In the last 10 years, I have had the privilege of working with three security guards in Nigeria who are part time students in the university. I am so thrilled to see these hard-working men undertake pursuits that have tremendous potential to transform their lives. The first of these 3 persons has finished NYSC, I have lost contact with him. The second, Dapo, is currently in his final year studying Political Science at the Lagos State University — I have maintained contact with him for the last 6 years and occasionally, providing him with whatever support that I can give. He is partly the inspiration of this article.
Some months ago, I wanted a personal assistant to pick up the slack in occasional surges in my private life, especially surges of the type that take a lot of time rather than intellect; activities that use up so much time on the traffic, house repairs, filling forms at Government offices, picking up a cheque book from the bank, finding special products in the market place, etc.
After telling my wife that I wanted to take a serving NYSC corps member or freshly mint college graduate to run these time-consuming errands, she suggested Dapo. Although, Dapo does a lot for me and her in activities that require a lot of physical energies, I just could not mentally come to terms with the idea of sending Dapo to Zenith bank to pick up a cheque book. It is six years now since I have known Dapo and for all of these six years, he is worked as a security guard for three different friends and offices close to where I live in Lagos. He is hardworking, honest and loyal. When he was in 300L he lost his job because the family he worked for moved to Canada and he came asking me if I needed a security guard. A few weeks after, he got a job as a security guard with another friend.
As I reflected on my refusal to hire Dapo for this role, I said to my wife, “a university degree isn’t all that changes a destiny”. I counted my words, paused as I said these words. How can I say this when I have been an advocate of education as the panacea to every societal ill for over a decade? Then these words came out of my mouth, “for Dapo to use his degree in Political Science, he must break the habits that have come to define him, and this is the hardest part of life”. I know nothing more difficult for any mortal than breaking the habits that define him/her. Dr Joe Dispenza has an excellent book from where the words, “breaking the habits of been you” leaped out of my mouth. I have listened to the audio of the book, it is scientifically sound, but putting it into practice is HARD WORK.
In 2003, It seemed like I was going in circles. I was running a small construction company and doing fine caring for my family, but like Dapo, I wanted more out of my life. I attended every possible seminar I could find in Lagos, but I could not stretch myself out of doing only small construction projects. I knew people who were not half as knowledgeable as me in construction doing a hundred times the size of the projects I was doing. I wanted these kinds of jobs, but for whatever reasons, I just never came close to doing any of these.
As I studied and read voraciously, I concluded that the outcome of a man’s life is more a product of the size of his thoughts than his academic qualifications. Although this conclusion has remained true to me for over 20 years now, I still don’t have a simple go-to strategy by which a person might alter his thoughts. While these thoughts roamed freely in my mind, my good friend who is now Lagos State Commissioner for Economic planning and Budget, Sam Egube came visiting and told me about the quantum leap he experienced as a student at the Lagos Business School. He told me the fees, but it looked too much for my fledging business to afford. He decided to go one step further, he gave me a personal cheque for 50% of the fees, the amount needed for me to be admitted to the 4 months part time Advance Management Program (AMP-12) of the Lagos Business School, and off I went to school.
My experience at the Lagos Business School beats what words can really describe. It was life changing and it ignited a deep hunger in me. Two years later that hunger continued to burn, and I decided to do a full time MBA at the University College, Dublin. It is obvious that my mind was growing. Somehow, you don’t really know in the very moment if your mind has changed. Mind growth, I found out isn’t really something you notice in the moment. Sometimes it is so small that you don’t even think anything happened.
I learned from motivational speaker, Jim Rohn that a small change of 2 degrees in mind can have very profound life changing impact on our lives. Draw a triangle and with the angle to the horizontal set at just 2 degrees. Imagine that the horizontal is time and the vertical axis is the change in your life; when you project it over 20 years, you will see that your life has changed by over 200% what it would have been without this new knowledge acted upon.
Does every new knowledge bring about a quantum change in life? The answer as you might have rightly guessed is NO. The only knowledge that changes your life is the one you act upon. This, in my personal life is where the challenge is. To recant the now popular quote, “it is insanity to do the same thing and expect a different outcome”.
If Dapo has been attending the Lagos State University part time program for 3 years, that new knowledge has the capacity to elevate his life to a different kind of job, but he has to act on it. You might say, he has not gotten a job that fares better than a night guard. You see, that isn’t true. Jobs don’t come to anyone of their own accord. All jobs are mentally created or embraced first before they become reality in our lives.
The reality is that his habits has him hardwired to be a security guard. Additional knowledge gained in the university just means increased store of knowledge, not a change of life circumstance. But he is not in school for increased store of knowledge; he is in school for a change of life circumstances. In a way, he would need to say NO to the old for the new to come in.
Reconciling these two contradictory positions is what “Breaking the habit of being yourself is all about”. To transition from a security guard to a graduate job, Dapo must “Break the habit of who he is”. I know nothing more difficult than doing this. It is easier to go to the moon than to break the ingrained habits that have come to define your personality. But if you are tired of the life you now live, you will take the plunge.
The older you get the more difficult it is to change your personality. In certain cases, it looks impossible. What will you do if you were the man by the pool of Bethesda that Jesus talked about in the bible? For 38 years, you have sat by this pool with other sick people like you and helpers who gave you food. Your brain knew ONLY ONE WAY to get healed — “the first person that jumped into the water, after it was stirred by an angel”. But you hear of Jesus and that He can make you whole without waiting for an angel to stair up the waters.
You intellectually believe it, but you just cannot see how this can take place. Then Jesus walks up to you and asks you if you want to be made whole? What is your response? The same that many of us will give today. You know that the economy is not good and graduate jobs are few. Covid 19 is ravaging the economy and there is nothing that anyone can do. That is what Dapo has said to himself all these years and has remained a guard. The man goes on with his stories, “look Jesus, I have no man and every time I even make attempt, I am never the first to get into the water, so I have even stopped trying. I pay someone to push me into the water and when I am not the first, I drink some more water and pay more to be brought out. This life is so frustrating and unfair”. What do you think the man is looking for? New knowledge. But what does he really need? To be made WHOLE! What did Jesus do? He ignored his stories, and told him, “rise, take up thy bed and walk”.
How should a man who is crippled RISE? I think this is the crux of breaking the habit of who we are. 38 years of knowing only one way to get healed, 4 years of knowing only one way of travelling abroad, 6 years of knowing only one way of getting a job, twelve years of knowing only one way of getting married and on and on the list goes. How do we ditch these ingrained hardwired patterns of behaviours and embrace a new reality? In Dr Joe Dispenza’s book, “Breaking the habit of being yourself”, the subtitle reads “How to lose your mind and create a new one”.
Watch out for Part 2 tomorrow
