Monthly Archives: January 2013

Little Lady Love

31 Thursday Jan 2013

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lady love

“To know even one life has breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

It feels like ages since I made a post here. I have been “swamped” with work, professional exams and life in general. Not a very good excuse…I know and I am sorry.

The core point of this post is not new; it has been written so many times, by different writers and wise people but please stick with me, as I intend to use a personal experience to further emphasize my point.

I tend to walk into high street stores over my lunch break to “entertain my eyes” and “burn some calories”. My “exercise routine” takes me to clothing, jewellery, perfume and book stores. In order to avoid unnecessary impulse spending, I tend to leave my purse at work to stop me from coming out of these stores with bags of stuff. This approach does not always work as some days I end up seeing something that keeps me awake at night and eventually go back into the store to buy it anyway. One recent example is my lovely new bag…

Click here for my blog post based on a yet another lunch time shopping experience I recently had.

Okay back to topic!

A week ago, I was on one my “lunch time exercise routines”. I did not feel particularly jolly that afternoon so I decided to go into Poundland to grab some cans of diet coke. (For people who don’t know, Poundland is a store where essentially everything is one pound. Sometimes you get multi-buy offers such as “3 for 1 pound” on packs of chocolates, drinks etc.)

After grabbing my drinks, I decided to check out what else was on offer, you never know, someday I could find a brand new Range Rover there (I wish). After pacing around for 5 more minutes, I decided that nothing else interested me, so I went straight to the till to pay for my items. As expected, there was a long queue, so I mentally gauged the queue and checked my wristwatch to see if I would make it back to work on time and decided to carry on waiting. While waiting, I noticed that the queue did not seem to be moving, so I looked ahead and noticed the shop attendant, a middle aged woman, struggling with her till. As expected, people in front of me started to get impatient, some had started grumbling and other faster ones quickly moved to other queues. As they did this, my queue got shorter so I moved forward.

After a while, the shop attendant fixed her till and continued attending to people. I was very glad about this and silently thankful to the impatient ones who left my queue to join other queues.

My queue continued moving and at this point, it was the turn of the lady right in front of me. I observed the exchange, noting that the shop attendant still looked very flustered by the broken till incident. She apologised for the delay and quickly packed up the lady’s things. While the shop attendant packed the lady’s purchases, I heard the lady compliment the shop attendant on her necklace. The shop attendant looked up with a very wide smile and said, “Thank you”. I don’t know how to explain in words, but seeing the shop attendant’s mood swiftly change from being flustered to that of pure joy really affected me. I stepped forward as the shop attendant looked after the lady while she walked away, with the beautiful smile still on her face.

I stepped out of the shop, looked across the street and saw some valentine’s day posters but my mind kept going back to what happened earlier in the shop and I thought to myself, “That was love right there”.

Clearly, the shop attendant was not having a good day but the lady, rather than moan about her long wait, chose to show her love with that tiny compliment, which I believe must have made the shop attendant’s day or hour, at least. Do you know the most beautiful thing about that action? It cost her absolutely nothing. Not one single dime. All it cost the lady were the one or two seconds it took her to say those words, “Beautiful necklace”. Think of all the difference those two words made.

It is the last day of January, and we all know that February is regarded as the month of love. I patiently wait to see how couples would try to express their love for each other. While we get carried away by valentine’s day and all the fanfare it comes with, perhaps it is also important to step back a little bit, to really consider what love should be. Perhaps we would see that it doesn’t have too cost much to show true love to one another. That single word, “Thank you”, that little compliment, “Nice tie”, that short phone call to know how your loved one is doing. That “How are you doing Jim?” to the security guard or cleaner at work.

Those two hours, out of your “busy schedule” to show your wife, partner or children that you care. Tiny little acts of love such as these could probably go a much longer way than choosing just one day to make a grand expression of love.
When we get back to the basics, we would see that such simple acts of love have the potential to reach places where time and money cannot. If anything, they have the potential to actually add to our joy, peace of mind, and total well-being.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please feel free to leave your comments and share with your friends.

Have a fulfilling weekend ahead.

Image credit: keturahweathers.theworldrace.org

The Law of Wealth

17 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by in Quotes

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wealth

“Wealth, like a tree grows from a tiny seed. The first copper you save is the tree from which your tree will grow. The sooner you plant the seed, the sooner the tree will grow. The care with which you water that tree with consistent savings, the sooner you may rest in contentment under its shade” – The Richest Man in Babylon

Image credit: welcome2holyspirit.blogspot.com

The Law of One

11 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by in Motivation

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law-of-one

“You attract into your life, whatever your dominant thought is” – The Law of One

Hi Friends,

I hope you have had a good week trying to snap back into the reality of work, school and other commitments after the Christmas and New Year celebrations. It was slightly tough trying to get my brain to continue from where I left off with work last year but now I think I have got the hang of it. Incase you didn’t get the chance to read the first post for 2013, “Keep digging” (see here).

This post was inspired by a law that has proven true time and time again. I have found out that just like the law of gravity, whether you believe in it or not, it still holds true.

Chances are that you may have may have read about this law as it is also called “The Law of Attraction”. If you have, I suggest that you still carry on reading.

To properly illustrate how this law works, I will use a very simple, somewhat flimsy example from December 2012.

I do a lot of planning and reflecting (in my opinion) and as a result, I go through notebooks very quickly. The last notebook I used served as a combination of a diary, jotter, to-do list, and drawing book for times when I was really bored. As a result of this, I needed a sturdy, not-so-large but thick diary to separate my to-do-list, the products of my sober reflections and my study notes. One could ask why I didn’t use my phone like most relatively young people do. My answer to that is that I still enjoy the old fashioned way of crossing off items from my to-do-list. It has a way of making me feel productive.

