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How to Reach Higher Altitude With Positive Attitude

Your attitude determines your altitude

In a world characterized by upheavals, crisis, disappointments, depression and dejection, there is a need for every individual that wants to live, have fun and ultimately take the rightful place in destiny to be self-motivated and self-encouraged. This is because I have come to realize that to cross over from “mourning” to “morning”, it takes “U”, letter that distinguishes the two homophonic words in the English language. Whenever you are faced with any challenges in life, buck ultimately stops with you. The decision you take at any time determines where you will be the next moment and what happens to you subsequently.  It is therefore important to make informed decisions in life. In all these, a positive attitude in life is vital for higher altitude.

In order for you to make decisions in life, you may need to learn either from the mistakes of others or their stories. It is usually very costly to learn from one’s own mistakes. The mistakes or the stories of others help tremendously in determining the attitudes you will put forth when confronted with similar challenges. Attitude, yes attitude!

When exposed to situations others are confronting, in most cases, our first reaction is “If I were the person, I would have responded this way or that way? More often than not we tend to blame such people, especially if what befalls them is a misfortune. We blame those in power for not performing; we criticize those performing for not doing enough and, disturbingly, we attribute the causes of our misfortunes in life to what others did or did not do. This is the tragedy of the today’s world.

I have, however, discovered that we are where we are not only because of bad leadership, poverty, lack of education, lack of parents, lack of love from others, among other reasons we  may want to adduce, but because of what we do when we are faced with challenges in life. Do we react to situations or respond to them? If you have been reactive, then there is the need for a change. It is vital that you be responsive to situations; you  be positive-minded and see the inherent best even in the worst of situations. This is because even thorns have roses. Where others see difficulties, you must begin to see opportunities. All you need to do is to look within and think beyond. Remember, the future you cannot picture, you cannot capture. And to capture your desired future you must be conscious of the fact that attitude is not just everything, but the ONLY thing. It is your attitude that determines your altitude in life. A positive attitude equals higher altitude.

Check for Part 2 shortly.

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The Best Time to Start was Yesterday (Part 1 &2 )

Part 1

Procrastination is the thief of time. What should be done today should not be delayed till tomorrow. Today is the tomorrow spoken about yesterday. I know you have several ideas on your mind at the moment. For instance, for quite some time you have been dreaming about starting that business of yours or perhaps it is that your book which you are yet to write. Whatever it is that you have on your mind, you must know that nothing moves unless it is moved. In fact, Newton’s law of motion states that every object will remain in a position of rest unless an external force is applied to it. The external force in this sense is YOU. You need to do something about that idea of yours. You must take the first step. After all, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step in the right direction. So, start now.

Part 2

In Part 1 of this piece, I emphasized the fact that what could be done today should not be delayed till tomorrow. Should you still be at sea with the essence of this article, let me quickly share this experience with you. In January, 2010, I told a colleague about a publisher in Germany. This firm publishes academic works free of charge with royalty paid at the end of the year. While my colleague is yet to come up with a single manuscript as at the time of writing this piece because he keeps on postponing sending his work to the outfit, yours sincerely has published two books already with the firm!

The challenge with my colleague is that he is waiting for “the right time” to publish his masterpiece. My fear for him however is that he does not wait forever. I am certain that several masterpieces are wasting away at the cemeteries because they were never written! In a nutshell, you need to know that no one will celebrate you for what you would have done. You will only be celebrated for what you did. The best time to act on your idea was, indeed, yesterday.

Isaac Oluyi is a motivational writer and speaker based in Nigeria. He speaks and writes on attitude, self-discovery and wealth creation. Isaac is the Administrative Officer at the National Centre for Technology Management at Obafemi Awolowo University.
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Are Men Just Happier People?

Francis Zulu, Zambia

Francis Zulu compares several attitudes of men and women to prove that men are happier species.

NICKNAMES

  • If Mary, Jerita and Mulenga go out for lunch, they will call each other Mary, Jerita and Mulenga.
    If Mike, Dave and John go out, they will affectionately refer to each other as Fat Boy, Godzilla and Kabundo.

EATING OUT

  • When the bill arrives, Mike, Dave and John will each throw in £20, even though it’s only for £32.50. None of them will have anything smaller and none will actually admit they want change back.
    ·  When the girls get their bill, out come the pocket calculators.

MONEY

  • A man will pay £2 for a £1 item he needs.
    ·  A woman will pay £1 for a £2 item that she doesn’t need but it’s on sale.

BATHROOMS

  • A man has six items in his bathroom: toothbrush and toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel .
    ·  The average number of items in the typical woman’s bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify more than 20 of these items.

