I want to be like you – Fola Daniel Adelesi.

If you are a good public speaker I am sure you would have heard these words over and over again. You may not be a public speaker. You are probably just extremely skillful at one game or the other. You are probably the role model for the guys on the street and people keep coming to you to say I want to be like you.

 

One Sunday morning after preaching a very wonderful message, a young lady came to me and for a moment was speechless before she finally said, “…I want to be like you.” I hear this always but this will not make me reduce the quality of my speech delivery.

 

Where I am going to is not the beautiful delivery that you admire so much. People may display dexterity in an amazing manner but there is more to the display of dexterity that you admire. The people who want to be like me don’t know what I go through. The people you want to be like have some things they don’t ever say in the public because it remains a source of sorrow to them yet you admire them.

 

To get what I have you must be ready to pay the price that I have paid! I remember some people came to, me after the last business meeting that I organized, simply because they wanted to gain some things and they wanted to be like me. They heard the beautiful, inspiring and thought-provoking business lectures but they never knew that while they were talking to me about their admiration, I was thinking about the debt incurred.

 

If we know what our “role models” are really going through, we will not want to be like some of them. This is not to discourage you. All I intend to say is that you have to be yourself so that when you face some challenges, you still have enough courage to fight on. You sure don’t have enough courage to go through the stress of trying to be like somebody else.

 

The only person I admire so much that I will pay anything to be like is me because there is a “me” on my mind that beyond description.

People Will Watch You Succeed

It is amazing how people around us sometimes will just watch us struggle to do somethings untill those things begin to take a good shape.

When we are starting out in life nobody may be interested in what we are doing but instead of gving us the support needed for what we are doing, they will laugh at us and make several attempts to discourage us. At a time when they realize that they cannot discourage us, they leave us to do what we intend to do. Because we are not going to give up on the things we have started, the nature that has been taking records of the things we are doing will now begin to reward us for our unwavering committment to the things that we have set to do.

Do you remember that there are some shops in your area that have been there ever before you were born. Some came there when you started schooling. Those shops are still there and they are not growing bigger. The owners are not dead. They are alive and healthy but they just remain in one position yet they are the one that will try to counsel you on how to get things done.

You will be amazed at how people will watch you get things done if you don’t join their mediocrity club. Please just keep doing what you know is right. Some of the people who told you it will never work will come back to ask you how you worked it out.

Some of the people who declined your request initially will also come back to beg your attention. Some of the people who told you they don’t have your time will soon come back to beg for your attention. If you continue doing what you are good at, if you continually improve upon your skills, if you do not lagt behind in the latest ways things are done, if you are consistently creative and outgoing, people will watch you succeed.

Some people are already watching me succeed.

 Fola Daniel Adelesi.

INSTEAD OF A NEW YEAR RESOLUTION

Many people get into a new year like this and they begin to make new year resolution. I never made any new year resolution because I have made some over and over again. Maybe like me you have also made some new year resolution over and over again and you are beginning to think about the way forward.

There is more to a new year than trying to say that you will stop this or that. There is more to a new year than saying you will no longer visit a place or will start going to a place. I think the first and the most important thing you should do is to decide what you want at the end of the year 2008.

I want to be a better person and one of my plans to become a better person involves reading some biographies and taking some professional exams. There are some people who never get things done until they have given themselves a reason to do it. Sometimes giving yourself a reason to do what you intend to do spurs you to get it done.

One other important thing you should think about instead of making the new year resolution that you will never follow is to think more about how you want to add to the society. What are you planning to contribute to the development of your community this year? What are your plans to improve the situation of things in your school this year? What are your plans to make things work in your office this year?

Don’t just say you hate to see things the way they are and do nothing about them. Each time you say that you hate something and you are doing nothing about it, you are indirectly saying that you are powerless. Actions they say speak louder than words. Be careful about what you say and do.

In order to plan better about what you will contribute to your school, community or office, you need to categorize your plans. In Public Relations there is what we call PEST. PEST is the acronym for Political, Economic, Social and Technological.  Take a plain sheet of paper and divide the page into four using a cross sign. Put these letters in each column that you now have. Then begin to write what you intend to contribute politically or what you want to add to yourself politically. Go over to the column for Economic and write how you intend to boost your finance this year. This may be through an investment or savings plan. Do the same in the columns for Social and Technological. You should have plans for some technological materials you intend to get provided they can boost your learning and ability or enhance your skill.

This planning is only beautiful if followed but you would have been a better person at the end of 2008 when the paper is not just for decoration.

Fola Daniel Adelesi