Agency as I’ve established in my last two pieces is the belief that the direction of your life is meaningfully shaped by your choices and decisions, rather than dictated entirely by fate or circumstance.

For the purpose of this article, I think about depression in two broad ways:

1. Circumstantial depression: Depression caused by a circumstance or current state of being, it includes situations like: poverty, being overweight, some sicknesses, low self-esteem etc. These are circumstances that, to varying degrees, can be influenced or changed, and in which, you can tie the cause (circumstance) to effect (depression)

2. Psychological depression: This is a more mental than physical or circumstantial type of depression. It’s a state where for the most part, the effect can’t be tied to any cause, but the effect exists nonetheless.

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When faced with circumstances, we have the options of either accepting them as fate or seeing them as challenges to overcome, now this is much easier said than done, and there are countless fine lines and contexts to consider. But ultimately, there is nothing you are currently facing that cannot be overcome by you. Whatever it is that saddens you, it most cartainly isn’t peculiar to you, and that someone has overcome in the past, is a gateway for you to do just the same. Poverty, weight problems, healing, grief, low self-esteem… a lot of the circumstances that contribute to our suffering are changeable, and therefore suffering does not necessarily have to be accepted as permanent.

I have seen many men fall, but I have never seen any man rise who did not first decide to get up.

Get up!

Now, choice is not only exercised through our actions. It is also exercised through the things we choose to dwell upon.

A principal idea of meditation is an expansion of whatever thought(s) that is being meditated on, and this is where gratitude comes in, Gratitude steers the mind away from problems to focus more on the positives in life. I’ve been thrown into disarray many times by different seasons or problems of life, and nearly everytime, I find that there is almost nothing as effective for me such as gratitude is.

I once came across a video on the internet that said, if we look well enough, for every thing that makes us sad, there’s at least 3 other things to be happy about.

I couldn’t agree more!

Gratitude isn’t denying the negatives, it is magnifying the positives. We don’t go pondering on our many sad circumstances and end up downcast, we choose rather, to not deny, but still refuse to let them occupy the entirety of our attention.

There will always be something wrong, something missing, something we wish were different; but, there will also always be something worth appreciating, something worth pursuing, and something within our reach that can be made better.

We have to understand that both can be true.

And perhaps this is another form of agency. It is not optimism. It is not denial. It is the sheer refusal to surrender the mind to circumstance.

Your circumstances may describe your current reality, but they do not write your final chapter and agency begins the exact moment you decide that your choices carry more weight than your conditions.

Look at what is wrong. Then look again at what is right.

And then, get up.

People often respond to difficult advice with stories about those who succeeded despite ignoring it. I have spoken to a fair number of smokers in my life, and in our many arguments against the dangers of smoking, I'm almost always told about someone's grandfather who smoked every day into his nineties, or someone who lived a perfectly healthy life and still died young.

Resisting the urge to expatiate on why it’s unwise to base your life on outlier outcomes and survivorship bias; I will mention that, while the future is uncertain, the decision to “play it safe” is not an assurance of the desired outcome, but it at least reduces the odds of the undesired outcome. No lifestyle can assure longevity, but longevity practices greatly improve the odds of you achieving it.

The goal isn’t to ensure an outcome, the goal is to stack the odds in your favor. And this principle applies far beyond physical health

Here are a few facts:

• The divorce rate in America sits at approximately 2.4 divorces per 1,000 people, or roughly 40 to 45% of all marriages.

• Dr. John Gottman’s study shows that couples who dedicate just 6 hours a week to specific relationship habits (like stress-reducing conversations at night, weekly dates etc) see a massive spike in relationship stability.

• Research indicates that only about 8% to 14% of people successfully achieve the goals they set for themselves.

• A study by Dr. Gail Matthews at Dominican University found that people who actively write down their goals and formulate action steps are 42% more likely to achieve them than those who merely think about them.

Different fields arrive at the same conclusion. Whether it’s marriage, health, or achievement, intentional habits consistently outperform hope.

In my older article, I defined agency as: the ability to influence — or the sense of control over — the outcome of one’s life irrespective of the circumstances that surround said life.

I go further:

Agency is the deliberate practice of stacking life's probabilities in your favor, to believe that predictions are primarily a function of choice, and not a deduction from statistics.

Active intentionality in habits greatly reduce the likelihood of an undesirable outcome, and this is the heartbeat of agency; the ability to exercise control over the uncertain factors of your life, by narrowing the scope of your predictions to maximize certainty.

Agency is the refusal of probability becoming prophecy; it is the decision to bend luck through deliberate choice, rather than surrender to statistics or chance.

_{Artem Biryukov - Art Station}

Allow me to share with you the story of a killer rat

A farmer had a rat problem on his farm to which he tried many solutions but all to no avail, so he devised a plan. He captured a couple of the rats, and put them in a pit with walls so smooth that they couldn’t climb out. He also put a lot of food in the pit, and then... waited.

Over time, the rats exhausted the food supply and, unable to escape, the inevitable happened; they began to kill each other for food, until there was only one rat left standing. The farmer then brought out this rat from the pit and released him into the open, knowing fully well he had now developed an affinity for killing his own kind.

