Stop Merely Wishing, Just Do It

"Stop wishing, and Start doing! Stop wishing for things to get better in your life without taking the necessary steps. Turn your CAN’Ts into CANs and your DREAMs into PLANs.

This is a wake-up call for you to be the change you wish to see in the world.The best way to get something done is to begin. Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. Take the risks; and if you win, you will be happy; if you lose, you will be wise.

There are 3 simple rules in life. If you do not go after what you want, you will never have it. If you do not ask, the answer will always be NO. If you do not step forward, you will always be in the same place."
- N. Adesanya

Dear Winner,
You see, it's very easy to wish and imagine yourself in beautiful situations or positions. It's easy to say "I'll buy that car," "I'll make a million dollars," "I'll be the best and most successful doctor or actor," "I'll become a big business owner," or even "I'll completely change the world."

It's very easy to imagine them and wish we already had all those things or that we will soon be in those situations. After all, the saying goes, "If wishes were horses, beggars will ride." :) However, you must keep it at the back of your mind that wishes are not enough. For your wishes to come true, you must take very conscious steps towards their achievements.

You can't wish to have a million dollars and expect it suddenly appear in your room by chance. If you're really serious about it, you need to start already working towards by figuring out the steps you need to take and what you need to start doing already to make a million dollars.

Many people are living average lives and stuck in same positions yearly, simply because they only wish for things want, but don't have any concrete plans or commenced any action steps to bring their wishes to reality. Having a wish is not enough. Having a plan is not enough as well. Get out of the wishing and planning stages and enter the "Doing" phase.

The Doing phase is the phase that brings your wishes to you faster than you may have imagined. The doing phase equips you with experience which makes it easier to reach more of your goals. Begin something, start something, do something and keep doing.

No matter how long you sit on the same spot and imagine yourself driving a car, drinking a cup of tea or even buying a house, it will never make these things come true until you go out and get the car, stand up and fetch the cup of water or make payment for the dream house.

We only achieve by doing. This is not to say that wishing is useless or futile. Wishes are like desires, they point us towards a direction. Without wishing for something, it makes no sense doing anything for it. But the key is not to get trapped in just wishing.

The distance between our wish and actually getting that wish fulfilled is our ACTIVITY or ACTIONS. There are no shortcuts.

Make attempts to DO. Never be afraid of DOING whether you MAY get it wrong or right doesn't really matter as long as you're putting in your BEST. As long as you're already doing something to get those things you wish for, you're already on track, it will soon be yours.

Even when you make mistakes in doing, just get up, dust yourself and continue doing applying your new experience to it! You will be far better than those stuck in the wishing zone who are afraid to even attempt.

Life has been designed to favor bold winners who are always doing something to get what they want. If there's one thing you will take away from this article let it be "DO, DO, KEEP DOING, DO, DO, DO AND DO SOMETHING AGAIN.. OVER AND OVER." I love the brand Nike because of the logo "JUST DO IT."

It's not even enough to just do it. Keep on doing. Do more and more. Life is all about your DOING. Your doing changes your life! Your doing is the magic stick that makes your dreams come true. Stay bold and keep winning!

Your friend,
Nigel.

You Are Responsible And You Have Choices

"Today, I want you to understand that you and you alone can make your life better; no one else can. You have total responsibility for what you do. Not only do you have the responsibility to make it better, you have the ability and the power to make it better.

No matter what your current situation is, you have a choice. No matter how bad things are, you have a choice. No matter what you think you can or cannot do, you have a choice.

Once you become open to the idea that you are responsible for your life and that you have choices, you will find that you are no longer stuck just because life is hard. You will be motivated to move on and make things work."
- N.Adesanya

Bold winners understand the power of choice and the place of responsibility in their peculiar situations. The first step is to stop blaming other people or situations for the things you are facing in your life, but instead accept the indispensable responsibility of steering your life to the direction you want.

You must understand that at every point in your life, you have a choice to continue experiencing what you're experiencing or change that reality through action, no matter how impossible it may look to you.

