Sometimes I wonder why we do not pay attention to the strength of passion inside of us! We have so much strength inside of us coming from the passion that we have but the truth is that there are only a few events that can get the passion inside of us to its peak. All over the world people claim they need motivation to do whatever they need to do but I should begin to ask where they get their motivation to willingly go to the stadium around to watch football matches and shout with the kind of excitement that you can barely explain. They don’t wait to pushed out of their homes to watch football matches and a lot of people do not wait to be motivated to listen to news on sports.

I also figured out that if the only news that exists in the world is sports news a lot of people would be so versatile with news and current affairs around the world. One of the things you need to see when you enter a stadium is the nearly uncontrollable optimism that you see in the people who have come to cheer the player of different teams. Before the match begins the stadium if filled and there is noise everywhere with high expectations from everyone present in there. For those who cannot make to the stadium you need to see how much stress they sometimes go through to watch the match. Some people who have to leave their offices to get home before viewing the matches sometimes leave their offices two hours before close of work just because of a football match and some of them come late because of a football match.

If we have this kind of euphoria all over the place just because there is going to be a football match I really want to ask why we can’t willingly transfer that consuming passion into our businesses and other personal daily activities. If we all transfer the kind of passion we have for football into business, charitable works, community development and other endeavours we will be amazed that only a few things we not work.

When you see your favourite footballers taking a kick nobody motivates you to shout just to encourage the player! You naturally respond to their actions even when you are not being paid to shout and the person who is playing is being paid to play. On this note I sincerely suggest that you should stop waiting for an external force to motivate you but find a way to motivate yourself for the goals ahead of you and motivate yourself for the task ahead. You have to be self-driven and that is easier when you choose in any given situation what you really love to do. If you are not motivated to shout while watching a football match then I suggest you transfer that football passion into something more worthwhile for you as an individual. Transfer your football passion into the organizational growth of your company or the personal productivity of your family members.

We often have a reservoir of passion for the things we really need to do but most of us never do the things we really should do because we are waiting to be motivated when nobody motivates us to do the things that we derive pleasure from. You need to choose today if you want to wait to be motivated about your personal success or willingly motivate yourself for only those things that fetch immediate pleasure for you.

Sometimes you wonder where the world is going to that the compass in your sophisticated machines cannot tell you and the soothsayers in your religion bound communities cannot even predict.

A few months back some university undergraduates were on an excursion to the beach and someone started a discussion. I had a friend at the time who worked as the manager of a photography studio and the company had gotten a contract to take pictures of the event and print after the beach party. My friend who was the manager of the company at the time was obviously looking forward to having a great time taking pictures at the beach and coming back to the office to make more money but the obviously did not allow him get to the beach before they started amusing him with some bewildered thoughts.

As the conversation began a question followed almost immediately and it was about virginity of the female folks in the vehicle. A lady was asked if she was still a virgin and she amazingly said, “God forbid that I am a virgin at my age.” My friend was speechless! What madness has come over us that we no longer boast about morality but now boast of immorality that is a thing of shame? Where is the pride that used to be associated with being “reserved” until the wedding night?

I do not understand where we are going when we now live in times that a young undergraduate can open her mouth and say, “God forbid that I am a virgin at my age.” I was not there when she said it but from the reported speech I could imagine the ignorant arrogance from her anti-social creed.

The statement of this young undergraduate obviously goes beyond a personal issue because there will be fresh students on campus who would not know anything at the point of entry and would unfortunately meet this kind of mentally derailed mentor. Imagine a situation where a fresh young lady encounters this lady and begins to share her creed about virginity until after marriage. I also imagine the ignorantly arrogant lady listening carefully for a while and then laughing scornfully after listening only to start a lesson to brainwash this other young lady with a virgin brain.

Friends we have to check ourselves. We used to have a society that commits atrocities but is ashamed of those atrocities but the atrocities we used to ashamed of are what people now boast of. We obviously live in a mentally sick society where the abnormal has become normal and the supposedly normal values and ethics have become abnormal.

We can be carried away by the critically weird disaster bound course that the “new society” is charting for people if we follow quietly and with the fear of not wanting to deviate from what the crowd does. Of what value is it to follow a group simply for the fear of not wanting to be different when destruction is not only obvious but certain?

The world will not only pave way for you when you know where you are going. The world will pay you much more than you think of when you add more value to yourself. I am also of the opinion that whatever you do but don’t do so well should not be your business. If you want to do anything you should not be thinking about being just one of the people rendering that service. You are either among the best or you become the very best. I believe that something is wrong somewhere if you are into a job for more than a decade or close to two and you still cannot be referred to as one of the best or the very best. The reason a lot of people start something and do not end up among the best is because they don’t increase their personal capacity or earning capacity.

