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Some weeks back, a friend of mine said amidst our conversation: “You have tough skin. Nothing moves you. You’re always calm in the face of emergencies.”

I laughed and replied: “Ah my dear, mi o le pa ara mi o” (I can’t kill myself) and the conversation went on with her confessing that she’d been distraught about a program she’s about to launch.

After the conversation, I thought it over and over and admitted that truly, I can indeed be calm under pressure. In fact, I work most efficiently along deadlines.

Then I dug deep into myself to know how I have been able to manage this unruffled disposition despite my ‘electric’ nature. I mean one would think that being a dominant sanguine, I would be ordinarily scattered in the face of deadlines.

I dug deep and then I found it! It was the deep engineering my Literature teacher had done in me when I was in SS 1 when she made me to internalise a poem. As a matter of fact, till date, that is the only stanza of a poem I can read coherently and I don’t even remember that poet.

It says:
When remedies are past, the griefs are ended.
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone,
is another way to draw a new mischief on.

If you’re good literature student, the meaning between the above lines would have jumped out to you but if you’re not, let me try to explain it to you.

It is saying in other words: there is no point crying over spilled milk. When you do, it will give you a migraine that ordinary Panadol cannot cure. At the, your day will be ruined, thanks to the headache and guess what, your milk is still gone!
You see, knowing how irrational I can be sometimes, I make it a conscious effort never to allow my agitation get in the face of my common sense because it will only lead to one thing – more trouble!

This means, when people have paid for courses and they are hammering me for login details and I can’t reach my Assistant because her devices are dead, I calmly apologize and tell them to give me more time.

When courier service delays for three weeks in delivering products that people were supposed to have gotten within a week, I calmly send out another batch with another courier company if I can afford it or plead profusely with the customer to exercise more patience. In fact, I have refunded money paid for the delivery of my book (because I was giving the book for free) in one instance when I saw that she obviously values her money than the value she will get from my book.

This means, I still manage to eat and make love to my husband while having our baths in the morning even though I had missed the deadline to deliver on a course last night because of terrible network.

This means I decide to convert a training I was supposed to hold in my group into an online course all because my husband was in a foul mood the time I was supposed to go live. Rather than sulk, I looked for a better way.

This means when I lost N1.8 million naira on a business venture, I calmly told myself to be more careful next time and went ahead to put in double of that in a similar but more calculated investment.

This means I simply throw my head back and watch Jenifa when I feel the pressure of a lofty goal I had set for myself is beginning to make me lose the things I value most in my career – integrity.

Ah! The list is endless but I’m sure you get the picture now. 🙂

The point is: I have trained my mind a long time ago, that when my milk spills, rather than cry over it and get head and heart aches, I start looking for a way to get myself another milk as soon as possible. If possible, a richer and fuller milk plus cookies sef.

But one thing I NEVER ever allow myself do, one thing you will NEVER ever catch me do is wallow in self-pity. That is not a feeling you will catch on any winner or achiever. Ever.

So I don’t know what you may have been targeting and feeling anxious over. Trust me, worrying will do NOTHING to make things better or easier for you. It will only add more to the stress you are already in. Well, I’m sure you’ve heard this before but I’m not sure you know it because you don’t practice it.

You may have seen others do it, you may have read about it or even talk about it but until you practice it, you do not know it.

What you want to do right now is decide BEFORE any hypertensive situation even comes your way that you will always be calm and always focus on the possible solution.

This is what has helped me from high BP so far in life and business and sometimes I go a step further to drive it home by asking: What’s the worst that can happen abeg?

Then I allow peace to flood my heart.

In my years of working with women to start and grow their businesses online, one topic almost always rear its ugly head – My husband does not support what I do.

I hear things like, “my husband does not allow me to work”, “he does not allow me to make money”, “he’s the reason I’m broke”, “he’s responsible for my poverty” and all the other similar tales of woe.

As I dig deep to help these women tackle this problem, I come to a very informed conclusion: Marriage does not make anyone poor.

