Author: Joel

Posted in Life, Salient Thoughts

The Firm Foundation Your Life Needs

Posted on by Joel

Sometimes it will look like nothing is working out in your favour. Sometimes it will feel like the universe is conspiring against you and luck has turned its back on you. Sometimes the feeling of helplessness may become so overwhelming that you are forced to consider lowering your standard.
If you’ve ever felt like that, you are not alone. It is a natural feeling in times of distress.
But there is something that serves like a support system in this trying times that everyone needs to have, and it’s none other than the good foundations provided by correct principles.

Principles are the foundation of anyone’s character. The kinds of principles your life is based on determines the kind of person you are. It also determines the kinds of virtue and skills that can be built on it, virtues that are compatible with the principles. Continue reading “The Firm Foundation Your Life Needs” →

Posted in Fiction, Stories

The Ghost House

Posted on by Joel

From the start of the night, the atmosphere held a premonition of evil tidings. When later, it started drizzling and everyone went inside early, A hooded figure stood lurking in the shadows between a dilapidated building and the public toilet on Crystal street.

Biola just left her boyfriend’s house and despite all his effort to make her stay the night, even with the rain, she had refused. The last time she tried it was with a guy she was seeing before. They had chemistry quite well, but their compatibility was shit. It had been raining that day as well and she had decided to stay till morning. Against her better judgement, they had had a sweet night, one that felt so right but she knew was so wrong. Once beaten, twice shy…so she was not going to let that happen again.

Her boyfriend, fairly new, but very compatible was the worst person she could stay the night within a drizzling night because the chemistry was mad–crazily mad. Irresistibly mad…
So as it started drizzling, she knew it was time to leave. Rain at night with her in a dude’s place had never been good for her. Continue reading “The Ghost House” →

Posted in Life, Salient Thoughts

The Paradox of Our Uniqueness

Posted on by Joel

Sometimes I feel like life is a game put together by supernatural forces and all they do to us is just for their amusement or a mere show of power. But even at that, it still feels like their twisted sense of humour gave us something good to help us cope.

When I observe people, their ways, their likes, their wants and interests, I can’t help but wonder if all is just an intricate web designed to make a person unique. You would never find someone who has something unique to them alone in the whole world, however when you check the combination of the similarities in random orders, it makes a person unique.

But this is what begs the question of ‘nature versus nurture’ in psychology. Are we the product of our biochemical make up or of our environment and things we were exposed to growing up, and every day?

The focus for now however is on the similarities in our uniqueness. What that means in simple term is this:

Continue reading “The Paradox of Our Uniqueness” →

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Posted in Life

Understanding Challenges

Posted on by Joel

“There is an old Celtic legend that says, just before each person is born, they are allowed to choose every hardship that they would experience during their lifetime. In this tradition, everyone selects the challenges that they would be able to overcome, the situations and conditions that would push them to learn and grow but that would not defeat them.”

I came across this in a guided meditation on Surrender: Letting Go by Jason Stephenson, and it made me realise that most of us had been going about challenges all wrong.

Most times when the word ‘challenge’ comes up, it almost automatically associates with words like deterrent, hindrances or insurmountable, in our mind. But really, a challenge is a demanding or stimulating situation. A challenge is meant to test us and see if we are fit for promotion. It is meant to ‘stimulate’ us for the sole purpose of growth.

Continue reading “Understanding Challenges” →

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Posted in Fiction, love, Stories

Scars To Your Beautiful

Posted on by Joel

It was a totally new and different situation I found myself when I said it again. The first time, I had been in a tight spot I’d put myself in and I had said it as the last resort to get out. But this time was different, and this time I meant it. I was in bed next to Monica. I looked at her. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling.

That smile was what attracted me to her in the first place. Her dimpled round face was accentuated by that radiant smile no one else in the world could wear so beautifully. It was heavenly. Purely divine. And to not want to explore beyond that surface smile to see into what beauty lies beneath it was, to me, the greatest sin I could ever commit.
I looked closely at her now. The smile was radiant all right. But now, I could see something else in it. It was a flutter of uncertainty that creeped out when she was lost in thought. Continue reading “Scars To Your Beautiful” →

Posted in Life

The Power of ‘Proactivity’

Posted on by Joel

Life deals us a variety of cards on a daily basis.
Some are in line with what our goal in life is and others seem to push us off our path and we have to fight or struggle to get back on our path.

But there is an interesting question to consider: is it possible to control if we are pushed off our path or not?

There are two things we have to consider, and they are:

  • What it means to be reactive, and
  • what it means to be proactive.

Continue reading “The Power of ‘Proactivity’” →

Posted in Life

The Need for Paradigm-Shifting in a World of Diversity

Posted on by Joel

It is natural to meet or listen to people we don’t agree with or share their point of view. In fact, it is part of being human, to be able to think in a way that is not necessarily general. But there are certain people that seem to think in ways that you can’t just understand what is going on in their head.

During NYSC I encountered a guy by chance. A young lady was trying to sell some beautiful bead necklaces she had made to my friend, but this guy came from no where and said something like, “this is a waste of time, can you get rich doing this kind of trade? blah blah blah…” and some other things that sounds worse than my paraphrasing. People around him–myself and my friend included–just stared at him, no one could think of an appropriate response to give him. So he walked away.

I have to admit, a lot of responses came to my mind and some of them were not nice at all.
Thinking back to that encounter and many other similar ones prompted the question, “what do I do with people that have a different POV and I don’t naturally agree with? Continue reading “The Need for Paradigm-Shifting in a World of Diversity” →