Be nice

I love saying hello to people. From old friends to complete strangers, I enjoy the simple ice breaker of a polite greeting that initiates conversations. Regardless of whomever, I do my best to go out of my way to be nice. I love making friends with cab drivers, security men, shop attendants, hawkers, washing bay attendants, bank tellers and so on. It is amazing how much you can learn from these people if you are willing to make the effort to treat them with some respect. A few days ago, after I had closed from work, I had to join a very long queue to take a cab home. As luck will have it, the clouds let go of their pent up content of rain and we had to quickly run for shelter. After standing in a shed of a kiosk for a while, I felt a tap on my shoulder and I turned around only to see the smiling face of a young taxi driver asking me to follow him. Apparently he had seen me in the queue and not wanting to cause a stir has parked somewhere to call me to board his vehicle. I was overwhelmed with relief. This was a driver I had engaged in conversations with a couple of times and we had developed a civil acquaintance. It was after we sat in his car that he told me, he singled me out because I was nice to him. 

Another significant event was when I urgently needed to complete a bank transaction or disappoint lots of kids who were expecting a big party. It was almost 2 pm when I walked into the banking hall and the first worker I encountered had a red eye and I could see he was in a lot of pain. Coming from a medical background, I engaged him in a conversation and gave him a few ideas on what to do and what medication to apply. After this conversation I moved to the banking sector and saw this very long queue and at that point I knew I would have to disappoint the kids. Just as I was about to turn around and leave, this worker walks up to me, takes my details and in a matter of minutes I was smiling on my way out of the bank. All he was said was, thank you for being nice.

Ever had someone treat you with absolute contempt and rudeness? How did you feel? Bad, right? Very bad I imagine. Well, guess what? Everyone you have ever been rude to felt the same way. The same kind of disgust you felt when someone was disrespectful, ungrateful or simply nasty to you is the same disgust everyone you have been nasty to also felt. Being nice is actually one of the easiest and most profitable life changes you could activate in your own life. It is simply a matter of sowing and reaping. Investing in a nice attitude, almost always brings good returns. 

I am not naive enough to claim that people you are polite to will always treat you in the same way. Some people are unabashedly rude. They are simply nasty! Unrepentantly ill mannered.  But you see, being nice is not just for other people. It is also for you. Being pleasant is a gift you give to yourself.

So from today, make up your mind to be nice. Treat everyone with respect. Never look down on people, especially everyday folks. One day, they might save your life or help you avoid a big mistake.

It is really nice to be nice.

Pastor Joel Osteen's Full Sermon "The Power of 'I Am'" - Oprah's Lifecla...

Joel Osteen - Be Good to People

Author and Finisher.

A couple of months ago I was watching the latest installment of the James Bond movies called Skyfall and an interesting event happened. If you have watched the movie you will realize that right in the first couple of action scenes, the hero and main character was shot by friendly fire and presumed dead. Now it was a little upsetting to realize the hero of the movie died in the first few scenes but I was not overly worried because I knew he couldn’t be dead. After all he was James Bond, the hero and main character. The director of the movie, the crew and all the technical staff knew this too. The only people who were worried were the audience, those who had no idea how the movie would end. 

Another event was when I had the privilege to watch one of Uncle Ebo Whyte’s plays. In this particular one, a couple was having an argument which later turned into a bitter exchange of words. In the middle of the play, they got a divorce amidst lots of groans and protest from the audience, myself included.

Since I had come in earlier I knew where the director was sitting so I chanced a glance at him at this point and saw him smiling. I was initially upset that he seemed to be enjoying our discomfort until it dawned on me that, perhaps the reason he was smiling was because he knew the end of the play. He knew what would happen in the end, so he could smile at the audience. I took a cue from that and focused on the events unfolding on stage with renewed hope. As you would expect, the end was so happy and satisfying that, every one of the audience including the ones who protested vehemently in the middle were applauding and cheering the couple who had reconciled and started a family.

I believe sometimes this is what happens in our lives. 

Since we have no idea how the movie of our life will end, we get overly worried stressed and anxious.  We protest and complain about the events in our life and blame the director for writing unpleasant parts for us to perform. We cry and wail, demanding a rewriting of our roles and functions. We forget that he knows the end of this play. He is the author and the finisher. He is the writer and director of this play called LIFE! And he asks us to take a cue from him and just focus on our roles. The Bible is replete with countless admonishing, prophecies and advice on having faith and confidence in the one who knows the beginning and end of our struggles.

My favorite verses on this topic are Romans 8:26-28 which says “Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good” (The Message Bible).

and Philippians 1:6; “There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears”(The Message Bible).

Being mortal and finite, there is no doubt that we will struggle with infinite ideas and pre-destination. However, I am certain that is why God keeps reminding us to have faith and trust in His word.

He is the author and finisher of our faith. He knows and has seen the full picture. He knows where all fits. Have faith and be still, He won’t let you down. So look unto the director and smile at the scenes. The end is truly glorious.

dedicated to my friend Caroline Isreal Kusi, and all those who have stories to tell, your story is a miracle, keeping smiling at the scenes.

Building blocks or stumbling rocks?