When you begin to rely primarily on the abilities that got you started in life then you are on your way to stagnation bus stop. Everything changes and changes faster than you can think. When you go to bed there are people who stay awake to decide that things that will be done tomorrow should not be done the way they were done today. You just wake up to realize that things have changed.

The man who keeps waking up to realize that things have changed is driving towards his grave. You should always envisage change and prepare for it. One of the disasters of life is not the earthquakes in Asia but lives that are forced into changing circumstances because they did not envisage change and as well prepare for it. Some people wake up some day only to realize that they would be laid off in their places of work because they have not taken additional qualifications and it would be too late to go back to school or any special academy for training at that time. Some so called business people just wake up to realize that their clients have changed their minds about who should take up their services because they have refused to find out the new trends that their clients are now interested in.

There are a lot of people out there who are asking for so much and they keep asking but keep getting nothing. They are not getting anything not because they do not know how to ask but because their focus is not on the right thing. I have read about people who would have ended up as ordinary mechanics but decided to do back to school to be able to learn more and add a professional touch to what they are doing. They definitely earned more by adding more value and not by asking for more.

I remember going through the national dailies one day when I found the interesting story of a young man who sponsored himself to school by riding commercial motorcycle. While he was on the motor cycle his focus was the degree he wanted to get and at the end of the day he started earning more not by asking the government to give him more but by deciding to add more value so that the society naturally adds more to him.

You are like to die a hungry man if you keep hoping that the society will give you much more than what it is giving to you right now. The hope of getting more out of anything will always be dashed until you have decided to add more value to yourself.

It is not your certificate that the world will pay you for. It is not the testimonial you are carrying about that the world will pay you for. The world may acknowledge and accept you as a result of those papers but what they will pay you for is what you can deliver. If what you are going to be paid for is what you have delivered then you must work as delivering more to get more. The quality of your delivery, permit me to say, determines the quality of your reward.

Don’t go about talking like a beggar and always reducing yourself to asking for a pay rise all the time. You sometimes threaten to leave an organization but you know that deep down inside of you there is no other place for you to go because you have not added more value to yourself.

To achieve greatness you need to keep adding value to yourself and after adding value to yourself you would need to keep transferring value to others. I did say in one of my articles that so many people are working hard because of value added tax and they are always under value added tension because they don’t do value added thinking and value added talking.

There are only a few great people all around the world compared to its population who stand in front of those who are to pay them and decide what to be paid. It takes some guts after increasing your earning capacity to charge much more than your contemporaries are charging for the service you render. You will only be able to do that and still not be threatened by your contenders because you know you have increased your earning capacity.

I remember hearing the story of a young man who cannot even rise from wherever you put him but this same man decided to make the best out of the situation and started painting with his mouth. He did not only paint with his mouth but painted so well to be able to compete favourably with any other artist. From all indications there was nothing that gave prospective buyers the impression that the person who did the painting cannot walk and can’t even hold a paint brush in his hands.

I was in a recording studio as well when on of the leading female broadcasters in Africa brought a young man into the studio. He had to walk with the aid of crutches every time and to everywhere but ever since this man was a kid he had always wanted to drive. He would not let his father know about his attempts to drive because he would be discouraged from doing so. He kept trying secretly and kept failing at every attempt to drive so he had to think about a solution. He didn’t want to be carried about and still wanted to be able to drive the distance any normal human being would drive. Eventually after so much brainstorming he invented a device that helped him to drive a car without the use of his legs on any pedal. His break pad and other pedals where converted to buttons he could press. When he succeeded with his own he started doing it for others and he said he had orders at the time he was on air to deliver some to a place. Here’s a lame man devising means to drive and making money yet doing another thing.

Challenges will always be our opportunity to increase our earning capacity so we cannot shy away from those challenges. When we face challenges we would only be rewarded after the challenges according to our perception during the challenges.

One of the most unfair things that I have seen in the society today is the fact that a lot of people are hoping to earn more for doing the same job over and over again and they feel that their desires to earn more are justified because they have been in the service to an organisation for a long time. This happens where there are federal government employees, state, local and some private company employees who will always paint the picture of a wicked boss in their places of work. Let’s take a look at the issue together and ask ourselves who is truly wicked. You started working in a place and you continued in the same place for several years. When you where applying for the job they looked at your qualification and they decided to employ you based on your current qualification. The pay pack that you also agreed upon was based on your current capacity and you decided to take the offer. Having agreed that what you are being paid is commensurate with your current capacity you took the job so it is as good as having a deal already.

