Tag Archives: Talent

Dec 14 2017
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Twenty is the formative age for success, the further you move away from this age the more pressured you get to succeed. However, there are some life facts that you need to know as you approach this age if you want to be really successful. I implore you to carefully read this article.

What You Do Defines Who You Are (and What You Get Out of Life)

We’ve all got that friend – the one who is always talking big, like they’re going to start this amazing new company, write an inspiring novel or change the world. In fact we probably have more than one friend we hear constantly talking about big future plans.

The problem I have noticed with not all, but many of my peers (20-somethings) is follow-through. Ideas are everywhere, but motivation is seemingly nonexistent. Life doesn’t start tomorrow, life is happening right now. Successful people know this and are focused on achieving their dreams and goals 24/7.It’s more than an obsession and a passion, it’s what they are living. Instead of talking, they’re doing.

Does what you’re doing at your day job support your overall life goals?

Are you equally excited for personal projects as you are projects at work?

Do you actually have any personal projects?

Do you have a passion?

Are you refining/advancing your skills and knowledge of something daily?

Do you know exactly what you want in life?

These are all big questions. But I guarantee you successful, motivated and passionate people not only answered yes to all of them instantly, but they even knew the what and why as well without much thought. If you didn’t answer yes to all of these, it may be the day to rethink your life.

I’m 25 and know exactly what I want out of life and the ways I plan to achieve it. In fact, I’ve known for years. One of my peers told me, that “I’m lucky to have found something I’m passionate about.” I disagree with that. I’m not “lucky” to have found it at all, it was a combination of my unquenchable thirst for knowledge, my desire to pursue independent learning and the fact that I can’t stop reading and consuming information.

If you haven’t found it yet, that incredible spark and excitement for life, here’s the reality: it isn’t just going to randomly happen or fall into your lap. It isn’t the result of lots of money, nor is it the result of chance and circumstance.

It is the result of freeing yourself mentally and engaging your intellect. It is the result of breaking away from your peers and delving deeply into a niche. It is the result of focus, determination and motivation. It is the result of an internal drive that is unstoppable.

How do you find a passion? There’s so many engaging, interesting and ultimately fulfilling things to spend your free time (and your work time) doing. The question is how can you not find a passion?

Once you’ve found it, it’s amazing and indescribable – no one can sway your thoughts and your concentration. When you know exactly what you want in life and what really drives you, you’ll never again be bored, tired or unfulfilled. Seemingly boundless inspiration and motivation will be brought forward.

Friends have called me “because they are bored” and I never understood it. I’m not sure how it is possible to be bored, life itself presents infinite challenges and mysteries, but only finite amount of time to explore them. That’s why having a focus is vital – we’re all only given X amount of time to accomplish what we set forth, and you certainly cannot do everything.

People who spend their free time engaged in a passion are happier, more creative and more dynamic in their personality than those who merely spend their time as consumers of vapid entertainment pop-culture. Getting sucked into that is a waste of life and (in my opinion) leaves smart people unfulfilled. It’s essentially fast food for your brain – small amounts once in awhile are fine, but I can’t understand how people live off of it.

Do you come home from work and simply fall down in front of the TV where you spend your time until you sleep? If the answer is yes, perhaps you should consider living life yourself instead of by proxy. You’re going to wake up one day regretting how you spent your limited time in existence. A human lifespan is but a cosmic blink when you consider the age of the Earth, our galaxy and the universe. It’s precious, it’s rare and it is happening right now. To waste it is to give up the ultimate gift.

I feel like most of you reading here understand this, and if you do this post was not for you. It’s for everyone who is living life by proxy and for those of you who haven’t yet found a passion and embraced your true, creative self. It is not too late, you can do it.

Start today!

WRITTEN BY ADAM SINGER

PUBLISHED MAY 14, 2008

What You Need To Know At Twenty

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Aug 26 2017

Work Your Strength

Work your Strength

We are all unique, each one of us with different skills, talents, reasoning, energy level, needs, greed, targets and history (STRENGTH), and that makes us special in our own way.

Some years back, there was this young undergraduate, he wasn’t too good academically, he was what most students call “let my people go”, he would not fail but he would always be on the bother line. Friends tried to help him with his studies and he tried his best to study hard but somehow he just doesn’t get it.

