Leadership Lessons from Martin Luther King Jr. By @Lanre_Olagunju

Last Monday, the world again celebrated the Martin Luther king Jr. Day which is habitually celebrated every third Monday of January. As an eloquent preacher, Dr. King was the orator and leader of the non-aggressive civil rights movement of the 1960s. His I have a Dream speech has remained a phenomenal point of reference for leaders all over the world. Let’s draw some lessons from his speech and outstanding leadership approach.

Lesson #1 Great leaders don’t keep quiet on issues that matter.

When we keep quiet on important national or personal issues, we give permission to the oppressor. We deny ourselves the opportunity for freedom. Martin Luther King said “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” During the course of the week, a couple of social media giants in the country decided to raise the issue of dying one-thousand-five-hundred children of Bagega in Nigeria’s Zamfara State. Within a short time, the awareness went viral on social media.

These kids have been afflicted by Lead poison, and their life is in danger. Restoration and remediation of the environment has been unnecessarily delayed by the government. Speaking up for these kids brought the issue to the desk and minds of the government officials concerned.  People were made to see the reality of losing these young ones if the prevailing deafening silence wasn’t crushed.

Lesson #2 Leaders know how to communicate their vision to the mind and heart of their followers.

Leadership in the real sense goes beyond just having a plan and knowing how to execute it.  The work of a true leader lies in his ability to have a vision, share the vision, lay the path to achieve the vision, and then inspire others to follow the vision while he takes the lead role.  Martin Luther King knows how to engage the heart of his followers. He does that by harnessing the use of stories and metaphor.

Lesson #3 Brave enough to reject the status quo and not be indifferent about it.

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference, says Elie Wiesel. Refusing to be indifferent is a defining characteristic of great leaders. They are not passive people. They are reactive and sometimes proactive, depending on the circumstance. They always take a stand and they ventilate it openly without fear. “But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.” were the brave words of Martin Luther King.

Lesson #4 Fight your course on the high plane of dignity and discipline.

Good leaders know how to struggle out their course within the boundary of dignity, ethics and morality.. And this is one area where I so much respect Martin Luther King. It’s quite difficult to imagine how to lead so much people in a struggle against injustice and segregation and yet eschew violence “But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must ever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.” Martin Luther King said.

Lesson #5 Use picture words to articulate the desired end.

Another quality lesson from MLK is that he harnessed the power of what I call picture words. Words that make followers see beyond today’s struggle but the benefit of the struggle, and how posterity will be pleased with their actions. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!”

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Five Simple Steps To Becoming More Intelligent By Jesse Ford

The brain is an amazing organ; the coordination centre of sensation and intellect. There used to be a misconception about our brains, our intelligence, and our IQ. We used to think that we were bound to live with the intelligence level we had at any given time. New research has shown that we can become more intelligent, smarter, and increase our IQ levels by taking some specific yet simple actions. These are the actions to take to become smarter and more intelligent:

Action #1: Reshaping The Brain

Lets start with our brains. Our brains have elasticity and plasticity. Over the course of your life, your brain has the ability to reshape connections when faced with new experiences. At any age, the brain can grow new neurons and the more mental stimulation you get, the more brain function is improved. By brain training exercises and games you can improve your attention, problem solving skills, memory, and processing speed.

Action #2: Learn a Foreign Language or Two
New research suggests that learning a foreign language gives you a mental boost. It also protects you from age related mental decline and lowers the risk of developing problems of memory loss or mental decline. Those who speak several languages have a reduced risk of developing cognitive problems. Learning a foreign language provides the brain with a mental workout that fine tunes the brain and makes your brain more powerful.
Nowadays you can learn a foreign language in the comfort of your own surroundings and just by devoting about 20 minutes a day over a period, you can learn to speak a foreign language. Learning new languages contribute to make you “smarter”. Let’s face it, it makes you appear to be more sophisticated as well.

Action #3: Do Mind Mapping
Mind mapping is a visual thinking tool that helps you get information out, generate ideas, and analyze information. Mind mapping jogs your creativity and helps you think in a more lateral way. It helps with cognition and maximises the power of the brain. When you need to think and generate information which is something that we do very often, mind maps help you to make the most of it and really use the power of your brain. At work and at home, you can use mind mapping for your thinking and analysis of information.

Action #4: Diet and Exercise
There are certain types of foods that help to boost your brain power like blueberries, oily fish, whole grain foods, tomatoes, leafy green vegetables, brown rice, and broccoli. Talk to your doctor about your diet and about exercise so that you can get a diet and exercise plan that is scientific and really works for you.

Action #5: Increase Knowledge

Your brain has the ability to do more and you can stimulate the brain through brain training, brain games, and learning foreign languages. In addition to improving cognitive ability, you should also increase your knowledge while stimulating the brain. Read books and explore new areas of study. It helps to keep your brain sharp and makes you more knowledgeable while doing so.

