In our country Nigeria, and indeed across the globe there is hardly a place or person without some form of challenge. I hope this is not a hasty generalization. Wait, is there a region that is spared its portion of pain, especially as each nation and region live by depending on the other?
It is the same way with individuals. Each person has a unique kind of pain and stress they confront, and it is almost impossible to find any person who is not nursing one kind of pain or the other, whether physical, emotional, financial, engagement, or a mix of all or some. As Carl Jung said: Man needs difficulties as they are necessary for health. Yet, most people instinctually avoid pain.
Is this position not a paradox? How credible is the thought that we need difficulties? How are difficulties necessary for our health? Is it for our physical or emotional health or both? While we do not want to go into proving the rightness or otherwise of this position, as this is not a research paper, the reality is that a problem free life is a fantasy, and it does not exist anywhere. It lives perhaps only in the imagination of the man who only dreams utopia.
Dreaming utopia is good, but if you have to manifest and live utopia, you have to embrace almost a limitless amount of pain. If you have to get utopia out of your head and physically create what you envision, you have to brace yourself up for a very difficult time, and if you must win at it, you have to be comfortable with and in that discomfort. That is a realistic position.
Now, in what is definitely a situation where we all have challenges, what should we do therefore? First, our mindset is responsible for how we perceive things. Regardless of the situation, we can always find a balance if we properly align our mental, emotional, and otherwise quotient together. This is important.
While challenges are not new to us, we do find that some challenges are either completely new or they are repackaged forms of the same challenges we had previously. Whichever type they are, only one thing is sure: They are not meant to break us; they are meant to make us, even if they break us before they end up making us.
Really, everything should work for us, as opposed to working against us, but the only thing that guarantees this is the perspective we have towards life, the issues of life or the things that life throws at us. Life does definitely throws things at us, and we have to come to terms with that.
If the challenges we face end up making rather than breaking us, we do need to eventually stay made as long as we inhabit this problematic space. We must constantly position ourselves to weather the storms that life throws our way. We do have to, and that is an absolute.
In order to weather storms as often as they come, we have to embrace storms rather than curse and kick at the slight approach of rain or the discomforting heat that we experienced in weeks past. We cannot escape either in their season. They are for us, not against us.
When we are faced with the heat caused by the elements, we try to escape and take solace in the artificial means of electricity but hit a brick wall. Turning to man-made energy sources leaves us with no better option as some experiences show. It does seem like everything is falling apart.
Where everything goes south as we have seen in recent times, one thing we have to hold on to with all tenacity is our mind. We must guard our minds jealously because life emanates from there. Nothing else does seem to matter to the one to whom this inalienable secret has been revealed.
Have we experienced the present issues or challenges before now, or were they not this intense? Whatever it is we are passing through, we have to accept the fact that life is all about pains and gains. Can you pause a moment and apply yourself to this reality a moment in your own personal life? Have you not lived with both pains and gains?
Every creature is groaning. Think about it. What do these things point us towards? Because iniquity is abounding everywhere, the love of many is waxing cold.
One solution to this is constant self-check. Each of us must constantly do a thorough self-evaluation and we cannot do a good job at this unless we have a good dose of self-awareness, and acceptance of reality.
How much of yourself do you know? Before you pay a visit to a psychologist, you do need to have a grasp of the state of your emotions knowing your degree of rationality and irrationalities. As rational as we are, we equally have some measure of irrationalities in us.
We must maintain sanity from our own end. In order to do this, we must accept the way we are feeling. How do you feel at the moment? Feelings do not lie. Feelings help us to interpret our emotions. Emotions are great for us, too. How we manage our emotions determines the strength or degree of our emotional intelligence.
This is the difference between emotions and emotional intelligence or quotient. We all have emotions but varying degrees of the intelligence with which to manage them. This is one essential key to mental balance.
When we are unable to effectively interpret our emotions based on what we feel, we will not be able to either act right or make the right decisions. And it is important that we are able to make the right personal decisions. It is our duty. We may not be able to depend on the external to get this done for us. No, we may not. If we do at some point, it will not endure because it is not sustainable to have others do for us the things we have been endowed to do for ourselves. Intra-dependence precedes interdependence.
Our degree of self-awareness will help us in our self-regulation and control if we are able to starve our irrationalities at those intense moments when we are tempted to act otherwise or in alignment with denial. The idea here is that we must do well to let go. We must learn to let go. We must learn to look away.
We must learn to forgive. Forgiveness works for our own peace more than it works for the person who has offended us. When we are unforgiving, our imaginations about the person we have refused to forgive are often constant multiplication of vain and often unfounded surmising. We hurt ourselves much when we habour these negative emotions and refuse to let go of them. It damages us progressively, and we are actually make no progress when we do.
If you are one who communes in anyway with the Higher Being, the Ultimate Seed of Life that dwells within your reins, you have to make sure not to habour offences within. This is as freeing as to get us in the place of mastery. Self-mastery is the ability for each one of us to manage our emotions such that we do not get into adversity through falling into common temptations that we encounter every time. We face them always, but do we succumb to them?
These times we are in are interesting times. They are interesting because we can do something about them. The times may not overcome us. We were made with the power and the psyche of dominion.
When the Maker made us, He actually reproduced Himself. He made man in his own image and so man has access to such degree and level of strength that he is either aware or unaware of. This is who you are: a god. Think about it. You were created to create but you cannot create until you discover, develop, and deliver in your space. That is the purpose for your being. We serve God by serving man.
In the field of service we are faced with many challenges and these days, it does not feel like it is getting better and that is why we are having this conversation. We have to be in charge of ourselves first. I have to take charge of myself by knowing who I am [self-awareness], manage what I know [self-regulation/control], and constantly develop competencies that we use to engage with others without representing hurt or negativity to them.
What do you deliver in your space? What do you discharge emotionally? What vibrations do you share? What charges emanate from you and how do these things affect the well-being of others? It is extremely important for us to deliver light, positive and goodness to others, not otherwise. How do we make others feel? That is exactly the way we will feel. It is sowing and reaping. Upon this foundation was everything set up.
Let us pay closer attention to our essential and personal development. It is a lifelong endeavour. We cannot go on vacation in this regard, and neither can we do it by proxy. It is such a personal and direct responsibility that we cannot afford to outsource.
