THE KING CALLED DOCUMENTATION

I have always liked doing business. I have devoted years of my life to studying business management on my own and I can say I understand it a little bit. I opened a bar (Dazzles Pub) while in school and after graduation I set up a small plant that produced methylated spirit or rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide. Both were successful. The pub closed when I left for national service while the mini plant closed because it was not registered with the government. From the day I set foot in Canada in 2016 I yearned to have my own business. In August 2018 this dream became a reality when I bought a restaurant that makes pizza and donairs. This background is important because of the topic we are doing today. 

I bought this restaurant on a rent to own basis, if I may call it that. I made a down payment and had a debt of $50,000 to the seller which I would pay as I made sales. When I took over the business I noticed that the claims made were not as accurate as I was made to believe. Being my first experience in buying a business I trusted the agent to do due diligence. He said he did. Events showed he did not. Lesson learned. Anyway, the amount I made the first month was nothing near what was told which was the basis for the sale. Oh, yes! I started asking the seller questions. Of course he came asking for the payment for that month. I stood my ground and insisted he showed documentation to prove the claims he made were true. This was around December 2018. It's July 2020 and I haven't seen him. I have not paid him a dime and he hasn't called to ask. Does this mean he has forgone $50,000? Probably. Why? If he pushes me and I sue the court will force him to provide those documents. If he fails he might go to jail. Chances are he doesn't have any and he overvalued the business. 

I have not taken this lesson for granted. It underscores the importance of keeping documents in whatever you do. One day you will be asked to go back in time and show evidence. If you don't have documents you could lose a lot. 

The importance of documentation cannot be overemphasized. It is the marriage between a plan, it's initial execution and continuous operation of the plan. Every goal, plan, process or procedure or method must first be written down to be considered to exist. When this has been done an execution method follows. This is necessary to be sure the plan has been executed accordingly and the execution can be monitored for compliance or non compliance as the case may be. As a Quality Management consultant I do not toy with documentation. In fact whatever is not written down is considered to not have happened. If you don't have vehicle particulars it's possible the car doesn't belong to you. If you don't have a marriage certificate it will be hard to prove you are married. If you don't have land documents you will be hard pressed to prove the land is yours and so on. 

We keep track of all the above but where it concerns our career we have no record of what we did yesterday at work. In my consulting days, because I wasn't on ground everyday, I made the workers I supervised keep log books of their daily activities. The format was simple. I wanted to see their plan for the day, how they executed it, what they accomplished, what they couldn't accomplish and why. Initially they disliked me for it but when they started seeing the benefits (they became more efficient at their jobs) we became friends. 

As I run my restaurant today, I have a record of every purchase that has been made, every sale that has been made in store and online, every bill that has been paid and so on. I sent all these to my accountant alongside other documents listing assets and he has valued the business way above $50,000. I don't know how else to show you the benefit of documentation. I hope you start today. 

ENDURANCE CRUSHES CHALLENGES

Research published in the Journal of Sports Sciences has found successful Olympians have a high degree of self-confidence, are able to block out distractions, manage their arousal level, are goal-oriented and demonstrate a healthy form of perfectionism. To put up the sporting shows that we enjoy on TV, these athletes literally put their bodies through hell in order to be in top shape for the competition. Winning an Olympic gold medal is a mean feat achieved only by truly exceptional people. You are already an exceptional person by the virtue of the fact that you are the sperm that won the race to the egg out of millions of sperm cells. Do not take this for granted. Only special people win and before you were born you already proved you were special. So what's happening to you today? Why aren't you winning? 

A guy walks into the restaurant and while waiting for his order he tells a story that inspired this article. He was a chef for 18 years. One day while leaning over a counter he pushed a tray that pushed a sharp pointed knife. The knife landed on his foot and stuck there. It was rush hour he said. In the restaurant industry you don't mess with your rush hour. It is a period you can't say no to any order or run out of anything let alone the chef. According to him, he looked at this and even though it was bleeding he pulled out the knife, taped the wound with gauze underneath, put his plastic shoe back on and went back to work for 6 hours. He showed me the scar. That's an incredible story. While I do not advocate that I want to draw lessons from the mental strength this man exhibited to ignore his bleeding foot and went on to get his job done. That's the mindset of a champion. He won! 

