Relationships - you make it or break it!

As you know, friends are great influencers of our growth as human beings. In other words, your friends have the power to make or break you.. This is because you let them in to your life and give them access to your secrets and pieces of information that others do not have. Forming a friendship with someone else is important as it helps to give you insight on how to deal with issues in your current or future love relationships. Due to the significance of the role that friends play in one's life, it is important to carefully select friends that will promote your growth as an individual or person rather than the opposite. My previous blog talks about success and how it can affect friendships since some friends are built or destined for a particular phase in your life. So how do you identify friends that are tailored to your growth or life goals? You test them. It is important to test the people who are close to you. Asking questions or making requests that can assist in identifying

Success is what everyone wants. It is what everybody craves and chases. We seek to gain a fraction of success in every thing we do. From waking up to making an impact at work that gets you recognition or hoping to do well in a course at school, success is all anyone thinks of and hopes for in our world today.  Achieving success is the reason we have role models in our lives. We model our actions and decisions after these people with the hope of being like or even better than them. However, people tend to forget that achieving success comes with a price that in most instances seem difficult to pay. The path to success mostly does encounter loneliness,  betrayal and doubts. To be actually successful or gain success in anything, we need to sacrifice few things in order to gain the greater good.  Our sacrifice to achieve success may interfere with the friendships we have built over the years.  Some friends can put you in a position to choose between continuing on the path to success versus

We all have a story. Sometimes we tell our stories in our dealings with others and how we live our lives in the world today.  Our story are part of our make up and what defines us. However,  some of those stories are not the greatest to reflect on because of the sadness that is linked to them. For Instance,  past relationships and our failures are part of our lives that we naturally tend to discuss less of because of how we will be perceived or judged by people around us. We live in a world where people respect our strengths and frown on our weaknesses. They admire our successes but judge our failures. The truth is that we are not one without the other. We are a combination of our failures and successes. An add up of our strengths and weaknesses. We cannot exist without another. We should not try to forget our past relationships because of the hurt they remind our hearts of or the sadness and tears they bring to our faces.  Our past relationships are there to educate us of what to emb

I was born into a christian home and raised as one. Throughout my childhood and teenage years,  I remember spending countless hours in churches and various christian assembly.  I still am a devout christian and believer and lover of Christ. However,  I am not one to say that my faith is without blemish or error as it surely has lots and has become a global joke. Christians have now become sheep led by leaders who do not even understand what being a leader means.  Leaders who talk the talk but can't walk the talk.  Leaders who go into office to chase after titles,  money and fame. Gone are the days when pastors or Christian leaders go into office to make a positive difference in people's lives.  Gone are the days people shy away from being a Christian leader because of the difficulty or meekness of office or how they're perceived by in public or even as a result of the little money they make. Nowadays pastors consider themselves rockstars prophesying falsely and leading peop

I had a different blog that I wanted to post for this month but i just could not finish that said blog for some reason. I scratched the surface for words, sentences and paragraphs to complete that blog but I still could not. It was then I realized that it was not the right time for that blog to be published. So, this morning, I woke up with a message for all avid or new readers of my blog.  When we are born into this earth, the first people we come to know are our family. The ones that made us, show us love and try to protect us from harm and the real truth of the world till we are mature or old enough to deal with those truths. And the reality is that those truths are some hard and cold truths that we will ever face in life. That truth is that the world is a beautiful place, however filled with people that may not share the same love in their heart that we had once experienced. The reality is that we leave a home that is filled or supposedly filled with love from our parents and famil

Marriage is not only sacred but instrumental  to the union of a man and woman who have made the decision to commit to one another irregardless of any situation that may arise. Well at least that is my philosophy when it comes to marriage.  When two people enter a long-term relationship, in most cases it leads to marriage.  Most people use marriage and wedding interchangeably because they are similar. However it is important to note that both are different.  A marriage involves the decision and commitment of the relationship while a wedding is the celebration of that marriage.  It is an amazing and beautiful spectacle when you walk down the street or arrive at a place and opportuned to see an old couple who you happen to discover have been married for multiple years.  It depicts love as a lifestyle with underpinnings carved into the wavelengths of eternal and true feelings. I was having a conversation with a friend when getting married to the right person came up as a topic. Our points