No matter what you think or believe, marriage didn’t collect your life from you and having children did not make you an invalid.

You did!

You allowed yourself to become complacent with marriage as your sorry excuse because you are not personally driven. Have you heard it said ‘where there is a will, there’s a way’? It is true.

If indeed you were living your life optimally before you got married, your husband cannot stop you from continuing living. After all, he met you living your life. Your life must have been appealing to him before he decided to become a part of it.

You must have seen the possibility of him aiding you become better before you said yes to him. You didn’t agree to marry him knowing he will subject you under his feet and absolutely forbid you from exploring your God-given potentials or did you?

Did you know he had the potentials to stump your growth and yet you went ahead hoping against hope that he will change after you get married?

I’m sure by now, you know that marriage doesn’t change people. If anything, it magnifies our flaws. And many times, we close our eyes to these little nasty behaviours under the guise and foolish hope that ‘he will change’.

Again, I daresay, only a woman that was not living can stop living after marriage.

Ibukun Awosika was living before she got married. Her company was worth millions before she became a Mrs.

Tara Durotoye was living before she got married.

I and many amazing women I know were living before we got married.

Heck, my husband’s contributions and support for my business and life made me decide to marry him. I had a list of ‘Must Haves’ and ‘Can’t Tolerates’ thanks to Pastor Bimbo Odukoya’s book, ‘165 Questions To Ask Before You Get Married’, so I went into that marriage with all my senses opened that I couldn’t even feel butterflies in my tummy.

If you have made the mistake of joining yourself with the wrong man for the wrong reasons, this is not a post to condemn you and if you agree that you weren’t living before you got married, I’m glad you’ve just crossed the first hurdle of admittance. The next hurdle to cross is to make demands.

Now, this is not the time to feel helpless or say ‘Temi you don’t understand’ because I absolutely do. No man will ordinarily permit you to go fly because the idea of ‘trophy wife’ appeals to most African men’s ego but you have to make those demands and damn the consequences because, this is your life!

God did not create you to be a second class citizen. He made them male and female and you’re to be a help meet for his needs. Not a slave or a foot mat.

You have tarried too long on this mountain sister, move! Stop making excuses or cowering at every ‘No’ he says. Ask ‘Why not?’ and if he doesn’t yield, let it lie for the moment but don’t stop demanding.

If he turns violent, talk to somebody immediately. Talk to an organization around you, involve those you know can help you and make some tough decisions before your life goes for it but by all means, make your demands!!!

Because guess what? When you make the demand consistently, resistance weakens and the music changes. And when you start coming back home with some bacon, he will start to dance to your rhythm.

I have worked with over 2000 women personally as a business coach in the past three years so I know. This works.

I have seen the transformation that happens when these women dare to face things squarely and speak for themselves.

I have seen the tears of joy that flows when these women finally get liberated from the hanging threat of ‘I’d divorce you’ from their husbands.

Before you discard the idea of living your life and rather remain complacent, ask yourself, this life you’re living right now, would you wish it for your daughter?

Yes, that daughter you love so dearly, if this is the sort of life she decides to live after all the training and investments you made on her, would you be happy if she ends up like you all because she’s married?

If you cannot say yes clearly or the thought of it even leaves you saying ‘God forbid’, sister you’re living below God’s expectations for your life as His beloved daughter.

The earlier you stop making marriage your reason for poverty and lack, the better.

Sorry, no puppy love today.

Go make some demands of yourself.