Okay back to topic, I needed a diary that was large enough to hold all my daily scribbles, small enough to go into my bag and chic enough to be seen with. I had a picture of what I wanted and casually looked in bookshops whenever I went into town but I could not find it – not at the right price anyway.

Towards Christmas, my department held a Christmas lunch and secret Santa was part of the activities. I hoped that whoever picked my name from the hat would get me a diary. Alas when the day came, I got a nice and interesting necklace but not a diary.

I then decided to take matters into my own hands and ordered a diary through the office ordering process but when the diary got delivered, it still wasn’t what I wanted. At this point I decided to make do with the little office diary and carried on with my life.

Two weeks later while typing away on my computer, with the diary issue long forgotten, my colleague pulled his chair closer to me and asked, “Chika do you need a diary?” I replied, “Sure, let me see what you’ve got.” To my surprise he handed me a lovely diary exactly like the one I was searching for weeks before. I was speechless for a while and thanked him for it. After thanking him, I did a mental check to find out if I had mentioned needing a diary to him at any point and concluded that I did not. The Law of One had worked.

You may be wondering why I am making all this fuss about a simple diary but just imagine what one could achieve by being aware of this law and using it positively.

It should be noted at this point that the Law of One or the Law of Attraction does not take away the power of God/the Universe in our lives.

The Bible actually states that, “If your faith is as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, move and it will move”. While I am not sure if one should attempt moving an actual mountain based on the bible passage, I am confident in the knowledge that a mustard seed was just about the size of my faith regarding the diary.

Just imagine what else could be possible if we decided to have a little more faith without the unnecessary pressure that having doubt creates.

I will leave you here for now and say thank you once again for visiting and reading through this post. Please feel free to leave your comments.

Have a fulfilling weekend.

Love,

Chika

Photo credit: sensualblissvoyager.wordpress.com

Keep Digging

05 Saturday Jan 2013

Posted by in Motivation

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keep digging

Hi friends,
I was considering a number of positively twisted topics for this week’s blog post and came across this story on Tyler Perry’s Facebook page.

(For those who do not know him, he is an American producer, known for creating, and performing in drag, the Madea character, a tough, vindictive, and over reactive elderly woman. He has created many feature films, starting with Diary of a Mad Black Woman, in 2005, featuring Madea. In 2011, Forbes named him the highest paid man in entertainment, earning $130 million between May 2010 and 2011 (source: Wikipedia))

I have decided to use this true story, which essentially captures my thoughts for my first post in 2013. I hope you enjoy reading it. See below:

A few years ago I was getting these really insane water bills. I mean HIGH! So I decided to dig some wells in my yard to have water for my landscape. I live alone, so I know it had to be from watering the grass. So I hired a company to come out and dig these wells. The foreman and I walked all around my yard and as we were walking he was putting down flags. I asked what the flags were for. He said, “The flags represent good places to dig for water.” I asked, “Why do you have so many flags?” He said, “I’m not sure if any of these places will produce water.” I said, “Hold up, you mean if you dig all these spots and don’t hit water I still have to pay you?” He said, “Yes, that’s how it goes.” I said, “Ok, fine.” Needless to say, he dug three wells and never hit water. I said, “Just stop.”

I got a few more extreme water bills and called him back. He said, “Are you sure?” I said, “Yes, keep drilling until you hit water.” The next well he dug he was down 500 feet and still didn’t hit any water. He asked if I wanted him to stop. I said, “Go deeper.” He dug down another 200 feet and still nothing. I said, “Go deeper.” He drilled another 200 feet and he hit rock. I said, “Blast it, cut it, do whatever you have to do but keep digging.” After fighting the rock and breaking his drill and getting a new one we got a little deeper. He said, “We are at 1,200 feet, why do you want me to keep going?” I said, “because I’m tired of these water bills and I’m going to do something about it.” He said, “But this is really deep.” I asked him if he had hit water yet. He said “no,” so I told him to go deeper. “But you don’t understand,” he said. “We don’t usually drill this deep, this is going to be expensive.” I told him that, “Sometimes you have to go deeper to get what you are after, no matter what the cost.” He started the machine and went down another four inches and hit a river of water. Just a few inches separated me from getting my breakthrough. That was five years ago and that well has never run dry.

In 2013 I want you to apply that to your life in all ways. Sometimes you will spend time on a thing and it will produce no water. Don’t be afraid to move on to another spot. YOU CAN’T HAVE FEAR. I don’t care how much time you put into it. If the well is dry MOVE ON! Nothing lives where there is no living water. Be it a relationship, a job, a business, don’t be afraid to move to another spot.

Now, on the other hand, if you are digging your well and you are sure that it is not only where you want to be but where God wants you to be, then keep digging in that same spot. Don’t stop digging until you hit a river of blessings. Don’t stop praying until you live in the change you’ve been waiting for. Don’t stop pushing until you deliver your breakthrough. Yes, it will get difficult. Yes, you may hit rock. Yes, there will be a cost. But when you get to what God is trying to get you to, YOU WILL RECOVER IT ALL!

One of my favorite scriptures says that. “PURSUE AND YOU SHALL RECOVER IT ALL!”

Some people give up when they are only inches away!!

Thank you for taking the time to read this and may you remember to keep digging.

Love,

Chika

Photo credit: smartsayingsfortoday.files.wordpress.com