"Passion for the Excellent Life" - ROtimi OdejayI

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Personal development is your springboard to personal excellence.

The word “passion” means a strong emotion or a great enthusiasm to achieve a particular feat. As culled from en.wikipedia.org/.../passion - Passion (emotion) is a term applied to a very strong feeling about a person or thing (Passion from the Latin verb “pati” meaning to suffer). The English word “excellent” means for something to be extremely good or (and) achieve an outstanding performance in an endeavour. That is, “of the highest or finest quality; exceptionally good of its kind”. For example, a student who scores ninety marks out of one hundred is believed to have excelled. The highest level of success you can think of is the excellent life. In the very words of Aristotle, he said and I quote, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence therefore is not an act, excellence is a habit”. For anyone to excel in life, the individual must live a daily life of value adding to his or herself. The reason is because; Personal development is your springboard to personal excellence.

The unit measurement of your passion (internal drive/motivation towards your goal) is the sacrifice you give-up.

“Passion is energy, feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you” – Oprah Winfrey.

The cycle is a movement from a definite vision to a corresponding action as shown in the person’s passion.

                                                                                        

 “If you can dream it, you can achieve it” – Walt Disney.

“Whenever a clear vision and action work together, the result is usually excellent. The selfless tradeoff you make to attain the excellent life is passion, and this is shown through your self-discipline” – ’Rotimi Odejayi                  
“We must act out passion before we can feel it” – Jean-Paul Sartre

“All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire” – Aristotle.

“Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant…It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Your mind is like a muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it. Continuous learning and personal development is the minimum requirement for excellence…It is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of a diligent choice.” – Brian Tracy

For anyone to achieve the excellent life, He or she must live with Passion!

“My Personal Opinion on Who a Leader is” – Mr. ’Rotimi Odejayi

“My Personal Opinion on Who a Leader is” – Mr. ’Rotimi Odejayi

The word “leader” is not a vague human concept. Humanity is identified with one leader or the other. All around us here we live, work, worship, school, is one leader or the other. Please be informed that a manager is not a leader by default. There are leaders and there are “leaders” in this intellectual world of pen and paper. I mean great role-models whose impacts are indelible in the lives of their followers. Alright, the New 9th Edition Longman Dictionary defines a “leader” as “the person who direct or controls a team, organization, a course or country; or someone who is in front of all the others in a race or competition. For example, a price was awarded to President De-Klerk and the ANC leader Nelson Mandela, for leadership, but who is elsewhere known as born leader.” With this definition you can easily deduce if you are a leader or not. Personally I know one if I see him or her, especially as they are always seen with their influential lifestyles. What do names like Mandela, Obama, Oprah Winfred, Queen Elizabeth II, Angela Merkel, Bill Gates, Wole Soyinka, Jonathan and W.F. Kumuyi suggest? These are world renowned leaders of course. “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” – John Quincy Adams 

To me, a leader is not only Successful; He/She is A SpeciaL Being. A leader is someone that stands while his colleagues are falling. Elsewhere, a leader is outstanding wherever a few of his colleagues only manage to stand. Besides, a leader is standing tall, whenever his colleagues manage to stand. To stand-tall is sincerely exclusive to very few but a leader equally stands as a model. He sets out his life ideologies for people to follow as a standard through his service to humanity. During his time in India, Gandhi was regarded as a servant-leader. His life was characterized by service. Let me confess at this juncture that I am not a leader yet, I am only a leader in the making; hence my coming to “MENTORING-CAFÉ FOR LEADERS”. Very soon, the world is going to borrow a leaf from the standards I am going to set. The late Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder was of this opinion and I quote, “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

Whoever desires to be a leader must be a sincere Optimist who possesses these lifelong qualities of a leader. Simply spell the word “LEADER” across-vertically to arrive at these hallmarks of a leader.