If you've not acknowledged your power of choice, your life will still be swayed by various external factors and you won't feel responsible over what's happening in your life. It will be easy to blame God, your government, your country, your community, your family, your parents, your lover and etcetera. You will shift the responsibility to anything else but yourself.

This is a loser's mentality. You've lost already when you think that you have no choices and you're not responsible to make your life better. Indeed, you're not responsible for where you were born, the family you know or even your gender. But you are very responsible for what you make out of your life despite these things you didn't choose.

If you only take care to look at the world around you, you will see that living a happy and very successful is not even determined by those factors we are not responsible for. People from troubled or poor homes have ended up becoming great. People that were abused as children and faced untold hardship are still making it in life just as some people who were born in seemingly better situations are making it.

Failure as well isn't determined by background, upbringing, race or gender. People born in very nice settings have experienced failure as well as those born in seemingly less better ones. Therefore, success and failure are not dependent on those things beyond our control rather they are dependent on the choices we make and how responsible we are.

If you take a look at the lives of great men and women, you will notice that they all understand the power of their choices and they do not run away from responsibility, not just over their personal lives, but in other spheres of life.

Stop throwing blames on things outside you to justify your current position and experiences in life. As a bold winner, you should throw all blames about your life to yourself. You always have a choice. Make your choices without fear. Be the captain of your ship and steer it into the right course by making the right choices and accepting your responsibility.

Know your choices, accept responsibility over your life and keep winning.

18 Days Of Inspiration

"A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning."
 - Brad Henry

“ The unexamined life is not worth living."
 - Socrates

"A word of encouragement from a teacher to a child can change a life. A word of encouragement from a spouse can save a marriage. A word of encouragement from a leader can inspire a person to reach her potential."
-John C. Maxwell

"To succeed, you need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you."
- Tony Dorsett

"The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do."
- Kobe Bryant

"Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs."
- Stephen Covey.

"My whole thing is to inspire, to better people, to better myself forever in this thing that we call rap, this thing that we call hip hop."
- Kendrick Lamar

"Well-structured messages that use strong imagery and appeal to our aspirational nature can be meaningful and powerful in changing our thinking and helping us see something in ourselves that we want to change or overcome, Fader says. That’s one of the main reasons they’re passed on for generations."
- Gwen Moren



All these quotes above cannot all be wrong. Inspiration is an indispensable part of our lives. For us to become successful, we must be inspired and motivated individuals. We must understand that great words possess tremendous power which enables us examine our personal lives, be decisive in our action and make corrective changes.

That's why The Bold Winner's Blog is bringing you 18 Days of inspiration from tomorrow 29th September. We will be expanding on the words of Mr. Niyi Adesina a renown public speaker, author, entrepreneur, strategist and founder of Fifthgearplus, a recruiting and consulting firm.

It promises to be a wonderful and very inspiring article series on this blog. Stay tuned, stay inspired to win.

Opportunities Are Everywhere

Early one morning, I left for a program in town because I wanted to beat time and traffic. I never knew that the clear blue sky was a disguise.
Enroute my destination, the sky started growing dark. When I first noticed it, I thought to myself "Damn, I'm in for this".. because I didn't come out with my umbrella or even a rain coat.

Few minutes later the rain poured down.. I was inside the bus thinking of how to alight when we get there before my thoughts were interrupted by the driver "Oya come down everybody.. Come down" he yelled.

We were already at the bus stop and unluckily for me, I was the last person to come down. That meant that the few nice spaces left under the shades where others were already standing were quickly filled up.

As I stepped down, the rain baptized me momentarily and I moved helter skelter looking for a shade. Some people were kind enough to make some room for me in front but the rain was still touching me although it was better than directly staying under it.

As I stood there wondering, I saw this young enterprising lady from nowhere. She came to the bus stop where passengers had filled up and started selling nylon raincoats!