A reporter once asked the legendary boxer Mohammed Ali how many sit ups he did a day to stay in shape. Ali said, “I don’t know because I don’t start counting until it hurts”. Mohammed Ali is considered the greatest boxer of all time because of his boxing skills and accomplishments. Ali was not known to be a hard pincher like Mike Tyson and unlike Tyson who ended most of his fights very early, Ali took most of his fights to the very end. He was 'blessed' with speed, agility, footwork and incredible athleticism. I say 'blessed' because he worked exceptionally hard in training to hone those skills and deployed them effectively in his fights. He was an endurance machine. That's the word I have been looking for: ENDURANCE

Endurance is primarily defined as the ability to withstand adversity or hardship. Has anyone told you that life is hard? Like seriously. Has anyone sat you down and told you that life is very rough and hard? While raising kids we try our best to make life beautiful for them. They call social services when they are whipped and things like that. However, when they grow up and become adults the same system that helped wrap a bubble around them will send police after them and jail them if they commit a crime worthy of jail. For me, it was better to be whipped by my mum as a kid than go to jail as an adult because I lack discipline. I digress. 

Endurance does not come by accident. No one is born with it. It is a skill that is learned. Many of us go to the gym and do some work out but compared to professional athletes (they are the best examples of endurance) all we do in the gym is exercise. These guys train. By training I mean they focus on every part of their body and make sure it is worked out. This way they can perform optimally. These guys put in an incredible amount of work for the few minutes we watch them on TV. For instance, a footballer plays at most 2 games a week. That's about 200 mins. To be able to do this they have to train at least 5 to 6 hours everyday for 5 days. This may or may not include football practice and gym work outs. They put in at least 20 hours of strenuous work so they can perform for a game that lasts less than 2 hours. Do you see why they have endurance? 

People who know me well know how much I like skill mobility. I have been able to find ingenious ways of making things that worked, say in the lab, and apply the same to marketing. An example is going round the city of Edmonton to buy pizza from various places and pulling them apart like I was doing scientific analysis so I can find their weakness and strengths. It has led me to have one of the best pizzas in the city. Now imagine cultivating an athletes mentality and applying same to your life. You will win! 

Athletes do not just train to participate in events. They train to win. They train to be better than their peers who are already excellent at running or jumping or footballing or swimming or boxing and so on. To do this they need to have endurance or stamina. Winners don't stop when they are tired but when the race is done. Winners never quit because they have endurance. They start counting their sit ups when it starts hurting. That's what you need to start doing. Stop whinning. Whinners are never winners! Go get it done and win! 

COST AND BENEFITS

Paying tax is an action whose consequence is good roads, pipe borne water, schools, hospitals among others. In other words, paying taxes is a cost we bear so we can enjoy the benefits of social amenities. When you break the law you pay fines or go to jail depending on the law you broke. Breaking the law is a cost or action which brings the benefit or consequence of fines or jail. 

As a kid growing up in Nigeria in the 80s, I didn't have the liberty and privilege kids of today have. My mum made sure that there were consequences for my misdeeds and I thank her immensely for that. I wouldn't be the man I am today without that foundation. When she told me to do something there were two options: I either did it or I did it. On the upside, she also made sure I enjoyed benefits when I did the right things like do well at school, do my homework etc. She was very intentional in raising me. If I did wrong or good I got what I deserved. There was always an outcome of what I did. 

In 2016 I was working at Shoppers Drug Mart as a merchandiser whose job was to fill shelves with goods and whatever else there was for me to do. It was Halloween and I had just finished setting up shelves and filling them nicely with chocolate. My boss told me I did a good job. I was finishing up when this woman and her kid came to the shelf to buy chocolate. She offered the kid a couple but in a fit he threw it down. This wasn't enough to show he didn't want what was offered. He went ahead to pull down all the items on the shelf. The mum was begging him to stop his tantrum and bent down to pick up the items. In a very firm tone I told her to stop and told the kid that if he didn't pick up the items I would whoop his a**. He looked at his mum and she told him I was serious. The tantrum ended and he quietly started picking up the items. I was not gonna let a kid make a mess of my work like that. Not on my watch. 

