For smart men and the women who love them

My dad and several wise men i admire have shown and lived by certain standards and i want to share them with you. These are but a few of the virtues espoused by smart men....

Integrity

Integrity is defined as firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values. It encompasses a set of beliefs, behaviors and standards that govern your life. Standards of high morals, justice, equity, honesty and fairness. It is a conscious decision to live up to an impeccable reputation and to leave an unsoiled legacy. Smart men know that life is governed by certain principles amongst them is the law of cause and effect, so they make sure all the causes in their lives are positive. They establish a specific set of responses to life issues that are consistent to both their private life and public reputation. They leave no room for hypocrisy and deceit. Smart men have integrity.

Hard work

Laziness is the slower way to die. Death of vision, passion, usefulness and relevance. To be lazy is to be chronically ill. A man who refuses to work hard is not worth his name. Smart men love to work and not just anyhow but diligently and with passion. Mind you, hard work is not necessarily strenuous labor, but diligent, effective and efficient productivity. Doing things in a more sophisticated manner, looking for faster and more efficient way to do menial jobs and adding value and polish to simple things are all tenets of hard work. Smart men live everyday, finding ways to do their work faster and better.

Humility

Humility is the only potent antidote to the poison of pride and its consequent failures and disasters. Smart men know this and hence pursue it with diligence and seriousness. Humility produces the spirit of gratitude and a heart of forgiveness. Humility says “I am human and hence have my own faults. In as much as I want others to treat me with tolerance and forgive me when I offend them, I will do likewise and forgive others too”. It understands the grace and mercy of God and comprehends the blessings of God that makes one successful or prosperous. In this light, it strives not to put up airs or become boastful. Therefore smart men pursue humility and incorporate it into their character.

Vision

Smart men are visionaries. They have clear cut goals and plans to take them to their visions. They think two steps ahead all the time. They are cautious, careful and moderate. They make budgets and stick to them. Having a vision, they make decisions and evaluate their actions to assess its congruence to their visions. Without a vision a man cannot be called wise or intelligent. Smart men see beyond physical attributes and fashion in their choice of life partners. They look deeper into the character, life philosophy, vision and soul of any potential marriage material. Since they understand the temporary nature of beauty and shallowness of looks, they are careful to make long term decisions based on long lasting qualities. Smart women know these and work on them.

Smart men are honorable. They desire wisdom and carry themselves with dignity. They are hardworking and have a heart of deep compassion and self control. Any woman at all, regardless of her status in life, is proud to hand over her heart and with it her dreams, aspirations and future into their care. They know they can say with pride and confidence that, "this is my man, the head of my family and father of my children". Are you a smart man, or do you know one?

Your TRUTH, my TRUTH, our TRUTH

What is TRUTH? Your version, my version, their version or the real version? Is it alright to make the truth "our version" to incite sympathy for ourselves and contempt for the other party? Do we accept something to be truth because we want it to be? What we see, hear and believe is not just made up of the external stimuli we perceive, but a combination of our own mental standards, experiences and interpretations of the raw external stimuli. The eyes see, the ears hear and the skin feels, but all these are sent to the brain for final interpretations.

" Do we accept something to be truth because we want it to be?"

 By the phenomenon of perception and perspective, the mind translates these signals into meaningful thoughts, pictures and sounds based on what information is already available in the mind. For instance, one might see a shadow in the dark and refer to it as a ghost, whilst another person might see the same shadow and refer to it as just that, a shadow. Guys who are familiar with themselves will hear words that might sound insulting from each other and perceive it as a joke, another guy who is not familiar with this group will hear and consider it as offensive.
 A friend might hug you and kiss you on the cheek and you may consider it as a friendly gesture, a romantic interest might do the same and you might consider it a sexual invitation. In all these examples, the external stimuli whether it is sight, sound or feel are the same, but their interpretations are different, even directly opposite, because of experience and set standards. How does this affect TRUTH? Very simple. Our experiences makes us predisposed to certain conclusions and these biases affect what we take as truth or not. A woman with a history of marital abuse will react differently to the sight of an angry man, even in a movie. A girl with a history of infidelity from men in her  relationships will readily accept and believe a story of a failed relationship and automatically blame the guy even before she gets any evidence to that effect. A guy who have had bad experiences with lying women, will readily believe any story that has a woman as the accused. This is what we call PREJUDICE!
 Our truth then becomes what we are familiar with. What makes sense to us and falls more in line with our expectations. This is most destructive in relationships. When people enter into relationships expecting their partners to cheat and hence their mind finds evidence to confirm their expectations. Every act becomes secrecy, every conversation appears suspicious, every show of affection looks flirtatious and every surprise looks dubious. We strangle our budding love partnerships with festering scars of old wounds. We allow our past to bleed into our present and contaminate our future.
 We end up becoming prophets of doom, making our lives a series of self-fulfilling prophecies. As long as we remain unawares of our biases, we continue to assume it has made us more PERSPECTIVE, WISER and able to DISCERN. It is not necessarily so!