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It’s Sex Time by Yinka Akoleowo

Yinka shares some values I endorse about sex, hear her personal perspective to sex and marriage. Kindly do well to drop your comments too, whether you agree with her or not. Enjoy!

Right from childhood, I’ve always carried the knowing that I am unique, and that I need no one to affirm it. My thinking has always been far above average even among my peers. I seem to always have an idea about many things, if not the full picture, at least far more than half of it. Early enough, I told myself “no to premarital sex” as soon as my mum told me I was capable of bringing forth a child. Mum explained that “Having a family is no child’s play; no matter how old or prepared you are, there is always an element of surprise at each turn”.

Up until now, premarital sex didn’t use to be a celebrated thing in many Nigerian cultures, not among teenagers! As a teenager, I didn’t want to make community headlines, dragging my family name into the mud, by being the next teenage mother. So I made up my mind to do the right thing.  This is what I told myself; the only man that will know how good, bad or ugly I am in bed will be the man that has taken me to the altar.

Not that I will run off with any man I see, but he must be approved by my parent, my parent necessarily don’t have to choose for me but he must be the man I love, and above all, he must love Christ, ‘cos I believe that a man who loves Christ can’t be struggling to love his wife, he should know how to love her right, give her the respect she deserves and help her in every way he can without being a tyrant. Simply because amidst so much love, respect, honour & humility is abides.

When a woman loves, it’s with all her heart. Nothing is left.

My stands on premarital sex and marriage might sound like a childhood fantasy, but believe me, it has helped me bottle up well. Not one of the above lines can be skipped; it must be truly followed to get the expected result. It is true that we live in a world where everything wrong now seems right, essentially because we erroneously choose to believe that everyone is doing it. Please snap out of it! Yeah it might seem as if everyone is losing their ability to discern from what is actually good or bad, yet, it’s important to note that it’s only in mathematics that negative * negative = positive. Our society might be losing its didactic values but we must pause in a while and then whisper some sensible truth to ourselves! Many things in life are worth waiting for, and to every single/unmarried person reading this; sex is part of it. How do you feel after doing it? So many adults are now in abusive relationship because they put the last thing first. Premarital sex can be likened to a man who wants to build a house & the first thing he buys is the paint far before getting the land. Even if you are doing it or you’re struggling with it, it’s never too late to put things right. Believe me no one says it’s going to be easy, but it’s worth the effort.

Our parents are the angels sent to guide us; they have lived long enough to know where the tree a child is cutting will fall. Never despise their warnings or frown at their rebukes because that which they see while laying you probably won’t see even when you climb the top of the tallest mountain.

The role of God cannot be over emphasized, always put God first in all you do then you will be great in life. Marriage is a sacred thing, where you do it with God’s blessing then you have the license to have sex in its full package. Old habits die hard but with God all things are possible including abstinence.

Yinka Akoleowo

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How to Procrastinate Positively In 2013 by Lanre Olagunju

Killing time is not killing, it’s suicide—Myles Munroe.

One way or the other, procrastination must have waddled its way into your goals for 2012, constituting an hindrance to some of the unachieved goals. We all are unavoidably preys to procrastination, essentially because we live in a world governed by the principle of space-time, in which anything that must happen will have to take time. Yeah time is an asset, a very vital resource at that, which is vastly needed in converting dreams into reality. But in another sense, time is also a restriction to man, essentially because we as humans can only do much within a specific time frame and then defer and hope to do other things much later. Can you now see why I said we all are preys to procrastination?

Just like there are two sides to a story and also two sides to a coin. There are basically two sides to procrastination. Many writers and self-improvement consultants who write and talk about procrastination only talk about how bad it is, how it kills opportunities and ideas and why one must be cured of it. Nevertheless, I wonder if any of these motivational experts have been able to come up with a cure for procrastination.

I vehemently disagree that procrastination has nothing good about it, specifically because many of the impressive and ambitious achievers procrastinate intelligently by choosing to give priority to the most important task. On the other hand, non-effective people are chronic procrastinators who neglect or defer important tasks as a result of laziness and lack of focus. Yet, it would be stupid to argue that of all the many ways to avoid personal success, the most sure-fire way isn’t procrastination. I’ve discovered that lazy procrastinators who squander time are awkwardly optimistic people who think they would still perfect a task by delaying it commencement to the tip end of the deadline. Therefore, they make unrealistic statements like "I’m more creative and productive under pressure." Or “I'll do it tomorrow when I’ll certainly be in the mood”

 When we procrastinate, it’s not really because we actually lack the ability to estimate time. So it’s not actually a problem of time management like many think. I like the way Dr. Joseph Ferrari, a world leading expert on procrastination, who is an associate professor of psychology at De Paul University in Chicago puts it when he explained that "Telling someone who procrastinates to buy a weekly planner is like telling someone with chronic depression to cheer up," That’s actually not the case. One of the reasons why many indulge in procrastination is that they lack the ability to overcome the inertia to get to work. And from my personal experience as a writer who has to churn out at least two articles every week, I’ve realized that the bigger the task, the harder it is to get yourself to work. But once you overcome that resistance, it becomes a lot easier to follow it through. 