In some cases you may say you do not agree that the pay pack is commensurate with your qualification or personal worth at that time but you agreed to take the job. If you took the job and you want more pay then you need to know that the only way to earn more is to prove that you know more.

These agents of the mind are popularly referred to as the sense organs but I am calling them agents of the mind to help us see their connection with the mind. When they something is a “sense” organ, it often does not occur to us that it simply means it is an organ that is connected to the brain and consequently connected to the activity or the inactivity of the mind. Lets take a look at them one after the other.

1.) Eyes

Your eyes are the sense of seeing as you already know but the eyes do more than just seeing. The eyes capture images and send those images to the mind for processing. The reason you sometimes remember what you have seen is not because you have sharp eyes like some people always say. It is because you have been able to send that image to the mind and it was properly stored in the mind. When an image sent into your mind by the eyes is properly stored, it will not be so difficult to remember seeing such image the next time you see something. That explains why you see some people and you can’t remember seeing them. That is why you have met some people but you cannot remember having met them before. All of these have a connection with what the mind has stored up for you to use. Imagine if your mind and your eyes are not in agreement. Then your eyes will see a big truck coming your way but it will send a signal to your mind that what is coming is a bicycle. You will begin to misinterpret pictures and that can be a dangerous thing for us to do.

2.) Ears

This as you already know is your sense of hearing and it also helps your mind to store up sounds since it is the one that hears sounds. Whenever you hear a sound for the first time it may not sink properly until the sound it repeated to you. Sometimes after the sound must have been repeated you will not need a repeat of that sound because it would have been stored in your mind and your mind can, on its own, replay the sound to you. That explains why you can be walking on the road and a song just pops up on your mind. That song is one of the several sounds stored up in the mind so it can be easily replayed to you by your mind. Now you can see that your mind is not just for hearing. It is the agent that helps your mind store sounds. That is why you do not take your parents’ voices for your friends’ voices. It is the ear that helps you not to take a television sound for a strike on the keyboard of a computer. One of the ways you know if some sounds are good enough for you or not is because there is proper coordination between your mind and your ears. When there is no proper coordination you will not be able to tell what you ought to listen to or what you ought not to listen to. Why do you think you have the ability to choose from the vast kinds of music that we have today? It’s not just because you have good ears. It is more importantly because your mind and your ears are working in harmony.

3.) Nose

Your nose helps to differentiate between what we call odour and aroma. It perceives or it smells. That is primarily the function of the nose but much more than that, it helps as an agent of the mind to store the differences in the smell. It is because of what you have stored in the mind through the nose that you can say a fresh soup being prepared gives you aroma but the same soup three days later gives you odour. It is what you have stored up in your mind through the nose that helps you to say someone who has just come out of the bathroom smells nice as a result of combination of soap and body lotion. At the same time if you see this same person after several weeks without bathing you don’t need anyone to describe the odour to you because your nose has been trained to differentiate between odour and aroma and it has been stored in your mind. It is the proper coordination between your nose and your mind that tells you what to inhale and what you ought not to inhale. There’s definitely a problem when you can’t tell the difference between what to inhale and what you ought not to inhale.

4.) Mouth

The sense of taste and also the agent of confession is what the mind should be but a lot of people have simply reduced it to a mere object for tasting so the only thing they do consciously with their mouth is to eat. It will not matter if you know it or not but the truth is that you are always using your mouth as an agent of confession and that means if you do not use it deliberately you are most likely using it negatively. When you put something in your mouth it is the connection between your tongue and your mind that tells you that this thing is good enough. And when it is not good enough for consumption it is still the connection between your tongue and your mind that helps you know what is not good enough for your mouth. When your mind is not working properly you can begin to put ordinary leaves into your mouth and appreciate them as food. That sounds like being mad to you but that explains why a mad man cannot deicide the right thing to put into the mouth. The mind and the tongue are not interpreting something properly and what that means is that the tongue will misbehave.

5.) Skin

One easy way to understand that your skin is an agent of the mind is to look at how you respond when the sun comes up or when it goes down. Take a look at how you respond when someone hits you or when someone embraces you. All these are feelings like you will say but the reason you can adjust to those feelings is because the mind is working properly. If the mind is not working properly you will not be able to interpret the feelings and to be able to tell which of the feelings is good enough for you or not. I once read about a man whose toes were chopped off by rats because he does not feel anything anymore. The cells in the skin are dead so they are not sending any signal to the mind as per what ought to be done. I also read about a child from Philip Yancey’s “Where is God when it hurts” the deliberate cuts herself because she does not feel pains. At a point when she realized that her mother was feeling horrible about it, she started using that as a tool to get something from the mother if the mother refuses to give her what she wants. She is not aware of the fact that if she keeps cutting herself she will lose so much blood and bleed to death. The cells that are supposed to communicate with the mind are dead!