ARGUMENTS

  • A woman has the last word in any argument.
  • Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

FUTURE

  • A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
    ·  A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

SUCCESS

  • A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
    ·A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

MARRIAGE

  • A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn’t.
    · A man marries a woman expecting that she won’t change, but she does.

DRESSING UP

  • A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the trash, answer the phone, read a book, and get the mail.
    ·  A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.

NATURAL

  • Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed.
    ·  Women somehow deteriorate during the night (in most cases).

OFFSPRING

  • Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favorite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.
    ·  A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.
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Making It Slowly but Surely

Success is a marathon, not a sprint. But many of today’s youth do not know this, or they know but not make it a maxim in running their life race. If we take things easy, and act as purposely and positively as we can, success will surely come our way.

There are rules for success, and one of them is: ‘Never rush’. If you look around you, you will discover that those who have made it to the top are not only those who inherit wealth, fame or name. Yes, wealth, fame, and popular name can open door of opportunities for some folks, but the lack of them, ab initio, does not lock such doors and windows of opportunities either.

If you want to make it in life, as we all make efforts to achieve greater potentials and accumulate better aspirations of life, the rule , ‘never rush’, applies. What do you want to make in life: intellectual progress or social mobility? The best and possibly easiest way to make it in life is to make it slowly but surely.

With this recommendation, I am not saying we should be lackadaisical about life, or that we should sleep off all the twenty-fours and expect miracles to come, what I am saying is that we should organise ourselves, and see our dreams come true one by one.

Remember the scriptural axiom that the battle is neither for the strong nor the race for the swift, but that time and chance happen to them all. In the year 2006, I gave a speech at the orientation event organised by the Student Leadership Development Programme, SLDP, at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The coordinator of that novel student programme, who read my modest citation on that day, is today the Chief Economic Adviser to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I am talking about

Prof (Mrs) Precious Kassey Garba, a woman of substance; respectful, respected, and respectable scholar and teacher.

Prof. Garba always told us to believe in ourselves, and that no matter how big a challenge could be, determination can melt it. At the event mentioned above, I spoke about why and how the youth can take their destiny in their own hands. I said  the youth should always plan their time and time their plan. I said the youth should always choose their friends and make library one of their friends. I reminded the youth about what Prof Adedoyin Soyibo used to tell us, that when you add value to yourself, the distance from your success is reduced by miles. We can make it slowly but surely. Nothing is worth-worrying or worth-rushing about in life.

The biggest god most people worship is money. Money is good but money is not god. How you get is more important. Remember Napoleon Hill, who wrote in Think and Grow Rich that ‘Quick riches are more dangerous than poverty’. What we need most of the time is organised planning, faith, hope, and action, and slowly but surely we shall make it.

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Nigeria’s Millionaires by Promo

Money is good, and so everybody wants money. But the proliferation of promos and lotteries by telecommunications companies and even banks, by which many hope to get rich quick are essentially anti-social. While a few might be lucky and start thanking their stars that they are now millionaires in naira, and even in dollars, this get-rich-quick attitude needs to be examined. It is like robbing many to enrich few, not even to talk about allegations that the companies running the try-your-luck games in town often undercut the intelligence of their unsuspecting subscribers.
The Director-General of the National Lottery Regulatory Commission, Mr. Peter Igho, once said that “one of our major telecom operators made a profit of N2 billion from a lottery game and I do not think it gave up to N20 million to the public who played the lottery. Imagine the impact on the people if N1billion had been given to the public as prizes won in the lottery.” (Daily Trust, September 13, 2009).
Aside the cheating claims, the main reason why I think both the telecoms and the participating population should review this kind of lottery is that it tends to promote a materialist and consumerist society. Every young person is made to think that money is everything and the adverts for these lotteries seem to suggest that gambling is the best source of wealth. Instead of focusing on the lottery mentality, telecommunications companies should improve on their services. Call drops, bad networks, undelivered (yet charged) text messages are too common to enjoy the benefits of the global system for mobile communications in Nigeria.
They should use part of the proceeds from these lotteries to execute social responsibility services in schools and health centres. Banks should give scholarships to diligent students and modest loans to indigent ones. Many of our students in public schools cannot afford food and books and when they hear about enrichment by lottery I wonder what they think.
There is no doubt that lottery is a matter of choice, and that there are laws that govern it. Even in the UK some are becoming millionaires in pounds by hitting the jackpot. Yet, the psycho-social impacts of lottery mentality, especially when it is not properly regulated and is being branded as the most normal source of wealth, can only give rise to a material-driven and heavily monetized society, where people, especially the youth, would want to chase money by all easiest means possible.

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