A few days ago I read an article written by one of the fascinating young women I have had the privilege of being friends with. She spoke about emptying the bowls that had stale food in them as an analogy for letting go of things that were no longer helping your state of mind. It was a good and timely call. A few days ago I had the unpleasant double tragedy of losing all my data and work when both my external hard disc and internal laptop hard disc crashed within the same week. As you can imagine I was devastated. My collection was classic and well stocked. It had taken me almost three years and lots of money to create my library of e-books, audio books, sermons and documentaries and since I am addicted to reading, losing my library felt like the end of the world, my world. The most difficult part to accept was the fact that, I had also lost the first few pages of the book I have been working on for a while now.  After going through the mandatory grieving period that lasted for the whole of 4 hours, I knew I had to make a decision. 

 

The first question I knew I had to ask and provide an answer to was “Was I going to allow this event to stop me or was I going to let it propel me instead?  A building block or a stumbling rock? I knew that the answer to this question was going to change my life whether I answered it right or wrong.  It was going to determine whether I would wallow in self-pity or rise up from the ashes like a phoenix and become even better. I chose the latter. 

Life is littered with numerous judgement calls like this; Periods in our lives where something unexpected happens and you are left grasping for breath. It might be the collapse of a business or start up you might have invested your life savings in or the death of a parent or even a partner. It may be the failure of an evaluation examination or even the diagnosis of a terminal illness. A point where the traffic light of life seems to be stacked in the red and there seems to be no detours in sight. What do you do then? How do behave and who do you turn to? Do you throw up your hands in despair and give up, or do you brush off the dust and get right back to work? 

If you read the biographies of people who achieved unparalleled successes and changed the course of history, you will discover that, almost all of them had to answer this question at a certain point in their lives. When faced with herculean challenges and tragic failures, they had to choose whether to see it as a stumbling rock or a building block. This is where their destinies were changed. This is where they transformed from ordinary to extra-ordinary. A classic example of a great man who chose to see failure as a building block instead of a stumbling rock is Abraham Lincoln.

Having failed several times to win any political seat whatsoever, he eventually became the president of the United States of America and led the nation through perhaps, the most critical moment of its existence. Having seen the effects of backbiting and hatred first hand in his very colorful and perhaps painful political journey, he understood the need for unity and the tenacity to win a war that was being fought between brothers and countrymen. He chose to use his failures as building blocks instead of allowing them to become stumbling rocks of bitterness and defeat.

How can I talk about extra-ordinary people and leave out Nelson “Mandiba” Mandela? Imprisoned wrongly for more than two decades for demanding for his rights and protesting apartheid, he came out of prison to contest and win the presidency of his beloved South Africa. Equipped with the humbling and deep thoughts of love and peace he developed whilst incarcerated, he led his country to heal wounds of racism and hatred and abolished apartheid. He saw his struggles as building rocks instead of stumbling rocks.

The underlying and hence fundamental point in choosing the right answer lies in perception and response, not denial and reaction. How you see the struggle or challenge determines what conclusion you will make of it and its effect on you.  Will you perceive defeat and hence react with resignation or will you perceive a lesson learnt and hence respond with renewed determination and conviction? It all depends on YOU! In fact almost all the principles on which success is built on are direct outcomes of our choices. Life is really a series of events that are collaged mainly as a result of our choices and its consequences. So how will you perceive difficult and trying events your life? Stumbling rocks or building blocks?

In parting I would like to leave you with this saying by Anthony Robbins; “ I have come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy”. Remember the power is YOURS!

MONEY IS JUST A TOOL. part 1

I've heard many people say "money cannot buy you happiness" and i must say i completely believed that until a couple of years ago, i discovered that, it is almost only said by those who do not have money and most often than not, used to justify laziness and spite the rich. But you and i know that, neither does poverty buy happiness. So why this mantra?  Let's evaluate this concept;

Truly money in itself is incapable of making you attain real happiness but i believe, it gives you a better chance at happiness than poverty. Giving to the poor, helping the homeless and hungry, supporting the work of God and maintaining a good home and family are all progressive routes towards happiness. Now tell me, which of these can poverty make available? So before you go all self-righteous and proclaim that money is that and that, just step back and think, is your poverty making it any better?

Then there are also those who like to quote the Bible to justify why they are not working hard enough to make some money. Most often than not, they quote Paul first epistle to Timothy;

(1Ti 6:10 ISV) For the love of money (philaguria) is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, in their eagerness to get rich, have wandered away from the faith and caused themselves a lot of pain.

Now allow me to clarify a few things.

The original Greek translation of the phrase "the love of money" is philaguria and the most direct English translation of the word is AVARICE. Now let's explain avarice and gather a few synonyms of the word.

Avarice is an intense selfish desire for wealth or possessions

SYNONYMS: acquisitiveness, avarice, avariciousness, avidity, avidness, covetousness, cupidity, graspingness, greediness, mercenariness, rapaciousness, rapacity

RELATED WORDS: commercialism, materialism, possessiveness; gluttonousness, gluttony, piggishness; appetite, craving, desire, drive, hankering, hunger, itch, longing, lust, passion, pining, ravenousness, thirst, voracity, yearning, yen; egoism, egotism, self-centeredness, self-interest, selfishness, self-regard

Noticed the overwhelming emphasis on SELF?

So in effect, the above verse can be translated as such, "For the selfish, egoistic, craving, greediness, rapacious desire for wealth and riches is a root of all evil.

So in effect Paul was not talking about just money or the love and desire for it. He was emphasizing on the selfish and greedy motivation behind accumulation of wealth for self-gratification which inevitably leads to all forms of evil against God, others and one’s self.

Anything done with the sole purpose of satisfying one’s selfish desires is evil and a sin against God....

to be continued.