Wow.. what an idea and what a perfect time to make sales! People were rushing to buy it. Some wore it immediately and jumped into the heavy rain like that. The girl was really a smart salesperson to spot that need.. she was quick to identify it and sold almost everything.

It's important to note that while others may be seeing the rain as an adversity or disturbance, she saw a vital business opportunity there and capitalised on it.

That same day as I finally got closer to my destination, I headed into a small shade close by to do just that when I met a young man. I said "Hi, what's up?" He also responded with a friendly greeting and we started talking about the rain in English (I speak English or pidgin to strangers). I learnt he came into the state in January without knowing anybody and was hustling by shuffling between jobs. He was currently working as a security agent in the area.

I was impressed and spoke about myself too. As we talked, I discovered he was closer to me than a stranger. We hail the same state and part of the country and we shared the same native language.

Meeting this guy offered an opportunity to get to know him. If I didn't speak at all to him or if I ignored him, I wouldn't really have gotten to know that we were even connected closely.

Opportunities are everywhere. Train your mind to find them and use them.

Keep Winning! 

Why You Shouldn't Take Mockery Seriously

I have an awesome friend called Dave.  Dave is smart, intelligent and very funny. He is full of life, energy and fun. Whenever I'm around him,  I laugh a lot alongside some of his other friends. When Dave talks and you're looking at him, you'd  rarely notice his dentition isn't pretty nice because you'll be lost in his words.

Despite the way his set of teeth looked, Dave was never shy to speak, to crack his humorous jokes and just be a happy guy to be around with. He wasn't limited by it. He only smiled and cracked a joke about anyone who makes a comment about his teeth. He wasn't hiding it. He didn't let it make him stop being himself.

In contrast, I learnt about another guy who also had bad dentition. As expected, he was constantly jeered at by his peers because of that. This guy took it to heart, and rarely spoke in public. In his photos, he rarely smiled because he didn't want anyone to notice the way his teeth looked.

He became restrained and unhappy because he was limiting himself as a result of letting that bother him. He was someone you would rarely be around with because he hardly laughs. He was too conscious of his teeth. It wasn't good for him.

Assuming you had bad dentition, which of those guys would you rather be? Dave or the other guy? Your guess is as good as mine. It's Dave of course, the young chap who kept on being happy, having fun and making lots of friends by being himself and not letting that little predicament limit him.

This is just an example. There are many things about you that other people can make mockery of. They may say you're too tall, too short, too fair, too dark, too slow, too fast, stammering, ugly, and lots of all other words that could be used to make humor or just ridicule you. You don't have to take it seriously. You don't have to let it get to you or make you stop being who you are, free and happy.

If you have not known, accepted or understood the way you are and who you really are, you will be affected by those common talks from other people. Know, accept and understand yourself, the way you are, and who you are. For example, if you're short, It's obvious that you're short, you must love and accept yourself that way. If you love and accept that you're short, it will be hard to get angry at anyone who makes a comment about it.

Being short doesn't limit what you can achieve. Kevin Hart is short. He's a well known celebrity, he's celebrated and very successful in his career, despite being short. If he had allowed comments about his shortness to bother him, you think anyone will know about him today?

People go on feeling bad about what other people said about the way the look which is so unnecessary if only they loved and accepted themselves. It's not the mockery that makes people believe negative things about themselves. It's their latent low self esteem. So they tend see such words as an attack on themselves. If only they knew themselves, they won't be bothered at all.

There's no point trying to hide yourself or your looks because people are commenting negatively about it. When they comment, keep on being yourself and keep showing up. Keep showing yourself. Keep living. They will get used to your looks and get tired of making mockery of you.

If you let them make you crawl inside and hide yourself, then you've lost the game. Their comments should inspire you to keep showing up, contrary to what they expect. Keep showing up and being yourself. Ignore those negative comments aimed to bring you down. Surprise them by staying happy despite all they may say.

It's not what people say about you outside that should determine how you feel about yourself. You should determine how you feel about yourself by loving yourself and accepting yourself the way you are. Not them.

