I caught myself in a lie earlier today.

I was speaking the lie with so much passion that the only reason I realized it was a lie was the disassembling that followed it.

I realized halfway through the explanation around the lie that I was, in fact, lying.

I have a group of friends that I really enjoy hanging with. People who reflect who I want to be in my heart of hearts.  This group of friends are all entrepreneurs. It is, however, apparent whenever we hang out that I am in LAST place. Not that these friends would ever rank who is where, but it is pretty clear (to me) that I am not taking as many risks, and as a result, not experiencing as many entrepreneurial successes.

In fact, I’ve been having the conversation, with many friends that the last 3 years have been a kind of holding pattern for me – entrepreneurially. I haven’t swung for the fences or been willing to adjust to a market that has changed from what I was used to. I haven’t been willing to step outside of my comfort zone.

I’ve distracted myself from the lack of movement by working harder. I started a second job. I picked up crazy hours and exhausted myself, which both made me feel like I was making progress, and prevented me from having enough time to think critically about where I was.

I picked up goals that would only require me to work harder, and not be creative.

It only took me a year to figure out what was wrong.

It didn’t click for me until a friend of mine, mentioned that she was trying to get a family member back on track and that she only had a couple rules. There were a couple rules that she set for them. One was that this family member couldn’t sit at the house all day. The rule that stood out for me was that this family member couldn’t have/invite any friends who were not doing better than them. Her exact quote was that “They have to be at the very bottom of their social scene – everyone they  know needs to be doing better”

As soon as I heard it, I knew that it was a powerful rule and I immediately wanted to ask myself where I was in my social circles.

Today, while hanging with my entrepreneur friends I immediately realized that I was at the bottom of this particular group. And that I was defending my excuses as to why I hadn’t progressed. I realized that I needed to let go of my pride and get clear about where I am.

I also need to use the resources I have to conquer the fears and old habits that have been holding me back. Release my ego and ask for help if necessary and move forward.

Having people around you who inspire you is a piece of advice that we often overlook, because looking for friends who are doing significantly better than you can be an ego-bruiser.

I pray that I don’t slip into using work as an excuse but continue to grow and move towards a life that is more fulfilling.

 

Fly or Fall

 

I’m not certain how to start this post.

Nor am I certain, where I want this post to end up.

Let’s throw some paint on the walls.

This morning I got the opportunity to speak to one of my cousin’s. Now, my cousin’s are as close as I get to having older brothers. I grew up with them, and they remember me before I remember myself.

Our conversation was supposed to center around something I’ve been thinking about lately – Adventure. Adventure is something that’s been whispering to me around corners. Waving at me from the periphery of my vision. Prank calling my heart then hanging up when I take too long to turn towards the phone.

As we were leading up to the pre-specified topic of the conversation, We got waylaid by a foundational issue that I think has to preface any discussion of being able to chase adventure.

“For us, African’s, you know we listen to our parents until someone falls into the grave” – A friend.

This quote from a friend rang true to me the first time I heard it. I’m a first generation naturalized American Citizen. I was born in Jos, Nigeria and moved to America when I was one. I’ve  only spoken English for most of my life. And yet, my worldview in many respects is rooted in Nigeria. Respect for elders was preached right along with the fact that God was watching. However, this respect for elders/parents culture can have some negative effects.

The culture that kids should be “seen and not heard” can lead to (in my experience) a tendency that these kids grow up to believe that their  voice (internal) isn’t important/valid/right.

This may not have been terrible in times where things didn’t change quickly. Innovation isn’t important when going to the factory and getting a job will ensure that you’re able to raise a family and take care of your responsibilities. This invalidation of children’s –>adults internal dialogue/voice is dangerous when we inhabit a world that is changing quickly.

Some Parents, for all their good intentions, are not built for the future. Their job, in many cases is to become stable launch pads to vault their children into the future.

My generation found this out when we listened wholeheartedly to the advice that “College is the only way to a stable future” and found that the job market isn’t as enamored of college degrees as our parents were. Some of us discovered this when we watched our parents, who espoused the stability of real estate, get dragged down by bloated mortgages and houses that were multiples bigger than what they really needed. I’m sure we’ll see more as more of our parents approach retirement with very little in savings.

Fortunately or unfortunately, growing up often means internalizing the voice of your parents. This can be a great thing when you’re young and may have more testosterone than common sense. This can be a terrible thing when you’re older and have a well-thought out framework that is being short-circuited by old programming given to you by your ultra-conservative christian fundamentalist dad, or racist uncle, or conspiracy theorist mother.

