BLOOM AND GROW

At different points in our lives, we will doubt our abilities to perform.  For example, when we land a new job or just become parents. Some people can do what is required of them regardless of how they feel, but not everybody. Here are three tips for eradicating self-doubt so that you can function at a higher level.  Believe You Have Something to Offer:  Your thoughts eventually become your actions. I like this quote from the book, Wide Awake by Erwin McManus, "the world we create our heads is the world we will create through our actions." The reality about life is that everybody is called to serve; your work matters to someone. I've learned that you don't need to impact the entire world to be successful. What matters is the quality of your service.  Believing I have something to offer is my new mindset as I relaunch my blog.  As much as I love writing, I also think of this blog as a business. My dream of making money doing something I love is what drives me. So, ask

The light bulb moment for me this year was realizing that I needed to work on my self-esteem. This realization actually came from wanting to blog about everything I did wrong this year.  And at that moment,  I was like, "wait a minute. Why am I always self-reflecting on the negative?" So, as a step in the right direction, I'm flipping that mindset over and writing about all the things I did right year-round.  1. I confronted one of my biggest fears:  I took an exam I was afraid to take. 16 years ago, I took a similar exam and I failed- and that failure marked me because I felt that I had given my best efforts. This time around I went above and beyond and I'm happy I passed. 2. I stuck to being a consistent blogger.   This year, I've written 51 articles on this blog. This one makes 52 by the way. This is more than twice everything I had written on this blog before 2020. Can you imagine!  3. I lost weight. This is almost happening by chance but I noticed that by ea

  It's no doubt that a lot of us are products of our environments. Our backgrounds shape the way we think and the things we believe in. What I know for sure is that we keep passing beliefs from one generation to the next without examining those beliefs to know whether they should be passed on or quenched.   I'm at that point in my life where I need to examine my beliefs and amend some, so that they work for me, going forward. I'll just share a few and I encourage you to do this exercise as well.  1. Not Having the Things My Parents Didn't Have.  A lot of us say that we want to have better lives than what our parents had, but subconsciously we resist change. We didn't have air conditioning units in our apartment growing up. We considered it to be an ostentatious buy.  "Only rich people use AC in their house" was something often said around the house. Now looking back, I see that we were actually well off enough to afford it. 2. My Parents Never Went Abroad.

Learning to be independent is a continuous process for me. And I am broadly referring to independence as it relates to the various parts of our lives. You can be very independent at work and this might not necessarily be the case on the home front. It's important to know that if there is no one around you, you can take care of yourself.  Emotional independence is important because when it comes to dating, you have to be a whole person without someone else being around you. You must be able to enjoy your own company. That way you can ask yourself important questions like why is this person in my life?  So, what I am highlighting here is the fact that our relationships have to go beyond the mindset of "so that they wouldn't say I don't have anybody" Financial independence is being able to meet your needs. It really does not matter how much you earn. What matters is that you are not at the mercy of money.  Relying on other people excessively can be detrimental to our

As a child, I was not one of the cool kids at school. I didn't play sports nor walk with a swagger. Instead, I was one of the goofy musical club ones (like the characters in Glee).  Things didn't change when I got to the university and I often worried about not being "cool enough". Over the years, I have learned a few things about becoming my own person and building my self-worth.  Self-worth is about the value you put on yourself. It's not always about your job or how much money you earn. Rather it's about how you are leading your life and being aware of the reasons for your actions. It's being honest with yourself and working to improve in areas where you might be deficient. At some point in my life,  I thought my worth was tied to how much I could make other people think of me as a good person. But that made me secretly bitter because I kept enduring people's trespasses.  Things changed when I started to pay more attention to myself by exploring my