Another reason why people procrastinate when there is a big project at hand is fear of failure or do I call it fear of wasting time in case the project fails. They erroneously think that would automatically amount to waste of time spent. Like one of my brilliant teachers would say, “failing after trying your hands on a mathematical problem would have shown you ways of how not to solve that problem”. And in fact, working on big projects always leads to somewhere, whether the desired result is achieved or not.

One more form of procrastination which is quite deadly is the one some experts refer to as “unacknowledged-procrastination”. They call it unacknowledged because you might not realize that you’re deferring major task basically because you’re getting other things done, most times things that aren’t necessarily related to your major task. There are times when I need to write an article and I lazily spend so much time surfing the internet all in the name of research. At other times, I find myself replying emails or returning text messages. Or you just find the need to clean up the house, visit a friend or take the dog on a walk, so you can avoid doing the main thing. 

I ask myself this question and most times it helps “What's the best thing you could be working on at the moment, and why aren't you? This should be the most vital question any ambitious person should be asking in 2013. And the amazing thing is that once you ask yourself this question and you follow the sincere answer that presents itself in your head, you will not need to bother about procrastination anymore.

As I close, there’s a positive side to one’s ability to intelligently defer some tasks. For Instance, when you get inspiration or ideas on a particular project and you know that it’d pay off to set other important things aside, it’s wise that you give attention to this fresh idea which would in-turn, eventually increase your net productivity.

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Of New Year Goals and Resolutions by @Lanre_Olagunju

I want to specially congratulate all my ardent followers and readers for making it into the New Year. You honestly should find some time to expressly ventilate an heartfelt thank-you to your guardian angel for a job well done. Most essentially when you consider that as a nation, 2012 was such a long year with several collections of disasters, gruesome killings and drama.

You might not necessarily be at a vantage point to dictate all the happenings of 2013, but to a great extent, you personally can still tell 2013 that which you want it to do and the role it should play in this chapter of the unconscious biography of yourself that you’re writing. Moreover, 2013 is still a very obedient child.

It’s actually a lot safer to pilot one’s life with clearly written goals than to depend on any autopilot of any sort. It becomes easier to persevere, remain focus and be persistent when goals are set and clearly written. Nothing boosts the self-confidence of a person striving to achieve a dream than the clearly written goals which clearly shows the end from the beginning. Goals help in mapping out sharp and intelligent problem solving strategies. Research conducted by sport psychologist reveals that world’s best athletes have concise and simple daily targets. They brilliantly understand how their daily targets connect with their long term goals.

I suggest that instead of a resolution which majorly focuses on things you actually struggled with in previous years, in 2013, do goals. Without any iota of doubt, you’d agree that many resolutions don’t live beyond the few days of the first month. And the adverse effect of this is that it makes you look incapacitated too early in the year, losing your self-confidence and self-esteem over your inability to stay true to them.

So why focus on what you don’t want to do when life has given you a plane slate where you can essentially write the things you want to see yourself do and achieve. In fact, research says that only 8 percent of those who actually make New Year resolutions truly keep them. I like the way the author of The Word For Today daily devotional puts it. “The key to breaking stubborn habits is not fighting them in your own strength. That only keeps your focus on the problem, intensifying its power. Changing your focus and submitting to God moment by moment is the key to winning, whether it’s a problem or a hang-up’”

It’s not just okay to come up with goals for the entire year in your head. As a matter of fact, it’s as good as a waste of time, definitely because they won’t live beyond the first few weeks of the year at best. When goals are written, they become so real, easy to interpret and easy to follow through. The case study of the three percent Harvard alumni who wrote down their goals at graduation, and thereafter thirty years, made more money than the 97 percent who did not; divulges that successful people write down their goals. No wonder the bible said “Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that reads it.”

It’s also important that you remain flexible as you go despite your goals. This is important because things do not always go according to plan, circumstances beyond your control might crop up, giving way to the unexpected. At such times, flexibility will help in re-adjusting your goals to suit into the unforeseen situation. In the same light, life would throw opportunities you never planned at you, by being flexible, you’d be able to respond and make the best use of them.

Do have my best wishes in 2013!

I am @Lanre_Olagunju

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