BE RELEVANT TODAY

BE RELEVANT TODAY

On a certain day, I got into a conversation with a young lady and as the gist proceeds I was dumbfounded by her intense desire and passion to build an orphanage in the future. She wants to make a difference for the poor, homeless and those without help and hope. After listening to her at the time, I encouraged her to work on becoming great and achieving financial freedom to enable her build the right network and capacity to achieve her dreams.

Just yesterday, in was also with another gentleman in his late teens, I was sharing the gospel with him and he was so excited especially when I shared my thought with him on vision. Then he said, I have a vision to build God a house, he said it had always been in his mind that after he has made enough money he will build God a house of worship.

These two individuals I mentioned above, I think they are smart and they are a clear specimen of few young people with similar vision and dreams. In contrast, I noticed that the older class of people within our society have a very selfish mindset, their mentality is getting enough for themselves and their family.

''Selfish thinking is the burden of society and it create barrier to the deposit of potentials buried in everyone''. Most older people in Nigeria are very self-centered, they want to be winners, to stay ahead even though they aren’t qualified – and they think money and resources are physical, static and scarce and in their mind if the other guy have more money it means less money for them. And this thinking is one of the major causes of extreme poverty in our nation Nigeria.

God’s plan is for us to be a blessing and that is where our greatness lies. Being a blessing means putting others first, serving others and continuously looking out for opportunities to solve other people’s problem. 

Someone said when you solve a problem for yourself, you are making someone rich. When you solve problems for other people, you are making yourself rich.

A lot of young people like I mentioned earlier, futurise their relevance in today’s world. They will say tomorrow I will do this, and I will do that – the good news is that you can be relevant today. Even though you have a vision for the future, there is a starting point; the reason is that

''Your future that is not connected to your today does not exist''. 

If you really want to be relevant in your world below are some suggestions that will help you:

1.     Have a clear definition of your personal worth: Do a self-analysis of yourself; who are you? What are you worth? What do you have that you can give to the world? What value can you contribute?

Remember, in a country where there are so many problems, you can be a solution in your own way. And every solution you problem reduces the problem. Once you have defined what you can contribute, no matter how small make up your mind and do it.

2.     Treat others with love and respect: the way you treat other people is a reflection of who you are. Remember the analysis you did, if you are worth something it means others are worth something too. So treat them with love and respect. What they can contribute might be exactly what you get to a higher level of your life. We lack real love in our society and with love we can make a difference and give all we can contribute to make our nation bigger and better.

3.     Look out for the little problems and meet them: 

 Give your best. Contribute the value that you have, maybe it’s to visit the orphanage on your birthday and give the kids gifts or making the neighborhood you are living in finer and cleaner by volunteering and mobilizing other to do a road trash out campaign and also providing trash can at different strategic locations in your street. Or drilling a borehole in a community that lack clean drinking water. You can also decide to donate books for your school or community library. You can be the change. There is always something you can do to meet some problems in your world.

4.     Learn Network and mobilize to solve more problems: 

aLeaders understand that there is little they can achieve on their own. They see the strength in others that might be their weakness and they mobilize both people and resources together adequate to solve more problems. Using your personal analysis for example, you might observe that there are problems that you don’t have the skills and capacity to solve. What you need to do is learn, study about it and get all the knowledge that you need.

The biggest motivation to learning that I have observed is that you learn better when you know that what you are learning has an intense consequence to achieving your overall goal. 

While learning network with people as you especially those with different skill set that you might need. Then mobilize all within your influence to solve the problems that you want to solve.

Also learn to share your vision with those you meet, and ask for volunteers of people that want to make a difference; usually people want to be part of a worthy cause.

This type of thinking is what has given birth to the global brands that we celebrate today. They found a way to solve more problems for more and more people in the world. The likes of Dangote, Gate and Zuckerberg are solving problem on a larger scale that is why resources and money come to them. Imagine the world without the solution that they provide.

I trust that you will do your best to solve societal problems and your name will not be erased in history for your contribution to the human race. Be relevant today!