From all that you have read so far you can see that all your sense organs are connected to the mind and they mainly give signals to the mind. When a signal comes to the mind through the eyes, it may not be the eyes that will respond to the signal. The mind, upon receiving the signal, tells the right organ what to do. If a baby is crawling towards naked fire, it will be your eyes that will send signals to your mind. When the mind interprets the signal then it sends another message to your hands and legs in the direction of that child crawling towards naked fire. If you intend to respond using your eyes because it was your eyes that saw the scenario you would be preparing for a looming danger.

I have taken all the time to explain the sense organs and their connection to the mind simply because I want to pass across a simply message to you. The message is that all your sense organs are the connecting points to your mind and your mind is only as qualitative as what goes into it. Therefore, start a gate keeping process for your mind by choosing what goes in there deliberately. Choose carefully what you listen to. Choose carefully what you look at or pay attention to. When you begin to do this there will be a dramatic change in your life. A great life is simply the result of a great input into the mind. The Bible says, “from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” That can be interpreted to mean your mouth is limited to the quality of what goes into your mind.

In circle of wild excitement
Made by their tiny hands
Tightly holding unto another
They leaped in response
To the order of
The acting commandant
Who chants,
‘Who stole the meat
From the cooking pot?’
Voluntarily, one of the chaps responds,
‘Number three stole the meat
From the cooking pot.’
And in protest to accusation,
Number three answers,
‘Oh, me?’ ‘Yes, you!’
The others answer.
It couldn’t be,’ he protests
And shifts his accusation
With each new suspect protesting.
Real fun it was
To those chaps
But all, under ex-ray,
Is a satire about
Our leandars
Or our politika mentor.
What an avalanche of wisdom
Resides in the nonsense
That makes merry
Heart of the innocent prophets?

Fola Daniel Adelesi
26/12/2005

Always busy in bed
For in such is their delight
No file is unattended to
So long it came from ‘skirts.’
Like a wild dog
Protecting a prey
From cassanovaric predators
Of their own feathers
So they Shepard their flock
Not knowing the clock
Would become a witnessing rock
To what the pelvis under their block
Was going to unlock.
They needn’t await
Reward of their labour
‘cos tummies
Had begun testimonies.
Horses whose strength
Are motivated and activated
By walking skirts
Have left their ‘wages.’
In days when chaps
Needed to be loved,
Fathers were on exile
But genes were not exiled.
These heroes
Birthed by heroes
Birthed more heroic heroes
But all time you have
Fathers on exile.

Fola Daniel Adelesi
28/10/2005

Great gourd
Clothed with beeds
Never magnanimous
In flaunting its bead-cloth
Skifully knitted
By its designer.
Little did it appear
‘twas a barricade
From what you tossed in
Through your thin neck
To your bank-like body.
You rolled and rolled
While we yelled and danced,
Then you became a man
Still with your qualities
Making men
Admire your beed-clothes
Without any eye
Looking what you tossed in.

Fola Daniel Adelesi
16/07/’05

On Christmas morning
Came a fat stucky hen
Knocking at my door.
He introduced himself
As the sacrificial lamb,
Begging to take refuge
In my alimentary canal
Lest he be imprisoned
As a prisoner of war
By 32-man battalion
And have his fate
Determined by their anus.
My alimentary canal
Is a strong tower
For he has since found refuge
In its cavity.

Fola Daniel Adelesi
01/07/2005

She roamed the streets
As postmaster would,
But only delivering mails
In between the pairs of
Trous…
These confidential mails
Were not criminal
But everyone read openly
‘cos her tummy was her bag
Too many mails undelivered
And her tummy growing bigger
She said to herself,
“I deliver confidential mails
But my tummy was the traitor.”

Fola Daniel Adelesi
15/06/2005

Though the full moon tarries
The sun sets at dawn
Bringing hope of better tomorrow
The worse the situation,
The happier you find me.
Tomorrow shall come
When tremendous problems
Become stories to be told
To chaps who aspire to be
As great as I.
Frustrated, the melody
And rendition of
Church songs shall be
My companion. Afflicted,
I shall not retaliate, lest there be
Two bad men. Oppressed,
I shall be calm because the road
To greatness is roughest of all
Roads and say to myself;
Tough times never last,
Tough people do.
A resolution
For revolution
Shall be the solution
To my confusion.
Solution to my frustration
Will not be suicide
That will cut short
A generation of achievers
And abridge the history
Of a nation
When starving, I smell
The aroma from my neighbour’s kitchen.
I say to myself that I shall one
Day taste the stuff that afflicts my nose
By that aroma, and there shall be
No cause for suicide.