However, when it comes to business, this guy is never short of ideas. While he was in school, he was into importation of car spare parts, he helped most of his lectures to import spare parts for their exotic cars. After graduation, he could only manage a ” Pass Grade”, he decided to go into business fully but because he had just little money to start, he decided to go into importation of flashy Japanese cars on request, he does all the hard work till the car is cleared at the port and he was able to make a lot as he grew smarter in the business. Five years after living school, while his colleagues with good grades were still trying to adjust to the labour market, he was already making millions.

We are all special and blessed with something only very few people can do like we can. We might not be able to do things people expect from us but there are things we are capable of that can yield more than what people expect of us. You might not be talented to play football, sing, write or even be good academically, that doesn’t make you less special, there are a million and one other things you can be good at and when you can work your strength you will be whatever you desire.

Play to your strength, feed what you are good at. Put in everything you have got till it starts to pay off. Someone said, ‘Selah i wish i can write like you’ and i replied him ‘i wish i can talk like you’. we are gifted in different areas and that’s what makes us standout as individuals. We can maximize what we are blessed with by working to our strength, putting in efforts and channelling our resources to become better at what we are already gifted at.

I remember some twins i met, these twins are not identical in any way, Kehinde was brilliant while Taye was just the opposite. Their parents tried to slow Kehinde down academically just hoping Taye would catch up but all their efforts proved abortive, Taye wasn’t just the book type. By age 15, Kehinde was done with secondary (high) school while Taye was still stuck at Primary (elementary) six. However, Taye was a gifted artiste, without any special training Taye was already drawing a ‘look alike sketch’. The parents thought it wise to send Taye to a technical school to become an artiste while Kehinde went to university to study law. Today, both are doing very fine, Taye with his own art studio while Kehinde works for a law firm.

Nobody is useless! Because a fish cannot survive on dry land doesn’t make it inferior to a bird that walks the land, and because the bird cannot survive in water doesn’t make it inferior to fishes that swim the ocean. We are all unique in our own way. We all have our areas of expertise, we should not be shy to explore our strength, we should not give into what people expect from us that we fail to do what we know how to do best.

You are already a winner, all you need to do is to work your strength! Put your Skills to use, develop your Talents, give the decisions to your Reasoning, maximize the use of your Energy, take care of your Needs, don’t let your Greed ruin your life, act with your Targets in mind at all times and never ever forget your History.

Jul 1 2017

What is that in your hand?

‘What is that in your hand?’

When God called Moses, one of the first questions He asked him was: ‘What is that in your hand?’ Moses was holding his shepherd’s staff – the one he used each day to lead and protect his sheep. But God had a different plan for it – a greater one! He used it to part the Red Sea and lead Israel into the Promised Land. When God asks you, ‘What is that in your hand?’ He wants you to think about your talents, experiences, relationships, education, resources, your mind and your temperament. – By Bob Bass

From the quote above, God just had to show Moses, Moses had all he needed to succeed. So also, I am bringing to your notice today, you have all you need to achieve that your desired goal(s). Understand this, all you have been through up until this time are no accidents, they are by design the exact things you need to push you to where you need to be. Your experiences, talent(s), lessons, trials, triumphs are just to get you in tune for what you have always wanted. But you have to be able to harness all these positively to make them work for you.

It may not seem much what you have but once you can take that big bold step, you will realize you have more than enough. You are equipped to succeed by default, no one is useless, no one is designed to be a failure, no one is destined to be irrelevant, we are all a product of a God that never fails, but we have to be willing to do our part; take the step, test our limits and go against all odds. It may not be easy but like I will always say, it will be worth it.

New day is always a reminder of the fact that you can start afresh any time you choose to, it goes dark and then it is morning, everything starts afresh. It is never late to change, make a choice, choose a path, find a new something worthwhile doing or meet that dream person of yours. Whichever level you think you are, you can always move to the next, but it is by choice, by deliberate attempt to better your yesterday while setting new heights for yourself.

So much depends on the choice you make now going forward. Remember, you have all it takes, don’t doubt yourself like Moses did at first, you are made for something extraordinary and you can do it. Your dreams may be scary, may look impossible but God gave you them for a reason and without a doubt I have strong conviction that you are just what those dreams need to come alive.

Keep going!

Jun 13 2017

Talent Development; Need for Positive Environment

​Talent Development; Need for Positive Environment

Good day! I’m Nicholas, in case you’re just reading this for the first time. I welcome you to a new week and I congratulate you because God is set to favor you this week. Always remember He has plans for you and me.

Today, I will be espousing more on the need for a positive environment for our talents to thrive well. We’ll be digging deeper on the need for a good environment for our talents.