I came across this story on a reel recently, and it was used as a metaphorical allegory to describe how the ruling class turn the ruled class on one other, while they enjoy the benefit of our enmity, and on one hand I thought “why didn’t he just get a cat?” but for the sake of philosophizing, let us proceed.

After reading that story there was a thought I couldn’t shake off. Did that rat kill other rats, or was he a killer rat?

I put myself in the rat’s shoes, and after a long contemplation, I came to conclusion — Now, I hope I never find myself in such a situation but should I — I would come out of that situation with a mental mantra. “I killed other people, I am not a killer”, and if I was ever put in a metaphorical farm with other human pests, I would go right back to life as normal or should the trauma be intense, I would recline in seclusion, but I most definitely will not develop, or feed a taste for shedding needless blood. keyword “needless” as the prior situation was indeed necessary.

Action speaks louder than Words
The proverb above connotes that a person’s true intentions are to be judged by their deeds, and not what they say, it emphasizes that actions hold more weight in defining character than words.

I agree with this but I believe the scope is underrated; I’m saying that, the full weight of a persons character is defined by their belief system, over their words, and over their actions

Faith, belief, and the reality of who we perceive ourselves to be
As a christian, this ideology of belief over action cannot possibly hit closer to home, as it is the very bedrock of my existential reality. That I, a sinner, not worthy of the father, will be reconciled to him, because I choose to believe in the person of Jesus Christ, his son who he sent to die for me.
So as long as I believe:

1. Even though I sin, I am not by definition a sinner.

2. Despite the fact that I sinned, I am by definition, righteous, not because of what I did, but because of who God says I am.

My belief holds the finality of who I see myself to be, not my actions

Self deceit - uniting the divide
If then I say that I am what I believe and not what I do, what stops me from sliding into self deceit, acting one way and declaring the opposite? Does action drive belief, or does belief drive action?

This is my balance: Belief drives action, and action reinforces identity (belief).

When you believe something, it necessitates an action or actions that correspond with your claimed belief. For instance, suppose I got a tip of a rigged football match, it makes no sense to place a bet, and then bet on the team that was tipped to lose, if I believe my informant, the only sensible thing to do will be to bet against them.
Similarly as I stated earlier, when you claim to have a belief, it only makes sense that your actions support the stance that you claim to believe, otherwise, you are living in self deceit

Actions might suggest character, but they do not define it. Circumstances can force people into actions that conflict with who they believe themselves to be but identity is ultimately shaped by belief, and genuine belief willl eventually manifest into action. The tension between these two —actions of free will, and not circumstance — is where human character is forged. Actions are temporary data points, while belief is the trajectory.

Psychological strength and reinforcing identity
Psychological strength is the ability to shape your psyche not by your experiences but by how you’ve chosen to see youself.

This is much easier said than done, it takes a tremendous amount of mental fortitude to look at a reality, and insist on it not being yours, even when it lies before your own very eyes.

Like my story at the beginning, it takes a lot of strength having killed a lot of people to come out and say, “I am not a killer, I only killed people” or in the case of faith; to look at yourself in sin, and say “I have only sinned, I am not a sinner

Your life is directly proportional to what you think of yourself

My conclusion is this, it is our beliefs that define who we will turn out to be. We will never rise above what we have seen ourselves to be, so no matter what we experience, we must never allow anybody or anything affect our self perception. This is fortitude, this is faith.

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Outrage can feel like movement. It gives the illusion that something is happening. Our heart rates rise, our thoughts sharpen, our words come faster and louder. We speak, we argue, we rant. And when it’s over, we feel a sense of release, almost like progress has been made.

But nothing has moved.

I’ve been an avid complainer for as long as I can remember. I would go on rants, conversations, and arguments on matters that seemed to upset me because, in my opinion, people needed to know what’s happening. I mistook expression for impact, believing that if something was wrong, it needed to be dissected and exposed. So I spoke; very often, passionately and repeatedly. It felt necessary, and it felt like responsibility.

Over time, a pattern became clear; the more we speak without leverage, the less anything actually changes.

Anger itself is not the problem. Anger can be useful; it is fuel—powerful fuel—but anger has no steering. Without structure, it spills into complaints. Without discipline, it becomes frustration. Without restraint, it consumes. And that feeling can be addictive.

There is also a layer of privilege hidden inside our outrage. It is easy for us to criticize people for decisions that seem short-sighted and write think pieces about how they’re setting society back. We have access to the internet, functional mobile devices, and have at least had a meal, giving us enough comfort to rant.

A man who has not eaten in two days is not thinking about societal progress; he is thinking about where his next meal will come from. When basic needs are unmet, higher-order thinking becomes a luxury. For the impoverished man, survival reshapes his priorities. If he has to sell his vote to eat, then praise his very own oppressors right after, that is exactly what he will do. While he lacks the luxury of anger, we often waste our energy on this cheap outrage. We say “we are not angry enough,” while actually doing nothing to ensure that the situation improves.

We have spent so many years perfecting the art of the eloquent grievance that we have forgotten the silent labor of building the very structures that would make those grievances unnecessary.

And so the cycle continues: Anger → Expression → Relief → Stagnation.

The release after a rant is the enemy of the progress we claim to want.

Here is the truth: anger without leverage is powerless and complaining without influence does not create change. Real change responds to power, not noise, and power is not just about money or status. It is the ability to influence outcomes, either by competence, discipline, credibility, network, or position.

