I had a gist over the weekend with
a friend on the
unhealthy drama of Office politics and I felt I should share someone’s
thoughts
on the matter.
In
Washington DC Metro Station on a cold January in 2007, a man with a
violin
played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes.
During that time,
approximately
two thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way
to work.
After
three minutes, a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing.
He slowed
his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried on to meet his
schedule.
Mahatma Gandhi, India's "Great Soul" and prophet of non-violence was assassinated on the 30th of January, 1948.
The Son of a Senior Government Official, Gandhi was born and raised in a Hindu Bania community in coastal Gujarat, and trained in law in London.
Gandhi became famous by fighting for the
civil rights of Muslim and Hindu Indians in South Africa, using new
techniques of "non-violence" that he developed.
His "philosophy" can be compared to that of Mother Theresa's; "Peace and Love above All".
AVAILABILITY; a word loosely used in a
number of occasions.
Avail-ABILITY has a way
of magnifying one's potential when properly harnessed.
After Lebron James led America's dream team to gold in Beijing Olympics (2008),
a common cart-pusher took him one-on-one in basket ball skills contest and
defeated him.
Lupe Fiasco was forced off stage
during an inaugural event in Washington DC, last night, after performing
an anti-Obama rant.
The Chicago rapper was
playing at The Hamilton, when he told the crowd that he did not vote for
Barack Obama and went on to perform a 30-minute version of his song “Words I
Never Said”.
I read this
“story” that am about to share now a while back and it really changed the way I
view people’s reactions / attitude.
I sure do
hope you read it and also get the insight
I got from it.
Enjoy:
Story by David J.
Pollay (the Author of The
Law of the Garbage Truck)
How often
do you let other people's nonsense change your mood?
Do you let
a bad driver, rude waiter, curt boss or an insensitive employee ruin your day?
Read the “theory”
below and get a different perspective:
Several
years ago, I learned this lesson.
I learned
it in the back of a New York City taxi cab.
Here's
what happened.
I hopped
in a taxi and we took off for Grand Central Station.
We were
driving in the right lane when, all of a sudden, a black car jumped out of a
parking space right in front of us.
My taxi
driver slammed on his breaks, skidded, and missed the other car's back end by
just inches!
The driver
of the other car, the guy who almost
caused a big accident, whipped his head around and he started yelling bad
words at us.
My taxi
driver just smiled and waved at the guy.
And I
mean...he was friendly.
So, I
said, 'Why did you just do that? That guy almost ruined your car and sent us to
the hospital!.
And this
is when my taxi driver told me what I now call, ‘The Law of the Garbage Truck’.
''Many people are
like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full
of anger and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a
place to dump it. And if you let them, they'll dump it on you”
When
someone wants to dump on you, don't take it personally.
You just
smile, wave, wish them well, and move on.
You'll be
happy you did.
I started
thinking, how often do I let Garbage
Trucks run right over me?
And how
often do I take their garbage and spread it to other people: at work, at home,
on the streets
It was
that day I said, 'I'm not going to do it anymore’.
“Life's too short to wake up in the
morning with regrets. Love the people who treat you right. Forget about the
ones who don't. Believe that everything happens for a reason”
Never let
the Garbage Truckrun over you.
Choose to
be HAPPY.
Breaking News:
Everyday Life With Tosyn now has a Facebook Page (www.facebook.com/EverydayLifeWithTosyn),
please visit the Page and while you at it, shift your mouse slowly and click on
the “like” button :).
The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as
ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we
hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We
forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when
we are ready to sacrifice ourselves ~ Eric
Hoffer
Life is a mirror.
People may not always
be nice to You when You are nice to them.
But at the end, nothing
beats that feeling of self-love and self-appreciation;
For doing the right
thing.
For loving the
"un-lovable".
Suddenly you realize
being nice wasn't about the "other"
person.
It was and will always
be about YOU.
For at the end of the
day, you only give what you have.
So if what you give is LOVE, then kudos my friend.
Definition:
a sudden,intuitiveperceptionofor insight intothe reality or essentialmeaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely,orcommonplaceoccurrenceorexperience (dictionary.com).
And what I just realised is that I am was a hoarder.
No, I don’t have a house filled with junk, quite to
the contrary for those who know me.
But I do know how to hold on to memories,
relationships and sometimes “hurtful” words in my head.
So while others “store up” junk in their homes, I store
up intangible memories, some good ones and some bad ones, in my head.
And overtime, the “storage unit” (my head) has gotten overly
cluttered.
