We worry too much about what we have lost and sometimes forget about what we have left. Our ability to rise again is never in what has left us, but in what we have left.

Using a bit of word play makes this concept quite interesting, so follow this train of thought.
1. What has left you, leaves you with what you have left – don’t worry about what has walked out of your life especially if you did all that was your responsibility to make it stay. Things that don’t stick most times are not meant to be in our lives.
2. What you have left, leaves you with what you have left – at other times, we need to make the decision to walk away from certain things that are detrimental to our progress.

In both scenarios, knowing what you have left, and what you do have left are important for you to start the process of building your life better, stronger, and making your latter end much greater than your past.

40+FAB Blog

Your ideas matter

By Olaolu Faj Opebiyi on

March 21, 2021

- 40+FAB Blog

Possibly one of the best ways to show someone that they matter is to listen to what they have to say. As a child learns and discovers more and more about the world, they will usually talk about it to thier carers. As we listen to that child, we affirm them or we correct them. Those conversations play a big part in moulding them to become wholesome beings.

Throughout our lives, we will continue to grow, and the process of sharing ideas with those we regard will always play a part in helping us refine our thoughts to be more productive.

The onus is therefore on us to guard our ideas and bring them to the right sources who will listen, affirm, or correct us. Anyone who casts our ideas down as if they do not matter should be avoided, as they will have a crippling effect on our ability to improve.

40+FAB Blog

Accepting myself

By Olaolu Faj Opebiyi on

March 20, 2021

- 40+FAB Blog

Robert Holden said, “No amount of self-improvement can make up for any lack of self-acceptance.” We usually try to do our best and work really hard so we can be like someone else, who we feel is more acceptable than we are. All such efforts soon weary us and we lose track of actually being the best we can be.

At the time I went through primary school, you had to be there for 6 years, then you would take entrance exams for the secondary schools you desired to attend. My parents allowed me to take the entrance exams in my 5th year and I passed it got got accepted into a prestigious secondary school.

It was a great feeling to be accepted seeing I was a year younger than everyone else who got admitted. Over the years, I have enjoyed that feeling of being accepted into various groups, institutions and bodies of various kinds. You too would have felt this same joy of being recognised for your achievements and being a partaker of the benefits of belonging to one of such bodies. All of that, as good as it may be, makes little difference to our level of fulfilment if we never come to accept ourselves.

The greatest acceptance one can have is to be accepted by ones own self. Those that have become great have accepted and embraced who they are, thier strengths, weaknesses, advantages and handicaps. Self-acceptance is the key to outstanding improvement and authentic change in ones life, which leads to greater achievements.

40+FAB Blog

When more is expected

By Olaolu Faj Opebiyi on

March 19, 2021

- 40+FAB Blog

You probably have heard the expression, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” It only makes sense that life expects us to be productive with what we have been given. If you give a seed to the ground, then you expect a plant to grow out of it. In the same way if you instruct a person, then you expect them to produce a desired outcome.

There are many tasks that can be done by different means, for instance you can train an animal to perform certain tasks, like pulling a plough. It will do no more, and it will do no less that you have trained it to do. The same goes for a machine too. However, if that task is given to a human, they can certainly do more. They can do it themselves, or employ others to help them, or harness horses to pull the plough, or create machinery to work faster and more effectively.

It is therefore not out of place to expect much more than you have given, by way of instruction, to any man, woman, boy or girl. We can think, we have imagination, we can produce in divers ways. For this reason, always be ready to deliver much more than is expected of you.

40+FAB Blog

What they didn’t have

By Olaolu Faj Opebiyi on

March 18, 2021

- 40+FAB Blog

Sometimes, it takes someone else pointing out things that are in plain sight and are kind of at the tip of our consciousness, yet we somehow fail to acknowledge that they exist.

I grew up in a country and in a generation where parents worked hard to give thier children everything that they didn’t have. Be it education, money, comfort, gadgets, you name it. Many hardworking families who came from a place of depravity worked thier way up to places of means, and put thier children in a much better place than they were.

Yet looking back on the generation of children brought up that way, a meagre percentage of those who received such largesse from thier parents have failed to achieve anything more significant than thier forbears.

It hit me hard when I heard someone say, “they were so busy giving thier children what they didn’t have that they failed to give them what they did have”. There is no doubt that the values of my parents generation were quite admirable, thier discipline and work ethic were second to none. It is only in hindsight that one gleans a lot more from thier lives than they were able to pass on. Could it be that my generation has not done as well as it could have because they were not fully immersed in what thier parents truly had?

Let us not make the same mistake of the old guard. Let us start by giving our children the best of who we are and what values we do have before we begin to strive to give them what we never had.