An important lesson taught in business management school is cost-benefit analysis. A cost benefit analysis (also known as a benefit cost analysis) is a process by which organizations can analyze decisions, systems or projects, or determine a value for intangibles. The model is built by identifying the benefits of an action as well as the associated costs, and subtracting the costs from benefits. That's the definition for smart people. For people like me who aren't smart, I define it as weighing the consequences of any action before execution. Simple. Right? I like simple things. I define it that way so it becomes applicable to my personal life and finance and not just business management. 

From the day you are born every decision taken on your behalf by your parents comes at cost and it will have benefits (value) or consequences. I have decided to use 'benefit' because many people hear 'consequence' and think of a negative outcome. As long as you are under 18 years of age your parents will bear all consequences while you enjoy the benefits. Parents who understand life will make sure you partake in some of the consequences of your actions so you learn from an early age that actions (costs) have benefits or consequences. That's how I was raised. When I became an adult I didn't always do the right things but I knew that whatever I did had repercussions and that I was gonna face them alone. It doesn't matter how you are raised. What really matters is that the criminal justice system exists and will catch, try and send you to jail if you break the law. As an adult, society will hold you accountable to your actions. It's up to you to choose what cost you can afford. 

HOW TO BUILD A GREAT CAREER

I began my career in Quality Management in 2004 as a Microbiologist in a pharmaceutical manufacturing company in Nigeria. 16 years later, here I am sitting in my own restaurant in Edmonton, Canada writing this article on a blog. In all these years I have moved from Microbiologist to Administrative Officer to Operations Manager to Quality Control Officer to Quality Assurance Manager to Quality Management consultant and then I moved to Canada in 2016. My aim of writing this is to let you in on the things I did and learnt on my journey. To have a great career is very possible but it requires a lot of work. When I say work I don't just mean work in the sense of the word. I mean work that is intentional. If you work hard like every one else you will end up like every one else but if you are intentional about the work you do you will end up great. 

The first man I worked for, Chigozie Anyachebelu, who passed away last week (may his soul RIP) took me through the school of hard knocks. I did not appreciate the words he said and the things he made me do at the time. Now I do. I will share some of the lessons he taught me. I learnt so many but I have narrowed them down to the 5 most important ones.

1. THINK BIG

This is arguably the most important one. You cannot have what you don't dream of or think about. If you dream small you have small things but if you think big you will have big things. The West Edmonton Mall (WEM) in Canada was built in 4 phases (1981, 1983, 1985 and 1999). It opened its doors on 15 September 1981 and at that time it was the biggest indoor shopping mall in the world as recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records. It lost this status in 2004. This is a perfect example of thinking big. The WEM has an area of 5.3m sq.ft, 2 hotels, 100 dining venues, 20,000 capacity parking lot and before the coronavirus pandemic hit it employed over 20,000 people. All this was planned in 1981. Today the WEM is number 24 in Worlds' biggest malls. Its still big. That is how you need to start thinking about your career. Think big. See yourself beyond what you are looking at today. It costs nothing to expand your horizon because thinking is free. Thinking big means you have to stop thinking only about now but also about yesterday and tomorrow. Thinking big can do many things for you. It can generate revenue (this is what consultants do), solve problems (what good managers do), create opportunities (what investors and inventors do). While you exist today you should think of the biggest you you can be and keep that in mind at all times. You cannot be bigger than the size of your thoughts but you can be smaller. This means that the bigger your thoughts the bigger your potential can be because if you aim for the sky you fall on the tree top but if you aim for the tree top you know where you will fall. Have a projection of where you wanna be in 5 years time. If your projection does not scare you its not big enough. 

