Resonance

Category: Habits

  • I Don’t Care: Breaking Free from the Apathy & Indifference

    I Don’t Care: Breaking Free from the Apathy & Indifference

    Ever met or been that person who is always like, “As for me, I don’t care. I don’t feel anything.” And we admired such people because they looked to us like strength. The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart. The Presence of God is known and it is also felt. Knowing God in our minds is boring and repressive. Having mental knowledge of God without ever experiencing Him is basically a religion. Joy, Peace, Love, Gratitude, Responsibility, Humility etc are expressions. Whatever we express is emotionally relevant. This means that anytime we try to act all cool and don’t really care who even died in our family, it’s because we have squirmed into ourselves.

    I have been a victim of “I don’t care”. Whenever I live constantly like that, I feel like I am a wall upon which all emotions around me are being thrown. I don’t feel like a person. I feel like an object in that situation. So I become invisible by becoming silent and I hide in plain sight. I don’t let people in. I am in a state of avoidance; being physically not present. So I go away so there’s nothing to relate to anymore. I hold strong boundaries or walls, keeping my feelings contained or even suppressed. And as long as I took this path of emotionlessness, I barely experienced God for myself. I interpret everything on a logical level. Even prophetic and worship meetings were full of my mind telling me how pretentious what was happening was.

    There are so many cover-up emotions today. This is where we can’t tolerate one emotion so we cover it up by feeling something else, usually something more acceptable. We can’t feel rage, so we feel frustration. I can’t tolerate intense betrayal, so I feel hurt instead. We can’t allow ourselves to feel unquenchable grief, so we feel sadness instead. I can’t even express or identify what we are feeling, so I stay silent. Because we do not know how to define what we are feeling or expressing, we would defend, hide, avoid, or escape it. But underneath these “defences” are often feelings of vulnerability. We too often identify a vulnerability with weakness, shame or being too emotional, in an attempt to cover a raw aspect of ourselves.

    No one was born a stoic. All creations are emotional creatures, birds and dogs alike. Because emotions do not come from our bodies though they do have a direct link with them; emotions are what makes us persons connected to the orchestrations of the universe as a whole.

    The truth is, once you close your heart to hurt, you also close yourself to love. Also, closing your heart will never stop you from feeling the negative emotions that come with life. It will rather stop you from fully expressing and benefitting from good emotions. There is hope in the shadows, there is peace in the storm, there is patience in the pain, and there is joy in the sorrow. Open up your heart. The Holy Spirit wants you to enjoy His fruits regardless of the circumstances.


    If you know for yourself that you’re in this “I don’t care anymore” state or you’re heading towards that in any important area of your life, I want you to put your hand on your heart and pray this prayer;
    Heart, you have permission to be wide open towards the LORD, to be fully present, to fully feel, to be fully affected. Heart, you have permission to know that He is emotional about you. You have permission to know that you don’t need to shut down. You don’t need to lock up. Lord, any place where I have stopped feeling because of pain, because of vows that I’ve made, I give you permission to open my heart back to you. I want to have a heart that is fully after yours. In Jesus’ Name, I pray, Amen.

    I love you ♥

  • What Do You Resonate With?

    If you’ve lived long enough, you’d realize you could be getting the same messages along a certain line for a period of time. Some even say it’s the universe sending them that message over and over. You’d hear a particular word echo or even a certain conclusion is drawn in different conservations with different people. You could resonate with discipline, balance, mindset, personality, or working smart.

    Some words or ideas may resonate with us for days, weeks, months or years, even a lifetime. We may be inclined towards a certain philosophy, school of thought, system, concept, mindset or attitude. Not just us, a generation, a city, a building, an architecture, culture, even animals may be related to a certain form of resonance. It’s an endless list.

    LENS

    There’s a difference between what it is and how we see it. How we see things is based on our lens. If you’ve noticed, no matter what the conversation is about, people tune it to what they resonate with. People who resonate with discipline think everything is about discipline. People who incline to love think it will come down to love. Those who resonate with balance see the balance in everything.

    Others who resonate with mindset think the mindset is everything. Those who also resonate with wisdom believe it all goes back to wisdom. If you hang around people who resonate with hard work, you’d soon believe in it and work with it. That’s why it’s necessary to find what works for you because everything works but it just may not be for you.

    INFLUENCE

    For some people, what they resonate with is in their everyday vocabulary. Stick around for a while and you’d hear them use it often. For others, it’s simply embedded in their attitude. Walk with them for a while and you’d be influenced. We all individually have the potential to be anything. What we don’t have the potential to be is everything at the same time.