40+FAB Blog

The significance of open reward

By Olaolu Faj Opebiyi on

March 17, 2021

- 40+FAB Blog

When you think about it, a reward for some good work or deed you have done should in and of itself compensate you for the deed. But there is something about being rewarded openly that is just as important as the reward itself.

It makes sense to openly reward those who have laboured publicly, like the athletes, and we sometimes overlook the ones who have laboured privately where no one could see.

In most cases, those who performed well publicly have spent a good part of thier lives working in secret, and thier results that have brought them out to the spotlight. So in essence, their reward is actually an acknowledgement of the efforts they have put in when no one could see.

As much as we should not seek an open reward for everything we do, we should not neglect the honour of receiving one publicly. It reinforces the values of hard work, integrity, persistence, vision, etc.

40+FAB Blog

Prediction vs attention

By Olaolu Faj Opebiyi on

March 16, 2021

- 40+FAB Blog

If there were someone who could accurately predict the future every time, we would probably all be in a very long queue trying to get some time with them so we could get a glimpse of what we hope to be a very bright future.

However, there is a level of insight we can get into the future when we learn to pay attention. One would be able to predict what would come out of an egg in the future if they took note of the animal that laid it today.

What are the things that have blindsided you? If take a look back at those situations, you will discover the distractions that kept you from reliably predicting the future. Your emotions are a key element that build up the fog that blocks our eyes. There are too many examples of people who ended up in toxic relationships as they failed to accurately interpret where it would end up due to strong feelings of affection for thier desired partner.

Get rid of your distractions, learn to look at situations objectively and take your emotions out of your quest to make a value judgement. Remember you need to pay attention to see further down the road. Take the time to do that and chances are you will end up on a much brighter path.

40+FAB Blog

Not what I expect

By Olaolu Faj Opebiyi on

March 15, 2021

- 40+FAB Blog

There is nothing more frustrating than expecting one thing but receiving something else. You have probably experienced it with a food order where the ads looked so delicious, but the meal tasted like the paper the advert was printed on. Or, in this day of online shopping, you may have received substandard items which looked nothing like what was promised on the tin.

The reality is we cannot blame our expectations on someone or something else. The onus is on us to do enough investigation to ensure that the investment of our expectation will yield a reasonable outcome. Whether we invest it in a relationship, a job, in anticipation of a meal or an event, we must do our due diligence to understand if those things can actually deliver on thier promise.

If people have disappointed you in the past, could it be that you had expectations of them which were unfounded? It may be worth having conversations with people around your expectations of them, and then reaching an understanding with them for the sake of that relationship. We should become better at managing the valuable energy of our expectations.

40+FAB Blog

Coming to terms with it

By Olaolu Faj Opebiyi on

March 14, 2021

- 40+FAB Blog

Usually when someone does not want to acknowledge or come to terms with the changes that are imminently upon them, they are said to be burying thier heads in the sand or living in denial.

It is hard to accept things that take us out of a state of perceived reality, and it is a shock to the system when you finally realise that things are not always what they seem. The singer Pink sang a song about the family portrait which touches on things looking good in a snapshot, but the realities people live out are different from it. We sometimes hold on to snapshots of our relationships, careers, successes, and more, but we refuse to acknowledge the changing times.

Coming to terms with unpleasant shifts in things is never easy, but it must be dealt with in order to move on. Find an objective friend or someone you trust who is mature enough to understand these things, and talk to them about your fears. Get professional help where you need to. However you do it, you will come out much better when you come to terms with it.

40+FAB Blog

The fear of the future

By Olaolu Faj Opebiyi on

March 13, 2021

- 40+FAB Blog

I read these words of wisdom from the Rabbi Daniel Lapin, “As important as it is to be future focussed, it is also important to remember that fear only exists in the future”.

I thought about it long and hard, and it struck me that indeed we always fear what has not yet happened, but that could potentially happen. The only reason we also fear what has happened is that we think that it might happen again. So in effect there is nothing like a past or a present fear, but only a future one.

I remember I was mugged many years back while walking down a lonely street. As I saw my assailant approaching, I could feel the fear of what would happen, after he grabbed me and wrestled my wallet out of my pocket, he took off, at that moment my adrenaline was high and so without thinking I pursued after him, my reasoning returned to me when someone who saw what happened called out to me to let it go.

I did not feel the fear in that moment, but rather responded to protect myself as best as I could. Thinking back on this and many other scenarios I have found myself in, indeed fear induced in the now is always a result of something we are looking at in the future, but when the situation does occur, fear seems to disappear and we are left to do what we can.

So, what is the best way to avoid this fear? I guess the answer would have to do with being more present in the now. Sometimes we spend too much of our thinking in the past or in the future. We have to get the balance right and learn to withdraw from focussing on what breeds fear in the future by being engaged in the present. If you feel that someone might break into your house, improve your security now or possibly move into a new neighbourhood. Taking present action always obscures future fears.

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