We can't totally stop people from mocking or making jest of us sometimes. That's the way life is. You can't stop people from talking about you. You'll have to stop them from talking altogether which is impossible. People are too occupied with their own personal lives and interests than to care about how you will feel when they mock you.

Some may mock you without any bad intentions. Just for laughter and fun. Being mocked by others doesn't make those who mock us bad people. We only need to know ourselves and see that these mockeries shouldn't be taken seriously at all.

Take your mind off mockeries and rude words. Love yourself first, love others and keep winning.

Don't Waste Your Time Arguing

One morning, I came across my neighbors seriously arguing about the existence of God. "Like seriously?" "This useful morning?" I asked myself. Does proving the existence or non existence of God successfully change anything in the lives of these people? The answer is a big no.

It's not the first time they argued. It's either they were arguing about politics, religion or something that's not really worth it. Arguments waste their time, but time seems not to matter to them.

It's not just them, many people around the world waste useful man hours arguing about things that cannot add value to their lives or those of other people. Some things cannot be known for sure and that shouldn't be too hard for certain people to accept.

I see no need arguing pointlessly. Anything that wastes your valuable time and doesn't take you closer to your mission is a waste of your time. The only argument permissible is an argument that takes you one step towards your goal.

Achieving dreams takes more of your own actions as an individual not arguments. When you look around you or even check out popular online forums, you see people wasting their time arguing on pointless things. There's no need to join them and do same.

When they are busy arguing, you're busy working on your goals. When they're busy complaining, keep calm and play your cards right. Save precious time by not engaging in mere banters.

Stay bold and win without arguments. 

When No One Sees You

Every great and successful person has at one point or the other been in that position when no one sees them or know that they exist. In this position, your opinions may not count and many may not take you serious.  But it is also your actions and activities this stage that will determine if people will ever see you or not.

Right now, you may be working so hard, doing what you can to save up money for an important venture which may change your life. People may be looking down on you, on what you've decided to do, they may even insult you, say negative things about you and belittle you.

You might be a really good and straight forward person whereas some people may think you're not smart because you've refused to be a cheat, an unfaithful or a fraudulent person. Your opinions might be frowned upon even though they're very good and correct.

Guess what? People's reactions to you at this level of your life don't matter. As long as deep down your heart, you've got a vision, a target and a plan, your business now is to focus on taking the steps you need. Right now it's safe to say you're still underground. No one will really give a damn about you or your life until at least you really prove that you're worth knowing.

This underground stage when nobody sees you is very important because it is the stage where we are refined and equipped with what we need to excel in life. But it takes an open mind to learn from this level and progress past it else one remains stuck.

What you do at this stage really counts. Your ability to recognize and seize opportunities, your ability to read and understand the emotions of other people, your ability to manage your time well and pay attention to details and your focus and determination; all these things count at this position.

When you're able to make tremendous progress in these things, you're certainly breaking out. But you have to pass through it first neglecting any distractions. It's pointless to get mad at people who may slight you, disregard you or ignore you right now. It's pointless because there's no point being bitter about it as you gain nothing.

So when you're underground, hustling and unseen, don't let your mind be bugged by all those trivial things. Your mind should be bugged by one thing and one thing only: your MISSION. Everything you're doing must be taking you one step closer to where you ideally want to be. You should dream and desire it, then eliminate distractions and do exact what you need to do.

When no one sees you, remain true to yourself.

When no one sees you, don't be a cheat, be a man or woman of integrity.

When no one sees you, don't lose your self esteem, know your worth.

When no one sees you, don't get envious or depressed, just stay focused and keep trying your best given any little opportunity.

Because in the end, you won't stay underground forever, your diligent efforts will be rewarded, your attitude will be rewarded. Life always rewards the deserving, no matter how twisted life may appear.

So when no one sees you, don't give up, one day you'll definitely be seen and heard.

Keep winning and stay bold.