2002, after collecting my previous school terms results at Kabulonga Boys High School, I had yet again performed ‘poorly’, and my mother was clearly disappointed.

That day when we reached home, she sat me down and had a long conversation with me. At the time, I didn’t know why she wasn’t happy because for me the results were Ok. At least from what I saw from my friends, I was within range if not slightly better. She then realized where the problem might be and asked me to make new friends, start spending time with the best students in class.

She advised me to pay attention to the results most of my friends were getting and went on to paint a vivid picture of what my life would look like if I continued to hang around them in addition to quoting the bible book of 1st Corinthians 15:33.

“Do you want to be like that?” She asked as I fervently refused at the thought of the image she had painted.

After that encounter, I decided to give her advice a try though not sure how it was going to improve my results at the time.

When I went to school the following day, I made a conscious effort to look out for the top performers in class and true to my mother’s word
saw that they hanged around together.

I became consciously aware that every morning before classes began, during break time and when knocking off most of these students were together. And as I started spending time with them, I discovered that their dominant conversations were different to what I was familiar with.

With my initial group, our conversations were dominated by the movies we watched on TV. At the time we had ABN channel on ZNBC TV which used to show movie series such as Passions, Bob Morane, Damon, Becker, etc. And the previous days episodes will be subject of discussion when we met the following morning in addition to any latest gossip or video games. We would rarely talk about studying or any schoolwork.

Initially, I found conversations with the ‘class top performers’ weird and boring at best. A typical chat would go like:

Person 1: “Yesternight, I slept late, I studied up to midnight and completed the History syllabus.”

Person 2: That is great, but myself I finished the History syllabus last week.” As another person would join in and say something like: “I slept when I reached home to ‘break the night’ and studied whole morning.”

And they said all this in a way that it made studying (hard work) sound like fun. I felt out of place but remembering moms advise I kept at it showing up every day where they are. With time, not sure whether it was because I wanted to become relevant to the group and share my own experience of “breaking the night”, I found myself doing the things they would talk about. 

This change didn’t feel forced but rather came naturally and the more time I spent, the more positive changes that were made.

By following my mother’s single advice, I was able to move from below average student in grade 9 term one to being among the best students the following term scooping best result prizes in History and Civic Education the entire school. 

I recently recollected this account by observing a particular pattern in my daily conversations with my wife, workmates, family, and friends. I realized that each one had a particular dominant theme and by analyzing the context, it gave me an idea of what I was exposing myself to.

What are the main topics of daily conversations when you chat with your spouse, friends, family, workmates, etc.? These meetings can take place over lunches (breaks), after knocking off work or on social media platforms.

The daily conversation may seem so irrelevant as no one will tell you to do the things that you are chatting about. But with time, if all that your friends talk about is going to drink, watching football, movies, gossip, etc. sooner rather than later you will find yourself spending most of your time doing the same things.

If most of the things your friends talk about is improving themselves, doing something with their family, business, etc. sooner rather than later you will start aligning your life in line with these dominant conversations.

The everyday conversations you are having make a huge difference to your life in the long run. Pay attention to the people you are spending most of your time with and ask yourself these questions:

Who am I spending my time with? What have they got me thinking? What have they got me becoming

Your answer to these questions may help you make the necessary adjustments which can lead to long term positive changes in your life.

I recently attended an online training focused on
bidding for tenders. Towards the end of the session, one of the participants
made a request to the trainer who had over 25 years’ experience in this field:

“Are you able to assist us with a standard/best
template which we can use when working on any future tender?”

I concurred with the participants question and looked
forward to the trainer assisting with request.

However, the feedback was not what I was expecting:

“Why are you looking for a template that was done by
others?….. That is why we are teaching you so you can learn the key
fundamentals and then create your own ‘best’ template according to the
requirements of the tender……. There is no perfect template to suit all situations.
It is your job to create the best one based on your assessment of the
situation.”

His response didn’t resonate well with me. I am one
person who likes making use of existing work and modifying it. In my university
days, whenever I had an assignment, the default setting would be to look for a
copy of solutions of a similar assignment done by the seniors and use it as a blueprint
for answering my assignment. We used to call this as ‘crooks’ and if it were
missing, doing the assignment was terrifying though we ended up performing just as
well if not better than with the aide of ‘crooks’.

As I delved deeper into this subject, I realized that
this scenario plays out beyond school or work assignments. This is a life
struggle.