Over time, that cycle hardens into a state of frustration. We see problems clearly, but we lack the capacity to change them. And the more we see, the heavier it feels. A better move is to shift our question from “why is this happening?” to “what would it take for me to influence this?” This moves us from reaction to construction.

This shift demands an honest look at our level of influence and an acceptance that our voice, no matter how passionate, has a limited reach without underlying substance; and therefore, pushes us towards the uncomfortable work of building capacity.

Your first domain of influence is personal; your habits, your discipline, your skill set, and your thinking. This is where control is highest and excuses are weakest. The second domain is environmental: the people you interact with, the systems you contribute to, and the standards you uphold.

Beyond this lies broader societal impact. But by then, you are no longer just reacting to the world. You are shaping parts of it. Anger, now redirected, becomes useful again; not as an identity or an outlet, but as energy. It stops being something you express and becomes something you convert.

Because the goal is not to feel strongly about problems.
It is to become someone who can do something about them.
The world doesn’t change because we feel deeply. It changes when we become useful.

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I have a theory about overweight people who claim to love their bodies, and love how they look, and insist they would not change it for anything in the world.

I think, in many cases, it is self-deceit. Sometimes well-intentioned, often understandable, but dishonest nonetheless.

My conclusion is this: after confronting the sheer amount of effort, discipline, consistency, and sometimes financial cost required to lose weight, many people cop out. And instead of honestly acknowledging this difficulty, they adopt modern-day body positivity as a philosophical escape hatch.

I arrived at this conclusion for three reasons:

1. The drift from the original purpose of the movement

2. The credibility gap between its messaging and the behavior of its most visible advocates

3. The dishonesty that now sits at its core.
   

From Dignity to Denial

Body positivity did not begin as a celebration of obesity. It was a movement that started in the late 1960s, led by Bill Fabrey, who was upset about how his wife was being treated because of her weight. It was a movement for dignity, representation, and fair treatment for people whose bodies fell outside narrow aesthetic standards.

What we see today is something else entirely.

We live in a world with the highest obesity rates in recorded human history. This is not controversial. In many developed and developing countries alike, a majority of adults are overweight, and a significant portion are clinically obese. These trends correlate strongly with rising rates of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, joint degeneration, sleep apnea, and reduced life expectancy.

Yet within modern body positivity spaces, this reality is often treated as irrelevant or even hostile. Rather than acknowledging obesity as a population-level health problem, many voices within the movement downplay or deflect the long-term health risks under the pretense of “self-love.”

Terms like “fatphobia” are no longer used simply to call out cruelty or discrimination. They are now weaponized to shut down legitimate conversations about health, behavior, and long-term outcomes. When medical professionals, trainers, or even formerly overweight individuals speak honestly about consequences, they are accused of hatred rather than engaged on the substance of their claims.

This version of positivity does not merely reject conventional health standards. It replaces them with a counter-standard, one where restraint is framed as self-betrayal and excess is defended as authenticity. In practice, it rewards indulgence while framing discipline as harm. It becomes ‘self-love’ reduced to the self alone.

The Hypocrisy of the Movement

The body positivity movement offers a guise of empowerment while simultaneously fostering a culture of falsehood and selective validation. Though it claims to support all body types, there is an obvious inconsistency in how plus-size bodies are celebrated while naturally thin people are often sidelined. This raises an uncomfortable question: is this not a form of body shaming in itself?

The pattern continues beyond that. By dismissing all constructive critique as “body-shaming,” the movement weakens essential conversations about health and wellness. Over time, legitimate medical concerns are reframed as cruelty, encouraging followers to repeat and internalize dishonest claims that are increasingly detached from reality as a way of signaling loyalty to the cause.

And before you disagree with me calling this belief system dishonest, consider the success of Ozempic and other GLP-1 weight loss drugs, which generated over $16 billion in sales in a single year. Ozempic was one of the best-selling drugs of 2024.

The explosion of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic has made this contradiction impossible to ignore. These medications did not become billion-dollar products because people suddenly discovered a love for pharmacology. They succeeded because they addressed a desire that never went away. Millions of people are purchasing these drugs, including prominent body positivity figures who built brands around ideas such as “your body doesn’t need fixing” and “wanting weight loss is internalized oppression.”

If you loved your body so much, why are you spending thousands of dollars to change it??

The problem isn’t that their bodies changed, but that the philosophy isn’t honest about human desire. Loving your body and still wanting it to change is normal, you shouldn’t hate yourself just because you are fat; but pretending the desire doesn’t exist, and then acting on it is where credibility breaks.

The Dishonesty of the Movement

One of my core principles in relationships is to always put the person over the friendship. I will say what is honest, with love, even if it risks the bond. I believe we owe each other the truth.

Within many body positivity spaces, there is an unspoken tension. People sense that the messaging does not match the lived experience. They feel the desire to change, the physical limitations, the health anxiety; but they also sense that acknowledging any of this openly risks social punishment.

So the lie persists, not necessarily because of belief, but because repetition becomes a form of affirmation. Enforcing euphemisms becomes more important than confronting uncomfortable truths, and this is what makes the movement exhausting rather than empowering.