So I knew it was time to de-clutter (separate the
good/useful from the bad).
Thus, my “pursuit of serenity” which eventually led me
to a certain message by Bishop T.D Jakes titled Let It Go.
Now why am I sharing this “publicly”?
Simple:
1)I
want someone out there to read the words in Bishop T.D Jakes message (below) and realise (just like I did) that sometimes its
best to just Let It Go.
We all have to learn how to “de-clutter” our lives,
then and only then can we make room for new and beautiful memories.
So read and reflect :):
Let It Go by Bishop T.D Jakes
There are people who can walk away
from you. And hear me when I tell you this! when people can walk away from you.
Let them walk.
I don't want you to try to talk
another person into staying with you, loving you, calling you, caring about
you, coming to see you, staying attached to you.
When people can walk away from you let them walk. Your destiny is never tied to anybody that left.
People leave you because they are not joined to you. And if they are not joined
to you, you can't make them stay. Let
them go.
And it doesn't mean that they are
bad people, it just means that their part
in the story is over.
And you've got to know when
people's part in your story is over so that you don't keep trying to raise the
dead. You've got to know when it's dead. You've got to know when it's over.
Let me tell you something. I've got the gift of good-bye. It's the tenth
spiritual gift, I believe in good-bye. It's not that I'm hateful, it's that I'm
faithful, and I know whatever God means for me to have He'll give it to me. And
if it takes too much sweat I don't need it. Stop begging people to stay. Let
them go!!
If you are holding on to something that doesn't belong to you and was never
intended for your life, then you need to...LET IT GO!!!
If you are holding on to past hurts and pains... LET IT GO!!!
If someone can't treat you right, love you back, and see your worth... LET IT
GO!!!
If someone has angered you ... LET IT GO!!!
If you are holding on to some thoughts of evil and revenge.... LET IT GO!!!
If you are involved in a wrong relationship or addiction ... LET IT GO!!!
If you are holding on to a job that no longer meets your needs or talents ..
LET IT GO!!!
If you have a bad attitude... LET IT GO!!!
If you keep judging others to make yourself feel better... LET IT GO!!!
If you're stuck in the past and God is trying to take you to a new level in
Him... LET IT GO!!!
If you are struggling with the healing of a broken relationship.... LET IT
GO!!!
If you keep trying to help someone who won't even try to help themselves.. LET
IT GO!!!
If you're feeling depressed and stressed ... LET IT GO!!!
If there is a particular situation that you are so used to handling yourself
and God is saying "take your hands off of it," then you need to...
LET IT GO!!!
Let the past be the past. Forget the former things. GOD is doing a new thing
this year!!!...just LET IT GO!!!
Self explanatory yeah.
The Journey continues :).
Footnote: In
LET IT GO, T.D. Jakes
serves as the reader’s personal tour guide through learning about and embracing
forgiveness, a word that is an ever present part of our vocabulary but not
something that we truly apply in our lives with any regularity or meaning.
It's time for me to share my usual
"weekend" post and this time I decided to share an article
written by my Cousin (Ekene Agabu).
The article focuses on things to look out for before
you get hitched (self explanatory title yeah).
Some people may not agree with his
"points" but I think they make sense and is worth reading.
So check it out:
I am at that point in life where if I am not at a
wedding, I am either coming from one or going to one. Most of my peers have
supposedly found their life partners and are ready to make it legit, in other
words, legitimize their union religiously and legally. Everything leading up to
the wedding day is usually exciting, but many at times there’s that
3a.m phone call I get 6 months after the wedding that tells me we might
be closer to the courthouse than we were to the church.
I’m sure you’ve heard phrases like, ‘He’s the one’
or ‘I’ve found my soul mate.’ Ok, if that’s true, why are you looking for
a way out from ‘the one?’ Don’t get me wrong, I believe in love and finding the
ONE, but more so, I am a bigger believer in the path that leads you to the ONE.
You’ll come to realize that as individuals, we have more control over the path
we take than the actual destination. Most times, the path has a way of
revealing what the eventual destination will be like. You must understand that
there is only one ONE,
and that ONE is YOU. Until you become the one, this
process of finding the other one may
lead to quite a number of errors, and in some cases, fatal errors.
There are 5 things you must
consider before you get to the altar or courthouse especially if you want to
make it your last trip.