    Thus, different people bring out different sides of us. Ever worked with a consistent person before? You’ll always be on your toes. How about one who always gives new excuses? You’d relax. If one group thinks you’re funny, your funny side comes out when you’re around them. This is why the people you surround yourself with matters.

    NATURE & NURTURE

    Truth is, we all don’t resonate with just one thing. One person can resonate with different seemingly contradictory ideologies. Nonetheless, we have something we’ll completely resonate with for a lifetime. This is usually the virtues that go with our personality. Introverts obviously resonate with solitude, the choleric believes in being straightforward, and so on. It’s nature.

    However, there are others we pick up along the way that we come to resonate with it so much that no matter our environment, it still wouldn’t rob off. It’s nurture that becomes nature. This is usually the values that come with our upbringing.

    PERSPECTIVE

    There are good and bad sides to anything we resonate with. You call it laziness but it may be smartness. Call it consistent but it may be conservative. You call it hectic but it may be hard work. You call it slow but it may be meticulous. Call it patience but it may be indecisiveness. It all depends on the situation.

    A particular generation may hype hard work, another will hype laziness, especially this generation. It says lazy people find easy ways of doing things. So make sure what you resonate with is consistent with the world’s current.

    Since everything works as long as you keep resonating with it, it’s better that you simply hype what you resonate without defaming any other. For instance, being practical doesn’t mean being theoretical is wrong. Practicality only makes us experts in specific things but theory makes us understand the principles that can applied in several ingenious ways.

    Leonardo Da Vinci once said, “He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast”.

    So find what you resonate with, be intentional about it, and let it be synonymous to your name in your environment. Morgina Arku said it better; you can resonate with a lot of things but muster a few.

    I love you ❤️

  • Balance: The Essential Universal Principle that Holds Life Together

    Art and science. Logic and emotions. Work and play. These words are not opposites but having the two creates a design principle of the universe: balance. This principle is not that everything should be balanced but that everything IS balanced. This is because balance is not a matter of choice or preference. Where there is no balance, there is destruction; a break in the cycle of resurgence where everything just swirls into depletion and nothingness. It is the basic ingredient of existence.

    Balance: Perfection’s Best Kept Secret

    Balance: Perfection’s Best Kept Secret

    Perfection is a scary word for many, really. Use it three or four times in a sentence and someone will definitely give you a lecture of how things can’t be perfect. True! We are not powerful enough to control the balance of ups and downs, highs and lows or even foreknow if the good will outweigh the bad in any decision we make. The power to make things perfect is not even 5% in our hands. There will always be a margin of error.

    However, perfection simply means complete. Have you seen how the earth revolves around the sun using the sun’s gravity? That’s perfect! If it were slightly lower by even an inch raised to the power of an inch, our earth will rotate slowly away into the “nothingness” of space. If it were slightly higher by the same margin, the earth will rotate slowly towards the sun until it was completely burned up by the sun’s harmful radiations. Do you see that balance?

    That’s not the only example in nature. I could talk about reproduction and childbirth, atmospheric pressure, the human brain, the cycle of nitrogen, the food chain, and so on. The good part about all this is; we haven’t discovered a tenth of all there is to know about the universe. Yet, we see it clearly. A lot of what we call perfection is balance at work. Perfection can choose not to exist and we’ll be perfectly fine. The day balance leaves office, hell will break lose. Balance is literally what’s holding hell from breaking lose.

    Balance: the Shortcut to Consistency

    Balance: the Shortcut to Consistency

    Life is so unpredictable, and all we feed our brains from social media is how inconsistent and messed up one thing or another is. It was only a matter of time until someone popularizes the idea that there’s no such thing as consistency. To be honest, consistency really sounds like a cool word for perfection. It would have been easy to sell the idea that it’s as unrealistic as perfection.

    Guess what makes consistency possible? It’s not sheer will power or motivation or even knowledge. We all can know what to do and still watch ourselves not do it. We ride our consistency on the shoulders of motivation till it exhausts, then we’re more inconsistent than we were before. Consistency is more about holding something together, keeping it going like a cycle. You can’t force it.

    Of course, there are no shortcuts to consistency. However, what makes consistency consistent in the long-term is balance. If you keep your hands up for like forever, it’s called punishment. If you keep your hands up for 2 minutes and bring it down for about 45 seconds so you could keep it up again for 2 minutes, it’s called exercise. Creating that balance is what makes you consistent. You don’t have to beat yourself up.

    balance

    Work, but don’t kill yourself working. Rest, but don’t be lazy. Have some days off. Resurgence, remember? If you don’t balance exertion and rest, either of them is bound to destroy you. As aforementioned, where there is no balance there is destruction. Balance keeps you in a cycle to keep on keeping on.