" We allow our past to bleed into our present and contaminate our future".


Most of the time, it makes us CYNICAL, PREJUDICIAL and PESSIMISTIC. The solution is to become a lot more OBJECTIVE and allow TRUTH to vindicate itself. Your experiences should teach you that, things are hardly what they appear and hence your truth might be completely far from THE TRUTH. Let us readjust our mental templates before we suffocate our relationships, partnerships and friendships with our biases. THE TRUTH is one, and it always shines forth!

LOVE: endocrine protein, reversible catalytic reaction or truth part 1

By Anthony Afum Awuah
Before I start I wish to establish the fact that I have been there before and I find nothing absolutely wrong with it. In fact it is part of the most important things that do get us through the difficult moments in life. I wish to however establish that it is more of a biological process than character or culture. The thing we call love as it is today
If we can agree that, the fact that you feel full doesn’t mean you don’t need food or the fact that you feel hungry doesn’t mean you need the food is not enough a principle to guide our lives then my case is justified.
Love as we know it is more of a biological process than a trait of good character or judgement. It is therefore the reserve of any human being that respires and metabolises and not necessarily a marital material. I know what you are thinking; ‘these bored science geeks’.

What establishes a bond between a mother and her baby is a hormone we call oxytocin. This hormone is secreted in breast milk even after delivery and helps the bonding process between a mother and a baby. The overwhelming sweep of emotions experienced by most mothers right after delivery that numbs their pain is associated with the influx of this hormone which serves a physiological function during labour by aiding contractions to deliver the baby from the uterus. Serotonins and beta endorphins also do play their role in this biological cascade of events.

Kofi sees Ama whom he finds attractive. He is impressed by her personality and passion. Ama has now become an external stimulus to which Kofi must respond to. These stimuli transmitted through sound and speech is transmitted to the brain. The pituitary gland in response stimulates the production of a cocktail of regulatory and effector hormones. The more time Kofi spends with Ama, the more of these hormones are released. At a point, the body responds to the secretions of these hormones in a cyclic way inducing what we call the feed forward mechanism. The more hormones are produced as a result of exposure, the more the body wants the exposure to the stimuli to induce more hormones.
By this time Kofi wants to see Ama every available minute of the day or in the least hear from her. The part of the brain responsible for expression of emotions which is not limited to love but passion, loyalty, jealousy hatred among others is overwhelmed. There is therefore a reduced activity of the logical centre of the brain. It goes without saying that those whose brains at this point in time function well are those who have trained themselves to do so just like training yourself not to pee in bed.

The body of Kofi will do all it takes to get him to the same physiological state we call ‘in love’. Kofi at this point is lenient, more accommodating, forgiving, and helpful. When Solomon in the book of proverbs documented this observation, it was based on an empirical data other than a philosophical one. One day Ama presents another stimulus that overrides the one inducing the love hormones. A consistent negative behaviour from Ama induces the production of stress hormones that includes some of the adrenocorticotropic hormones like cortisol. Because hormones have a short life span the current hormones overrides the afore-mentioned one and Kofi wants to call off the wedding because all of a sudden he has realised that he doesn’t really love Ama like he thought he did.

At this point it makes sense that though an important biological process like excretion, urination and digestion, ‘falling in love’ is a complex biological process devoid of human judgement or voluntary intervention. The point being; you can’t tell your body to stop producing urine but you can tell your body when to urinate if you have trained yourself to. That is why at some point we all did wet our bed but most of us do not do so again, well except in exceptional cases that you know very well.
  
So why then the fuss about something at level with ejection, excretion or even nausea? The state of being “in love” as it is now do not just have a biological basis but purely molecular biological process like anger and stress.
  Solomon found this strange and fascinating and something he did not understand (we are talking about the world’s wisest that ever lived). I am sure that was the day that endocrinology as a branch of medicine was birthed. Jesus then advised that humans are too valuable for us to reduce each other to a biological process and that we should override that process.
   So what then do we override it with? This is subtle but important information that has to be elucidated. He made it very simple by giving it to us. That would be the topic for another day’s article. If your trust is based on the fact that He or She loves you so much in the way we know it now, you have every right to take it back because as innocent, ambitious, passionate and meaningful as that is, it is just a biological process devoid by default of good judgement and character.

DECEPTION.

by Matilda Praise Kafui

Growing up in an Occult family, we were told by the head of the Occult group that if we turned away from the group, we would die or loose our minds and out of Fear, we remained faithful, even when deep within we wanted out.

