25 things you must have before age 25 (Preface)

UNDERSTANDING THE TIMES AND SEASONS

“All great achievement requires time”

-         MAYA ANGELOU Celebrated Author and Poet

You can’t be a successful farmer without understanding the mystery of times and seasons. For everything therefore, there is a time and season. We must be very conscious of the season we are. Time is a very important factor, there is time for ideas, time to think, time to plan and strategize, time to prepare, time to work, time to readjust and reassess, time to see result, time to harvest that which has been planted, time to profit. The time you’re supposed to reap, you can’t start planting. You can’t start planting when the planting season is gone. There is a season of planting and a season of reaping.

We have only 31536000 seconds

525600 minutes

8760 hours

365 days

52 weeks

12 months in a year.

WHAT YOU DO WITH YOUR TIME DEPENDS ON YOU

You must take 100% responsibility for your time. What you do with all these time and the seasons that comes along depends on your understanding of the times and seasons. A student who scored ‘F’ in a course read for that course (Obafemi Awolowo University students know this better). It doesn’t mean the student failed to burn the midnight candle or take night classes. The effort wasn’t just enough. On the other hand, if the student has started reading maybe two weeks before he started, he might have scored a ‘C’ or a ‘B’ or an ‘A’. The result for adequate and effective time use is limitless but first you must understand the times and seasons. Some track athlete actually starts preparing for a marathon 9 months before the games. That’s a reflection of the understanding of the times and season.

BECOMING A STAR

Becoming a star is a process. Everything is a process. Life is a process. A couple just got married and the Husband was without the knowledge that his wife knows nothing about cooking. In their new house, they had a visitor and it was time to cook so the new wife got into the Kitchen and poured all the ingredients she can lay her hand on in the pot. She poured water into it and placed it on the cooker. She wondered what next and remembered her mom use to clap her hands over the pot when the food is cooking so she started clapping her hands too. You know the rest of the story. Becoming a star cannot be rushed. It is a school everyone must pass through to become a star. Don’t think God is slow to make you a star because he isn’t. God is not slow, don’t be angry with yourself because it looks like among your mates you are the one who seems not to be doing well.

Persist and persevere in that department, in that faculty, in that project, among your classmates, on the field, among your team, in that business, in that studio.

ACT LIKE YOU ARE A STAR

“All you have to do is act as if. . .”

-JACK CANFIELD Phenomenal Bestselling Author of “Chicken Soup for the Soul”

It’s all about acting, think of how successful people work. People like Pastor E. A. Adeboye, Aliko Dangote, Bishop David Oyedepo; nobody has to tell you they are busy working day and night. A recent interview of Aliko Dangote revealed that he has a plaque with “Nothing is Impossible” written on it on his table. That means he’s just getting started to becoming one of the richest of all time. Ask yourself what does the message on the plaque does? It inspires him to act like he’s just getting started. You might be living in the project, i.e. the ghetto. It doesn’t matter. All you just have to do is act like that person you want to become. Don’t think about what other people say, live your life like the star you want to be and you’ll start attracting the right set of people, resources and everything you need to get to the top.

Get up to Greatness!

“Deep within man dwells those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.”

-         ORISON SWETT MARDEN Founder, Success Magazine.

Everyman has a seed of greatness in him. Every single person on earth has what it takes to make a great impact, to achieve and to succeed. Experts and intellectuals have invested their time, money and energy researching why some people are so successful and some are not. Why do some set of people achieve greatness and some don’t. Why is it that from the same family, you see two brothers, one is successful, the other a complete failure? What makes the difference? You see people from different cultures around the world asking these same questions? Like,

Why am I not successful?

Am I capable of anything at all?

Can I ever be successful?

Why can’t I just achieve my goals?

Why can’t I just achieve greatness?

Why am I in this sorry state?

YES YOU CAN

“Yes we can . . .”

-         BARRACK OBAMA First black American President.

The truth is we can achieve higher levels than we’ve ever dreamed of. We can create our own future; compelling, sweet and fun. We can use our brain power, we can keep developing, keep changing, keep getting informed, keep getting more knowledge, keep reaching, keep working and keep fighting. As long as you are alive and you’re not dead you should be grateful for that and have hope. Because hope sets you free from the dungeon of negativity. Hopelessness is a disease of the mind deriding you of joy and happiness. Wherever you are right now reading this or maybe someone is reading to you. You have dreams, yes? Everybody has dreams. Everybody wants to become successful. Self-actualization tops Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I personally I’ve never for once met anybody without a dream. In one way or the other, your dream is there in you waiting for you to fulfill its purpose. Everyman has a dream and for every dream there is a WHY?

ACHIEVING REQUIRES ENERGY

“You must surround yourself with positive people and get out of negative people. You must say NO to energy drainers”

-         "TOBI DELLY Author and Entrepreneur

It takes a lot of energy to achieve dreams or goals. If you’ve ever worked on a single project of achieving your dream or goals, you’d know what I’m talking about. Chasing after our goal day to day drains us of our energy. We spend it; physically, emotionally and psychologically. We are trying to believe it. Trying to coordinate and control whatever circumstances on the way towards our goal. And maybe after a few days, weeks, months or years, the people who believed in you, or were supposed to do otherwise. Instead of believing in you, they begin to give you their own advice;

“Oh son, why don’t you just give up on this, you know this is impossible”

“You can’t do this, you can’t go that way”

“You understand nobody ever works that path and live to tell the story”

“You can’t even raise money to feed yourself, where do you want to get this huge capital from? Forget it brother, it can’t work”

You know how that makes you feel, you listen to them pour out their dream killing poison, draining and de-energizing you. It might be their own method of helping you in their own context. With your shoulders down and your face looking down, you search right deep inside you, you know this is possible, you know you can do it. You already figured out a way but you know this people don’t believe in you and what a great help it would be if they did. And then you begin to have a second thought, you begin to have doubt, you start evaluating, raising negative premonitions if it will work out or not. And maybe at the end you gave into their talks and agreed you can’t be successful, so you dropped the project, you closed your mind to your dream. I am here to tell you that it is time to prove those people wrong; it is time to GET UP! TO GREATNESS.

I named this teaching “Get up to greatness” because it is time most people started becoming who they are supposed to be. So many have been discouraged, demoralized, dropped beyond. You have to remember that at the far side of failure, dwells success. It might be hard, it might be challenging, you might be encountering hundreds of challenges on the way but if you will just follow your heart, if you will just cross the abyss with your heart, then your body will follow.

 

LOOK UP

 

“When life knocks you down, you have to lie on your back and look up, because if you can look up, you can get up”

-         LES BROWN Motivational Speaker and Author

 

You can get up and lift yourself into an excellent life. You can get up and start living the best life ever. Look up whenever you’re down in any of those negative moods. Look up and see greatness beyond you, beyond what you can imagine and get up to it. Because if you can look up, you can re-energize yourself to get up and fight for what belongs to you. In a population where they say we’re 140 million people, with 70% of it, 30years of age and under. You can say Nigeria is bursting with energized youths, vibrant with ideas and creativity. This means Nigeria has the potential to become one of the greatest Nations in the world. If you and I will develop to our maximum capacity and tap into the greatness that lies in us, we’d have an outstanding result and thank God there is space for everyone, there is enough to go around. The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.

It doesn’t matter how old you are. Age doesn’t matter except you’re a cheese.

(Culled from Tobi Delly, Get up to Greatness 1; A success article)