If you’ll ask me how much environment matters, I will say very much. Considering where I spent my early days as a kid, I appreciate the power of environment. I had a good family upbringing, but the question is the people I met apart from my family weren’t the best so to say. I learnt abusive words as early as possible, I learnt some weird things as early as possible, I mingled with various kinds of people with various strange mentality. It affected me until I changed my environment, that happened when I left our community for medical school. However, note sometimes the environment we need to change isn’t our physical environment, some of us need to change ourselves and the community of our minds.

It’s impossible to grow without changing, but it’s possible to change without growing. 

It’s impossible to grow without changing, but it’s possible to change without growing but there are some things you can’t change, as poor as the community I grew in was, I couldn’t change it. It’ll definitely appear in my autobiography, you’ll definitely see Ajegunle. That’s one of the things we can’t change. You cannot change where and when you’re born, you can’t change your parents, you can’t change your height or DNA; but even though you can’t change all these, you can change your attitude about them. You can do your best to live with them. Your parents may be illiterate, but you must learn to live with that. Your family may be poor, but you must learn to live with and aim for a better family. What I’ve learnt in life is, we can always contain everything that comes at us (we can choose how we want to respond to whatever life throws at us). They can’t expand, but you can expand; you can be bigger!

The first step in changing your environment now is by assessing it. Change for the sake of change is not going to help you . If you’re going to make changes, you’ve got to make the right ones. That’s why you must start by assessing your current environment and why you want to make a change. The first sign of an environment that needs a change is an environment where you’re always at the head of the class (mates). If the environment your talent is currently is that, you need a change I must say. If you don’t, you’re gonna use the whole of your talent as a mediocre, an average, the best of the worst and the worst of the best. I must say that you’ll enjoy it, but in the long run it won’t be best the best. You need an environment where you can be the smallest fish in the pond so you can learn. 

The other day I talked about curiosity, but this can only work in an environment where there are people better than you. I’m not saying you can’t be the best where you’re, but I’m saying winning every time is a sign that others you’re moving with aren’t growing and before you know it you’ll be affected, it’s a bitter truth. In my early days, I was often hailed as the best poet by my classmates because there wasn’t anyone that could write poem like I could, but as I moved out of that shell, I saw that environment isn’t the best. I saw other great poets, people that have got something to learn from. To keep on improving, you must be in a growing environment and a growing environment isn’t one where you’re always at the top.

You need an environment where you can be the smallest fish in the pond so you can learn. Winning every time is a sign that others you’re moving with aren’t growing and before you know it you’ll be affected.

After assessing your state, you must learn that changing the environment doesn’t stop there, to maximize our changed environment we need to change ourselves too. It’s like a seedling changing an environment for a richer soil. As much as the seedling needs a better environment, we must be sure the seedling is good too or else the farmer will see his efforts become futile. We need to change our environment from within to the outside. It’s a key. If you change  yourself without changing your environment, your talent will only be frustrated. If you change your environment without changing yourself, your talent will develop at a slower pace. If you do the two, your talent will develop at a faster pace.

 What I’ve learnt early enough in my life is that I can’t soar with the Eagles if I’m still playing around with the chicken. It’s almost impossible. You must look for an environment where you’re always challenged, where you’re often out of your comfort zone, where you wake up excited and where people are willing to accept change.

I have written about this, but it’s expedient that I do again. You need to change those you spend your time with if they’re not the right ones. Note, I didn’t say if they’re not the good ones, I said the right ones. Some people are good, but they’re not right for you at the moment. So when I’m in a look out for relationship, I consider right before good. Your talent can’t reach the highest, if you want to develop it alone, but again it must be developed with the right set of people.

If you change yourself without changing your environment, your talent will only be frustrated. If you change your environment without changing yourself, your talent will develop at a slower pace.

So now you’ve changed your environment, what’s next? You must be proactive! You must take initiative and challenge yourself. Now you’ve room to fly any height possible, but you must be intentional to fly. Now you’ve got people to learn from, but you must be willing to learn from them. Now you’ve an environment where change is acceptable, but you must be willing to accept the change. If we drop two small fish in a pond, I’m sure both of them won’t grow at the same rate.

Changing yourself and your environment will attract criticism. Some will say you’re proud, rude or an ingrate; but you must move on despite that knowing fully well that you’ve got to make those changes for your good. When I started changing friends in my life, I received so much criticism, enough to have made me stopped, but no I moved on and today I’m thankful to God for the changes I was able to make. Their opinions about you doesn’t have to become your reality.