Every dawn, men and women of God would pass by our house preaching "Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand. Heaven and Hell is real”. They quoted Biblical verses like John 3:16 and many more imploring us to come to Christ. Even though our membership of the occult group was a secret known to only us, we felt quite guilty and feared missing heaven. We would sit up at night when the ministers of God were doing their dawn broadcast and listen to their gospel.

Even as a young girl of eleven years, i always knew anytime l look at the clouds, the moon, the stars, and the sun, that there had to be someone greater than what we were serving who was in charge of all these. I desperately wanted to know Him.

The amazing thing was that, the head of the occult group actually advised us to attend church (he chose some churches saying we can only go to these churches) in order to remove suspicion of our membership of the occult. So on Sundays, we would go to those Churches and come back to our old life. Those churches had no impact in our lives. All we did was listen to hymns and some few bible verses, take our offerings, then we were out!

Today, i understand why the Head of the occult group advised we go to those Churches; there was no revival, the word was not living, the fire of the word did not burn there.

l can say many were and are still living this double life to cover the things they do in secret.

Even though my mum told us she initiated us to the group for protection against so many things happening in the family, there was no night l slept in peace. It was evident the enemy had control over our lives. Nightmare after nightmare, sleepless nights and poverty were like a tag on our forehead. Life was hard. There were times when all we had to take school was bread. Mum would fall sick every now and then and no matter how hard she worked, problems kept rising.

 "l can say many were and are still living this double life to cover the things they do in secret."

Then one fateful day, a missionary from South Korea, Michael Lee, came to rent a room in our house. Even though the building was incomplete, he still wanted to pay mum his rent so we could complete it for him to move in. Mum did as he requested and he moved in. l despised Mr. Lee. I was appalled at his simple dressing and plain slippers. HA! Now l can’t help but regret ever despising him. We were quite amazed that a missionary would come all the way from Korea, just to bring us the gospel, and that made us give him all our attention. We began to live like one family. We listened to his sermons, even though l found it hard to understand him. Mr. Lee was not fluent in English but managed to get his messages across through the few English words he could speak. I remember him telling me that now l may not understand what he is teaching me, though l have a learning Spirit, but l would understand later. So my whole family became his assistants throughout his missionary work in Ghana. He would cook his native Korean food and share with us.  He would show us videos of sermons of heaven and Hell, pray with us bless us with various gifts.

 We had never experience love like this. 

 We saw the God of love come alive in our lives through his actions. Through Michael Lee, my whole family gave our lives to Christ. My mum went inside, packed all the pots and concoctions and threw them all away. She broke the breakables and burned what needed to be burnt. A new wind blew in the family. Mr. Lee advised we go to a Bible Believing Church, which we did, and were taken through a series of deliverance sessions. We never missed church for anything. The head of the occult would come to the house and issue various threats. OH, but Jesus has been Faithful. To date, nothing has happened to us.  Our live in that occult group was a deception from the pit of hell.

Thank God that even while we were still in darkness he loved us and reached out for us in love.

Now l don't know what you may be going through, what may be holding you bound or what you may be carrying inside. It could be it pain, anger or an addiction. I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT HE WHOM THE SON SHALL SET FREE IS FREE INDEED. Surrender it all to Christ and let him work on you. Whatever it is that may look or sound impossible to you is possible with God. Jesus is the way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the father except through Him. John 14:16.

Enough of the DECEPTION of the enemy! Let Christ in and watch him turn it all for your good. He is still calling out and reaching out for you ,please listen to His call and open up to Him.

Heart Work: The Essence of HARD WORK

by Caroline Israel Kusi

Many of us grew up with the phrase, "Work hard and don't be lazy," but what exactly does working hard mean? I would like to apply a unique perspective to this thing we call "hard work." This unique perspective is rooted in the idea that our God-endowed calling is a "disposition." When you refer to something as being a disposition, you are conveying that your actions and perspective are contingent upon your state of mind or inclination. Therefore, the idea of "calling" or "being called" is a disposition and a state of mind depending on where God orders your steps. I want us to remember that we are on this earth for a reason and God has designed specific tasks to help us fulfill His ordained purpose for our lives. It becomes short-sighted when Christians assume that daily tasks that do not directly pertain to what has been prophesied to them about their "calling", are not important and do not require "hard" work or what I call "hearty" work.  However, when you read Colossians 3:23-24, Paul admonishes the Colossian Church that, "Whatever may be your task, work at it heartily (from the soul), as [something done] for the Lord and not for men..."