That deadly habit is none other than TAKING THINGS FOR GRANTED. There are three things I want to highlight here that you must not take for granted in 2018. They are

1. Do not take opportunities for granted: All those things that you have right now were once a prayer point for you and right now somebody else is praying for them. I mean all the opportunities you have right now, it could be your degree, Facebook, internet, business skills, whatever it is.  Make the best use of it and don’t take it for granted. 
2. Do not take your relationships for granted: Don’t take your friends, siblings, in-laws for granted. Sometimes I hear people say things like “I wish you were my sister, I will have drained your brain”, that person’s sister hasn’t drained her brain. Don’t take your mentors for granted, don’t call them indiscriminately, don’t ask those questions that google can answer. Don’t encroach into their time. 
3. Do not take yourself for granted:  Don’t take your skill, experience, talent and your time for granted. Don’t take your brand building for granted. A lot business owners wants to be build their brands but they don’t care about their graphics, their looks, their grammar, they don’t even care to reply those who engage their posts. They don’t take things deliberately, that is you taking yourself for granted. Don’t take your skills for granted i.e. you know something that somebody else don’t know even if it’s just 1% above the average crowd, don’t wash down your ability.
   

HOW CAN ONE TAKE SOME OF THESE THINGS FOR GRANTED?
1. You can take opportunities for granted when you don’t take advantage of such things. For example, you have a mobile phone with access to internet and you keep saying you don’t have things. Stop focusing on what you don’t have. Stop looking for more businesses when the ones you have in your hands are not being maximized. If you don’t take advantage of opportunities, that opportunity will not stay with you. Whatever you don’t respect will not stay with you.

2. How you take your relationships for granted is when you start feeling entitled to your friend’s time, your sister in laws’ time and their expertise saying after all, we grew up together. If that friend has moved far ahead of you, all you need to do is to be humble and learn from this friend no matter how young or inexperienced she is. So far she has moved ahead of you in a sphere of life in which you are just trying to attain, then you want to stay close and humble enough to learn from such friend. When you are feeling entitled to people’s time, you are taking them for granted. Stop calling them indiscriminately to pick their brains on what you do not deserve. Life gives you what you demand and not what you deserve. Some people will not offer a helping hand until they see that you deserve the help, until they see how much you have done for yourself. Nobody owes you anything!

3. You can take yourself for granted by comparing yourself with other people. That way you are not allowing yourself to shine your own light. You are sneaking on their timeline, people will always be themselves, every other person is taken, so you should always be yourself. The more of a photocopy you want to be, the less of yourself you will be and who wants a photocopy when they can see the original. Celebrate your strength. Stop focusing on your competition rather focus on your mentors, people that will help you grow and show you possibilities of what is available in the future.

WHAT CAN YOU DO DIFFERENTLY IF YOU ARE GUILTY OF THIS?
1. If you have been taking opportunities for granted, take it one step at a time doing the things that you have been procrastinating. The opportunities available for you – the friends you would have made, the calls you would have made. Start taking advantage of those things one by one.

2. If you have been taking advantage of those relationships, start adding value to those relationships. Give and it shall be given unto you. Do not ask to receive until you have given. Always out give the other person, that way people will keep owing you wherever you go, they always feel indebted to you.

3. If you have been taking advantage of yourself by comparing yourself to other people, what you want to do right now is to be yourself. If you are the gentle type who doesn’t like to talk too much, start doing your live streaming in that gentle way, you can even do a voice note. Be yourself, be original, every other person is taken, you are a miracle, stop looking down on yourself, stop saying you are not enough. Know that you are awesome all by yourself. Those who have had contact with me know that I love myself to pieces. That way I make others loving me more exciting, attracting. That way, I am also giving you the psychological permission to love yourself.

Be confident of yourself and your abilities!

Wealth is not something we see every day around us in Africa, even in Nigeria. So what model do we have for wealth creation? I mean how to recognize opportunities and then latch on to it. Many of us who are wealthy had to fight huge battles, swim seven seas and climb seven mountains, just to make it to that place of wealth.

It is heart aching when you are seeing the level of poverty around you, but can’t do anything about it. There is a saying that if you are among ten poor people, it means you are poor yourself. You wouldn’t keep complaining about the ways things are going, so you have to be the catalyst yourself.

Primarily, you have to know that for you to be rich physically, it has to happen in your mind first and foremost. Wealth begins within first, then manifests without.

I have compiled seven principles of wealth that I learned, have applied and I’m still applying. They have given me the results I have today and are guaranteed to give you the results that I seek.