    So keep on keeping on, baby ❤️

  • Believe In Yourself Like No One Else In The World Would

    We all know and have heard several times that we should believe in ourselves. The major reason we usually don’t is because we think we know ourselves too well. Some think success will crumble them. Others think it’s good to be lazy sometimes (then sometimes gradually turns into all the time), while some others think consistency will break them. We are our own worst enemy. No one limits us more than we limit ourselves. It’s amazing that of all the things we can choose to think of ourselves, we choose negativity shaped as truths and live by it.

    John C. Maxwell once told a story about a school that performed an interesting experiment. They randomly picked a teacher from the teachers’ database and assigned the teacher to randomly picked freshmen, about 30 of them. They met separately with the teacher and said, “we chose you because you’re the best teacher in your field in the entire region. Therefore, we’ve assigned to you the very best students because you deserve the very best. Then they met with the students and said, “we chose you because you’re the best students in one of the best schools in the world. Therefore, we’ve assigned to you the best teacher in the entire region because you deserve nothing but the best.

    At the end of the academic year, the selected students’ group performance was 30% higher than the rest of the freshmen. The teacher was really proud of the performance and applauded the students for being the best of the best. The students also were very proud of their achievements but weren’t surprised because they had the best teacher. The board came back and said to the teacher, “we have a confession to make. You actually aren’t the best teacher”.

    The teacher somewhat understood and immediately accredited the extraordinary performance to the students. The board then said again, “We have another confession. Your students weren’t necessarily the best. They were randomly selected by a computerized system. Then the teacher asked, “if you randomly selected me and randomly selected the students, why did the students excel? The board concluded wisely, “because you thought they should and they thought they should”.

    What happens when you have someone who believes the best about you? You raise the belief in yourself to a higher level. A level higher than yourself. The sky no more becomes the limit. The limit becomes the sky. So are you going to wait till you find someone who believes in you? Life is too short to give that power to someone else. The reason why people live mediocre lives is not because they aim high and miss; it’s that they aim low and hit. So you’d want to examine yourself and realize the standard you’ve set for yourself. If you raise it too high, you’ll always be too hard on yourself, stressed out and feel like an under-achiever. But for most of us, we’ve set it too low so that we don’t feel too bad about ourselves for not trying hard enough.

    You need to constantly raise the bar a little in order to consistently grow in ways you never thought possible. It all begins with believing in ourselves. There’s a part of you within you that lies undiscovered because you refuse to jump off the cliff. You’re too sure about yourself, but the truth is you are too complex to understand everything about you. It takes more than a lifetime to know ourselves for sure, so don’t think negatively about yourself all your life based on one or two past circumstances. Your future drastically changes when you change your perception about your own self. Your thoughts will change. Even your thoughts will change and so will your choices and decisions.

    Do you want to change? It starts with changing what and how you think about yourself. Believe in yourself. Anyone else’s belief in you is auxiliary. It doesn’t matter who believes in you if you don’t believe in yourself. God believes in you. The universe believes in you. What about you? Do you?

    I love you ❤️

  • Planning Your Life : Practical Reasons Why You Need To

    Nobody is rich in time or poor in time. Everyone has 24 hours every day. Your dream is only a wish until it has a plan. The secret to success in life is the effective management of time and change. The principle key to management of time and change is planning.

    Planning is the most important principle of success in life. You were created by God to live life; not for life to live you. Life simply changes through time. The primary key to regulating and controlling change is planning.

    Time is present anyway. Planning is giving time purpose. The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Even God has a plan, how much more you. What I like about God is that He always exceeds our plans (Jeremiah 29:11). But if you do not have a plan, you give away your life to chance; life will toss you anywhere anyhow.

    Do not plan your life independent of God’s purpose. Synchronise your plans with God’s purpose. Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails”.

    Remember, your daily plans must bring you closer and closer to achieving your life’s purpose.

    P.S. This information is from Dr Myles Monroe and not the author’s own words.

  • Coping with Finances as a Couple

    If there is one thing that is forever relevant in the world system, it is finances. Throughout human history, legal tender has changed. The complexity of the legal tender always reflected the monetary system put in place for financial transactions to be possible. However, the need and relevance has barely changed; only evolving with time.

    Gone is the generation where the woman only stays home to take care of the house while the man goes out to work for sustenance. In our world today, for the family to fluorish financially both parents step out the door for work. This has brought about new challenges on coping with finances.

