Focus and Achieve More

There are so many voices around – voices of trust and distrust, love and hatred, hope and despair, peace and confusion. Climbing the ladder of destiny, you need to ward off distractions coming from below. It’s stuffy and overcrowded below. There’s too much heat below. So MOVE UP and face your destiny! Climb up for fresh air. Muster your inner strength, move up higher and higher until you achieve! Overcome obstacles. Keep your eyes on the goal!

Focus creates blindness.

says Fela Durotoye. It concentrates one’s mental faculties on one’s goal and dims the light on distractions. Focus reduces stress and gets the job done quicker. Stop going off tangent, work with your goals. Walk with the people who give you the kick to stay focused on your goals. Check your map, assess your compass. Stay on course in your journey northward. Discipline is the key. Sail on.

Let it go

For you to move northward, your body, soul and spirit must not only work in harmony, but they must be healthy. A heart condition like hurt can render you 'impotent', keeping you from achieving maximally. Hurt is a fruit of unforgiveness. This evil can clog your wheel of progress in a rather subtle way. It's a toxin that gradually weakens the heart's ability to maintain a positive, forward thinking. The destructive potency of unforgiveness is highest when you see the person who has hurt you & you become resentful towards him/her. Why allow someone who is already going on with his/her life to weigh you down? Richard Branson says,

It makes sense in life to mend bridges with everyone you fall out with, even your worst enemies, to try and befriend them.

Forgive.

Sound of silence

Ideas come to men during moments of silence. Test this yourself. You might not be achieving so much being 'busy'. Sometimes, to become more effective at whatever you are doing, it helps to come to a full halt & have some cooling-off time. Lock yourself away in a private place, far from friends & your normal routines. Think & pray. Immense power & ideas often reside within the sound of silence. Listen to yourself. Daily, we receive answers from above to the nagging questions on our minds but we're too busy & too 'intelligent' to respond to the sound of silence! Look ahead, contemplate what the future holds & chart a course northward. Steer clear of icebergs. The sound of silence- so deafening but powerful.

Recognize Opportunities

Opportunities come and go but only the man whose mind is trained to recognize them benefits from them. There is a difference between a man who just looks and the one that sees. People can become so short-sighted - focusing on immediate problems and overlooking possibilities all around. On the other hand, people can become long-sighted - not making plans for tomorrow.

Of what value is a dollar note to a rat beyond just a piece of paper? Same goes for any enviable opportunity you allow pass you by. Napoleon Hill says nine-tenth of seeing is in the brain. This seems to suggest that seeing opportunities is as much a mental habit as it is an atitude to life. Choose to see!

Get a flight plan

A pilot never flies an aircraft without a flight plan. Unfortunately, many people go through life without clearly thought-through, written plan. They merely meander through life's mazes. Beyond having a clear, specific plan, it is important that you don't just think it; you must 'ink' it.

Your memory may fail you but a sage says that 'the shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory.' Keep a journal where you document your life goals. Peruse constantly and work on achieving them. This will help you to keep focused in the direction of achieving the goals. Get a flight plan.

Walk on water

To step into higher grounds, you need to confront a height you’ve never confronted. Attainment of new levels requires a newer level of effort, input, determination, courage, strength and knowledge. You cannot assume to be moving forward when your gaze is fixed on your rear mirror. Align your actions with your thoughts, make achievable plans and follow through.

When life confronts you with threatening realities and you are boxed between the devil and the deep blue sea, you may have no other choice but to walk on water; doing the seemingly impossible. Life usually stretches people beyond their limits and they soon realise that they are experiencing a circumstance that demands an extraordinary and an out-of-the-box decision.

For instance, a friend recently quit paid employment to start a small business of his dreams. I praised his courage and he stated that the urge had been beating him for a year but that the struggles over the perks of paid employment and how to sustain his family thereafter pulled him back. “Why should I continue to postpone the ‘evil day’ ”, he concluded. The founder of Ford Motors, Henry Ford says: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” You hold both the yam and the knife.

