28.10.11

A Pleasing Personality



Growth cannot occur without change like change might not be effected without learning. Learning is an integral aspect of life and development. How often we neglect the opportunity to learn amidst the hustle and bustle in our daily chase. As the saying goes, we live and we learn. Amongst the many things that can be learned, learning to exhibit a pleasing personality is essential.

1. Learn to laugh: there is nothing like a good laugh, I don’t mean laughing at people to mock them. Some people never laugh, or at least not openly when it is necessary. A good laugh does for you what an air freshener does for a living room with an offensive ambience. A good laugh makes you feel as well as look human, which you are. It has never been a good recommendation to always keep a mean look especially for people in leadership positions. You ease tension in the atmosphere when you laugh or smile and this makes you a more pleasing person to have around. Here’s the interesting part, a laugh makes you feel good and when you feel good, you raise your hopes and happiness as well as gain confidence to achieve your goals.

2. Learn to listen: considering the human physiognomy, nature made it that the ears should be involuntarily open while the mouth only does same voluntarily. But some people choose to do the reverse, keeping the mouth open and running. Two things happen when we contradict the design set by nature. One is that we could end up removing flies from our mouth; two is that we don’t get to learn much. You learn more when you listen more. Sometimes we are more helpful to people when they have our ears than when we give advice they obviously don’t need at that point in time. And it’s funny how we listen when we do; we readily listen to know how to respond rather than listening to understand. You make yourself unpleasant when you are apt to give counsel when people rather need your listening ear. Advice won’t always solve a problem in that has to be gotten out of the chest.

3. Learn to love: it is not always an automatic process to love, that’s why, it has to be learned. Like persistence, love doesn’t just happen. When love is built on material things it can fail and it will fail. To have a pleasing personality you must learn to love people in spite of circumstances as well as show genue concern. Look for the good in people and encourage them towards more good through the same channel rather than finding reason to fault them for their wrongs.

Let people know you for encouraging them towards good and they will like you for it. A pleasing personality is great asset, there is something about one with a pleasing personality that arrests your prejudice you simply can’t just ignore. A pleasing personality matched with humility in service make up for a great quality in manhood or womanhood. There is no art more beautiful than that of a pleasing personality.

18.10.11

Pillars of Persistence



Welcome to seeds of success. Today’s personal development will be looking at persistence. Persistence is one virtue that great achievers habitualize. It's interesting to know that people don’t give up only when they face opposition. There are three times when people give up. They could give up at the face of opposition, they could give up when they feel they have achieved a reasonable percentage of a project so they think they know how the completed version will look like, and thirdly people give up after first success. The first is common, the second is pernicious and the third is just ridiculous.

Persistence is not a natural occurring trait, but like many other virtues it is developed. Persistence is one of the key pillars of personal development but on what does persistence stand? There are three important pillars of persistence.

1. Hope: every act of persistence reclines upon a given hope. Nobody will continue giving time, effort and resources into an obviously hopeless venture. It is said that where there is life there is hope but where there is hope then there is the will and strength for persistence to hold through. But what is hope? Hope is not wishing that help will come; it is knowing it. A life to be pitied is not the one who has lost possession, family, friends, good reputation nor the one who has lost arms and legs, sight or hearing, but the one who has totally lost hope in living. Hope is a cardinal factor not only for persistence but in living.

2. A worthy goal: the achievability of a goal is determined not only by the individual whose objective it is to achieve the goal, but on the worthiness and importance of the goal. Psychologically you give yourself a reason to give up when your goal is not worth the effort, risk and resources to persist all the way in achieving it. And that way it is hard to keep up the will and strength of your persistence. For persistence to hold through the many obstacles and opposing forces, it must rest on a sure bet that the goal is worth it.

3. Habit: habits are very important determinants in the formation of character and eventually the direction of one's life. It is very important that we choose wisely and form habits consciously. People who give up don’t do so just because they like to be quitters, knowing that quitters are referred to as losers. They usually do because they have formed the habit of quitting when things seem not to be working out well. On the other hand there are others who through conscious efforts learned the discipline of not being easy quitters at the face of difficulty. Your persistence or in-persistence drives towards the direction of the habits you have built about it over time.