LEARNER: “Leadership and learning are very indispensable to each other” – John F. Kennedy
EFFECTIVE: “Effective Leaders have an uncanny ability to quickly turn problems to opportunities” – Author Unknown
ACTION: “When thoughts and action operates together, the result is a masterpiece”—Rotimi Odejayi
DARING: “You must dare to think about leading in life”—William Fullbright
ENTHUSIASM: “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm” – Ralph W. Emerson
READER: “A reader today is a leader tomorrow”—W. Fusselman.

The utmost desire of my being is to live to be a renowned leader, a leader who will be a positive influence as well as be a channel of blessing to others. Normally a leader must be “loaded”. I mean he or she must be well-fed with appropriate knowledge as well as possess the necessary core leadership qualities. In my quest to know more about leadership I stumbled on this wise saying of Stephen Covey, which says and I quote “Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent (agreeing) with them.” You have to personally understand cum lead yourself first before you can talk of leading any other person or group of people. What Covey is saying is that, assuming the post of a leader is a personal issue that starts with you having a clear vision of your future leadership roles and the inherent values you must add to humanity so as to make the difference in your world. The inference here is that personal leadership begets occupying leadership position in life. It is in you, so dare to lead.

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“Making The Choice To Be Creative” - ’Rotimi Odejayi

The OXFORD ENGLISH Mini-Dictionary, the Fifth Edition defined the word “creative” to mean “involving creation or invention; for an individual to show imagination and originality.” A creative youth for instance is one who come up with a newest invention breaking out of the existing status quo. What our nation and the world at large is looking out for are creative youths…so they can be celebrated. The challenge before us today as youths living in a digital world is to dare to create as well as be creative. The world is looking out for an innovator, please will you be one? Please “Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth through your creativity’’ – RUMI

This issue of creativity reminds us of the incidence that happened in a certain city between a sage and an equally wise boy. The later actually brought a tactical question for this old wise man to answer so that He could confirm how wise or otherwise this man really was. This mischievous boy went to the man holding a live bird within the hollow of his palms. The bird was held tight inside his palms. This boy with the intention of testing how intelligent this wise man is jokingly asked him, “Sir, can you tell me whether the bird kept in the hollow of my palm is alive or dead’’. Through wisdom, this old man knew fully well that the boy reserve the right to the status of the bird’s life. Should he say, “the bird is dead’’; the boy will simply open his held palms and free the bird. And if he answered, “the bird is alive’’ the boy can snorf life out of the bird kept in the hollow of his palms. The wise man then pondered for a while and answered the imp, “the status of the bird either dead or alive is in your hand’’. It is in your hand. So also is creativity, it is in your hand. The reason is simply because “creativity is not attained by chance, you can only be creative by choice, and as a matter of fact will demand a diligent choice for that matter. Your action to this all – important subject of creativity or inaction is simply a choice that will eventually depicts the kind of difference you will make in life or in you becoming a mediocre. None of us will be a mediocre in Jesus name, Amen…Recall it is your creativity that makes the difference. Dare to be creative.

Here is a practical scenario of a creative individual as opined by Pablo Picasso, “There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun’’. The pivotal point here is that, there is literally no new thing in the world. That newest invention is actually an upgrade of an existing project. This affirms the Yoruba proverbs that says ‘’There is no new thing under heaven’’. Let us look at this practical instance every quickly. When I started surfing the internet a little over a decade ago, was the prevalence of the social network hi5.com. After a while was an innovation from Mark Zuckerberg in facebook. It is on record that within one month facebook had over forty million Subscribers. Another set of creative individual went ahead to create something a-bit distinct to facebook in twitter.com As if twitter is not enough in November 2010, a newest creative breakthrough came up in instagram.com And now we have the latest discovery in the social media network in keek.com, with each of them (though social media network) having their unique features. I am convinced we too can create something unprecedented here in the next twenty-four hours. And that is why we are here today. To not only inspire you, but train you on how to design website and develop applications. We are not here to play and this workshop is an intensive hand-on practical session with a view to making creative youths out of this digital world. Please note that we are not here to joke but we are to create. By tomorrow each of us must show – case our project for the world to see. Let us get some messages on creativity from the words of Steve Jobs “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.”.