Changing yourself and your environment will attract criticism but their opinions about you doesn’t have to become your reality.

So this week, start by assessing your current environment and why you need a change, and after that make the change and challenge yourself in your new environment. It doesn’t mean you’re leaving your neighborhood, even though it could mean for some. It may be tough my dear friend, but this is your talent, your life we’re talking about; you’ve got to take the guts to get out of the ruts.

Thank you.

By Aderinto Nicholas
A young medical student with the passion of reaching lives with Hope.

May 1 2016

Messi Vs Ronaldo; My choice!

If there is one topic that divides football lovers all over the world currently, it is “who is better between C.Ronaldo (CR7) and Messi?” There have been diverse expressions from stakeholders; statement of opinion from other footballers, unguarded utterances from sport officials and facts from analysts but one thing is still lingers on; there can’t seem to be a consensus.

I am a football lover too and like many others, if I do not allow my judgement to be clouded by my other sentiments, it is hard to pick from these two. However, this article is not meant to help me or you choose between these two, rather I will attempt to point out those things; traits and characters that has made these two legendary, which I think we can use too.

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1. Talent Vs Hardwork
Looking at the two stars, easily one can see that Messi is more talented however, what Ronaldo is missing in talent he made up for in hard work. Messi is a workaholic too but undoubtedly Ronaldo is the most hardworking player ever known.
Lessons: Because you are talented doesn’t mean you don’t have to work hard. You have to sharpen your talent if not you will soon forget what you think you are good at. And if you are not talented at something, it doesn’t mean you can’t be great at it, it only means you have to work twice as hard as someone who is talented.

2. Passion Vs Love
Messi in my own analysis has the love for the game, he wants to enjoy the game and be exceptional while Ronaldo has passion for success, he wants to be more efficient and want to achieve results.
Lessons: The best way to achieve success fast is to enjoy what you do. Love for what you do will definitely keep you going even when the odds are against you while your passion for success will ensure that what you Love is paying the bills and making available what you want; success, money and fame.

3. Re-invention Vs Acceptance
Over the years, Ronaldo has had to re-invent himself, as many times as required, in order to become more efficient; from the right wing, to the centre then to the left side. He has re-invented his styles to make sure he remains relevant. On the other hand, Messi had worked with the acceptance of what he is capable of. Many like him had been called ‘great’ but ended up failing to deliver, but he has always delivered. He accepted what was expected of him and built on it.
Lessons: No matter what you are called, if you don’t accept it you can’t be it. Whether good or bad, you have to accept it first before you become it. If you have been called something good, accept it and build on it but if it is something bad, you can always re-invent yourself as many times as possible to prove them wrong. It is your life and you can always write how your story will end.

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4. Endless Push Vs Self-assurance
The life of Messi can be seen as one based on self-assurance, right from his discovery, treatment to stardom. The pressure must have been overwhelming but somehow he has kept assuring himself it is doable. Ronaldo on the other hand, epitomizes endless push, each time you want to write him off, he finds a new way of surprising you; sometimes seemingly coming back from the dead.
Lessons: You have to believe in yourself, and sometimes even against all odds keep assuring yourself it is doable. Nothing matters, not the pressure from families, the expectations from friends and the doubts from haters, none should really matter; you must not give up on yourself. You have to constantly keep pushing yourself, till you reach your goal. Often times, it is convenient to give up and say “l couldn’t have done anything” but the truth is there is always something to be done, even when people think you are dead and buried, you can still beat the odds, if you don’t stop pushing.

5. Self-belief Vs Persistence
Too often people mistake Ronaldo’s self-belief for arrogance, I don’t intend to debate this though, but like most success driven individuals, there is the aura of “I know what I am capable of” around them and I think that explains self-belief. While with Messi you will understand persistence, he keeps coming in your face, so hard to stop and eventually you will have to give way because he won’t stop.
Lessons: Having self-belief and being persistent for me takes your drive for success to another height. Ordinarily, It is hard to sell yourself to others but it is even harder if you don’t believe in yourself. This is why I believe, the first step to success is self-belief, even if some people mistake it for arrogance. Then you have to keep stepping up even if you are up in other people’s space and you have to keep doing this persistently.

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There is a lot we can learn from these two idols, if we can, for some pretty few seconds, forget whatever we have against them and see their great sides. People who are up there didn’t just get there, no matter how lucky some of us might think they are, they must have worked some things up, which if we can borrow from, our climb to success won’t be that hard.