When you begin to expose your mind to be enriched by the resonant energy of the minds of others, through documented writings, recorded audio or video, or captured moments in images, you begin to reorder into a new being.

I like to say that one of the ways transformation comes is through exposure to excellence or the excellent. Excellence has a form in human beings and the impression of such excellence affects their speech, and the energy they exude. When you expose yourself to these people, they transfer this energy to you through their speech and their presence. This affects you. It makes an impression on you. If you don’t cultivate and sustain this energy it will slowly wane with time. The possibility of keeping the “pedal” swinging is the transformation. You must intentionally seek this.

I just returned from a Marriage and Family Conference and the words my ears heard charged my heart and spirit; the prayers and the exhortations were so profound. I’ve completely changed frequency. But…how does one sustain this “uppity”?

My argument is that there has to be constant exposure. The heat that boils water is the same heat that will keep such water boiling: the principles that produce a result are the same principles that will sustain such result. Therefore, remain exposed to excellence.

One last thing, beside the conference, I have been engaging lots of books, podcasts, and videos on various topics spanning work, spirituality, money and marriage. And as a result, my mind is beaming with visions. Ideas have just been flowing through my mind like I just got admission to become a channel for ideas. I hear strange phrases, weird combination of words that Google have no reference to. The bathroom has now become an altar. Sometimes, I almost control myself from shouting and screaming. It’s a different kind of possession. (I would suggest that it seems like humans graduate—at some point—to become conduits. What they become channels of is relative to the activities that engendered their graduation. Interesting!)

Now, my vocation and avocation are to designing structures to executing ideas. From Notes, to my Podcast, to my videos, to (whatever). I don’t just want to relish in these visions. I want to share these ideas, build things, and enable other people.

When I had a conversation with my elder sister on my Podcast —the episode, The Girls Afraid of Shame— she asked, “What if you lived life and you never got married? Are you afraid of that? You’re a woman, what if you never have children? Are you afraid of not having children?”

When I think about these questions, I restructure it and ask myself, and ask you a similar question: What are you afraid of? What questions of ‘what if’ are you afraid to ask yourself?

What if you don’t…eventually get married to [her/him], or travel the world like you desire, or buy that thing you’ve always longed for, or build the house you’ve always imagined, or make as much money as you desire to make? What if you don’t have sex before you die? What if that relationship doesn’t work out? What if the business doesn’t work? What if your dad or mom or anyone you love so dearly dies before you’re ready for it? Are you afraid of that?

What are you afraid of? (I once heard from Apostle Joshua Selman that fear is an evidence there is a knowledge you lack. Well, everyone lacks some knowledge. Alone, nobody knows everything. But, think about the question.)

Well, if you will not fear anything you must have some hope. And what you hope on better be Solid, otherwise when the storms come—and come they will— you might go nuts. Life happens, they say. Perhaps, someone else challenged, “Life doesn’t just happen, life happens just…” The desire to acquire the knowledge of what “just” means for you is primarily your responsibility.

Serendipity is real. But do not base your life on them. Mrs Funke Felix-Adejumo said, “Life is not governed by miracles, it’s governed by principles.” It’s just very stupid of some of us to always pray for miracles when simple application of principles can easily solve our problems. Well, such is the life of the unenlightened wo/man.

So, I’m back again…what are you afraid of? What am I afraid of? “Joshua, what are you afraid? What if Netintui doesn’t work out?” Haha! It’s my job to make it work. Don’t be afraid of anything. Just do what you’re supposed to do. Launch for the galaxies. Leave the rest to serendipity, luck, grace, favour, fortune or whatever you might want to call it —depending on who you are.

This is perhaps one of the best ideas to practice for your financial breakthrough. A part of all you earn is yours to keep. Oh, yes.

In fact, read the book, The Richest Man in Babylon, by George Clason, to get the full gist. Read the book at least 5 times, and something will affect you. Exposure attracts impactation. There are so many books, and you CANNOT read them all. My advice is to get 5 of the best books on a subject and read them over, and over, and over, and over…until you begin to recite the writings from your sleep.

Good advice. (By the way, how do you like the new Writing page. We are just getting started.)

Take care.

This is by Chung Ju Yung, the founder of Hyundai. And boy is it true? You just have to do your best. You just have to contribute as much as you can to the right cause. For the time you have, that’s the best you can do while you hope for the better.

A lot of things will not go on straight. A lot of things will not work so well. A lot of them will not be so easy. You need soldiers to help you along the way. You need “helpers” to support you along the journey. But, even with all the help possible, you still have to hope for the best. When there’s nothing left to do, take a break. Go for leisure. (You’ve done your best. Last we checked, you’re not God.)

At least, in my life, I know this is quite a message for me, I used to feel like I could bend reality. (And I still believe I could. And I can. Yet, frankly, I must confess, there’s power that needs to be received to execute such agency.) Agency requires power; it requires maturity, skill, drive, passion, etc. Agency is a powerful thing and it has enabled people to force reality into being, but not every human being can apply agency, at the same level. When you have done all you can at the level of your power and influence, that is your agency threshold, leave the rest to…(whatever). Chill. Refresh yourself. Re-strategize. Recoup. Go for another training —after your leisure. We need leisure to regain our sanity.

I just finished reading Timothy Keller’s book, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment With the Wisdom of God. It’s a very powerful book, very well researched and biblically sound. I totally recommend. Okay, here are my quotes from reading the book.

Nothing can mature character like marriage.