Rather than creating our own template to suit our
circumstances, we tend to look at what another person has done and copy them to
the later albeit with some few changes to their plan. We simply copy and paste
other people’s templates when it comes to our work, businesses, marriages, etc.

The trainer was asking us to learn about life as much as we
can from those we admire and look up to (‘best templates’) and then based on the
knowledge acquired; create our own template. He was telling us not to copy and
paste, to plagiarize our lives.

When the trainer challenged each one to come up with an
original template for tender preparation, he was advocating for originality, creativity,
imagination, individualism in our work or life. To understand our tender (life
situation) before coming up with a plan of action with which to respond to the
situation rather than starting with a solution (copying) before understanding
the problem.

To Trust ourselves and create our own best template for
life!

I attended a wedding last week and I was excited not only
for the couple getting married but my own selfish interest-to be reminded of
what I needed to do to keep my marriage happy.

This has now been my approach when am invited for these occasions since my meeting with our Managing Director at a wedding earlier this year where
he gave me this wonderful insight. encounter which was shared in this article 

The guest of honour perfectly
summed up the exquisite occasion in his opening remarks of his speech:

“This wedding is lit! Harrison and Towani, you have
nailed it! Jealous down!” 

The speakers from both sides of the family and the guest
of honour had a collective over 80 years in marriage and so much can be learnt
from the wisdom shared by them.

The speaker (29 years in marriage) from the groom’s side of the family in his
speech made it clear that he is not a conformist, and some people may not agree
with what he was going to say. 

He gave the couple two lessons as follows:

1. Marriage is never 100%:  He advised the couple against being overtaken
by events of the day to think that marriage will just be a celebration (100%) going
forward. “Most of the times, your marriage will operate between
51-60%.” He added: “However, when both of you put in your best, you
can get to about 80%.”

The most important thing is to put in the work and
realize that marriage may not always be bliss but all the same it is a beautiful
thing. 

2. Do not compete: He urged the couple not to fall into
the temptation of competing with others. He mentioned that our natural tendency
is to compare our relationships with others. The key is to focus on yourselves
and not what other people are doing. 

You will be much happier if you focus and work on your
marriage.

Being an event dominated by members of the Legal profession including the groom, it was very fitting that the event had the
guest of honour from the Engineering fraternity.

With 37 years in marriage, the guest of honour delivered
what could not be described as a speech but a performance worthy of any speaking award.

The energy and intensity in which he gave his opening
remarks was enough to get everyone’s attention.

He based his talk on 4 principles derived from the bible which the Apostle
Paul gave to young Timothy whom he was grooming.

The principles were as follows:

1.Guard the Gospel: Paul urged Timothy to safeguard the
gospel which he had shared with him. In a similar way, the couple was urged to
“guard each other”, to be faithful and loyal to one another. 

“Build a fence around each other. Hold on to each other!” he
emphasized.

2. Endure hardship as a good soldier: Paul admonished
Timothy to endure difficulties as a good soldier of Christ. In the same way, he
urged the groom to be tough like a soldier when difficult times arise which they will.

“When times are hard and your family is having difficulties, it is not just time to kneel down and pray in tongues. It is
time to stand up and defend your family like a good soldier defends his
country!”

3. Preach the gospel: In a similar way that Paul
encouraged Timothy to share the good news with others, he urged
the couple to do the same. They should encourage their friends who may be
single to marry and be good examples of what a good marriage should look like.
Treat and support your colleagues the same way that you have been supported.

4. Find pleasure in preaching the gospel: He advised the couple to enjoy their marriage.

“You are in a position to travel within and outside the country. Get out and explore, enjoy your marriage.” 

He mentioned that in his time, he didn’t know better because they would only travel for holidays in December to Livingstone as that is the only place they knew. He jokily added:

“And whenever we came back from Livingstone, they would be another baby on the way.” To a roaring laughter from the audience.

You can most certainly do better than that, he added.

He concluded his invigorating ‘performance’ to a rousing
applause. 

As he left the stage, the Master of Ceremony remarked that the guest
of honour was drenched in sweat, an indication of the level of passion with which he delivered his heartfelt speech.

 Lesson from another wedding here

 Two weeks ago, a good friend of mine complained about
some of his phone apps (WhatsApp, Zoom, etc) not working well. Either they were
too slow or were freezing (stalling) while in use which was frustrating him. The phone had been working well until then.