Using delicate language to spare feelings is understandable, tact matters. But repeatedly asserting claims that contradict both data and personal experience erodes trust. It teaches people to doubt not just others, but themselves.

We must never elevate comfort above the truth. When feelings consistently override needs, the result is not kindness but societal degradation.

Health Is Not a Social Construct

It is true that our bodies vary and that health is not binary but, it is also false to pretend that excess body fat carries no cost. Obesity is associated, statistically and mechanistically, with higher risks of metabolic disease, cardiovascular strain, joint damage, reduced mobility, and shortened lifespan. These are not moral judgments, these are realities observed across populations and decades.

This does not mean every overweight person is sick. It means that, on average and over time, higher levels of body fat directly correlate with worse health outcomes.

Pretending otherwise may feel compassionate, but it is not accurate. Self-acceptance should never function as a rationale for neglect. There is room for empathy without abandoning responsibility. There is room to reject cruelty without rejecting reality.

A truly empowering movement would acknowledge that people deserve respect at any size but also encourage self-confidence without disregarding the significance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Our bodies are not abstract symbols in a culture war, they are the systems we inhabit daily and that’s something to be cherished. As our lifelong companion, it is deserving of care and attention.

To the proponents of body positivity

I have one question to ask:

If you had the chance to wake up with a fit body overnight, would you turn it down?

Of course not. Because we all know that being fit offers a quality of life; mobility, energy, and longevity; that “positivity” cannot provide.

If you don’t want to put in the work, your life decisions are yours to make, but self-love isn’t lying to yourself in the mirror; it’s caring enough about yourself to do the hard work. We must stop pushing lies to younger, more impressionable people who would do better if someone just told them the truth. To get in shape!

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Closing

Body positivity, when it drifts into glorifying obesity and underrepresenting the dangers of inactivity and a bad diet, is very dangerous. Not because it encourages people to feel good about themselves, but because it discourages them from taking responsibility for their future health.

No philosophy can override biology indefinitely, and behind every woke ideology is a staunch refusal to accept a basic truth. Denying basic truths does not make them disappear. It only delays the inevitable.

I will take this movement seriously when people who lose significant weight return to say, honestly and publicly, that they preferred their lives before they shed the excess weight. Until then, the contradiction speaks for itself

Yours truly
A fat kid trying to change his life

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Hello friend, it’s good to see you again. Happy new year.

I’ve been away for a bit, life has been lifing, but I’m back now, back and consistent. It’s been a really tough start to the year but I’m grateful. I’ve had quite the work load, especially as I started my second newsletter and also decided to start creating content on instagram. Whoever said ”big dreams, big labor“ knew exactly what they were saying.

Excuses nonetheless, this is me promising you, and myself consistency this year.

Going forward, I’ll be in your inbox every Wednesday, from now till forever (I know today is Thursday, just close your eyes and imagine today is Wednesday)

And if you’re not getting my letters in your mailbox, consider becoming my email friend it will make me really happy.

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“You’re not always responsible for what happens to you, but you are always responsible for how you respond to it.”

I found this transforming because it shifted my worldview from reaction to control. This principle led me to a difficult conclusion: even when I am not the cause of events in my life, I still have a part in the outcome. Through action, inaction, or ignorance, I helped shape where I ended up.

Growing older forces you to accept that pity for victimization or circumstantial misfortune does not move your life forward, and until we internalize the belief system of complete ownership over our choices, patterns, and consequences, we might never be ready for genuine success.

Your Life and Your Decisions

Lasting change usually begins with a decision, not a lucky break.

Change is never accidental. It is premeditated. There must be a moment when you look at your life and say, “I am tired of living like this.” That moment does not fix anything on its own, but it opens the door for everything that comes after.

Your Life and Your Friendships

Relationships are more than a reflection of your character. They are a key marker of your direction in life. Influence is involuntary. Those around you will affect you whether you permit it or not.

Because of that, the people closest to you need a degree of responsibility. Kindness and good intentions are not enough if someone consistently cannot manage their own life. If a friend is irresponsible, talk to them and be patient, because change takes time. However, if there is no change or even an attempt at growth, you have a duty of self-preservation to create distance. You can care deeply and still accept that you cannot want a better life for them than they want for themselves.

To keep someone close who is neither competent nor reliable is to invite disappointment, negative influence, or betrayal. The choice to withdraw, however painful, is a necessary act of self-care.

Your Life & Romantic Relationships

You rarely end up in a relationship you did not choose. Relationships reveal too much of a person for you to claim complete ignorance. You can miss a few signs, but you cannot miss all of them. If you cannot read patterns or behavior well enough yet, it is better to learn before entering something serious.

We underestimate how deeply relationships affect the core of our being. They shape us more than we think.

A bad one does not just hurt your feelings. It shifts the way you interpret the world. The bitter part about bad relationships is this: they turn you into a worse version of yourself. Negativity rubs off, trauma warps your thinking, and dysfunction rewrites your patterns. You walk away with habits, assumptions, fears, and reactions you did not have before. It does not mean you are doomed or broken. It means relationships leave marks, both good and bad, and so we must be intentional about who we date.

Sometimes loneliness feels uncomfortable enough that any attention seems like progress, but short-term comfort often becomes long-term damage. Staying in the wrong relationship does not make the problem easier to solve. It usually makes the exit harder.

