17 Lessons from “#BeInspired Mondays with IK” in 2017

Phew! It’s the last Monday of the year already! Merry Christmas!

I began this column on the 9th of January 2017 to share pearls I’ve picked up as I journey through life, with the aim of inspiring and encouraging people to live their best lives and achieve their personal goals.

As we journeyed through the year, virtually every lesson I learned, I shared on this platform and this last Monday of 2017, the 51st feature of the #BeInspired Mondays with IK column, I’m going to be highlighting 17 major lessons:

1. As you cannot accidentally climb a ladder, you cannot accidentally become successful without work. Nothing works unless you work.
2. Activity is not the same as achievement and motion is not the same as progress. Major keys are Purpose and Direction.
3. Be the unbalanced force. In Physics, the unbalanced force disrupts the equilibrium a static object is enjoying, thus causing movement (in the direction of the force).
4. Embrace your difference. Life does not reward people for the similarities they share with others, but the differences they have. If you copy, the best you can be is second best.
5. Just start and Show up everyday. Little drops of water make a mighty ocean; the journey of a thousand miles begin with a step, and another after that and another after that. Start, then keep it moving.
6. Sometimes, giving up is better than continuing on a journey. That decision is up to you to make. In some circumstances, giving up does not necessarily translate to weakness, or lack of drive, it just means you know better and are focusing on other more important things.
7. Pain is not necessarily a negative experience, it is your body or mind, nudging you to make adjustments. It is a response to something that is going on within and/or around you.
8. You aren’t indispensable. Life will go on without you. Imagine how amazed people who died in the 1900s will be if they come back to the world to see how far the world has advanced without them.
9. “Life happens” shouldn’t only be interpreted as the negative experiences of our journey on earth. It should also be interpreted as the positive things that happen in our lives. Life presents us with opportunities regularly, don’t shut your eyes to them by focusing on the negative.
10. Learn to use resistance well. In Physics, resistance is needed for motion to be complete. The goal is to displace the resistance and thrive. Just like pain, resistance is a response, and may just simply mean, “go back to your drawing board, reorganise, and try again”.
11. Don’t be deceived by the words “you are special” and become inactive. While that is true, also true is that we all are special and what differentiates us from others is what we do with what makes us special.
12. Becoming “the best” is not enough. You can only become “the best” in a “class” and it’s all fun and games until you enter another “class” and your best score is the least score over there. What’s more important is becoming “your best”. You are your only competition.
13. No one has the perfect life, we all know this but have constantly failed to live with that knowledge in mind, thus focusing on our inadequacies. The only focus you should give to your inadequacies or weaknesses is to find ways to turn them to strengths. Usain Bolt was once taught how to walk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was not born with her writing skills, and that there was a time Anthony Joshua could not knock out a fly.
14. There is time for everything, but no time for anything. You have enough time to do whatever you want, but until you put a time to an activity, there’s no time for it.
15. The grass can be genuinely greener on the other side. Don’t feel people doing well in life have some personal problems they’re struggling with. The goal is to focus on yourself and grow.
16. Be Optimistic. Whether “haters” and “your village people” exist or not shouldn’t make you lose faith or live your life trying to “cast and bind” them without eventually doing anything with your life. Pessimism achieves nothing; it only helps to keep you stagnant in the name of being cautious. Remain optimistic but flexible.
17. Happiness is an inside job. Happiness, just like love, is not just a feeling, but a decision. Once you begin to savour the idea that happiness is something to be pursued, no matter how much of it you get, you’ll never be satisfied. If you live your life in pursuit of happiness, that is all you’ll ever do. Until you give up the idea that happiness is somewhere else, it will never be where you are. Enjoy your life and not just try to get through it.

There you go. My 17 major lessons from all 51 posts in this column this past year. What are yours?

P.S: With this post out of the way. I want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone that has followed this column from Day 1; the people that joined on the way; and those seeing it for the first time. Thank you all. I’ll like to say here that this is the last post on this column. I’ll still be writing regularly on BellaNaija though. Cheers!

Merry Christmas and have a prosperous 2018!