    In this life, realize that sitting to think about a situation before venturing into it is the best way to tackle that situation. Thus, this write-up is really necessary for singles and young couples. Trust me, if you don’t plan beforehand what you’ll say when – for instance – you go for an interview, what you’ll do when you are broke etc, you can end up embarrassing yourself or making an avoidable wrong decision. Even thieves plan what they’ll do when they are about to get caught. You hope for the best, yes: but do plan for the worst.

    Here are 3 outlined things I have come to understand about this issue;

    1. Each one ought to have their own money

    As a couple, the idea of doing everything together sounds romantic. Actually, it’s not always realistic. You are not two halves making a whole. You are individuals coming together as a couple. So you need to have a life of your own, complemented by the life you share with your partner. In simple English when it comes to finances, have your own money. Don’t put all your money together.

    If you put your money together, if you’re broke you’re broke together. Yet, if you had your own money separate from the one you had together, one can be broke for a season and be supported by the other. In this way, you fulfill the reason for being a couple.

    Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.

    Ecclesiastes 4:9‭-‬10 NLT

    2. Balance

    Complement each other. Divide major expenditure brackets among yourselves. As a man, I will take care of the car. As a woman, you take care of the rent. So once payday is due, everyone knows what they are taking care of. It could even be in percentages. As a man, I will take care of 40% of the school fees while the lady takes care of the 60%. There is no formula to this. It does not need to be rigid or fixed because circumstances change often. It really depends on the level of understanding between the two of you.

    Compromise, don’t compete. Usually, men feel inferior when their partner makes more money than they do. It feels like the woman would get to make more vital decisions in the relationship because of how important finances are. That notwithstanding, your partner is your helper and not your competition. You are not trying to beat them. You both are coming together to face life. So you need everything you can get, including extra cash from a richer spouse.

    3. Understand your financial personality

    Depending on how we were brought up and the coping skills we picked along the way, we tackle finances differently. We can however group everyone under two main umbrellas. “Saving-oriented” and “Spending-oriented”. Proverbs 13:7 says “some who are poor pretend to be rich; others who are rich pretend to be poor.”

    It’s human nature to “waste” resources once there’s that feeling that there’s more than enough resources available. This is because human wants are insatiable. Immediately you get enough money, you tend to feel more comfortable and begin to spend on your insatiable wants. That is natural.

    Nonetheless, there are people who develop a saving-oriented attitude towards money. They are slow to spend, critical of the amount they have at the moment and barely buy out of impulse. The Spending-oriented easily releases money, doesn’t count until it’s almost finished and usually don’t know how their money run low so fast.

    A couple who are both Spending-oriented is a disasterclass. They will end up spending three-month salary in advance. When both are saving-oriented, it’s bad in a different way. Ask them rich kids who look rich but aren’t allowed to spend rich. They are so rich yet live so poor. Proverbs 13:7 is so true.

    Thus, identify your financial personality as a couple. Who likes spending? Who has cultivated a unique habit of saving? Who doesn’t count the cost until the money is finished? Who has so much money but still lives within their initial budget? Understanding who is what creates the balance both of you need. After all, coming together as a couple ought to strengthen your strengths and weaken your weaknesses. Where one falls short, the other is a suitable helper.

    I hope you’ve learnt so much from this. Please leave a comment. I would like to hear from you. Speaking of finances, this website is monetized so please do well to like and share to any platform you know would help. I love you ❤

  • How to Live Above the People-pleasing Mentality & Environment

    Don’t live your life to please anyone. Not your boss or your friends. Definitely not your friends. Not any member of your family. People-pleasing is a slavery mentality. If you want someone to please, please God. God is the one person you can pursue to please and never regret.

    Why shouldn’t you live your life to please anyone?

    It’s a trap. Once you live up to their expectations, they will always pile their issues on you to solve. Guess what? You’d have to live up to their expectations all the time. You’ll lose yourself trying to keep up with their expectations and praise of you. This is the fact; the day you disappoint them, their reaction will be greater than every praise they’ve ever showered on you.

    People-pleasing Mentality

    If you are people-pleasing, you will suffer when they are gone. Our mind needs a metric to measure how well we are doing in an area. If your efforts are based on the praises and rewards of your pleaser, you will lack a reward system of your own. Immediately that boss is replaced, that relative dies or that friend leaves, your world shatters. You won’t know your left from your right. This usually happens to students who are teachers’ pets. Once they complete school and go into industry, they struggle to cope because they don’t know who to please and how to please who.

    If you live for their acceptance, you will die from their rejection. You can easily break down if someone doesn’t appreciate the effort you put in to please them. Make sure you are doing the right thing for your own self-development and good motive. Sometimes, the people you are trying to please may not even notice any effort, and that can still leave you devastated.