Your Life and Trauma

Trauma is complicated. It usually comes from someone else’s choices, not yours, and it can leave you feeling powerless long after the event ends. Yet even here, responsibility must be asserted, not for what happened, but for what comes next.

Trauma’s trusted friend is blame. Blame is tempting because it feels fair. It tells you that your life is on hold because someone else did something wrong. The problem is that this transfers the power to determine your life’s outcomes from you to the person who wronged you. You wait for them to change, apologize, or face consequences before you allow yourself to heal, and that is too high a price to pay.

Letting go of hurt is extremely difficult but still necessary. It does not mean pretending nothing happened. It does not mean you excuse anyone. Forgiveness is more about reclaiming direction than offering absolution. It frees you to move, even if the past still hurts. You first forgive others and then forgive yourself. Healing is rarely quick and never clean. It is slow and difficult, but it is possible. Your future self benefits from every bit of work you put in now.

Bad Habits and Limitations

After dealing with the external influences of trauma and relationships, the next step is a deep introspection into your own life. You can’t grow without acknowledging the parts of yourself that get in the way.

What habits are ruining my life?.
What character flaws are preventing my growth?
Am I selfish, lazy, proud, narcissistic?
Do I lack self-control, or empathy?
Do I have low self-esteem?
Do I lack self love, worth and respect?
Am I afraid of loneliness? Why?

Your limitations close doors you could have opened. Your habits can cost you opportunities you already have. None of this changes until you are honest about who you are today, not who you hope to be.

Awareness is key to defeating habits, as exposure is to limitations. Put yourself out there. When people give you feedback, especially if it is the same feedback over time, sit with it before dismissing it. It might be pointing to something you have ignored.

A Call to Responsibility

This isn’t meant to inspire you. This is a call to arms.

It’s a reminder that you cannot build a better life while holding on to excuses, destructive people, and unexamined habits. Agency doesn’t solve everything, but it gives you a starting point. It gives you power.

You’re not powerless. You’re not trapped. You are not a victim of your circumstances. You are the architect of your own life.

You’re not alone in whatever you’re going through. There’s no situation you’re facing or will face that someone hasn’t faced before and conquered. Their survival is proof that it can be done. Their victory is evidence that yours is possible.

Now, it’s time to build, and I’m rooting for you.

. . .

I hope this helps you move from thought to reality this week. If this piece stirred something in you, consider becoming my email friend it will really make me happy.

Photo by Amaka Ekwo on X

This week, I’m addressing the current situation in our dear country.
(If you’re a non-Nigerian subscriber, pardon this edition. Ride along however, there’s useful information here for you too)

Social media, horror stories, kidnappings, corruption, terrorism, poverty, fake news, fear.

SO MUCH NOISE

Amidst all the pain and bloodshed in Nigeria right now, we must remember one sobering truth

This is a long fight. It will not be won quickly, and it will not be won easily.

It’s ok to be emotional. It’s ok to even cry, but we must remember that: only action brings change; not tears, not negotiation.

Stop Letting the Internet Drain Your Spirit

Don’t spend all your time consuming negative content online. The more we focus on problems, the larger they get in our minds and heart.

If you must, please step back.
Watch something calming.
Laugh a little.
Pray. Play. Praise. Worship.
Be around people you love.
Listen to children play, their innocence is medicine.

Never let the darkness outside outweigh the light inside.

A Better Nigeria Starts With a Better You

If you have an issue with the state of the country then the best thing you can do is to become a better version of yourself and perharps your influence can bring about some change tomorrow.

Go through your emotional cycles—but after that, get up.
Dust yourself off.
And get to work.

Speak when you see evil.
Encourage what is good.
Protect your values.
And aim for positions of influence, because:

Oppression does not respond to negotiation or reason—only to power.

The power of people.
The power of voices.
The power of influence and resources.

So, If you’re tired of this country, become stronger. Become wiser. Become better, so that your children do not inherit this chaos.

We will not all run away.
We are not destined to be global wanderers; wandering gypsies, drifting between countries that barely tolerate us.

Also, we must never lose hope because, if we lose hope — if we give in to despair, we have lost the war before we even started.

Faith and Action Are Not Enemies

To the brethren, please, never stop praying.

Spiritual laws (prayer) are an advantage to physical laws (action and hard work) — but never a replacement

So while we don’t give in to economic laziness by neglecting work in the name of prayer. We must be careful also, not to give in to the folly of neglecting spiritual laws as a whole. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

You can be a fervent Christian and an efficient citizen. You don’t have to pick one. Don’t let anyone deceive you into believing prayer is useless.

Pray for the country.
Pray for the persecuted.
Pray for the Church.
Pray as though the people suffering are your own family.

With dogged spirits, eyes fixed on Jesus, and a clear focus on our vision

It’s time to silence the noise and get to work.

Shalom.

Extra thoughts: On the Rising Calls for American Intervention in Nigeria

If being Nigerian has taught me anything, it’s this:
No matter how bad things are… they can get worse.

Case example, Buhari’s government compared to this present Tinubu economy.

Look at the state of nations America has interfered with (Libya, Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam etc.) and the ones where they still maintain presence today (Haiti, Syria e.t.c)
Look at their conditions before and after American.