I figured that perhaps the apps didn’t install correctly
and advised him to re-install them. But the same challenges persisted. I then
thought that it could be the internet connectivity challenge, but he said he
tried different service providers with no success. We then thought we need to
take it to a phone repairer  for a “specialist” to check and fix the problem.

Last week, my friend came to me all smiles that he found
the phone had been updated with the new OS (iOS 15.1) and since then all apps
have been working well.

Before the app challenges, a message prompt had popped up
on his phone requesting to update but at the time he was busy with the phone
and ignored the message. This prompt message came up 2 more times but kept
ignoring it because each time he was busy with the phone and couldn’t wait for
it to be updating as it would mean not using it during that period.

This experience stroke a chord in my mind and made me question
how we couldn’t connect the failure of the apps to run effectively to the phone
OS. For us, the problem was with the apps themselves. And the solution was changing
the apps, internet connectivity or taking it to some “professional” to fix it
for us.

In a similar way in life, we also have an OS upon which
all our apps (plans, goals, strategies) run. This OS is our mindset which
physically sits in the brain.

What do we do when we are not accomplishing our plans or
goals?

There is something wrong with the goal, lets uninstall
(change) and re-install (modify) it. Or maybe say the internet
connectivity (external conditions) are not favourable and we need to try
connecting with another service provider. Which may be like saying we need another job, position, location,
relationship, book, or conference (repairer), etc. for our goals or plans to
come to fruition.

In most cases, this may be true as a few “tweaks” in the
plan may result in positive outcomes.

However, this experience has had me relook at things
differently. Perhaps, the problem is not the app. And the solution lies in
something that we might have overlooked upon which all human apps run, our “Mind
Set” (MS). 

Unlike a phone or other electronic devices which sends us reminders to update them, we may not
have such mechanisms for humans.

However, when we feel a lot of stress, burn out or
struggle as we execute our plans, in a way it is like how the app slows down or
“freezes” the phone. And whenever we find ourselves “freezing” on a
regular basis, our body is in a way telling us that we need to update
ourselves. But because we are too busy with life, we can’t seem to get
ourselves to do so because we just don’t have the time for that.

Let us consider taking some time to update our MS. For a
phone, updating it’s OS involves shutting down, then rebooting while undergoing
a slow sequence in which it fixes bugs or its weaknesses and adds new features
to make it better. During its update, the phone is not usable or is at complete
rest with no destructions in a sense.

Update of the MS involves a similar routine. We must find
some time out of our busy schedules to detach from all external interruptions
such as TV, people, phone, etc. To be in a quiet place as you look at your life
and try and fix the bugs or issues which “unknowingly” might have been working
to prevent you from achieving your own goals.

It is not easy to sit and scrutinize ourselves searching
for our own bugs (weaknesses) as we also think of ways to add new features to
improve ourselves. It may feel like we are “doing nothing” during
this period. But remember, even for the phone, updating seems like a waste of our time but once process is completed leads to its improved performance.

It was interesting that at the end of the update, my
friend did not complain that the update took so long and that he could have
used that time to do something more productive with the phone. At the end of
the day, what mattered was that the apps on the phone were running and he was
very happy.

Perhaps, you do not need another goal, plan, change your job,
location, position or attend another conference. All these are apps which if
they are not on the current updated MS, will not be able to run effectively in
your life.

As we come to the end of 2021 and start working our new year’s
resolutions, this maybe a good time for a MS update.

With an updated MS, you will be in a better position to
run your 2022 apps (resolutions) enabling you to accomplish your long standing goals.

In my junior high school days at
Kabulonga Boys Secondary School, I had a classmate who had a hearing impairment
(found it difficult to hear).

As a result of this physical limitation,
he always sat in the front row desk directly in the center of the classroom and
paid close attention to the teacher to benefit from the lectures.

On many occasions when the teacher would
not be present, the students would be chatting and laughing, and the class
would be filled with chatter (noise) from all corners of the room. In this
time, it was very difficult to study as you would get caught up in the
conversations which were very interesting and could not help but laugh along or
join in the dialogue.

During the same period, my classmate
would be studying detached from this unconducive environment for doing anything
productive. At that time, I thought he was missing out on being part of the
“fun” in class.

