40+FAB Blog

“I will give you something to think about!” I remember hearing this threat when my parents were about to go into discipline mode. I honestly didn’t want anything to think about at that time.

Having something to think about however is by no means a negative thing or an overhyped threat. Truth is, if you haven’t had something to think about in the last few days, you need to ask yourself if you are really growing.

If where you have hung out in the last week has not thrown up something as food for thought, then you are probably hanging around the wrong places. If your work, friends, family, books you read, programmes you watch etc are not challenging you, then you may need to make some necessary adjustments. Your world will never get bigger than the size of your thinking ability and your thinking ability will never get bigger than the thoughts that have challenged it.

I heard a well known author say, forget about the concept of mental block, you have something to say daily, so you can write something daily. Those words blew my mind and changed my thinking. It’s been months since I heard him, and it’s also been months since I have written something everyday without fail.

I would probably be stuck with a mental block right now if I did not get something to think about. Where have you been stuck? Unstuck yourself by going after something to think about.

40+FAB Blog

Have you ever noticed that if a particular type of shirt gets drawn to your attention like the florescent yellow silk one that your friend recently purchased, you suddenly begin to notice a lot of florescent yellow shirts where previously you didn’t think they existed.

This is due to a part of the brain known as the Reticular Activating System (RAS) helping you to recognise this new detail whenever you see it.
Apparently our brain is bombarded with billions of bits of information at any moment in time and in order for the mind not to blow up, the RAS filters and only allows what you have come to recognise to be in your consciousness. This is why everyone has a bias that is based on their upbringing or training.

A research was conducted to understand why entrepreneurs were great at spotting opportunities others did not see. It was found that they were good at taking time to visualise and talk about the type of opportunity they were looking for, this made their RAS to filter and help them to recognise those opportunities everywhere, just like you would see the yellow shirts when it was called to your attention.

So, what do you recognise on a daily basis? is it problems, fear, failure, difficulties or negativity? You can change it by spending time with what you do want to see instead. Educate your mind on possibilities, and then spend time visualising it. If you do this regularly, what you begin to recognise will change and before long you will begin to spot opportunities where others don’t see them.

40+FAB Blog

Everybody needs somebody is not just a nice cliché but is a truth that is timeless.

You needed two parents to be born. You needed several people to be raised, among them family and friends. You needed to be educated with the help of teachers and mentors.
Every small step and every great step are punctuated with interactions with people that help us to go on and achieve.

Don’t take people for granted, you need them. Celebrate them, be thankful for them, do to others as you would have them do for you. The wealthiest person is not one who has a vast array of riches, but rather the one who has cultivated relationships that cover every area of life.

40+FAB Blog

“Better to be patient than powerful; better to have self-control than to conquer a city.” – Jewish Proverb

“The first and best victory is to conquer self.” – Plato 

Many different ancient proverbs of wisdom talk about the man (and indeed woman) who is recognised as great in their area of endeavour, but they lack the ability to fully manage themselves. It is good to be mighty, but a lack of self control eventually neutralises that might.

Don’t get carried away with building great monuments at the expense of being able to rule over your own emotions. It is a worthwhile battle and never a wasted effort to keep your self, ego and emotions all under strict control. 

Whenever you struggle with Maning yourself, just remember those icons who got very famous only to have it all come crashing down because of those moments when they totally lost self-control.

40+FAB Blog

People define mental strength in a few different ways, and looking at it from different points of view gives a well rounded meaning to it.
Some say it’s “having inner peace and detaching yourself emotionally from concrete consequences and outcomes and focus on the process of achieving your goals”. Others say it’s “the ability to persevere in pursuit of a goal; no matter how long it takes”.

However it is defined, one must be able to keep their emotions in check and keep moving towards a goal until they see it come to pass. It is not an easy thing to do when you encounter haters, detractors, mean, manipulative and maligning persons, on the way to your future. People that take delight in breaking another persons spirit, esteem and dignity because of the biases that they have against others are rampant everywhere. 

I coached a female football team years ago, and we were playing a final match of a competition which we were winning until the players on the other team started taunting my star striker. She got really frustrated when someone bumped into her and tore her jersey. I was shouting from the sideline, ignore it, let it go, we are winning, it is almost over, but I saw her emotions overcome her and she pounced on that other player. She got sent off, and the other team equalised. We managed to survive until the penalty shootout where we were lucky enough to win the competition. 