If America invades Nigeria, one thing is guaranteed:
More Nigerians will die.
And this time, it won’t be only Christians or extremists.
Everyone will bleed.

Rebel groups will multiply.
Weapons will flood the country.
Chaos will escalate.

To hell with our resources, human lives have always, and will always be more important, but the problem is we’re crying for military interference from a country that’s only interested in a political - global resources war.

America. Russia. China.
The global West. The global East.

They don’t look at Africa and see a land of valuable human lives.
They see oil, minerals, land, cheap labour and leverage.

And if burning us to get it becomes necessary, that is exactly what they will do.

At this junction, I must admit that I can not fully understand the pain
I live in a relatively peaceful part of Nigeria, and I have not lost anyone personally.

But history is loud for a reason. We study it so as not to repeat it’s tragedies.

We are not anybody’s responsibility; and no country is coming to save us.

The destiny of Africa lies in the hands of Africans.

And that starts with you.

Picture a man standing before an empty field. He sketches buildings in the air, speaks of their beauty and potential, and yet the ground beneath him remains untouched. Nothing changes because nothing is done.

A strange tragedy repeats itself in human nature:
We mistake motion for momentum, noise for direction, and intention for action.

We live inside plans and conversations as thought they were reality, forgetting that the world only shifts when we move.

Talking can feel like progress; planning can feel like productivity. But both can simply be clever disguises for procrastination.

Why Announcing Your Goals Kills Them: The Intention–Behavior Gap.

Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer discovered that the more you announce your goals, the less likely you are to accomplish them. A phenomenon known as the intention–behavior gap.

The cause is biological.

Another researcher, Peter M. Vishton explains that when we set a goal and achieve it, our brain sends dopamine to the nucleus accumbens — a part of the brain’s reward system that plays a key role in motivation, pleasure, and reinforcing behaviors.

When you announce a goal and receive praise, most especially if the idea is brilliant. Your brain releases a smaller version of that same dopamine reward.

A fake victory.
A premature high.
A borrowed sense of accomplishment that drains your desire to earn the real one.

You got the dopamine but you didn’t earn the result.

An old aphorism goes thus, “Failing to plan, is planning to fail” and this is true by all measure but sometimes planning, while very essential, can also be a trap.

So yes, plan.
But don’t hide inside planning.

Sometimes “preparation” is just fear dressed in responsible clothing.
We endlessly polish the blueprint because we’re afraid to lay the first brick.

The pain of watching others start

You’ve probably seen someone with a poorly executed plan show up online and do the very thing you’ve been overthinking for years, only for them to grow, improve, and rise while you watch silently from the sidelines.
It’s infuriating.
And it’s your fault.

In this world, it’s not the best ideas that win. It’s the ones that escape their owner’s head.

Clarity comes from action, progress comes from contact with reality. You learn by touching the thing, not theorizing about it. Every step teaches. Every error sharpens. Every attempt refines. We grow by moving, not by imagining movement.

Most people don’t have a discipline problem, they have a “starting” problem. Continually circling their goals like a satellite that refuses to land; always close, but never touching the ground. Eventually, their ideas die in the planning stage, buried under the debris of their own brilliant intentions.

So:

Cut the explanations
Cut the presentations
Cut the theatrics of preparation
Begin!

Mistakes are inevitable anyway, you might as well start now and correct as you go.

The world does not remember the almosts.
It does not reward the the beautifully-planned, or the endlessly-prepared.

Action is the only language ambition understands
Everything else is noise.
Move.

. . .

I hope this helps you move from thought to reality this week. If this piece stirred something in you, consider becoming my email friend it will really make me happy.

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Comfort has become our new religion; and happiness, its false god.

We live in the most convenient version of the world to ever exist.
We are connected to every corner of the earth, and anyone is basically accessible from the comfort of a screen.

Anything you want: food, friends, entertainment, distraction… it’s only a few clicks away.

Apps are optimized to remove friction:
Endless scroll to spare you the hassle of “next page.”
Dating apps to rid you of the awkwardness of real life conversations.

I was internet surfing a while back and I came across something called an ice-cream cone spinner; yes, a gadget that spins your cone for you, and all you have to do is keep your tongue moving. This is deeply characteristic of the world we live in now.

With this level of access and comfort, it wouldn’t be absurd to think we should be the happiest humans to ever exist.
The evidence, however, suggests a historical failure.

About 332 million people worldwide suffer from depression.
1 in 6 report feeling lonely, even among among the youth, the supposedly most “connected,” loneliness has reached epidemic levels.
Every 43 seconds, someone takes their own life, with depression responsible for about 87% of those deaths.
Roughly 29% of people globally say they’re unhappy with their lives, with global surveys suggesting a long-term trend of declining happiness.

The most comfortable era in human history; yet happiness is in free fall.
We’ve never had it easier, and somehow, we’ve never felt worse.

We’ve traded meaning for comfort.
A lack of purpose, community, and significance has left us at a historical low of collective contentment.

The Futility of Chasing Happiness

Happiness to me is a pointless goal, a futile attempt at living a joyful life. It’s like chasing smoke; every time you reach for it, it disappears.

No one has ever achieved anything worthwhile by simply doing what makes them happy. Real fulfillment comes from responsibility, from the weight of purpose that gives your suffering a reason to exist.