As you work to achieve your goals, let your persistence stand on firm pillars to pull you through the obstacles and opposition that will come your way.

Hope you enjoyed today’s blog on seeds of success. Let’s do this again tomorrow. Have a great day.

17.10.11

Letter to an Old Friend

Welcome to seeds of success.I stumbled upon a quite interesting poetry, you might find it funny. But enjoy it and tell me what you think.

Oh! Poverty my good old friend
How are you today?
Hope you are hale and hearty?
Waxing and waning, kicking harder?


My warmest regards to your new friends
Treat them kindly, give them courage
Tolerate them; let them also understand your path
Hold them gently, touch them softly,
you know how it is


You have been too good to me not to say goodbye
I shall never forget you in a hurry
It's painful to say goodbye
But my prayers are never to see you again


I am sure we 'll seldom meet
Not even in heaven when you die
Greet your friends for me
But remain down there, I have risen above you

By Michael Igele

13.10.11

Risk Factor: Everyday Brings Opportunity



It may interest you to know the uniqueness of today. In all of history, there has never been a day titled today, neither will there be a repeat of today and the opportunity it present. However it’s more interesting to know that you can make the best of today and what it has to offer. There is one sure thing toady will bring you, it may not bring riches, it may not guaranty safety or security but it will surely bring opportunity.

Everyday is a seed and it offers opportunity or at least the potential to create opportunity. The problem most times is that we wait for opportunity to knock on our door rather than being proactive about it. Opportunity is created when realization meets necessity and possibility. If everyday bring with it the opportunity to achieve, then we have the most readily available resource to utilize that opportunity – “time”.

We have ourselves to blame alone if we form the habit of excusing from opportunity for reason of time. I'm informed that three seconds up to now, every person on planet earth has 1440 minutes in his/her day. The nature of our day varies in proportion to the variance of our faces. There’s one important lesson to be learned, nothing is new, events do repeat and there is sharp commonality in human affairs as well as their experiences. So the prudent learn from them.

I’m not excluded from the minority who reason that there is a degree of stupidity in man (both male and female), which most often manifest in our daily is living. It comes to play in related issues like decision making and risk taking. That’s why many people get stuck in the situation they are passing through because they hold sacred the idea that doing anything aside what they are taught or accustomed to could spare only disaster. They think doing anything other than their usual will be very risky.

It brings us to the question, why take risk?  “it's fair to say that any reasonable person would basically take risk to achieve the best”. Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one’s better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, or to take calculated risk and to act – Maxwell Maltz.

I hope to meet you tomorrow. Have a great day.

7.10.11

Envy Factor: 6 More Reasons Why You Must Not Envy



Do you envy? If you answer that question faithfully, then you have taken the first step to disclose to yourself some really helpful counsel. But I must warn you, this blog is liable to purge you of some fitly envy ailments, so prepare your mind (you will be better for it anyways). To a large extent, envy is a result of ignorance. It won't be too loud to say that people envy because

1. They lack knowledge of their calling, but it’s true. If you know what you are cut out for, you will understand that you are in a competition, not with any other but with yourself; to consistently improve upon your effectiveness. The knowledge and practice of this fills and annuls every opportunity for envy.
We definitely can’t avoid competition, it happens virtually everyday. However, is to improve your effectiveness and not to use others as total yardstick for your existence. Comparing yourself to others is ok to an extent but end up calling the ill emotion cause they can’t help the solution.

2. They can’t control their desires. Envy could equally result from not having what you think you want and not being able to bear it because another has it and you think or wish they shouldn’t. if you seek to rule the world or perhaps your ‘world’, you must first control your desires and emotions. Vain glories are not to be desired.

3. Anyone who has a stony mind towards change most certainly tends to envy. When you ignore the reality of change, and envy would be certain when you see others sailing safe on the tides with change while you are stuck on shore by an unwilling attitude towards it. Change could be risky. We take risk to achieve the best.

4. Envy could result from low self-esteem. People who think low of themselves often use others as a yardstick in the aspects of their lives.