2. BE PASSIONATE

Diego Armando Maradona is an Argentinian soccer legend who won the world cup in 1986 and is regarded as one of the best soccer players of all times. He could easily have been named the best soccer player of all time if his passion for soccer was not tainted. His playing career was plagued by indiscipline and while he played for Napoli in Italy he had drug related problems that affected his career. He never recovered from that. His passion switched from soccer to indiscipline. Cristiano Ronaldo is another soccer player whose passion for the game has been unbridled. He knew his talent alone could not make him a great soccer player. Passion is boundless enthusiasm, a strong excitement about or active interest in something. As far as this interest is concerned you can never be tired or say no to it. It is like an addiction but a good one. According to Norman Vincent Pearle, "There is real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment (excellence)". It is passion or enthusiasm that spurs excellence, growth and development. The more you do something you are passionate about the more you learn about it and the better you get at it. As you progress in your career you will encounter challenges but being passionate is what gets you through these challenges. A passionate person never sleeps until a challenge is surmounted. Following this cycle repeatedly is what makes you a guru in your field of endeavor. It is passion that keeps your appetite for continuous learning and development alive. Passion is the difference between failure and success. 

3. HAVE GOALS

 A microscope is an instrument used to see objects that are too small for the human eye. This is achieved by viewing the object through an array of lenses that bring the object into focus so it can be magnified. Without this focus there will be no magnification and the object cannot be seen. The blood hound is a dog breed that is famous for it ability to discern human scent over great distances, even days later. This keen sense of smell and a strong tracking instinct makes this dog ideal for use by the Police to track escaped prisoners, missing people or animals. Once this dog is given a scent as a goal it will not stop until the scent owner is found. I had a boss who always said that every day he woke up he knew what he wanted from that day and what he needed to do to accomplish it. He charged us to have that same attitude because any day that nothing is accomplished is a wasted day. A passion without direction will run out of steam soon enough and frustration will set in. Every company has a vision and a mission. That is their goal. You should have yours as well. Make sure you have goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and has a time line for their accomplishment. Your career will not be great if you do not set goals and try to accomplish them.

4. DOCUMENT THINGS

The inspiration to write this came from something I wrote in my diary in March 2016. I was going through this diary and found the notes I made. This article would not exist if I did not make the notes I made in 2016. Documentation is very important because it serves as a reminder of where we have been and what we have done. It is said that the faintest ink is better than the longest memory. This is because what is written down will not be forgotten but a good memory can be lost. In my days in company management I took notes on everything I did. I had a diary where I wrote down the things I wanted to do for the day and at the end of the day I went back to check off the ones I did and state why the ones I did not do were left undone. At the end of the week I reviewed my activities to know how productive I was. Many of us that are immigrants in Canada do not joke with our immigration documents. We guard them jealously and that is excellent. You need to start treating your career that way. It is great to have goals but if you do not write them down you may not accomplish them and even when you do you will find such goals impossible to replicate because you do not have a template to emulate. This is why documentation is critical to a successful career. No one is smart enough to remember everything. There are hard drives for that. 

5. BUILD OTHERS

The best way to put this is to say that while standing in a crowd you will not be seen by anyone but if a crowd starts to lift you up everyone will see you. To get the benefit of having a crowd lift you up you have to bear the cost of helping people in a crowd. Think about it this way. To get to where you are in life today people helped you in one way or another. You speak well of these people and have recommended them to others. Remember that word of mouth is the best kind of advertisement, if you are willing to put your reputation on the recommendation of someone, then they are likely worth the recommendation. In order to get to where you need to be you have to help others. It is not mandatory but your career cannot be said to be successful if no one knows who you are. If you become an island then no one can consult you because no one knows how capable you are. It is the people you help along the way that become megaphones that speak to others about you. If you stand on one corner of the world and yell how good you are not many people will hear you but if 20 people are standing on different corners of the world and yell for you lots more people will hear them and ask who you are. The easiest way to develop is to develop others. That is how a great career is built.