To be clear, this is not an argument against enjoying the pleasures of life, nor an invitation to go seeking out unnecessary hardship.
The pursuit of suffering is not the goal

But the ability to endure and learn from it when it comes

We’re not trading pleasure for pain; we’re trading the lightness of an empty life for the weight of a purposeful one.

This meaningful burden is not an abstract ideal; it plays out in our everyday lives.

The Entrepreneur: Losing sleep and risking capital not for wealth, but to solve a problem.
The Parent: Sacrificing personal time for the arduous, thankless work of raising a human.
The Activist: Accepting personal risk to fight for a principle.

Think about it

As a student, it’s miserable to attend endless lectures, lose sleep, endure mind-numbing coursework. But the moment you receive a first-class degree - something earned, not handed. That joy is different; deeper, unshakeable.

Had you only chased what made you happy, you would skip class, miss deadlines, party your way through and fail spectacularly.

The joy we seek in life is buried in hard work.
I would even argue that taking on a great burden is the surest path to a life so meaningful that suffering becomes irrelevant.

“Perhaps happiness is always to be found in the journey uphill, not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak.”

Meaning First, Happiness Follows

If we lived only to feel good, we’d live shallow lives.
We weren’t made for comfort; we were made for purpose.

Chasing happiness for its own sake, eventually leaves you unanchored & empty
So yes, it’s tempting to believe that life’s meaning is to be found in happiness, but what happens when you’re unhappy? What then?

Happiness is the by-product of a meaningful life, and not its goal.

It is a fleeting reward for a burden well-carried. When it shows up, ride the wave, enjoy it. Appreciate it as the spontaneous music of a life lived for something greater than comfort.

Joy comes when purpose has already done its work.
Meaning, not comfort, is what keeps us truly alive.

Seek the burden, and happiness will find you on the way.

. . .

Words only find meaning when they meet a mind willing to reflect. If this piece stirred something in you, consider becoming my email friend it will really make me happy.

Hi friends, it’s another Saturday, and I’m here again, hopefully I can keep this up for the next year… or twenty.

I came across a post a few days back and it had me thinking, so of course, I’m here to punish you all with my thoughts. Enjoy the ride.

Let’s talk About vulnerability, and why it’s not the enemy. You see, the concept of marriage is so intimate, and so exposing. This is why I have to agree with Eric Gugua that it is impossible to marry more than one partner. Wed many people? Sure. Marry? The continuous intermeddling of being; body, mind and soul? Most definitely not! Marriage is a process that takes donkey-years to fully form, that is assuming it does ever completely form

It only makes sense that it should be so vulnerable, transparent, and most importantly, permanent! Huge bargain some would say, but then again, what good thing in life ever came easy?

Regarding how you can handle the uneasy feeling of being bare in a relationship, I would say; vulnerability isn’t the issue, who you are vulnerable to is the real problem. Fire is a refiner in the hands of a Smith, and a weapon of destruction in the hands of an arsonist. Give your vulnerability to a good person and it’s going to be one of the best decisions you ever made in your life.

Rather than worry about being vulnerable, I think it wiser to fixate on being whole:

At this junction, I channel the inner lecturer in me — the one who says “we’ll be brief” and then proceeds to give y’all twelve bullet points and a quiz. (For my dummies in session, don’t worry; they’re emotionally graded, not academically.)

1. Being a good person so that you can in turn have a good marriage and subsequently, a good life. An orange tree cannot bear lemon fruits.

2. Arming yourself (through reading, podcasts… learning) with the skills to be able to identify good people, and likewise identify evil people also. The frog must always be able to differentiate between a fellow frog and a scorpion.

3. Heal from ALL your trauma, make a firm resolve to face your demons, combat your challenges head on, and deal with your issues. Finding new thrills or distractions won’t help you on that. No amount of ‘happiness’ you add to yourself will ever reduce the sadness that already exists in your life. However, removing sources of sadness, will incrementally increase the amount of joy in your life

As humans, we by default, tend to make life decisions from our experiences (traumas included) but I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to live your life with an outlook based on the things that happened “to you.” I show you a better way — you can live the life that comes “from you.” You don’t have to draw your virtues from other people’s vices. You should live your life based on your principles & values, and not just experience.

4. Learn to be happy by yourself for yourself, learn to enjoy your own company. Learn to accept external validation, as a compliment, and not as a need. When people compliment you, take it without feeling the urge to return it back or the desire for a compliment in the first place. The satisfaction you seek in your soul cannot be filled by another person, you must first find yourself before you find a partner.

5. Commit to increasing self worth, self value, self love and self respect. Nobody will love you or respect you more than how you love or respect yourself. When you commit to a standard, you won’t tolerate or even envison a life with a person who brings you below such standards. (Don’t reduce your worth to what you possess, you must know your value outside the size of your pocket; this is not an encouragement to be broke, better go and work)

6. Never give your vulnerability to someone who has no authority over their head, and an immutable set of values by which they live their lives

7. Have a sense of self preservation, be smart enough to know you cannot change anybody. Marry a person not a project. Don’t make excuses for a grown adult. When people show you who they are, believe them. Maturity does not change people, it reveals them. A good man today will be a refined leader tomorrow. An unintelligent person today will be a refined fool tomorrow.