The Scripture is indirectly describing hard work. To begin with, the use of the words "whatever" and "task" without specifications suggest several things:

1. Tasks are inevitable

2. Tasks vary-"Whatever"

3. Tasks are completed by someone FOR someone

4. The accomplishment of a task is to honor or appease varying audiences

Furthermore, the Scripture encourages Believers that regardless of the audience, regardless of the task; we must accomplish it from the HEART. Now briefly: What does it mean to accomplish something from your soul or heart? A better question would be what sorts of things are produced from our soul/heart? They are joy, happiness, hurt, anger, infatuated love, and many more. In essence, the Apostle Paul wants us to understand that regardless of the task and audience for whom the task is for; we must accomplish it while being joyful, happy, in good spirits, and appreciative in the process. Based on the afore mentioned revelation, anything accomplished from a bitter soul will never yield positive results here on Earth and in Heaven. Well, you might say, "How can I clean toilets and have joy?" or "How can I set up chairs for Sunday school and be happy?" 

The truth of the matter is: The Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. Whomever you work for and are completing the task for was placed in their positions by God. If the task you have been required to complete does not go against God's word and is part of the things that make the world go around; it was instituted by God. The ability to have this perspective will help you to perform hard work from the heart because you are "doing it unto the Lord (the Ultimate Boss) and not unto men.

“Perspective and understanding are essential. If I clean toilets or feed children at homeless shelters by sweeping 23 floors in 2 hours and standing on my feet to distribute food, but I am not doing it joyfully and from the heart; I have failed to perform "hard work" in the Lord's eyes. Just close your eyes and think about how hard you worked to get your child or significant other something. You may have even gone to the extent of taking a bus from Accra to Sunyani or called someone to get the person you love a gift.
What would make your audience say, "Wow, that was some hard work?" It would be the fact that you joyfully, sacrificially, and lovingly went through major inconveniences to ensure that they were happy. It was HEART work unto your child or significant other not HARD work. If the Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; how much more, as His Servants and ambassadors on this Earth, should we accomplish tasks sacrificially and from the heart EVEN IF they have no direct impact on our purpose. On the bright side, remember Paul said count it all joy because situations in life build character in us? Well, if there is no direct impact on your purpose, guess what? It will still shape and prepare you in some way for events that will aid you in getting you to fulfill your destiny. You will become more like Christ. We must do it from the heart because we are doing it unto the Lord. Don't you want God to have your best? We don't think it's to God because our perspective hasn't changed. The understanding that EVERYTHING you do is for God will increase your motivation to have the state of mind (perspective) that you are doing it from your heart to make it hard work. You can't seem to find any joy in cleaning up after people in church? Well let your spirit accept that it's for Jesus. And HE, Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith is the only audience you need. HE will compensate you.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I think this unique perspective is one of the important pillars and evidence of HARD WORK.

Laugh it off

Have you ever had a real laugh before? Have you ever really laughed out loud before? How about laughing till your ribs hurt and you are out of breath and cannot even stand or sit properly? How did you feel afterwards? And if you haven’t done any of these before then I can bet you are missing out on one of the most refreshing activities in life. 

Life can and will almost always throw curve balls at you. You will have to experience lots of sorrow and pain in certain parts of your life, but you do not have to suffer through anxiety and worry. If spending time worrying and stressing on problems cannot solve them, why bother? So the next time you feel stress coming up, or you feel yourself getting anxious about anything, get a comedy flick, throw your feet up on the coffee table and laugh it off. 

Researchers have discovered some pretty amazing things about laughter.

1.       Blood flow; apparently some researchers at the University of Maryland studied the effects on people and their blood vessels when they were shown some comedy. After the screening, the blood vessels of the group who watched the comedy behaved normally -- expanding and contracting easily whereas the blood vessels in another group of people who had watched a drama tended to tense up, restricting blood flow.

2.       Immune booster; It has been discovered that, laughter actually causes an increase in the release of infection-fighting antibodies in the body, thus raising the immune level. So the more you laugh, the better your chances of fighting common infections and viruses. Isn’t this better and cheaper than medicine?

3.       Relaxation and sleep; Well I can definitely testify to this one. Laughing relieves tension, relaxes muscles and improves blood flow. These factors are basically the requirements for relaxation and a sound sleep. It also promotes pain relief and digestion.

The bible advises us to cast our cares on God for he loves us and will cater for us. Jesus told the disciples to observe the lilies of the valley and the birds of the skies and know how they neither sow nor work a farm but are clothed and fed every day. He then admonishes them to acknowledge their significance in the kingdom of God and to be content in the knowledge that, their father in heaven will provide for them. How many of us can add even a minute to their lives by worrying? All we do by worrying is increase our blood pressure and make us susceptible to all manner of lifestyle ailments.

From this day forward, make a conscious effort to laugh your stress off. Get a few clean comedy flicks and treat yourself to a laughter therapy at least 30 minutes every day. You will have fun and stay healthy too. Have a funny day. Hehehehehehehehehe.