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I am one of those people who put so much pressure on myself about not being there yet. By there I mean at the level of success that I thought I should have achieved by this age, or the weight I should be, or the love that I should have. There’s that nagging feeling of comparison. Even though you’re trying hard to run your own race and stay focused. You get these thoughts that “so and so is this age and has achieved this and I am this age, and I am not where I want to be” Not realizing everyone is going through some version of that fear.

I’ve had to deal with a lot of judgement from some friends and family because of my choice to live in Canada. They believe I should move back to Namibia and continue my teaching career. Some of the harshest comments came from people that I really care about. “You’re wasting your time,” “if you were here you’d be married by now, with a career.” Imagine hearing your fears being voiced by someone you love and with them not having an understanding of the dream the journey that God has put in your soul. So its almost like you’re being pulled by both arms in opposite directions. On your right, you have your loved ones, who are concerned about your future and your own fears, and on your left, you have your dream and the spirit of God whispering ever so gently, pushing you to your destiny. What do you do? You love yourself through the process and trust your journey. Allow it to take the lead role and above all else trust God.

A close friend of mine who was on my case about me moving back home came back to me and sort of apologized but not really. I took it as an apology because her realization that life is not a straight line and everyone has a different path took an ounce pressure off of me. She was having trouble in her marriage she said “Maybe you’re ok being there and doing those funny jobs because you’re happier than I am. You never know what is happening in someone’s life.”

You cannot let someone decide for you how you should do life. NO matter how much they love you. They will never understand what God is calling you to do. You don’t even understand everything God has called you to do. It’s hard to articulate it to yourself and damn near impossible to articulate it to someone else. Trust him anyway and love yourself through this process of change. The Journey of life is a solo journey. You get to decide the direction.

My heart really goes out to men, black men especially. Society has taught you that to be human was weak. That to feel pain and expressing it wasn’t man enough. For you to feel love, you must feel pain. If feeling pain is unmanly how can you ever feel love? Now we have generations of men that cannot be reached. Men who have built their walls so up high that if you ever attempt to love him, you’ll get bruised.

When the world set the standard of beauty; women rallied together and challenged the status quo, and they continue to do so to this day by setting up Instagram pages dark skin women, fat women, natural haired women. There are blogs and self-help books written for women by women. Mothers, sisters, cousins and friends seat us down and talk things through with us as women. All these things have helped us define ourselves for ourselves. We’ve been labelled emotional beings, and we’ve allowed ourselves to express this part of our humanity.

Where are your books on manhood? Where are your groups? Where are your blogs where are your Instagram pages? Where do you go to heal? To express yourselves? To be human. I get it most of you are raised by women and women can only raise you, but they cannot teach you what manhood is. This is why I encourage you all to create these safe spaces and try to define what masculinity is for yourselves for the sake of society and the next generation. We need emotionally healthy husbands, fathers and brothers. Men who will not cover up their pain with drugs, sex and money, destroying everything and everyone on their path. Society has put your healing on our shoulders. That somehow it is the responsibility of a “good woman” to heal a broken man. No, healing is a personal journey. One has to be intentional about it.

I’m writing in genuine concern, and this is not a “pick me” agenda.

Working with customers is notoriously hard you guys. People these days are impatient, entitled and in a rush to go home and eat frozen dinners for one in front of the television.
A few weeks ago I informed a customer, a woman that we couldn’t release any of her private info to her son without her written consent. Makes sense right? Nope, not to her. She sent me a series of impolite emails in caps with several exclamation marks.
I was professional, and everything worked out. About a week later the same woman asked me for something else, and I said “Sorry, but the management office handles that” and I asked her to have a seat and wait 5 minutes. The woman went crazy. In between all the yelling, I heard her say “I will never forgive you for not releasing that information to my son.”
That stood out to me because I was out with my friends several weekends in between those two encounters, laughing, dancing and genuinely having a good time. I had forgotten about all that.
Apart from the fact, there was nothing to forgive as I was only doing my job. How did her unforgiveness affect me? What did I lose because of her refusal to forgive me? She was the one suffering from her unforgiveness, this is why they say “forgiveness is not for others it’s for yourself.” When you forgive your mind is no longer being held hostage by the person who hurt you. If you’re upset, angry and bitter while the other person is living life, guess what? That’s your loss.

Happy New Year and Happy Friday! Enjoy your weekend.