5. Envy is not far from pride. Yes that’s true. Pride will envy in seeing another do with humility that which it can’t do out of pride. Out of the many definitions of pride, one is striking. Pride is failing to do what you should.

6. People who lack common sense of basic judgment tend to envy. Not distinguishing what is permitted from what is pertinent , they wonder in the valley of wrong choices or indecision. Sometimes common sense is not common at all. It takes common sense to know what is right for you (job 5:2).

It’s believed that there is a positive aspect of envy (benign envy) the one that motivates towards improvement. It’s ridiculous how some are driven by envy to do right, when the right is in sharp contrast to their will, values and tendency. They do this to either get even, prove a point or to even satisfy their envy. But at the end, if there be any such thing as good envy, a right minded person will be sure to use it wisely. I’m among the few who believe something good can come out Nazareth.
Show me what you lack and I will show you what you don’t value to work hard for. Envy could refer to being angry for not having a thing and wishing on the other hand that others shouldn’t have it too. If you consider these words, you will do well to get that sinful emotion out of your back. Hope to meet you tomorrow on this uplifting blog. Good luck.

Succeed in Service by Humility



Did you know that humility can work in you, through you and for you towards success? Humility is not a trait of weakness. Only the strong can be gentle, it takes a great deal of self worth, character and understanding to be humble.

The first action line of humility is personal, it concerns itself with improving ones mental frame, and it equips one with the understanding of who one is. We know what we are to ourselves, it’s not the same with what people see of us. It’s necessary we see ourselves also in the light of how people see us. Humility helps us in this aspect. It not only helps us appreciate or show concern, it makes us see value in people. When you don’t value people, it’s hard to see any good whatsoever in their opinion or contribution even if they have the perfect solution.
A master piece is not produced only by the skillfulness of the craftsman alone, flexibility is required on the path of object of work. As much as we want to be flexible to change, we equally desire to be agents of the change we desire. That’s what humility does, it reeds you of rigidity.


we are yet to realize and utilize the potential of possibilities we are capable of. Humility is a key virtue in making one a ready agent of impact, change and empowerment. These can only be achieved by service.

To be humble you must not only conquer pride but self. If you can conquer and control self, you can possibly conquer anything. You are humble not because you don’t realized who you are, but the correct idea about is; you know who you are so you must be humble.

3.10.11

The Prime Problem of Success



Beware of the common attitude that follows satisfaction, progress and abundance. These indeed do great deal of good to the human person and his self esteem but don’t be ignorant of their opposite effects. Satisfaction is a wonderful feeling considering that unsatisfaction can cause cancer. Satisfaction to an extent can lead to mediocrity, likewise comfort and abundance; as they both have their negative effects. Right now you might be thinking I’m trying to bring something under a bad light. No am not. I’m only trying to make plain the truth that too much of anything doesn’t help personal development.

But for progress…I’m yet to figure out the adverse effect of it. I know that success as it progresses encounters problems it must have to solve. Every progress shares one common challenge. At the feet of this challenge many success metamorphose into mediocrity.

That challenge is improvement and all it connotes. One common problem with man is that he does not come to realization of what he is capable of (so he settles for less). The little I know, I owe to my ignorance – Sacha Guitry.

It’s natural to revel and savor breakthroughs and achievements, it’s however more common to be carried away by it. The distance between consistent progress and mediocrity is the sense of improvement. There is always opportunity for improvement. One question I ask and recommend is “Is this the best that can be made out of me”? if you answer faithfully you will discover streams of ideas, passion, aspiration and motivation that will flow through.

A key to consistent progress is, knowing that there is always opportunity for improvement and that you can be/do better. Though time runs it leaves behind opportunity for improvement. And while we haste to keep pace with time we run over opportunity that could make appreciable impact. So appreciate the thought that time is not against you rather you are against time. He is not in haste that knows what he is doing. If you know what you are doing, you won’t envy. I think those who envy others success are those who fail to do what they should yet hope on luck to see them through.

The level of effort and thinking that results to a success is not the same level of effort and thinking that would propel or facilitate continuous growth of that success.

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