Pavan Chaudary’s wisdom for winning and thriving in life’s battles

Writing for Medium, the sing song is that you must give your essay, story or book, a title that really pops and rightly so. The fascinating title of Pavan Choudary’s book left an indelible mark on my mind until I finally grabbed an e-copy via Amazon Kindle.

Enter, When You Are Sinking Become A Submarine: Winning Through Wisdom and Creativity. Mr Pavan Chaudary identifies two groups of people in the world of power. There are those for whom only the ends matter and others for whom the end is as important as the means. The first group he named the vile and the second the naive. The naive do often win in the struggle for power. …

“Itirayi ni gbogbo nkan.”
— — Wole Soyinka

The above statement in Yoruba language translates to;

“The trying is all.”
— — Wole Soyinka

In his memoir, You Must Set Forth At Dawn, Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka attributed the above aphorism to his mother. According to him, his mother, whom he described as Wild Christian used to confront every “gamut of incompatible situations” with the crisp adage quoted above. Professor Wole Soyinka explained that every time he was faced with any daunting and seemingly intractable challenge, those words always float up from within to spur him on. …

10 practical steps to keep your momentum in an over distracted age.

Inertia is the tendency of an object to remain in a state of rest unless compelled by external forces that set it in motion. Once in motion, an object tends to keep moving in a straight line in the direction of the force applied to it unless compelled by other external forces acting to stop its motion. This is called momentum. These concepts learnt from early Physics lessons were as explained by Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion.

Any object, once in motion must have enough reserve energy to counter the opposition to its momentum. Otherwise, there is no escape, inertia soon sets in and the object falls back to ground zero. …

Photo by Author

“Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.”

~ The Holy Bible

The family devotion time has just ended on that Monday morning. Shortly afterwards, my beloved three years old godson walked in with his mum. Ever inquisitive, he has on several instances floored me with his barrage of unending questions. Repeatedly, I will be left wondering, "Where did this young man got the idea for this query that got me flunked?" He will continue rummaging the house or livening the compound with his chants and restless antics.

His first question to me on that day was, "Grandpa, do you like Bugatti?" I turned from my phone, gazing at him for some seconds before responding. I must not dampen his zest. So, I calmly replied him, "No, the Camry is OK for me." Apparently disappointed by my poor car preferences, he went on undaunted as if to further assure me of his promise. "OK, I will buy a jet for you." How do I tell him that cars are the least of my concerns now? …

There are two main seasons in my country. None of these two, rainy season (of plenitude) or dry season (of scarcity) matters much to this hardy breed.

I’ve crossed its path on several previous encounters. Back then, all I had to do was a short dash up the flight of stairs by the side of my office building, look down and there it was. Its foliage were either still or waving with the flow of the breeze. Each time, it was as if the stationary sentinel was whispering another “Hello there” my way.

One afternoon, I was upstairs again. As I reflected on the fate of this lonely maroon, it dawned on me that this moment will not last forever. Of course, no good moment ever lasts forever. Bad times don’t last forever either. …

It was two days before Christmas and the day has already ran late into the night. Willy has been engrossed mending an old big map. It was one of those fold-in maps from an old edition of the National Geographic magazine. An average adult can make a decent T-shirt from cloth size measures of two of these maps. Come any day, several old copies of the magazine are scattered all over the house.

Frequent folding and unfolding has resulted in some slashes along its edges, but the map was still in good shape. That night, Willy insisted on mending the torn map. For this purpose, he has previously bought a sellotape from a nearby store. The borrowed pair of scissors from his mum also came in handy. Right there on that night, the focus and commitment of my young man attested to the truism that nobody ever gets weary or tired from a self-imposed obligation. …

Photo by Hanny Naibaho on Unsplash

Yes, I know it. You’ve already had more than your fair share of those seemingly unending tips and hacks for keeping your head above the waters in these turbulent times.

Right from our mothers’ wombs to our infant days and all through our early teens, we were all dependent on our parents and other loved loved ones for our existence.

Today, many young adults are still tied to their parents umbilical chords. Severing these chords of dependency early in life are vital towards healthy growth and self reliance.

How do you pull this off?

1. Get out of the mire of learned self helplessness.

People who have experienced stressful conditions repeatedly may begin to believe that they are unable to change their situations. Hamstrung by this mindset, they do not even try to help themselves when opportunities for change become available to them. This is called Learned Helplessness.

According to the American psychologist, Dr Barry Schwartz, learned helplessness make people to have the feeling that they do not have control over any or all of their life’s circumstances. This self limiting hangover lead to dire consequences as it drains such self inflicted victims of future motivations to even make the least try towards escaping from their less than ideal conditions.

People with attitudes of learned helplessness paradoxically sustain self defeating behaviors. They do this by responding to the possibility of failing by deliberately sabotaging their own likelihood of success by not putting in any effort.

So long as you are willing to try just one more time, you have not failed. You only fail when you quit. So, try one more time. This is the only way to overcome self-helplessness and self fulfilling self defeating behavior.

First, you must change your entitlement mentality because nobody owes you anything. …

These 2 tips will serve you well into the new year

I was driving back home with my family from vacation in 2013. Together, we have journeyed through seven states and spent almost an entire day on the road. At last we were getting closer to home. We’ve passed the outskirts of our city and were now less than half an hour's drive away from our den. For me, work was to resume the following day.

The Honda Pilot was ambling on smoothly, as if it was ready to resume a repeat of the distance it has covered so far. The traffic on the stretch of the double-lane highway was light. Surely, having covered over 99 percent of our journey home was just a leisurely few miles' drive away. Two teenagers and two pre-teens were seated behind us. The younger ones were weary and asleep from the long-distance trip. This is Nigeria, and the roads were not at all endearing. …