I thought my biggest fear was snakes, but that’s not it. I went to the emergency on October 8th, I rarely get sick, so I was freaking out. It turned out to be nothing major. But as I sat there waiting for my test results, I was almost in tears because of the pain, but what was more traumatizing than the pain was that I have just found out what my passion is, I haven’t done much to impact humanity in a big way through my gift. So I kept saying to myself “I just cannot die yet.”

The fear was not death itself the fear was dying before I can make a difference. Dying before I have released all the stuff God put in me. So when the test results came back all clear. Why did I go back to my comfort zone? Ordering chicken wings and loaded fries. Like I didn’t have a fear of not releasing all my stuff? SMH. I know I can do better.

The funny thing is I always think I am too old and I haven’t achieved this and that. And when I thought I was going to die I was crying “Lord please I’m too young.” It reminded me of a story, some of you may know it; This guy had lost his mother, and he was wailing and crying saying “take me with you mom, Take me with you.” he was particularly dramatic as they lowered the casket into the ground he fell into the hole. He freaked out and screamed “Not today!”

Is anyone ready for death? Maybe those who have done their work and lived up to their fullest potential. I Know I’m not there yet. Thoughts?

Cos it ain’t you

You don’t have the power to dim the light that shines from within you. I mean you can try. By lowering yourself to the standards of those around you, people you should be around in the first place. Others might convince you that your light is not there and that you are nothing special. But it’s still not going to go away. There will be people who will attack you because it’s shining in their face and you’ll wonder “What have I done to these people? Don’t they see how broke and broken I am?” You can try to hide it, you can try to squash it, so it might not offend others. This light is a Godly light, and it will not go away for your convenience. It’ll bring you pain. Pain from hiding it and pain from the envious once you release it.
Choose to release it anyway. Because the joy that comes from bright lights is more intense than whatever pain the envious will cause. Choose you, choose your light so that you might please God.

PS: If you’re a people pleaser like me (previous article) you might want to use all that “people pleasing” energy to please God. How about that?

 “Have the courage to be disliked.”

Read the first quote I came across this morning. It takes a certain amount of courage to walk confidently into a room knowing that half the room hates your guts!

The people pleaser in me would never allow it. There were times I would go to an event and force conversation with someone who doesn’t like me until they budged. Imagine using all that time and energy to convince someone how much of a beautiful person you are instead of letting them think whatever and enjoy your night.

At one point I was so fearful of being disliked to the point where I would change the way I dressed, talked and thought. I stopped thinking independently, and every decision had to be approved by someone. I once let someone talk me out of opening a boutique, something that I was so sure of at the time. Had I been courageous I would have been further along or I would have failed and learned from my mistakes.

Now that I’m older you’d think I have come full circle huh? Nope! Sometimes I’m still fearful, and sometimes its both middle fingers up like a rock star.

I’m courageous, I face this fear on a daily basis. Being a supervisor I have to make tuff decisions, that make my crew dislike me. One time I came in to find my name tag stabbed with a pair of scissors. I didn’t even flinch.  The more you are disliked, the more ok you get with it.

And when you get ok with not being liked, the more rooms you’ll enter courageously. The more opportunities you will take. The more success you’ll achieve.

Please, you’re doing me a favour

See, I was just surfing the gram and came across this cute rapper/ comedian called B. Simone. She has this freestyle rap on her page which I loved! When she hit the B.Simone tone, I lost it!  In her rap, she says “keep my name outta your mouth if you ain’t my real friend” I’ve heard this statement for a while now and for a long time I’ve felt it and agreed with it but now, I’m somewhat on the fence about it. The reason behind that is that I’ve realized that people will keep your name in their mouths, and it isn’t much you can do about it, cos a lot of the time it happens when you’re not there to defend yourself. There’s not much you can do, other than breaking the law on sight! (fight),  Which isn’t really in your best interest. I’d like to think that a lot of you are on a spiritual journey that is why you found your way here.  So my suggestion is to let people keep talking about you. Get comfortable with it.

Get so comfortable that you’re okay with it. Take it a step further and capitalize on it. Build a brand on being the topic of conversation at dinner tables. They say any publicity is good publicity. So keep my name in your mouth and make me some guap!  

So how can you make money from being talked about? Here is how. Researchers at Stanford University say in some cases negative publicity can increase sales when a product or company is relatively unknown, just because it stimulates product awareness. This means people are aware of you. People generally turn to things and products that they are aware of so if they had to choose to buy a product from you over someone else they will want yours.

How does this benefit you if you’re not running a business? I don’t know. You should probably consider running a business…