The programming doesn’t have to be super-crazy or extremist. It can be as subtle as “you’re not quite as special as your siblings” or “You’re the middle child, you always have to be peacemaker” or “Your job as oldest is to be responsible for all your other siblings”, or “in our family, we don’t take big risks” or “Just do enough to not get noticed, you don’t do well under pressure”, “you should suppress parts of yourself (culture, sexuality, beliefs) in order make your life more comfortable.

And I’m not saying that you have to throw out everything that your parents ever told you. I’m just saying our parents are there to be our training wheels for the real world. You should examine all parts of the training wheels, keep the spokes that make sense (integrity, faith systems, etc) and throw out the prejudices, fears, and accumulated experiences that don’t match up with reality anymore.

Trust yourself. fly or fall.

OFO

---

 

Hello.

You ever feel like your on a merry-go-around and you keep passing a particular face in the crowd over and over?

And the person you keep passing is yourself?

Maybe your best self? The self that you imagine you can  be? I’m hoping on every revolution that I’m getting closer and closer to him.

But, sometimes I’m not certain.

Anyway, what’s the post about?

Just came out of my shell to write another reminder to myself to  make sure that I’m focusing on the right things. I’m struggling to come up for air from another work bender due to some issues with the car that make me think that it’s on its last legs.

As a result, I flew into a tizzy ..working all the hours available this side of the mason-Dixon.

Somewhere right in the midst of reaching my savings goal (so I wouldn’t have to take out a car loan)-  I started to sense that I was off track.

That somehow, someway, I had missed the mark once again.

One day, while toiling away, making steady progress toward my GOAL, I had a thought float to the surface of my brain. “What happens when you reach this goal Okenna?”

I paused. Thought on my feet and answered quickly, “well, duh, I’ll have reached the goal! Then I’ll be …happier, less stressed, more peaceful..right?”

I looked behind me at all the conquered goals and achievements and  milestones and realized that my life has been a hamster wheel of achievement and centered around the pursuit of “excellence”. And that more success had not exactly led to contentment. More money has not always led to a sense of security.

My next question was directed at God. “Ok, God, I get it. If this next purchase/achievement isn’t going to lead to eternal happiness, what should I be putting my energy toward?”

The answer was simple and somewhat surprising.

“It’s people, stupid.”

Ok, to be clear, God didn’t call me an idiot. Although, if He did, He wouldn’t have been wrong. Upon reflection, it was very interesting to me that I could have missed the plot for soo long.

I’ve ruminated before how our society makes it easy for us to focus on the trappings  of success and the process of hard work as our “raison d’etre”. Our society rewards a  puritan work ethic and claps for the people who accumulate wealth, no matter what the sacrifices that they’ve had to make. For the first 3 decades of my life, and actually even right this second, work ethic has been a constant that has helped me to overcome tough (immigrant) beginnings, bad decisions (Oh lord, my 20’s), and helped me to build a life that I can be proud of.

More and more I’m realizing that the template set up for me to follow will not lead to long-term happiness. What’s difficult is formulating a template that will work for me.. It’s always more difficult creating something vs. copying, but usually more rewarding.

Fly or Fall.

OFO

So this is going to be more a brain dump than a legitimate blog post.

I’ve been spinning in circles for the last couple weeks. In true overthinker fashion, I’ve been struggling with the question of working hard and balance. I was kicking this idea around with my accountability partner/good friend over a 5am phone call and we had a watershed moment.

Midway through the conversation we stumbled across a couple thoughts that (for good  or for bad) will be guiding light when this question comes up again in the future. Which, knowing myself, will likely happen.

The last couple weeks, as I’ve noted, I’ve been working like I was trying to pay off all my student loans in a month. This has meant 17-18 hour days. 5am calls with accountability partners. Working 3 weekends out of the month. (#Humblebragging) Basically being at work every time I opened my eyes. I thought I was being disciplined. I wanted certain things at a certain time and, by golly, I was going to make sure that I did everything I could to make sure that these goals got accomplished.

I would struggle with myself whenever I would feel tired or want to sleep in. Reminding myself that Hard Work is what successful people did. That applying myself now would lead to greater rewards in the future. I would wake up bleary-eyed. My eyes would sometimes lose focus and I would find myself making mistakes that I wouldn’t normally. I was burning the candle from both ends.

Using up all the midnight oil. Buckling down. Busy as a cat on a hot tin roof.

Going the extra mile….(ok, I think I’m done)

During this conversation, I finally asked myself “why”?