    If you live to please people, you never discover your authenticity. You live in the shadow of your pleaser. It’s about what they want and how they want it. You never take the time to do it your way and use your own discretion. If you want to please your boss so bad, this is what happens. You’re too careful, thereby limiting the use of your own intuition to make independent decisions that can still work out.

    People-pleasing Environments

    Sometimes, it’s not our fault. We may not even notice that we are doing certain things as a way to please someone above us. This is because of the kind of environment that has already been created. Some leaders don’t accept opinions. It is only about executing things their way and style. Thus, people end up doing what the boss wants; not because they want to make him happy, but because they don’t want to get on his/her bad side.

    No wonder that’s how people interpret God and His Ways. “Obey Me otherwise I will throw you into hell forever.” As a result, so many remain a scared slave to God rather than a close friend. No wonder. Leaders who want you to please them are making sure you’re never above them. Once you do it your way, they’ll make you feel small and “put you in your place”: below them.

    What if you find yourself in the company of someone who wishes that you keep pleasing them because they alone always know what is right? Let me give you a piece of terrible advice: disappoint them. Don’t do what is right in an attempt to meet their expectations. Do what is right because you want to. Brace yourself for a ton of criticism. Their perfectionism is not your mandate. Free yourself from having to carry the burden of always pleasing them for their praises and worship on you.

    You cannot be everything to everyone. Stop setting yourself on fire to keep everyone else warm

    Daniel Good

    Treat them well

    Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying intentionally live to displease them. Such people are already perfectionists so no matter how hard you try to please them, you will still keep falling short from time to time. So don’t try to please them. On the other hand, don’t live to intentionally displease them. Just do your very best for your own self, not for them.

    One day when you’re in their capacity, please endeavour to treat those below you with the compassion you needed so much. Treat your employees well, treat your children well, treat the younger generations well. Treat those down the pipeline well, and never look down on those who look up to you. I love you ❤

  • Distractions: Social Media, Abstinence & the Secret of Addiction

    Who doesn’t know what to do to achieve good results? Who doesn’t know that salad is healthier than chocolate candy? In the Information Age, there’s barely any excuse for not knowing. Everything is basically one Google search away. What is common is learnt ignorance, where we choose to not know because we don’t what to know. Perhaps, the truth is a bitter pill to swallow. Many are afraid of checking their health status. Others are afraid of checking their school marks while others are afraid of checking their bank account balance.

    It does start from the little things where we are afraid of checking the remainder of our data bundle. This is one of the biggest fuels of inconsistency, deviation and wastage; not checking on your own progress though you feel that urge that you’ve deviated from your initial agenda. Also, not verifying though you are unsure and choosing to do the bare minimum with the pretense that you didn’t know the requirements.

    We are all know what is right. It doesn’t guarantee that we will do what is right. What we lack is the ability to follow through till we achieve the desired results. In other words, we are lacking the ability to avoid distractions. Life is not just about doing the right things. It’s also about not doing the wrong things. Have you ever been fully motivated to sit down and work hard till you achieve a certain goal, only for you to be stuck on your phone 45 minutes later, scrolling through social media. You come back to your task and all that energy is gone. What is left is just boredom, demotivation and reluctance.

    From one perspective, we live in a world full of distractions. Every product, lifestyle, fashion, accessory, software, tool, mechanism is designed to catch your attention. Everything you see, hear, feel, taste and smell takes a portion of your attention and craves for more of it till you crave for more of that thing. Technology is no different. It was designed to be persuasive and pervasive. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have synced into our way of life that fast. Every new invention and every virtual software is backed by research in human psycnology and is scientifically designed to “distract” you. That means it is easier today than it was yesterday to get distracted.

    Does that mean technology is bad? Is technology hijacking our brains? Is it getting everyone synced in a virutal reality that is so addictive and unhealthy? I am no conspiracy theorist. It is scientifically untrue that technology is a distraction because everything is potentially distracting and addictive. In fact, anything that solves pain is potentially addictive. Yes, some people do become addicted to technology as a defensive mechanism against their own lack of self-esteem, self-confidence and self-image.

    After all, it is easier to tweet your ideas to a million people than to stand in front of a million people to convey the same idea. So is technology; video games, social media etc. ruining our children? The idea of thinking technology is a distraction for our generation is in itself a distraction. It is distracting us from the potential prowess of exploration and creativity that comes with technology. You are using social media to convey the idea of social media ruining this generation. Think about it!

    So how do we stop getting distracted? One thing people do a lot but it never really works is strict abstinence. They say to themselves, “I’m never going to do that ever again”. They say it with all sincerity but fail over and over again. This is because strict abstinence is like pulling out a rubber band. It’s only a matter of time until all that tension is released and it ricochets even further than where it started. In order words, people who opt for strict abstinence end up doing worse. If you keep telling yourself not to do something, you build up a lot of pressure to actually do it. Why? Because that sensation of relieving the discomfort of telling yourself not to, is itself pleasurable. I just told you the secret of addiction.