These principles are as follows:

1.      Your Destiny To Creating Wealth Lies In Your Hands.

Life happens to every one of us. For someone like me, I lost my father at birth, I lost my mother at the age of 21. I could have chosen to go any other way but the wealthy way. Yes, I had a story but there are others who have more pathetic stories. If you think you have a genuine reason to be poor, there are others who have worse reasons and are rich today. Therefore your destiny of being wealthy lies in your hands, not in your background, parents, husbands, children,  but your own hands.

What you have to do is to stop playing victim. I have seen people who keep telling me everything that is wrong with their lives. They never tell me empowering things about their lives, they are mostly concerned about pity party. Stop playing the victim because you are not one. Stop blaming the Nigerian government, stop blaming your parent or wealthy uncle who has refused to lend a helping hand, your husband or whoever. Blame only yourself for the decisions you have made. It is your decisions that has determined your outcome. You are exactly where your decisions led you. If you think, your husband led you here; hello, you chose him. Even if he was forced on you, excuse me, you had the option of running away but you didn’t. Come to think of it, there are also women who have married poor men, but took their destiny in their hands and climbed up on the ladder of wealth. So your excuses are invalid!

If you think money is not that important, it is because you are broke and with that mentality, money will never come to you. Money comes to the hands of those who thinks it is very important to have it.  Remember that you can’t use any other thing to pay your rent, your children’s fees or hospital bills. Money is absolutely necessary in life. Never ever say money is not important in anything in life. Marriages break due to financial challenges, it is that serious!

Never complain and focus on what’s wrong, whatever you focus on magnifies. If you focus on being rich, you will be rich. If you focus on being poor, you will be poor, because you still have the poverty mentality. What you focus on is what you attract, if you focus on wealth, you attract wealth. Whatever you focus on will expand so create your success with your decisions.

2.      Wealthy People Play The Money Game To Win.

They don’t play it not to lose. Many people play too safe when playing the money game, by putting their money only where they are sure of getting money back. Don’t do that, the truly rich play the money game to win.

Your goal should be to have massive wealth and not only to pay your bills. If you are all about just being comfortable, that is all you will ever get. Go out there and set your goals to be stupendously rich, amazingly wealthy! A lot of people want to be sure about an opportunity before venturing into it. Hell no! You don’t have to. Let me remind you that successful people make their minds quickly but change it slowly. If you are always playing safe, you cannot be rich. Wealthy people are risk takers, they go all out of their comfort zone.

3.      Commit To Being Rich And You Will Be Rich.

There is a difference between saying I want to be rich and being rich. Wanting to be rich is never enough; it places you on probability, if it happens fine, if it doesn’t, life goes on. We don’t all get what we want, do we?  If wishes were horses.

Come on! There is a more powerful level of choosing to be rich. You have to choose and there is a more powerful level that commits to being rich. Devote yourself unreservedly. There should be no limit to what you are willing to do or the level of inconvenience you are willing to experience to be able to get rich. Wealthy people give up sleep, TV, Parties etc. So you must unreservedly go for wealth. Tell yourself, it is either I get wealthy or I die getting it. That’s the spirit!  It is not by illegitimate ways but by putting the work and the effort that it demands.

4.      Think big.

Many people think big and play small. Wealthy people are always thinking big while poor people play small.  You will be paid in direct proportion according to the value you deliver in the marketplace. Always bring value to the market place every single time. In terms of value, you must think about supply, demand, quantity and quality. You have to develop your capacity every single time.

I have shared my story of how I began to move into wealth. The problem I was solving initially was selling internet data which was a small problem at that. Then I began to train people on how to solve this data problem and thereby creating wealth. Beyond all of that, I increase my value in the market place, I began to solve bigger problems for bigger people by sharing my energy and strategy strictly with those who can do much with the little I share with them. I created my inner circle where I share my strategies on business growth because they are the ones who have stood up to take responsibilities of their future.  