THE PERSON IN THE MIRROR

I'm starting with the man in the mirror 

I'm asking him to change his ways  

And no message could have been any clearer 

If you want to make the world a better place Take a look at yourself, and then make a change

That's part of the chorus of a song by Michael Jackson. I fell in love with the song the first time I heard it. It changed the way I look at issues and has impacted my life till this day. I will tell you how shortly after I give an example. I work with conveyor belts. When items are too much on the belt it jams. On a certain day, there was a jam and I told a staff member to stop the belt. That's all I said. The idea was to stop the belt, clear the jam and get the belt running. He stopped the belt, cleared the jam but didn't start the belt. I went back and wanted to get upset but remembered I only told him to stop the belt and didn't tell him why or when to start it up. That was my fault not his. I assumed he would know.  

As I write this the world is battling a pandemic caused by a mutant strain of coronavirus called Covid-19. The most common thing I hear people say is that Covid-19 has changed the world. It has brought a paradigm shift in the way people relate, the way businesses operate, work/life pattern etc. These changes may well be permanent. For instance, because people are working from home right now many companies are starting to rethink if they really need office space.  

In 2015 the opposition party in Nigeria took power from the ruling party when it won the election with a majority of the votes cast. The opposition party had run a campaign based on change. After the inauguration the new government began an advocacy that was titled change begins with you. People were excited and were willing to start making changes in the way they lived and behaved. A few months into this advocacy Nigerians discovered that government officials were paying lip service to the campaign. They still behaved the way they did. It was as if only those not in government were expected to change their behaviour and mindset. From that moment the campaign started losing steam. Today, 5 years after, it has been totally abandoned.  

The new president in his speeches told Nigerians to live within their means. It was a pragmatic thing to say seeing that the price of crude oil, Nigeria's major forex earner, was dwindling. It made so much sense hearing that but then the president borrowed money to buy his party registration form. He had a fleet of 10 jets at his disposal. He borrowed more money from the international community to do projects that didn't make economic sense. He was not living within the means of the resources available to him. The moment Nigerians noticed this the slogan died. Nigerians were very loud in saying the president shouldn't be telling them to do what he can't do.  

In the 3 examples above there's 3 constants: an issue is found to be a problem, change is needed, there's an entity driving the change and another expected to change. This opens the door to bring in the term change management. It has been defined as the controlled identification and implementation of required modifications within a system. There are lots of excellent and practical theories associated with change management. They have been known to be quite effective in modifying systems to make them more effective. I know this because I am a quality assurance professional. I have built QA systems with all the checks and balances and I can tell you for free that no system is perfect. In fact systems require constant modifications and variations to get the desired results. These modifications may or may not be successful depending on how they are executed. 

Remember the beginning of this article where I started with a song titled man in the mirror? In my career as a QA professional I have come to agree that real change begins with the person in the mirror. I cannot talk about the person in the mirror without talking about self awareness. Self awareness is not just the conscious knowledge of one's own character, feelings, motives, and desires. It is also the acknowledgement of one's flaws (we all have them) and making intentional efforts to overcome them. This is why the person in the mirror is important. Self awareness is not a commodity that can be given, sold or bought but one that must be discovered. To make this discovery you have to set out on a journey. Self awareness, when you discover it, is a very potent tool that opens your eyes to the realities of your contributions or lack thereof to the society that you are part of.  

As I write this America is plagued by protests following the death of George Floyd in the hands of policemen. The Black Lives Matter movement has gathered steam and everyone is tired of the killings of black people at the hands of policemen. It is a sad reality that we face today and action must be taken. This is not the first time in America black people are protesting about police killings. Given time the protests will stop and the police will go back to what they do. Why is this? It is so because the black man living in America lacks self awareness. He doesn't know who he is, doesn't know his true potential, doesn't know his capabilities etc. The black man has not defined the person he sees in the mirror. In my honest opinion, the best mirror black Americans can look at is present day African leaders. If they lead well and use the resources abundant in Africa to develop Africa all black people can go back to Africa and watch the economy of the Western world collapse. There's no better response to racism than that.  