    This is why people smoke. This is why people masturbate though they hate themselves for doing it. This is why people swear they will never drink again but still do though the drink is actually very bitter. It is not the only reason why they richochetted to the old behaviour but it is the commonest. Once you keep telling yourself, “don’t do it! don’t do it! don’t do it!”, doing it relieves you of the discomfort. Neurologically speaking, we all do things to avoid discomfort, remember? Strict abstinence will always backfire. This is because we are wiring our neurocircuitry to expect a pleasurable sensation whenever we relieve ourselves of the discomfort we impose on ourselves. Thus, it becomes a cycle.

    Bottom line: the biggest cause of all distraction is the instinctive nature within to avoid discomfort at all cost. It takes zero effort to live in your comfort zone. Wishes are free so everyone wishes for all the good things in life. However, nothing essential comes on a silver platter. The conquest belongs to the doers. To be consistent, to be revolutionary, to be relentless, to be determined, takes a lot of guts; Not just to want to do something special, achieve something extraordinary, or become someone great. No! It goes beyond that. In order to conquer the world, you need to conquer yourself. The biggest part of conquering yourself is denying yourself of the pleasure of distractions and the need to avoid discomfort. I love you ❤️

  • Self-Deception & Assumptions: How You Lie to Yourself without Realising

    Self-Deception & Assumptions: How You Lie to Yourself without Realising

    The brain was primarily designed to create, not store. Our thought stream is so amazing that we can think about and come up with assumptions on any random thing at any time at all. The speed of thought is so fast that I can travel to Jupiter and back in just 7 seconds. However, our brain has the power to focus our line of thinking. In order words, despite all the random thoughts, we choose which thought to pick and ponder on. Since our brain is not primarily for storing, we forget some thoughts as fast as we get them.

    See your stream of thoughts like search results. Our brain draws thoughts to our attention based on what we have previously fed it. Everything is mathematical in nature. Without self-consciousness, our brain picks data, derives meaning, makes analysis and draws potential conclusions without us even voicing it out. However, most of these “mathematical equations” in our brain don’t always draw the right conclusions.

    It’s like solving an MSQ math question, seeing our answer in the options and still getting it wrong. Our brain had all the needed data to put in but still produced a misconception. This is so dangerous to the extent that most of what we know to be true could just be lies assumed to be true. Let’s dive in.

    The first influences the rest

    One’s first thought concerning a particular and specific matter, aspect, facet, situation, field or even circumstance – be it truth or deceit – will affect the build-up of ideas that comes afterwards pertaining to that area. A foundation of truth is, therefore, essential. Building incorruptible on the corrupt results in deception. That is why it is very important to renew our minds in our new life in Christ.

    We don’t have the luxury of hitting the reset button for our minds. How you were brought up to perceive something and how you were conditioned to think about any particular thing will always influence your thoughts, opinions, ideas, concepts, philosophy and mindset. Since you initially didn’t know anything concerning let’s say thermodynamics, your very first knowledge of it is likely to become your absolute truth. You’ll swallow it hook, link and sinker.

    Any further knowledge you have about it will be believed only if it’s in line with prior knowledge or any already believed knowledge in another field. Speaking of the latter, let’s talk about our ability to believe something we know nothing about when it’s related well with something we already know;

    It is easy to agree with opinions in line with our thinking

    If you have no clue in a particular area of study, one can relate it with an area of study you are already conversant with so as to make you understand better. Thus, you now understand because it’s in line with your thinking. This is brilliant and dangerous at the same time. Transfer of knowledge is not always accurate. In many cases, it’s not.

    Having had the wrong conception as a foundation, any deception in line with it will easily be treated as truth. Any simple logic that may be true in a particular context can be transferred to fit into another unrelated context just to add up to our made-up fact. This is one concept of deception. Another concept is adding a pinch of lie to a wholemeal truth. When deception is built on a misconception that is already in line with one’s stream of thought, it is difficult to convince the person otherwise.

    Sometimes we don’t need a third party to deceive us. Our minds can draw its own conclusions and conceive lies based on truth. This is the concept of misconception. For instance, some whites think it’s the scorching sun that burnt our skin black. You’ll find some blacks who think this way. No one told them. It’s just their own theory they came up with based on the truth of skin burn, the hot sun around the equator and black skin. Their brain took the right equation and still came up with a misconception. Our skin actually produces melanin to protect us against the sun, not that the sun burnt it black.