A little over a week ago, Anthony Bourdain, a famous chef and well traveled lover of diverse cultures and food took his own life. He lived and struggled with depression with little knowledge to the general public.  Days before his death, it was Kate Spade, a designer and business mogul who had taken her life while struggling and living with depression.  Depression is a chronic condition that plays heavily on an individual's mood and behavior. In most cases, depression is coined, the silent killer, because it slowly kills those who live with it till they eventually take their own lives. And mostly, all these take place with little or no knowledge to close friends and family members. Depression knows no race, no social class, gender, religion etc. The passing of Bourdain raised an intimate discussion between my mom and I where she learned that I had struggled with suicidal ideations that stemmed from a depressed state during my teen years.  I had multiple times when I had suicidal

What do women want from a man? This is a common question men normally ask when it comes to dating.  Men always say no one can figure out what a woman is thinking or what a woman wants.  Remember the 2000 romantic movie, what women wants, when Mel Gibson an advertising executive acquires the power to hear the thoughts of women. Well, in reality men don't have that luxury to know the thoughts of women to know what they want.  However, I think I have a good idea of what women need from a man.  So, listen up boys as I highlight the top 4 things a woman needs from a man.  Women always drool over the tall, dark and handsome man fantasy. Although that is a deal breaker for most if not all women, most women do not get married to those type of men. Rather women are more interested in other qualities. I think the most important quality  women need from a man is respect.  Now respect is an umbrella term that includes loyalty, honesty  and fairness. A woman will respect you when you respect th

A little over a week ago, I was involved in a conversation with a friend of mine who showed me a thread of Instagram posts. These posts centered on the idea that men married women that were available at the time these men were ready to settle down rather than women they are in love with.  This seemed interesting to me and got me thinking.  Is there some truth to this? Do i think it applies to all men? Yes I think there's some truth to it and no i do not think it applies to all men. I believe there are significant number of men that do fall in love with the girl they marry and there are some men who get married based on availability. Human beings are beings of choices and preferences.  Both men and women have qualities that they want in a mate be it physical, emotional, mental or spiritual. Since, we do not live in a perfect world where we get everything we want or need, we prioritize our preferences in a mate and choose the things we need versus the things we want when we date. 

An avid reader writes, "I have been with this guy for over 2 years and lately he has not been into me as he normally used to be. Is he cheating on me? Should I confront him?    First I'd like to apologize on not replying to your question earlier than now. I believe when you said he has not been into you as he normally used to be, you mean there's a distancing or disconnect from how things used to be. It is understandable that you feel that he could be cheating on you. However, that may not be the case. There are a lot of contributing factors to the issue at hand. 1) He may be going through something in his life that has his attention. Stress from other areas of life or adjusting to new life situations may be a contributing factor to his new behavior.  2) You two may be dissociated emotionally in some ways that need to be addressed. There may be areas in your relationships that may not be the greatest that needs some attention. The result of those attention seeki

An avid reader sent me a message days ago on on social media and asked me the duration of a relationship before it should materialize into marriage. It is a great dating question and i thought i make it into a blog for this month (since February is termed love month). When two people go into a relationship, the expectation is that it ends in marriage or some sort of longtime union especially if they are both marriage ready. When I say marriage ready, I mean they are both mature in age and have some sort of financial or career stability. So back to the question, how long does it take for a relationship to mature into marriage?  Well, it is dependent on three factors.  It depends on the two individuals, where they are at in life and where they are at in the relationship.  The two individuals have to be in sync and be at the same point mentally and emotionally to consider getting married to each other. They also have to be where they want to be in life to be ready to convert the relation

If you're reading this, you made it to the new year. Therefore, I'd start by saying congratulations. Not everyone made it into 2018, so count yourself lucky.  What are your plans for the year? You may be amongst the significant percentage that make new year resolutions and don't seem to accomplish by the end of the year or the rest who freestyle through the year or you may be amongst the wise few who set goals and work on achieving them at some point in the year. My blog from January 2017 discusses goal setting and how to achieve the set goals by the end of the year.  However, in this blog, I would like to talk about career building and reflecting on the future societal trends. You may not know this but by the year 2030 robots or robotic technology would have taken over a significant part of our workforce.  It has already started. All you just have to do is look around.  The government and business corporations are adopting this idea because of many reasons.  Reduced financ