Marry someone you are totally Crazy about
Being
crazy about someone is a feeling that makes your heart beat twice as hard at
the mention of this person’s name. Your heart skips a beat when they walk into
the room. There is something in you that responds to their presence. It’s a
feeling only you can understand but never articulate. It’s a feeling that
transcends any bad day or tragic event.
No matter
how horrible your day might have been, nothing gives you more comfort than
knowing that in a matter of minutes, at the end of a long and hectic day, you
will be seeing the person that brings the most joy to your heart – not because
of anything they have done, but simply because of who they are.
Go back with me if you will to grade school, say the
5th Grade; Do you remember those crushes you had? Do you remember how you felt
when the boy you secretly admired asked if he could use your pen? Do you
remember when that girl you were always drooling about said ‘Bless you’ after
you sneezed? I know, her ‘Bless you’ sounded different, right? And you went
home thinking, ‘she likes me’ not knowing she had said ‘Bless you’ to 5 other
guys that day.
I referred to the 5th grade when we must have been
about 10 or 11 before the unset of puberty (now if you were older, you’ve got
some explaining to do). There were no butts or boobies to look at. It was a
sincere attraction to who the person was and not what they had or didn’t have.
This craziness I speak of is a loving attraction that will exist between you
and this person and as silly as it may sound, should be the foundation of any
relationship you plan on getting into. Now remember, if you are not crazy about
him or her, you will eventually get attracted to someone you are crazy about even
after you are married. That wedding band around your finger only tells the
world that you are married to someone, it can’t make you love them or better
yet – it can’t make you crazy about them.
Marry someone whom you have reverential respect for
We
all know what respect means. This is deeper than that. Growing up in high
school, I respected my teachers. Now to some of you, I know that might sound
strange, but we greeted them first, addressed them politely and followed their
instructions provided it was within educational ramifications. You see, I’m not
talking about that. I respected them but I wasn’t in awe of them. I wasn’t
amazed and intrigued by who they were or what they were. I respected them
because they were older than me and probably because they had the power to
decide whether I would be class of ’92 or class of ’02. Some of us are in
relationships where we show respect because he is providing a good life for the
family or because she is the mother of your kids. But besides what they are,
there is really no reason to respect them.
This
reverential respect has nothing to do with what this person is to you or what
they do for you but more so, it’s about who they were even before you met them.
It’s the thing that intrigues you about them. It could be their character,
their vision, their personal discipline, their intelligence or their immense
contribution to society. One thing is for sure; it’s usually something about
them that you have nothing to do with but rather reminds you daily that this person
is a gift to you. It’s almost impossible to abuse or mistreat someone you are
in awe of.
In marriage,
we get to see the best and worst of each other and it’s that awe factor that
keeps us from just seeing people at the level of their mistakes or short
comings – and you’ll have to admit, we all have them.
Marry someone you are totally physically attracted to
In
my years of observation, I have come to realize that people make deals with
themselves based on what they think they can get instead of being honest with
themselves and saying, ‘I don’t think she is fine’ or ‘He just doesn’t cut it
for me.’ Dude! 50 years is a long time to be looking at a head that you think
is too big or feet that are ugly. If you’re going to lie in my bed, you better
be everything I dreamed of and if I’m going to lie in yours, I better be
everything you desired. I’ll speak as a man: Looking at a beautiful woman, is
like experiencing a 70 degree day in January. She brightens up the whole place.
She attracts and commands attention. We may look calm and collected when we are
talking with you for the first time, but trust me, we can’t hear a word you’re
saying. We are mesmerized by your beauty. I didn’t say makeup – I said beauty.
If you are a
guy and you know you love large breasts, please don’t marry someone with a B-cup and if you know you love a
woman’s rear, please marry someone with a sizable butt. If you marry someone
who is missing something you like, you’re going to hurt her. How? You ask.
If
you are not mesmerized by your wife’s physical beauty, you will find it
difficult to give her the heartfelt compliments that she truly deserves. Women
run on heartfelt compliments. You may not cheat on her but you will cheat her
and rob her of loving words that she would love to hear on a daily basis. When
a man is physically attracted to a woman, he can’t help but say it to someone.
If he’s living with her, who do you think he will be saying to? When he’s
married to a woman that he is hot for, his mouth will be a volcano for
compliments anytime he sees her. It is close to impossible to keep your hands
to yourself let alone your words around a woman you consider amazing.