    So how do we avoid making unnecessary assumptions that make us look paranoid when our weird assumptions turn out to be untrue?

    1. Ask

    Stop wasting energy that could be used for a productive thought process on an area where you can simply ask to confirm and affirm. If you don’t know, ask. You may realize that the issue is not in the direction of your assumptions at all. If it is, hallelujah. That leads me to my next point;

    2. Being right is not a trophy

    The reason why we may like assuming is that we find pleasure in being right. We have lots of theories and make baseless assumptions which could still come to pass due to the unpredictability of life. Okay, your assumptions were right. Now what? Should we carry you on our shoulders?

    3. Keep your assumptions to yourself

    Truth is, we can’t stop our brain from analyzing and coming up with possible explanations for issues we experience. We don’t even need to stop our brain. We need that drive, that curiosity. When there’s a problem, we need to come up with possible solutions. We need to make decisions based on predictions. So don’t stop assuming. It’s not something bad. Rather, keep most of your assumptions to yourself.

    This is a good read. I know you just read only the words in the pictures. Please go back to the top and read every word. You’ve probably heard this idea of cognitive biases before. I’ve articulated into words, so read and understand. This last paragraph is intentionally full of assumptions so you’d have a good laugh. Now where’s my “my assumptions were right” trophy? 😂

  • Don’t Give Up Now: If Only You Knew Your Future

    Don’t Give Up Now: If Only You Knew Your Future

    If only you knew how glorious your future is, you wouldn’t be perturbed by the prevalent winds of the present. If only you knew how glorious your future is, the past would remain what it really is; the past.

    One mistake we often do is pick our present static state and put it in a dynamic future context. Why wouldn’t we be so anxious?

    Hard times make us appreciate the good times. Sad times gives us the experience of learning to do things at the right times. It’s not that we only tend to appreciate things when we lose it, but that we can only understand fully in retrospect.

    It may be hard but don't give up now

    That is why it is necessary to have a testimony. Testimonies are prophecies of possibilities. Have you been through a difficult time where you thought you had hit rock bottom but somehow you came through?

    If only you knew how painful giving up is, you wouldn’t have made it an option. It’s better to do your best and fail than to have never tried. There are some things that a person must learn on his own. A person grows up when he is forced to overcome hardships. The best in us will never be revealed until we have come between a rock and a hard place.

    Things change; hold on and don't give up

    Some things don’t change while others always do. Some things will change no matter what you do. Others will never change unless you do something. That is why you must never see “giving up” as an option when it gets so hard. Don’t allow your mind to tell your heart what to do. The mind gives up easily. The mind resorts to our instinctive most immature self when we are hard-pressed.

    Let the convictions of your heart be the decisions of your mind. One reason people resist change is that they focus on what they have to give up, rather than what they have to gain. The minute you think you wanna give up, think of the reason why you held on so long.

    At the end of the day, it’s not only going to get better; you’re going to get better. If only! If only you knew that one day you’re going to look back and be grateful that you didn’t give up, you’d work so hard to bring out the best in you.

    I love you ❤️

  • Why Do We Argue A Lot? Understanding Arguments In a Relationship

    Why Do We Argue A Lot? Understanding Arguments In a Relationship

    Every relationship begins on a “honeymoon” phase. The feelings are so heightened and the love for each other is so heartfelt that we tend to overlook our partner’s flaws. Every shortcoming is taken lightly. Any misunderstanding that shoots up is swiftly swept under the carpet by reminding ourselves of how madly in love we are with each other. Yet as time goes by, friction starts to come into play. We all are never perfect so our flaws, mishaps and insecurities are soon exposed in our relationships. That’s because now there are two of us sharing our lives together. Surely that doesn’t justify why we should argue all the time. That should rather justify why we should deal with our personal problems together as a couple. So then, why are we still arguing?

    We argue;

    1. ’cause we wanna be right

    It’s such a bad feeling to feel wrong. So whenever an issue comes up, we wanna justify our actions. We are so busy trying to make a point that we forget that our significant other is coming from a place of love. What makes the argument difficult the more is when we’re trying to convince ourselves that we indeed did the right thing. Because indeed we are not convincing our partner; we are trying to convince ourselves by justifying the right in our wrong. We don’t want to look like the one in the relationship always making the silly mistakes. This leads us to the second point which is closely tied;

    2. ’cause we wanna prove that the other is wrong

    If there’s something more difficult than trying to convince someone that we’re right, it’s trying to convince them that they’re wrong. In doing this, we are projecting something wrong on them. Since no one is perfect, we’re definitely going to find something to point out. If nothing really comes to mind at the time, we’d make something up. That’s why we as couples should never store any dislike for our partner in our minds. If there are any dislikes that we happen to come across, we should immediately point it out. Nothing hurts more than your lover pointing out all their dislikes about you that you initially didn’t know they disliked in one argument.