How to do the unimaginable

1.       Consider your options- What is the price of your inaction? What is the prize of your action? Which of the two do you prefer? Don’t run with your eyes shut, think through the pros and the cons of either of your decision and follow a sustainable action whose result would transcend time.

                               Think before you leap.

2.       Stand to fight- Face your battle and resist the pressure to despair. Don’t procrastinate the evil day, run to the battle and fight. Gather sufficient inner strength for the battle.

                          Don’t flee the battle you must face.

3.       Do it- “Success has only 1 calculation formula: stop thinking in terms of limitations and start thinking in terms of possibilities.” (Anonymous). Go against the grain, just do the impossible! Distraction is inimical to distinction and excellence. Persistence is enough proof of desire; act till you get the desired results. Act with the available resources at your disposal. Waiting for utopia may just be another attempt in futility. Waiting for an external push may be a pipe-dream as your inner belief may just be all you need to push out the brain child the world awaits.

   Just do it, one step at a time. Afterall, great people don’t have 2 heads!

4.       Seek Support- Since no man is an island to himself, everyone needs help through relationships –vertical and horizontal- the supernatural and the natural. You need God, family, mentors, contemporaries, competitors, friends, staff, neighbours and adversaries. You’ll miss your life’s purpose if you decide to live independent of God and you’ll equally frustrate it if you live independent of people. You need sound counsel, a helping hand, a rod of correction and shoulders to cry on. Find people who make you tick.

   What a child does not see standing up, an adult sees sitting down.

               There’s a friend that sticks closer than a brother.

Photography: Tunde Alabi-Hundeyin II

Turn the tables

Clutched in one hand, each parent hands over his boy to an Almajiri malami at a tender age of 4 or 5 for tutoring in Islamic education. This practice, which has existed for decades in northern Nigeria, has bred more destitutes than scholars. The hungry, helpless and hopeless boys comb the streets in groups, scouting for a meal; however indecent, even in garbage- as you see in the picture below, which I shot on the streets of Kano.

    Kano Almajiris scouting for a meal inside street garbage.

During the day, the Almajiri boys dot the landscape, roaming for just one reason: survival. They clutch their only item of trade- a bowl; walk up to you by the street corner, beg alms, food or whatever you can offer. They taste a daily dose of hunger, abuse and deprivation. At night, while we snore in the comfort of our homes, many sleep in the cold or heat of the open, which they share with ubiquitous flies and stray animals! They are not deviant as their parents would have made the Almajiri malami tutor to believe. These masters even sometimes share in their daily booty- as I was informed by Sadiq, my tour guide.

Almajiri boys combing the streets for survival.

"Can I get your help?"

"Which way to go?"

He noted quite frankly that some of them however, strive through thick and thin to start some petty business in their teens and by dint of hardwork, discipline and commitment, become wealthy businessmen trading in FMCG, Fast Moving Consumer Goods.

Life lesson: never end your life where it started. You may start by being a security man, a cleaner or a jobless/under-employed graduate but ensure that you add a new skill or knowledge to re-invent your destiny. Pay the price to move from ground zero to the top. Rome was not built in a day but day by day and week by week. It was not even built sitting down and crying over spilled milk. Tables turn only for people who make the effort to put more pressure on life. Do not die a celebrated potential; push your limits and evolve into the star you really are! Be responsible for your destiny.

The boys receive no education, no shelter and no care.

From Maiduguri to Kano, Sokoto to Dutse, Gusau to Yola…the parents of the Almajiris fling them so far from home, never to set their eyes on them again. How far do you go to abdicate your responsibility? This Almajirinchi phenomenon that broke my heart in Kano may just be like a stray bullet that wrecks havoc anonymously or another time bomb waiting to explode over many generations unborn if we fail to show love and get the stray kids out of the streets. The problem we watch and do nothing about will later haunt us and what we do not address will undress us. Love is the only way we will be free!

"Where is hope?" The boy standing on Dutse Dala (Dala Hill) overlooking Old Kano seems to ask.

Photo credit: Tunde Alabi-Hundeyin II/Fish Eye Photography