8. Find people, within your given set of values, who have successfully created what looks like the life you want, over a long period of time (emphasis on long period; they have passed the test of time), and mirror them.

9. The knowledge you have about the life you want (and the opposing version of that life), will save you from experiencing the life you don’t want. Never stop learning

10. You cannot be a good judge of character or marriage if you don’t even know what good character or marriage is meant to look like. Seek healthy models, dissect them, understand them, copy them.

11. Don’t be a hypocrite, the change you want to see starts from you. For every standard to which you hold your person to, hold yourself to an equal and even higher standard. Be kind, give people more grace — within reasonable limit of course.

12. Lastly, I plea to you my beloved reader, please do not get into relationships with people that do not share your values. I’m on my knees right now.

That will be all for today. You see? No quiz, but self-reflection counts as homework. Do have a lovely weekend.

To you who was dreading the quiz, fret not, just my 12 points as promised — bonus point for integrity — but you know what you can do instead?

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May it not be heard that I’m begging for you to subscribe and share my work. You just mght be changing someone’s life.

There’s something I love to say: “you cannot control how you think or control the quality of your thoughts; the only thing within your control is what you feed your mind” and no, this article isn’t about nutrition, just in case you were wondering.

You see, your view of life directly correlates to what you allow into your consciousness. If you constantly absorb positive content-even if you have quite the negative feedback around you-chances are high that you’re going to be a positive person.

From the type of movies you watch, to the tweets you read, to that course you just took to advance your career, to who you follow on social platforms, to the memes and skits you see on those same platforms, to what you see around you on your way to work every morning, to the last lecture or documentary you listened to-even something as insignificant as the song you listen to while taking a walk-they are all connected, and each one affects the very fabric of your thinking, and therefore, you life.

Your personality is influenced by your reality and your reality is the sum total of everything that you take in either:

1. Consciously: Information that you deliberately consume

2. Subconsciously: the environment that you find yourself in and the information that it feeds you

In the words of a lyrical philosopher "music no need permission to enter your spirit" Have you ever caught yourself singing line by line, a song you’ve never had on your phone before? Or, using a catchphrase of the main character from that movie you just finished-or, even worse, you start to act like the main character for a few days after watching? I certainly have; it’s a feeling I know too well. There are jokes I have laughed to, takes I have read online and agreed to, words I have used in heated arguments etc. and upon further reflection, I start to think: I shouldn’t have found that funny; this is not something I should be agreeing with; and when did I start using such words?

If you don’t get anything from this article today, take this: as far as information intake is concerned, “it’s not that serious” is a very ignorant thing to say. Your capacity to not be influenced is by far smaller than you think, and most especially when it comes to subconscious influence.

From tweets to skits, from the news to your conversations with colleagues at work, from the songs being played around you to doomscrolling on Instagram... every piece of information you take in is a data unit, along with other units, that will eventually program the operating system called your mind. And your life will never outperform the system that it operates on.

Above all else, guard your heart... because therapy isn’t cheap.

If you’re familiar with the feeling of heartbreak, I didn’t mean to trigger you. Welcome to the club; we meet on Fridays, bring tissues and sarcasm. Anyways, we were talking about guarding the mind and not your tragic dating history-but I digress.

We must be very intentional and careful about what we let into our mental space. It’s okay to log out, it’s okay to be disconnected. You’re infinitesimal in the grand scheme of the universe and there’s only so much you can do, you’re not missing out on anything.

The quality of your life is directly linked to the quality of your thoughts, and the quality of your thoughts is a direct outcome of what you feed your mind. So, it goes without saying; eat wisely.

“Thanks for the advice.” “I don’t agree with you.” “You were so helpful today; I really appreciate the talk.” These and similar expressions are statements I hear day to day. I’ve always had a knack - more like a passion - for talking to people; talking in general, if I’m being honest 😂 I love to talk; I especially love to argue. I love to talk to people, to hear their stories, their pains, their victories, their mindsets - what’s going on in their head, how they view the world.

The human mind is a very beautiful thing, and I love to explore it. Why do I act the way I do? Why do people repeat patterns? What goes on in the head of a psychopath or that brother who just won’t stop dating wicked women?

Thanks to modern technology, my attention span is on a rapid decline — so, fewer books, more articles. But for sure, I’m always reading something. I read a lot (or I like to think so). What my reading doesn’t cover, I make up for with YouTube; if I can’t read, then I’m watching something; a lecture, a sermon, an exposé, a documentary, an interview… I just won’t stop.

I’m not the best storyteller or poet, but thinking? Leave am for meee. Thinking might just be my superpower (if you take away my toxic trait of micromanagement). And I’m starting this letter for that very reason. What topics will I be unleashing on you, my fortunate or unfortunate reader? Mostly philosophical-psychological and self-development, if I’m being honest — political thoughts, christian-theological conversations, and whatever else you see here. Truth is, I don’t have a niche; I’m just here thinking out loud. I only have one promise: I won’t waste your time or bore you (in Jesus’ name we’ve prayed).

As I advance in age, I’ve come to realize my true obsessions:

1. Harnessing knowledge

2. Helping people with the knowledge that I have

However, gathering a world of knowledge is not enough. I recently came across a quote that goes thus: “It’s not what you know that matters, but rather what you do with what you know.” And word to my number 2 obsession, here we are.