We started this series yesterday with the Average Mentality, and concluded that it is the worst mentality anyone can have. Nobody who operates with such mentality achieves anything remarkable. 
Today we are looking at the Defeatist Mentality. It is a mental block that allows one to expect and accept defeat without putting up a fight. It is borne out of a negative mindset, which could be experiential, circumstantial or psychological. 
To avoid being a victim of Defeatist Mentality, you must do the following :

Separate events from personalities: The fact that you  fail in a task doesn’t make you a failure. Anything could have led to the failure. 

Always believe nothing is impossible: Even if you have not succeeded in achieving that goal, it does not mean it is impossible, it only means you have not found the possible way. 

Believe in yourself: The main problem behind the Defeatist Mentality is lack of self confidence or low self esteem. You must stop belittling yourself and start visualise yourself achieving great things. Stop expecting failure and start expecting success. 

Start with small tasks: As you achieve those small tasks and have a record of successes, you will begin to silence the defeatist inner voice, and your confidence level will grow. 
Don’t allow defeatist mentality anymore. Get into the winning mode. You can make it. Yes, you can. 
God bless us all. 
Good morning! 

Have you wondered why people you spent your childhood with end up either very successful or pitiably unsuccessful? Or why you seem to be either lagging behind or miles ahead of your schoolmates, classmates or age mates? I am sure we have all asked ourselves these questions. 
In this series, we will discuss some of the reasons, which are actually called ‘mental blocks’  or ‘mentalities’, responsible for where you  are today. These mental blocks reduce the chances of reaching full potential or even stop potentials. My hope is that, at the end of the series, you would have identified your own mental block(s). Or if you don’t have any, you would have learnt how to avoid these mentalities. 
The first mentality is the Average Mentality. Average is perhaps the worst word ever invented. It depicts a ‘slightly  better than poor’ position. Portia de Rossi puts it succinctly, “Average. It was the worst, most disgusting word in the English language. Nothing meaningful or worthwhile ever came from that word.” 

An average mentality makes one to accept to just be slightly better than the worst. It is a mentality that never strives for the best. Such a person always put in minimal effort to escape being the worst or least person. You cannot amount to anything worthwhile with the average mentality. 

It is average mentality that makes students to read to pass, rather than to understand and excel. It is this same mentality that makes an employee aims only to finish his task while being less concerned about time spent and quality of work. Same mentality is responsible for people settling for less than the best in life. It is a destroyer of destiny. 

You must hate this mentality, fight it off and replace it with the Winning Mentality, if you are to make any mark in life. You always have a choice to either settle for average or aim for the best. 

God bless us all. 

Good morning! 

There is a story on social media about a woman who  betrayed her friend by spilling the beans that the child of the friend belongs to another man. There have been all kinds of reactions against both friends, but that is for another day. 
The focus here is that there is nothing you do in secret that will not be revealed sooner or later. No matter how well you try to hide a lie, truth will always catch up with it. A Yoruba adage says ‘If a lie has travelled for twenty years, the truth will catch up with it one day.’ 
Don’t build your life on lies. Don’t lie to win a contract. Don’t lie to win a office.  Don’t lie about your age to get a job. Leave the job if you are overaged. Don’t bring another man’s child home to your husband as his. Sooner or later, it will be revealed and you will be put to shame. Not only will you be put to shame, others may partake in your shame. The story of the two friends would have come to light one way or the other, so it is not about the friend betraying, it is about lies.
Let us be truthful in all we do. Many of our woes as a nation today are the consequences of lies of our past leaders. Together we can rebuild this nation if we start acting and speaking the truth. 
God bless us all.  

Good morning! 

In a bid to stay ahead in today’s world, many of us have lost the virtue of patience. We do everything in a hurry and we rush for almost everything and expect instant results for all our efforts. Instant coffee, instant photo, instant messaging, etc are all on the good sides of staying ahead. 
But we have a lot on the bad side, jumping queues for bus or in the banking hall or anywhere, overspeeding on the road, breaking traffic light, and a whole lot of habits that have contributed to the moral decadence in our world. 
Can we just relearn patience again? Be patient when you are on that queue. Be patient when you see elderly people on the queue, give them room first. Be patient when there is traffic, don’t take one way and further lock the traffic jam. Be patient when explaining things to your kids and watch what you do in their presence. 
Be patient when you have done your best and still no result. You will not missed what belongs to you if you are patient. Preach Patience. It is a Virtue. 
God bless us all. 
Good morning! 