“Why was I working so hard? Assuming certain things to be true about my faith:

• God cares about me.
• God can & will provide
• God has & will be with me throughout my life

Why was I working my fingers to the bone (found another metaphor for hard work!) when God hadn’t needed my help to accomplish the things that I am most proud of?

The truth was I didn’t trust God.

I didn’t trust God to provide what I thought I needed (when I thought I would need it)

I didn’t trust God.

Isn’t that something? After all this time. All the moments where I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt that God had my back, that He had come through in the clutch..and I didn’t trust Him for a couple small things that weren’t happening on my timeline.

In the words of Kanye West, “Man, people are funny”…Ok, I don’t think it was Kanye West who came up with that.

Couple verses that came to my attention today, courtesy of a accompanying series that Rick Warren is doing about creating a life of margin.

“It is vain for you to rise up early, tor retire late. To eat the bread of painful labors; for He gives to His beloved even in his sleep.” – Proverbs 127:2

“Better a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil.” – Proverbs 15:16

..

You know why I struggle with this balance?

Because for me this is really a battle between my need for control and admitting that I have none. The answer “Trust God” is very unsatisfying to my analytical, Type-A, Google-calendar checking personality.

And yet..it’s oddly comforting and Free-ing.

God has told me at certain times in my life that I need to “turn up” professionally. Work 2 jobs, wake up early, and go to bed late. And He’s always provided the strength for those times. As well as the job’s or business opportunities.

I guess I just need to let go of my need to control and KNOW and just trust Him to direct me when the time is right.

..Here’s to letting go of control (and trying to let it stay let go of)

Fly or Fall.

OFO

 

So.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a cousin of mine who read a blog post. She noted that she had read a recent post, then scrolled to a random post a couple years back and noticed that the content had been pretty similar.

I was struggling with the same thing I had been struggling with.

I had come to the same conclusions that I had realized back then.

And finally,

had written a blog post that summarized my learning and memorialized my wisdom from the whole experience.

Unfortunately. I must have forgotten it. (smh), because years later, here I was – re-learning, re-conquering, and re-writing about it.

I wonder if anyone else has similar struggles? Anyway, I was reading my new favorite blog post (and perhaps blogger) of now-time: (http://www.joshuakennon.com/one-of-the-most-important-lessons-about-life-and-making-money-you-can-ever-learn/)  and re-realized a lesson that I often forget.

Money is a tool. A mile-marker. An accessory to helping you live a good life. Trading your life for money is nonsensical.

So why do I forget this? How do I forget this? How can I make sure that I remember it?

First..How do I forget it?

Tunnel Vision. This year I read an amazing book by Gary Keller called “The One Thing”. This book’s main premise was that we needed to think deeply about the myriad goals we have in life, business, and personally. We should take stock of all the different goals we have and think very carefully before focusing on one priority.

It’s a great book. A great idea.

Couple that thought with my newfound infatuation with the teaching’s of one Gary Vaynerchuk. He is a disciple of the work-hard philosophy. It’s one that I am also an apostle of; but recently he made me ask myself, if I could work harder?

And the question that has haunted me for the last couple of weeks has been: What would your life look like if you had decided to work hard earlier  in my life?

“What if instead of goofing off in the 9th grade I would have worked hard? Would I have went to Harvard? What if in College I had really applied myself? What if I had conquered my fears and bought a investment property to live in during school in Macon? If I had worked harder academically would I have gotten into medical school? Would I be an anesthesiologist now? What if I had double majored in college or pharmacy school and gotten an MBA? What if I discovered my love of business earlier? What if I explored the limits of my capacity earlier? What if I started blogging earlier?”

Do you see how this question can lead to a rabbit hole of regret?

How it can lead you almost unbidden to a (possibly mistaken) belief that if I just work  a LITTLE harder right now, I can be in a better place later on?

On the other side of that temptation to work nauseatingly hard is the thought that I should enjoy the moment. That I could die at any moment. That 20 years down the road isn’t promised to me. That the only guarantee that I have is the present moment.

I think I just have to remind myself that (1) God is good (2) I’m ok. Just as I am. with just the amount of work that I decided to put in.

Work hard. Enjoy Today.

For me, this is often easier said than done.

Fly or fall.

OFO

 

What does America dream of?

What does it mean to be American?

As a nation, where are we going? How do we plan to get there?

…

As a matter of habit, I try to stay away from addressing controversial topics via online social media because, let’s face it,social media is a terrible forum for any substantive conversation. The anonymity of the internet, coupled with the lack of nonverbal communication allows for ample opportunity for miscommunication and downright nastiness to emerge. The times I did try to engage in political/racial/intellectual conversations online usually ended after a couple hours with my blood pressure in the red zone, having written 20 pages worth of comments to someone who is typing in ALL CAPS, and my evening and possibly (depending on how many clever things I should have said come to me afterwards) next morning ruined. My time is usually much better spent watching re-runs of The Love Boat. 