“Keeping Youths Out of Trouble Via Creativity” – Rotimi Odejayi

“Keeping Youths Out of Trouble Via Creativity” – Rotimi Odejayi

Rotimi Odejayi is a student of Computer Science, UI Ibadan, ICT Officer at Lead City University, Ibadan and the Author of “DARE TO PONDER”

                                                                               Who is a “Youth”?

The Youth is the period between childhood and adult age…Young people considered as a group.

What do we mean by “youth”? Culled from United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – (UNESCO) Website.

“Youth” is best understood as a period of transition from the dependence of childhood to adulthood’s independence and awareness of our interdependence as members of a community. Youth is a more fluid category than a fixed age-group.

However, age is the easiest way to define this group, particularly in relation to education and employment. Therefore “youth” is often indicated as a person between the age where he/she may leave compulsory education, and the age at which he/she finds his/her first employment. This latter age limit has been increasing, as higher levels of unemployment and the cost of setting up an independent household puts many young people into a prolonged period of dependency.

When carrying out its Youth Strategy, UNESCO uses different definitions of youth depending on the context. For activities at international or at regional level, such as the African Youth Forum, UNESCO uses the United Nations’ universal definition.

The UN, for statistical consistency across regions, defines ‘youth’, as those persons between the ages of 15 and 24 years, without prejudice to other definitions by Member States. All UN statistics on youth are based on this definition, as illustrated by the annual yearbooks of statistics published by the United Nations system on demography, education, employment and health.

For activities at the national level, for example when implementing a local community youth programme, “youth” may be understood in a more flexible manner. UNESCO will then adopt the definition of “youth” as used by a particular Member State. It can be based for instance on the definition given in the African Youth Charter where “youth” means “every person between the ages of 15 and 35 years”.

In Nigeria, it is generally believed that youngsters that fall between 18 years and 35 years are youths.

For Nigeria, the life expectancy of the World Health Organisation Stats (in 2011) as culled from Wikipedia.org for male is 52 years and 54 for females. Nigeria is ranked 180^th in the world out of 193 along with Cameroun and Burundi. Affirming that there are many youths in Nigeria.

The Influences on Youths come from different quarters. These include: The (Hostile) HOME, Peer Pressure, The Media (What They Watch on Electronic Media e.g. Television Stations), The SOCIETY and Advancement in Information and Communication Technology ICT. Though these Influences Have Some Positive Effects on The Youths, Their Negative Impacts Outweighs Their Positive Effects Thereby MakinG The Paths (or Ways) of Youths through destiny fulfillment Generally Slippery.

One good way to save the Nigerian youths from entering into trouble is to gainfully engage them. This could be done by organizing Youths-Workshop for them (for example, we are holding a Youths-Centered Workshop “CREATE” here in Lead City University, Ibadan this Friday). Besides, the matured ones amongst we Youths can get involved in Community-Development Service. This is possible through volunteering.

The last way to help save the Nigerian youths from getting into trouble is for them to be involved in profitable ventures. And this is possible when you acquire skills. Recall that “Skill” is equal to Knowledge Plus Ability. You must gather knowledge by going to acquire knowledge in schools, artisan-workshops, online and in Specialised Programmes. It must be noted however that having skills is not enough, that skills must be married with Creativity. The OXFORD ENGLISH Mini-Dictionary, the Fifth Edition defined the word “creative” to mean “involving creation or invention; for an individual to show imagination and originality.” A creative youth for instance is one who comes up with a newest invention breaking out of the existing status quo. What our nation and the world at large is looking out for are creative youths…so they can be celebrated. The challenge before us today as youths living in a digital world is to be courageous enough to create as well as be creative. The world is looking out for an innovator, please will you be one? Please “Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth through your creativity’’ – RUMI