    3. ’cause we feel attacked so we get defensive

    All living things have adaptive features that protect them against harm in the environment. As humans that are evolving, we still have that defensive mechanism. Thus, we’d defend ourselves against what is trying to degrade our mental state of being in any way. The argument is a mental fight. Winning it boosts our ego. Losing it is mentally disturbing. What do we do when we realise we’re losing? We get defensive. We talk about how good and supportive we’ve been to our partner in the past. We remind them of our sacrifices. As a way of working on their soft spot, we try to convince them that we’re not that bad. Though it sounds like a good thing, it is actually unnecessary to do so when all the other partner needs is a sincere apology.

    4. ’cause we attack as a means of being defensive

    The best way to defend is to attack. When one is attacking, the other has to defend. Sometimes, that’s not really the case. We rather counter-attack. As our partner is listing our flaws and how we need to put our shit together, we decide not to go down so easily. We dirty ourselves in the mud. We also list all their flaws and shortcomings and exaggerate on how bad it is. Counter-attacking means my voice should be louder than yours. The emotional trauma alone of being shouted upon is disheartening. It never stops ringing in your ears. When the same point is repeated over and over, that adds insult to injury. This is because it really gets into our minds at the end of the day.

    We should always remember that there’s a difference between having a misunderstanding and arguing. Misunderstandings will always arise because we are not all the same. We must make sure that we don’t argue when there’s a misunderstanding. Arguing is basically stress. No one should sincerely have the energy to argue all the time. After all, what do you want at the end of the day; to win the argument or to enjoy your relationship?

    I love you ❤

  • Choosing to Stay Pure in a Sexually Immoral World

    “If God didn’t want us to have sex before marriage, He would have given us our sexual organs on our wedding days”, says the fool who refuses to think deep. No boss will pay you a salary on the first day of employment. No tree will bear fruit on the first day of planting. Besides, people in ancient times used to be given in marriage soon after their puberty was discovered. The point is, no one is stopping you from enjoying sexual pleasure. God is rather preventing you from tremendous destruction.

    With great freedom comes less safety. Thus, the need to keep sexual pleasure within the safety of a commitment. If you’ve been involved in sexual immorality of any form before, you’d realize it has a really high addictive power. You can get addicted to porn for the majority of your life, fornicate every weekend, masturbate when the opportunity presents itself and lust continuously after someone almost every day. In fact, it is the highest sin one can commit (because it is a sin against your own body: 1 Cor 6:18) and the one that can permanently destroy your life the most.

    Yet, let’s not give it all the credit. It is not the most powerful force in the world. It is not the strongest drive. It’s not even the most addictive. Evil always looks like the winner when compared to good. That’s why I like what 1 Peter 1:14 says. Some versions use the word “ignorant”. We were ignorant. That’s why we kept going back. We thought the edge is too strong. That’s why we give in to it all the time. We didn’t know any better.

    So how do we live above that? It’s simple, not easy. We need to live as God’s obedient children. God will never lead us into temptation. If we find ourselves in one, His Voice will be loud and clear on what we must do. See it this way; it is more difficult to hear God’s Voice and still disobey. For His Voice will keep ringing in our minds and hearts to flee, to stop, to not venture, to expose the darkness, to unhide the secret sinful life. For no sexual sin can exist in Light.

    If you have never indulged in one form of sexual immorality like say, fornication, don’t fancy those who do. Don’t judge them either. In a few years to come, you can find yourself in a similar situation as theirs, if not even worse. If you have made up your mind to keep yourself until marriage, keep that mindset intact. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. Don’t let anyone belittle your virginity to you. Even rags have value, how much more wedding dresses.

    If you have dirtied yourself before and you feel devalued, get up from the mud and keep going. It’s not the end of the journey. This may not sound encouraging but there are far worse temptations awaiting you. There are bigger mountains to climb. Don’t let this hill look like it’s the end of the road. If you don’t even care anymore because you’ve gone too far and you’ve been in too deep, I’m here to tell you that it’s not too late. The prodigal son was competing with pigs to eat but the day He returned, His Father gave him the best robe, put a ring on his finger and got sandals on his feet. These three things represent his royalty, authority and dignity. In just one day, he was completely restored and he never went back.

    This post is for you. It is exactly what you need to hear right now. There is still hope. Grace is still available. There is still enough power, to stay pure in a sexually immoral world. I love you ❤️