A whole lot of people here just desire to get wealthy but they don’t want to go all out to get it. They are not ready to spend money to invest on themselves so I don’t share my precious time working with such kind. If you want quality mentoring, you have to exchange value for value. I can’t pour value into you when you are not reciprocating. The people I get value from, I invest in them, pay for their courses, pay for their time, recharge card and data. You must invest in me, that way it is symbiotic. Think bigger value. Play big and shine shamelessly. Entrepreneur solve problems for a profit. You are not giving because you are poor, you are poor because you are not giving value. Poor people keeps thinking the world owes them. Heeck! No one owes you.

List out your areas of strength and where you can serve. Never ever say you don’t have values you can give, you do. The wealthiest people in the world are the biggest givers. Check out Oprah, Mark Zuckerberg, Dangote etc. if you have not conditioned your mind to giving in whatever capacity you have, you will remain a non-giver. Remember that givers never lack. Give your time, energy in whatever capacity.

5.    Commit yourself to seeing opportunities

Rich people see opportunities, poor people see obstacles. In my inner circle, we have our anthem that says “The Virtuous Woman- I sense, I see and I seize every opportunity, I make the right choices always”. You have to sense, see and seize opportunities happening around you. Poor people only sense obstacles. Poor people see loss, rich people see potentials. Rich people see rewards, poor people see risks. Stop thinking what if it doesn’t work, rather think “what if it works”. If you keep thinking negativity, you attract negativity. The rich are always optimistic. The higher the risk, the higher the rewards. Successful people don’t always make the right decision but they always stand right by the decisions they make. It is extremely impossible to foresee every circumstance that may one day occur in a venture. Rather you want to jump in and learn. You can’t learn from the outside. Richard Braxton one of the richest man living says “when someone share an opportunity with you, say yes first and then get to work”.

6.      Admire wealth and the wealthy.

If you start thinking that wealth is disgusting and it is the root of all evil. Haaaaaaaah! The bible talked about the potency in money when you give it out.  It is when you love money to the level of making it your lord that it’s bad. Rather money is a defense. It is not money that is evil it is the love of money. When you see someone who is richly dressed and drives a beautiful car, what comes to your mind? Do you resent them and say “wicked people” “money ritualist”? When someone says they are earning seven figures, what comes to your mind? If you resent the rich, you can never ever be rich. If you don’t believe that someone can be honorable and rich, you cannot be rich. I see religious people giving the example of the rich man and Lazarus. Have you ever wondered what the name of the rich man was?  His name was not mentioned, he was only described as the rich man because that’s the only thing that defines him. Your money should not define you neither should poverty define you. Money magnifies whatever behavior you have in you so also does poverty. There is a popular saying that “a hungry man is an angry man”. People also say “the rich also cry”. Yes, I will rather be rich and cry because I have handkerchief to wipe my tear. The poor are not only crying but wailing yet they don’t have handkerchief to wipe their tears. We all have our problems but trust me, problems have categories. They kept saying the rich man went to hell. Has it ever occurred to you that father Abraham is a stupendously rich man and yet was called the friend of God? Has it ever occurred to you that David was amazingly rich and yet was a man after God’s own heart? Solomon was a rich man yet he was a beloved of God. You say it is difficult for a rich man to enter heaven and you think all poor people are going to heaven. It is only when you allow money define your life that you miss heaven.

7.      Invest in the rich minds and models.

Energy is contagious, if people around you are downer:

• Don’t try to change them rather inspire them. Stop telling people what they should do rather be the model, then maybe they will join you. Start living your own live deliberately. Start thinking and acting rich.
• Remain true to your own values and be strong in pursuing them. Don’t try convincing downers rather let your life show that it is possible. Refrain your mind from being like them. They are showing you what you don’t want to be like, then inspire them to become better person. There is no way you can fly like eagles if you keep moving with chickens. Disassociate yourself from anyone who is always pulling you down.  This might be a tough decision and it is better to do it early than you to live more years in sorrow and in tears.