There are many ways to build mental strength, but one way I know that works is to pour all of your heart and soul into your game, such that the way you play does all the talking for you. This way all your emotions are tied up in how you are delivering and you have no more emotions to spend on people who want to draw you back. This kind of focus on the future blinds you to all the other side roads and is like an armour that protects you from the darts of people and events that come against you on your way.

40+FAB Blog

I was lucky enough not to be in a high school that had a white shirt as part of the uniform. For a male teenager who loved to run around at playtime and engage in any sport that involved dirt, my light green shirt was adequate.

Have you noticed how differently you behave when you wear certain clothes or colours? You suddenly become more aware of your environment and move in a way that preserves the appearance of your apparel. 

Having an attitude or a mindset that is crisp and clean like a white shirt makes you more aware of how you behave. You do the right things because it leaves no stains on the conscience.
Allowing too many compromises to such standards is like messing up a white shirt, you cringe at the results, but if it is ignored, then it all goes downhill and before long the stains mean nothing.

Keep on your white shirt of honesty, integrity, punctuality, diligence, industry, compassion and more, while resisting the little lapses that could taint these great qualities. 

40+FAB Blog

One of our needs as human beings is for affection, that human connection and touch. There was a disturbing experiment carried out in the USA around 1944 to validate if affection was important to people. As I write about it, I cringe and my heart bleeds. 
40 new born babies were put in the best facilities to care for them, 20 of them were given all they needed but without any affection at all and the least bit of human contact. After 4 months, half of these babies had died and the experiment was halted. The other 20 babies were given all they needed, but with a lot of attention and affection. All the babies in that set were fine.

Sometimes life happens and we tend to have this reaction of wanting to cut ourselves off from the whole world and just be left alone, or we wait in isolation for someone to reach out to us. This is not a good thing.
I watched a TED talk on a research done on those who lived longer than average. One of the top 3 things that they did was to reach out to family, friends and people they met randomly. They did this every day.

Having contact with other humans is essential, it is necessary for your good, for your health. When we are sick and need urgent care, we go to find the doctor or the pharmacist to give us what will help us.
So, if contact with others is important, then why do we wait for them to come to us? There are too many people in this world for anyone to suffer from the malady of not being touched.

Don’t wait for people to come to you, but rather reach out to others, you will be solving your problem and their’s by doing so.

40+FAB Blog

You find that animals – including insects, that follow a defined way of living in their ecosystem seem to be quite successful. Take the ants as an example, they are able to gather food and build nests that keep them safe, supplied and superseding expectations of something so small. Or the birds that fly for miles from one continent to another, they band together and accomplish what is impossible for one bird to achieve alone.
Their ability to organise themselves seems to be their greatest strength. 

This is no different for human beings. You will find that the strongest families, communities, businesses or nations have a well defined set of protocols by which they band themselves together to achieve what is impossible for one individual to achieve alone.

Are there any successful entities you would like to emulate reproducing similar results to theirs? The answer to doing this may be as simple as learning, understanding and applying their protocols.
If you want to be a part of such entities, then you cannot achieve that without imbibing their protocol.

We should become students of the right protocol for the right situations. This is a right step in the direction of good success.

40+FAB Blog

Someone said if the only tool you have is a hammer, you will treat every problem like a nail. 

Another described a long lasting marriage ‘made in heaven’ as one that started out like an empty box which the couple has filled with precious treasures over the years.

We are travellers in the journey of life, we start out with an empty bag. As we go through life, we gather the intangible things in our bag that dictate the way we live. What’s in that bag? Do we allow all kinds of experiences, bitterness, regrets, hate and everything else that turns our bag into a baggage? 

Or, do we watch what we let in our bag and pursue positive experiences, knowledge, relationships, attitudes etc that makes our bag a bounty of treasure?

That bag is yours and yours alone and you have a choice of what will remain in it.

40+FAB Blog

In the world we live in today everyone has an opinion about various things that most times they have no business with.
Most times we need to shut out things that do not concern us. 

However, in things that do concern us, we should be upfront about expressing what we mean. In our relationships at home, at work and elsewhere those around us should not have to second guess where we stand on important issues.

Be more invested in how to raise your kids, plan the family budget or what kind of entertainment you let into your home. There is no point being a champion of opinions in other people’s matters while being tentative on the issues that most affect you such that those closest to you don’t know what you mean.