Most of the ills in our society today are symptomatic of sick homes. In every sense of it, many homes require emergency attention and until we start fixing homes, our attempts to restore values and decency in our world would continue to yield fruitless results. 
Your home is your first and main garden. Every other preoccupation is secondary,  whether secular or spiritual. Just as Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden to tend, cultivate and maintain the garden, your home is to be tended, cultivated and maintained for God. 
No matter how responsible you are in your profession or vocation, to the extent that you are irresponsible at home, you are a failure. Many people will be shocked to read this. A man who fails to provide for his household is worse than an infidel. The man here represents both genders. 
Pay attention to your children and ward. Train them to be hardworking and instil the fear of God in their heart. Let them join you in carrying out house chores as soon as they are of age. Don’t indulge them. We have too many microwave young men and women out there today. Beautiful outside but lacking manners and with zero culinary skills. Be their mentor and provide emotional, spiritual, financial and material guidance for them. If you are not your children’s first mentor, then you don’t qualify to be a mentor to others. 
Also, maintain your home. Keep it clean. Houses don’t collapse overnight, they cave in gradually. Have a maintenance habit. Check your electrical fittings, plumbing system, mechanical system and civil structure from time to time. Weed and trim your grass and flowers. Sometimes we blame witches and wizards for the cats, snakes and scorpions we see in our homes, when we are the real culprits after failing to keep our homes clean. No matter how beautiful and handsome you are, if your home is dirty, it shows that you are just a pretender. 
Start paying attention to your home today. Together, if we raise healthy homes our world will become safer and better. 
God bless us all. 
Good morning!  

We often view life through eyes distorted by the pains, losses, failures, and misfortunes we have experienced, making us to come up with wrong conclusions about people, life and God. We become negative, moody, suspicious of people’s motives and intentions, often ending up missing out of great opportunities to recover what we have lost. 
Though it is important to learn from our experiences, we should not allow them to shade life wrongly such that we become the exact opposite of what God intends for us to be. Every wrong or negative experience we go through can be used to make us better persons and to comfort, counsel or comfort others. 
You may have been jilted in a relationship or several relationships, it doesn’t make all men or women bad. You just haven’t come across the one who deserves you. Your spouse may have cheated on you, it doesn’t mean you should throw your marriage away, you may be in the school of forgiveness and unconditional love. Or you have suffered huge loss in business because you trusted the wrong people, it could be that you are meant to do it alone or you are to sharpen your spirit of discernment. 
Whatever experience life and destiny allow you to go through is meant to make you a better person not a bad person. Don’t start stealing because you have been wrongly sacked. Don’t start sleeping around because you have been defiled. Take the experience, learn from it and use it positively. 
God bless us all. 
Good morning! 

Finally, in this series, one more debt you owe both God and humanity is the debt of gratitude. We are fast turning out to become ungrateful people. We complain just about everything, the rain, the sun, the air, nature and so on. 
We also find it difficult to appreciate the little things, help, support and encouragement from others. Gratitude brings forth positivity in both the doer and the receiver, and provides the climate for more acts of goodness. Ingratitude does the exact opposite, killing more opportunities and sowing seed of negativities. 
Begin to show gratitude for everything and you will begin to see life and people in a new way. Your love for life and humanity will take a new dimension and you will begin to see what others can’t see, enjoy what others can’t enjoy and  do what others can’t do. 
Appreciate your spouse, your friends, your colleagues, your business associates, your pets, nature and the Creator of all things. In everything give thanks. 
God bless us all. 
Good morning! 

There are certain debts we all owe, apart from money or materials borrowed from others or financial institutions. If you strive to pay these particular debts, you will live and end well. 
We will examine these debts in this series and the first one is:
Debt of being true to yourself

There are times people tell us what they want us to hear. Especially for leaders in political offices who are surrounded with praise singers, bootleggers, yes-men and sycophants, you owe yourself the debt of telling yourself the truth when you are not doing well. Examine yourself daily. Don’t judge yourself by the accolades of the people, they may be playing you music of death. 
Sometimes you even win a race or contest, but you know you didn’t put in your best, rather than just celebrating that success, push yourself harder to surpass your previous feat. 
If you are always looking for the approval of men, you will continuously lie to yourself, your conscience and God. Seek the approval of your conscience and you will get God’s approval. 
Finally, as a debt of being true to yourself, don’t copy or try to be like others. You are uniquely made and you have your own place and space. Stay in your space. Maintain your Lane. Be yourself.  
God bless us all. 
Good morning!