Climate change is another aspect of our lives today where the person in the mirror needs to be addressed. In October 2019 a climate change activist group named Extinction Rebellion blocked the Walter Dale bridge in Edmonton. It was rush hour and many people couldn't get to work. After a few hours they wrapped up their protest and drove away. Yes, they drove away. That's ironic. They finished protesting climate change and immediately engaged in an activity that made climate change worse. It was a failure to address the person in the mirror. I have since stopped engaging climate change activists who still heat their homes with natural gas, who still drive, who still use mobile phones and computers, who still eat fruits imported from Mexico, who still use plastic products made from crude oil. If they address the person in the mirror and stop doing things that exacerbate climate change perhaps there will be progress. 

I can go on and on with examples of how we fail to get the right solutions because we don't address the person in the mirror but that will make this too long. The point is that while we hope to go through life without problems, it's not feasible. Our ability to solve the problems we face daily is therefore heavily dependent on how we perceive these problems. Many times we try to resolve issues by pointing fingers of blame away from ourselves. While this may be a good approach it prevents us from looking at ourselves. The mere fact that something affects you negatively or positively means you are part of that thing or system otherwise you wouldn't be affected. Knowing this should enable you to see yourself as part of the factors that need to be considered while seeking a solution.

In my consulting days, while in Nigeria, I never offered any solution to a problem I didn't experience. My interventions were always based off of me going into the establishment to observe for a few hours. I offered solutions not as an outside entity but as a part of the system. This helped me give long lasting solutions. You can do the same. To find the solution to an issue you must first of all identify how you contribute to the issue since you are part of the system. Doing this reduces the work by 50%. Try it. It works. Look at the person you see in the mirror and listen to what he or she says.  If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself, and then make a change. 

MISANDRY AND MISOGYNY

Misandry and Misogyny are products that have HATE as their base and hate is not good for anyone. Misogyny, a very bad situation, is deeply rooted in patriarchy. Women are no less humans than men and in many instances have shown to be more valuable than men. They should not suffer hate for any reason. 

I don't know fully when when patriarchy was or why it was established. I do know that there was a time when humanity lived and died by the sword such that the survival of any group depended on the ability to fight and win battles. Men were relied upon for these battles.  Why? Because they were expendable. Procreation wouldn't happen fast enough for repopulation if few women are available. One man can repopulate a group of 100 women (reason birth control should have been designed for men not women) but a single woman will die if she has 100 men as mates. 

When patriarchy was being established as a social system I don't think anyone was smart enough to know its consequences will affect men and women adversely as we have seen today. I will give a few instances of things that started off as good but over time became horrible. 

During the era of industrialization, humanity needed power so imagine the joy when crude oil became a thing. Humanity became so reliant on this substance and created so much value with it. Today, climate change is upon us. If anyone knew this 200 years ago we may not be here today.  When China started the one child policy it wanted to control its population and made the mistake of allowing men design policies for that. Women weren't consulted. Of all the gains one child policy had today it has been seen as a disaster seeing that China has millions of men who can't find women to marry because the women are not just available. It will take years to correct this. Nigeria needs to study this. If you want a one child policy for population control patriarchy has to be dismantled so that men and women have equal status That way, parents won't prefer male children to female children.  In China, the patriarchal one child policy for population control is affecting men badly. Women have become more valuable than men in China today. 

Misogyny and misandry are bias or hate incidents that are bad for everyone and none should be justified. Because of patriarchy, the abuse, pressure and hate men face are grossly underreported. Many men prefer to suffer in silence because patriarchy demands they show 'strength'. I do not know how we came to the conclusion that muscle is equal to strength and must be attributed to men. Women carry their unborn baby for 9 months. Men with pot bellies can tell you how hard that is. While men run sprints, women do marathons. Why are they considered weak? 

A bias incident or hate incident is an act of hostility motivated by racism, religious intolerance, or other prejudice. A bias incident is different from a hate crime in that it does not necessarily involve criminal activity. Misogyny and Misandry are bias incidents. You can't promote one over the other without making yourself look like a hateful person. Hate is hate and to fight hate with hate is like fighting fire with fure which will bring more fire. No one wants that.  