I’ve tried to find ways to think about the problem of race in America. And being honest, it’s a thorny issue. Emotionally charged. Confusing. Exhausting. Manifestation and consequences of race in America permeate everything from our television to political  gerrymandering.  Books have been written by better thinkers, writers, and human beings than I. Even so, I still wrestle with it, in order to try to figure out why, in 2016, being non-white, often feels like 2nd class citizenship.

During the events of the previous week, someone on social media asked the question why?

Why were these things happening? What caused the sniper in Dallas? What is the root cause of the protests? How did we get here?

I don’t know if I have the same questions. I feel like I have a grasp on the why’s and what’s. (Feelings, of course, can be deceiving). I think anyone who has looked (critically) at the history of America should have a loose idea of the issues that haven’t been addressed and why that might cause some frustration.

But.. There is something that I am having a hard time wrapping my head around. Something I’m still struggling to figure out. And it’s not the problem of racism in America. As I conceptualize the “race in America” problem. I don’t think it’s an insurmountable one. Or even a problem that would take superhuman levels to start to address.

I actually see, in America’s reaction to the problem, a bigger issue.

What I am frustrated with our Nation’s complacency in the face of real issues. And to be fair with America, it’s not an isolated issue. America finds itself unable to move on a variety of issues – for the same reason that it finds itself unable to address systemic racism. [Although, I think  Andy Stanley  did a masterful job of starting the conversation]

In areas of social justice, and other policy issues America seems to be addicted to comfort.

This “addiction to comfort”is a evidenced in the reaction of Americans to the tough issues of our time. I see this addiction in our half-hearted condolences in the families of gun violence, in our unwillingness to come up with substantive plans to tackle global warming (Candidates positions on Global Warming), dragging our feet on addressing social net programs, being willing to be distracted from real issues in order to feed our outrage addiction..because anger makes us feel like we’re doing something, although the world changes not one whit because of how we feel.

It seems as if we’ve (collectively) lost the ability to look past the present, see a distant/future good, and sacrifice in the moment in order to attain these things.

How does this crack-comfort manifest itself?

You see this evidenced in the decline of the American personal savings rate. In the intractability of Congress, our willingness to be distracted by news about transgender bathrooms as we try to bomb our way out of a leadership vacuum in the middle east.

A personal anecdote: During the hubbub around the police-related shootings and the dallas sniper I got the opportunity to talk to a older caucasian lady at my local drug store. Somehow, as it happens when two people meet and know they will see each other again, we stumbled into  the topic of all that was happening in the country. We both bemoaned the negative incidents we were seeing in the country, and then before we could really start talking about specific problems and perhaps what was behind the outpouring of anger from the African-American community, this lady mentioned that she just couldn’t wait for “Jesus to come back and take us all away”.

I didn’t know how to respond, other than with an affirmative nod and forlorn shrug.

Now, I hesitate to assign my interpretation to this woman’s comments but I felt like she was missing the boat. Not just because I don’t think Jesus is going to return in order (and in time) to save us from all of our messes, but because I think this hands off approach seems to be a spiritual version of the esprit of the times.

I think, Jesus being an example we all strive for, that instead of waiting for someone to come along with the answers (ala Donald Trump) we must instead become our own answers. Seek to understand the problems we’re facing, and strive to come up with solutions that might work. Some of them may fail. But, when we adopt an attitude that refuses to even glance in the direction of the problem and hoping that something will come along and distract us from the issues that we are facing is a recipe for disaster.

This attitude, in my mind, is what frustrates many about the discourse around hard topics. 100 people killed by a nut with an assault weapon? “Oh gosh. That’s unfortunate,  I hate that (shrug).” Black people being killed?  “Man that’s rough, try to be nice to be the police”.  The education system failing? “Wish we could do something about it”. Global warming might wreck the environment for our children. “Is Global warming even a thing?”

This general, uneasy, shuffling of feet that doesn’t lead to solutions frustrates me to no end. There are solutions. As human beings finding these tough solutions is what has allowed us to make it past the caves of Africa to 2016.

Let’s get on it Humans.

P.s. My feelings as I was writing this were a moving target. My frustration with the lack of effort put toward finding solutions or even acknowledging problems continues to remain consistent but after many conversations, I find the shades of grey and different viewpoints make it tough adequately think about this post in its entirety ..But I did want to get my initial thoughts down.