Life went on from grade 8 to grade 9
until a time came when the JSSLE results were officially announced. On the day I
went to get my results, I linked up with him as well as other classmates
outside the careers master’s office where results were being collected.

One by one, we entered and left the
careers office each with his individual results and varying outcomes expressed
through happiness or sadness. However, there was one moment which stood out on
that day.  Our classmate with hearing
limitation came out of the careers office with a wide smile shaking his head in
disbelief. We rushed to look at his results transcript and were impressed as
they were by far the best we had seen. As we were busy congratulating him, he
couldn’t hold back his joy as he screamed out on top of his voice:

“Oh, I can’t believe this, let me
go show my mother!” As he ran off to deliver the news to the most
important person in his life.

The classroom (world) is never short of
entertainment, trends and gossip which easily catches our attention, and we
can’t help but join into the different avenues fighting for our attention.

What might help is to be
“deaf” to most of the “noise” so you can focus on what
truly matters in your life. Because in the end, it’s not knowing “all the
conversations” happening in the classroom but the results of your efforts at
school, work, business, family, etc. that will truly contribute to your growth
and happiness.

I recently had a work encounter which unfortunately didn’t go as planned. I had done the groundwork for this project up to a certain point then waited for the perfect time to start working on it.

And the perfect time I thought to myself at the time was when the client would officially communicate to us (Contractors) to confirm on some of the requirements of the work. However, by the time  feedback was provided, little did I know that there wasn’t going to be enough time to work on it and submit the proposal by the set deadline.

In the end, it was a lost opportunity and one which I would like to learn from going forward. I was waiting for information (official communication) from the client which I didn’t even need in the first place to start working on the proposal. I thought later, “Everything was set, why was I waiting for information from client? “

What areas of your life might you be waiting for a “nod” from someone before you can begin to work on them? Are you waiting on your spouse, boss, parents, client, pastor, friends, etc. to tell you what you know you should do with your life?

Or are you waiting for a perfect time when you have all the money, information, qualifications, etc. to start doing what you want to do?

The bible book of 2nd Corinthians 8:11-12 encourages us to complete what you have started according to the means (i.e., time, money, information, knowledge, etc.) you have at the time. If you are willing to do something, it is acceptable accordingly at that moment based on what you have and not what you don’t have.

What do you want, and do you have the willingness or desire to work on it?

This experience has made me realize that I don’t have to seek permission from others or look at what I don’t have to do what I want. You don’t have to wait until the time or information is perfect, until you have all the money or qualifications before you can start working on your proposal, business or go to school.

Not to wait until I have been recommended by someone, have a certain level of success, or get a defined number of “clicks” on social media platforms before I can start doing what I want.

Or wait until the blog is perfect with well-constructed stories, high quality pictures, attractive links before I can start sharing.

Let me start with what I have today!

Last month, I attended the company’s annual management conference and during the last day, the company’s CEO was making his usual presentation. In what would be his last company conference before he retires next year, his presentation shifted from the usual spreadsheets, graphs, company plan, etc. This time, he decided to take us through his personal journey and plan in life. 

His presentation stole the hearts of those in attendance including mine.

As he openly shared his heart, he mentioned of a time in which things weren’t going so well in his personal life despite initial career success and when things hit rock bottom, he turned his life around by making a decision to model the life of David in the bible (his first name is David). He quoted the bible books of Acts 13:22 and Acts 13:36 as one of his favorite scriptures which speaks of David as a man after Gods heart. 

He credits this single decision as one which transformed his life forever.

When I heard this, I remember thinking: “Being a Christian, I have never thought of modelling a bible character before?” I know a good number of bible characters and most of them its simply surface knowledge. 

The bible has over 100 good characters or models from Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Noah, Jacob, Hannah, Sarah, Racheal, Paul, John, Peter, Moses, Solomon, David, Daniel, Matthew, Samson, Samuel, Timothy, Mary, etc. Each one led a different and unique life (in terms of circumstances and experiences) from the other  but ultimately found favor in Gods eyes.

They must be a reason why the bible is not a “one man show” book as the characters give us a wide choice from which we can relate our own experiences and deeply learn from each individual.

In a way, you might be facing similar circumstances to one of them or might even be named after one giving you a good head start on which role model to pick.

Once you decide on which character, you can start following their stories in the bible in a similar way that we follow modern day role models on social media. 

And if you follow closely enough, it could have a profound effect on your life. 

Who are you modelling?

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