That no man can say he has not been affected by misandry doesn't mean it's not happening now or won't happen tomorrow. Misogyny has been established as a bias incident but calls are mounting to establish it as a hate crime on the same level with racism, antisemitism, homophobia etc.  A UK report in 2019 revealed that gender hate incidents were at least as common as any hate crime recorded by police. There were 67,000 such incidents last year, with 57,000 of them targeted at women, according to figures from the Crime Survey of England and Wales. Promoting misandry as a response to misogyny is simply saying we need 47,000 more incidents of misandry to match the 57,000 cases of misogyny. Our mothers, sisters, wives, aunties, cousins, nieces are affected. It will be our fathers, brothers, uncles, nephews too. Above all humanity suffers. 

We cannot cure hate by being hateful and this doesn't mean we should love those that hate us. Advocacy and Activism are different things. Feminism as advocacy will achieve more than misandry as activism. MISOGYNY IS BAD!!!

 Nnaemeka Udoka

CHANGE YOUR MENTALITY, CHANGE YOUR LIFE

According to Wikipedia, thought can refer to ideas or arrangement of ideas that result from thinking. This simply means that the human mind/brain is a production room which produces ideas using thought as raw material. As with no raw material, no products so is no thinking, no ideas. Your mentality as a person is determined by the thoughts that dominate your mind. Your mentality is your habitual or characteristic mental attitude that determines how you will interpret or respond to situations.

Your mentality is habitual because you follow a particular pattern repeatedly for a while and become accustomed to it. Your mentality is attitudinal because it displays your disposition, feeling or position to a situation. As with perspective, your mental disposition is never right or wrong but can be positive or negative. What comes to you is dependent on what you invite. What you see is dependent on where you stand. If you stand at one spot all the time then you will see the same thing all the time. 

Your attitude in life determines your altitude. It is a known fact that people with bad attitude, negative mentality, who don’t make time for thinking never change their life and don’t achieve much. All of the people who have made a mark in this life have had positive mentality. None of them had even the slightest amount of negativity in or around them. This goes to show that what you get out of life is a direct consequence of the mentality you have. 

Let us look at 2 real life scenarios. 

1. I was discussing opportunities in Edmonton, Canada with a friend. He told me in plain terms that I cannot earn $200,000/annum in Edmonton. His reason or rather excuse is because the oil price has crashed and so the economy is bad. I agreed with him that the economy was bad and affirmed to him that one day soon I will make that amount of money and even more. He laughed at me. 

2. This lady who isn’t rich dresses very well daily because she knows how to shop. She has been applying to help people shop but is always told such jobs don’t exist. I told her she doesn’t need to apply for any job but can create a service people can use and pay her for her skills. She agreed to explore this. We sat down and talked. I gave her valuable tips free of charge. 

The guy in 1 above has a negative mentality which has caused him to stand at a place. He can’t see any different because he has refused to change his mentality by changing his stand point. He is locked in a mental block which ensures he can’t think of anything outside of crude oil. Because of this he is blind to opportunities that can be exploited to earn $200,000/annum. For instance, there are people in Edmonton who don’t work with oil companies but are earning that amount. Because of his negative mentality he can’t be one of them. Right? 

The lady in 2 above had a situation but after speaking with me changed her mentality by changing her stand point from someone looking for a job to someone who can create a job for herself. The details of the advice she received is a business secret which I cannot reveal here. In one year of conscientiously following the tips she was given, which she agreed to do, she will change her life for good. 

I was told that if I got the flu shot I would get sick for a while then recover. I did get the flu shot but I haven’t fallen sick and I won’t. I told the person who told me this, two actually, that I won’t fall sick. The next day I started feeling sick but I continued to speak to myself reaffirming I won’t get sick. What I was feeling slowly went away. This is how much a positive mental attitude can do for you. Being an activity as described at the beginning, you must create time for producing ideas by thinking. To generate ideas through thinking is the only difference between man and animals which is the reason man is called a higher animal. If you refuse to heed this simple advice you are deciding to remove the ‘higher’ which describes you as an animal. Hahahaha. Just kidding. One word for the wise, many words for the foolish.