Delay physical intimacy
This
is where most people mess up a good thing. Physical intimacy should be the last
stage discovered in a relationship. You must develop a mental and emotional
connection over a period of time before embarking on the physical journey. How
you build your relationship determines how you live in it. You want to make
sure that your relationship is based on commitment and not attachment. A
commitment to a person is; wanting to be with that individual void of any
external forces. An attachment is; needing to be with the individual due to
external forces. I’ll give you an example. Most of you go to work because
you are attached – you need the money and in turn that pays your bills and
helps you look like you are somebody in society. On the other hand, there are
people who hold volunteer positions and don’t get paid a dime. These individuals
are there because of a deep passion for the issue they are a part of. They are
committed. They can walk away at anytime but the love for what they do keeps
them there. They don’t need to be there, they want to be there.
Most ladies
who have slept with guys too soon often try to make the relationship work
because they do not want to lose what they have already lost, so they remain
trying to recapture something that never existed. They’ve just given
their apparent sense of self and worth to this guy and now they
feel obligated to stay no matter how bad things get because they laid the
sacrifice down too soon. Deep down, they know it was a mistake to have had sex
too soon, so to recover the loss they work really hard to try to make something
out of nothing.
When you have a baby for a guy, you become attached. You want
to have a baby for a guy who is committed to you. You don’t want to marry a guy
who is committed to his baby and attached to you. An attachment means’ I’m
stuck with you and I have to be with you’ while a commitment means ‘I want to
be with you – not just in you.’ You can never get a commitment out of an
attachment but you can always create an attachment within a commitment. Never
let your bodies get attached to each other before your hearts are committed to
each other.
Never marry someone you need – Marry someone you love
Never
marry someone who needs you. Needs are some of the most deceptive things on
earth. They are temporal and selfish. When someone needs you, you are not
the Subject, but the object to getting that need fulfilled. Once that need has
been fulfilled, you become a nuisance in that scenario. What am I talking
about? If a lady has a need to be married because all her friends are married,
she’ll get you and keep you, but once that need in her has been fulfilled, your
relevance to her begins to diminish day by day.
You see, in
relationships, we desire a true loving connection with another human being and
this cannot exist in the presence of any deception. If you are not with someone
because you sincerely love them for who they are, you are using them and once
their use over, you’ll focus elsewhere and you subconsciously become available
to extra marital company without knowing it. For a guy, all its going to take
is a lady outside to stroke his ego and for a lady it’s probably going to take
that one guy at work who gives her a heartfelt compliment that she has truly
yearned for but never received.
A lot of folks are still married
and living in the same house but all the while their hearts are looking outside
through separate windows. Marriage is not where your physical body is, it’s
where you heart is.
So if that’s the case; why not
follow your heart? You never want to find yourself in a place of wonder –
wondering what your life would have been like if you really married the person
you truly loved. You owe it to yourself and the family you’ll create to be true
to yourself when making this decision. Your kids will be blessed or scared by
it. You life will be on track or derailed by it.
You must remember that divorce is
not an issue for the Courts; it’s a matter of the heart. So before you make
that decision to marry this person, consider these five things, so that first
trip down the aisle of your heart also becomes the last one.
My friend told me
about a very cool idea she saw on Pinterest and I thought it would be
nice to share it with YOU.
Trust me, when you
are done reading this post you will be eager to start your "blissful"
journey into 2013.
Here is the tool for this wonderful
journey:
Sure you will be
wondering; that is just a jar na...*rolling your eyes*.
Don't roll them too much ko!!!!
Here is what you can do with this wonderful "tool" in the course of
your 2013 journey:
Step 1
Keep the jar or box
in an accessible place in your home or office.
Step 2
Cut out little pieces
of paper (small enough to fit into the jar or box, big enough to contain at
least a sentence, try not to write too much or you will need a book at the end
of the day).
Step 3
This is the most
important step: Write down "every" memorable event and milestone
achieved in 2013 on these little pieces of paper and drop them in the
"tool" (the jar or box), starting from the first day of 2013 to the
last day.
Note: these
memories and milestones don't have to be huge or extraordinary, every little
event counts, but they should be very dear to your heart as they will serve as
a reminder of the little blessings you have experienced in 2013.
Now after
"saving" up these little nuggets of joy, try not to be tempted to
open the jar or box before the end of the year.
On the 31st of
December, 2013, make out time to open your "jar" or "box",
relish pulling out and reading what you have written on these little pieces of
paper.
Trust me, you will be
surprised.
You will
either realize that you were probably too quick to complain about
life while forgetting these blessings.
Or
It may just dawn on
you that the mere fact that you made it to the end of 2013 and have two hands
to open that jar or box, is a HUGE blessing in itself.