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they had resisted the traditional purposes of marriage: to change their natural instincts, to reign in passions, to learn denial of one’s own desires, and to serve others.

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They want a spouse who is fun, intellectually stimulating, sexually attractive, with many common interests, and who, on top of it all, is supportive of their personal goals and of the way they are living now.

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They are all looking for a marriage partner who will “fulfill their emotional, sexual, and spiritual desires.”

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The primary problem is . . . learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.

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Over the years you will go through seasons in which you have to learn to love a person who you didn’t marry, who is something of a stranger. You will have to make changes that you don’t want to make, and so will your spouse.

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If our views of marriage are too romantic and idealistic, we underestimate the influence of sin on human life. If they are too pessimistic and cynical, we misunderstand marriage’s divine origin.

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There is so much to do that we don’t know where to start. Start here, Paul says. Do for your spouse what God did for you in Jesus, and the rest will follow.

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Is the purpose of marriage to deny your interests for the good of the family, or is it rather to assert your interests for the fulfillment of yourself? The Christian teaching does not offer a choice between fulfillment and sacrifice but rather mutual fulfillment through mutual sacrifice.

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Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.

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Only if you have learned to serve others by the power of the Holy Spirit will you have the power to face the challenges of marriage

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After trying all kinds of other things, Christians have learned that the worship of God with the whole heart in the assurance of his love through the work of Jesus Christ is the thing their souls were meant to “run on.” That is what gets all the heart’s cylinders to fire. If this is not understood, then we will not have the resources to be good spouses. If we look to our spouses to fill up our tanks in a way that only God can do, we are demanding an impossibility.

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The ability to serve another person requires the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, to drive this very gospel into our hearts until it changes us.

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Therefore, when facing any problem in marriage, the first thing you look for at the base of it is, in some measure, self-centeredness and an unwillingness to serve or minister to the other.

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Fulfillment is on the far side of sustained unselfish service, not the near side. It is one of the universal principles of life:

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“Woundedness” is compounded self-doubt and guilt, resentment and disillusionment.

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If people are self-absorbed and messed up, it is argued, it is only because they lack healthy self-esteem.

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A marriage relationship unavoidably entails self-denial, even in the most mundane day-to-day living.

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you have to get your spouse to recognize your potential and help you to develop it.

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not thinking less of yourself or more of yourself but thinking of yourself less

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You must lose yourself to find yourself.

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Only out of the fear of the Lord Jesus will we be liberated to serve one another.

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But each of us comes to marriage with a disordered inner being

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As we will see, a marriage devoid of passion and emotional desire for one another doesn’t fulfill the Biblical vision.

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The best sex makes you want to weep tears of joy, not bask in the glow of a good performance.

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at the heart of the Biblical idea of marriage is the covenant.

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Christian ethicist Lewis Smedes wrote an article that I read as a young pastor and a still new husband. It helped me enormously as both a counselor and spouse. It is called “Controlling the Unpredictable—The Power of Promising.” First, he locates the very basis of our identity in the power of promising:

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Without being bound to the fulfillment of our promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wander helplessly and without direction in the darkness of each person’s lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities.

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Smedes argues eloquently that promising is the means to freedom. In promising, you limit options now, in order to have wonderful, fuller options later.

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I am well aware that much of what I am and what I do is a gift or a curse from my past. But when I make a promise to anyone, I rise above all the conditioning that limits me.

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To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial.

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slowly but surely, my emotions were catching up with my behavior.

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Our culture says that feelings of love are the basis for actions of love. And of course that can be true. But it is truer to say that actions of love can lead consistently to feelings of love.

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The paradox is that friendship cannot be merely about itself. It must be about something else, something that both friends are committed to and passionate about besides one another.

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Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers.

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You should give your Christian friends “hunting licenses” to confront you if you are failing to live in line with your commitments (Galatians 6:1).

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We think of a prospective spouse as primarily a lover (or a provider), and if he or she can be a friend on top of that, well isn’t that nice! We should be going at it the other way around. Screen first for friendship. Look for someone who understands you better than you do yourself, who makes you a better person just by being around them. And then explore whether that friendship could become a romance and a marriage.

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What are the “tools” for this work? How can we engage one another in spiritual friendship to help us on our journey toward our future selves? How do we love each other so that our marriage goes on from strength to strength rather than stalling out in repetitive arguments that end in fruitless silence? The basic answer is that you must speak the truth in love with the power of God’s grace.

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What are the flaws that your spouse will see? You may be a fearful person, with a tendency toward great anxiety. You may be a proud person, with a tendency to be opinionated and selfish. You may be an inflexible person, with a tendency to be demanding and sulky if you don’t get your way. You may be an abrasive or harsh person, who people tend to respect more than they love. You may be an undisciplined person, with a tendency to be unreliable and disorganized. You may be an oblivious person, who tends to be distracted, insensitive, and unaware of how you come across to others. You may be a perfectionist, with a tendency to be judgmental and critical of others and also to get down on yourself. You may be an impatient, irritable person, with a tendency to hold grudges or to lose your temper too often. You may be a highly independent person, who does not like to be responsible for the needs of others, who dislikes having to make joint decisions, and who most definitely hates to ask for any help yourself. You may be a person who wants far too much to be liked, and so you tend to shade the truth, you can’t keep secrets, and you work too hard to please everyone. You may be thrifty but at the same time miserly with money, too unwilling to spend it on your own needs appropriately, and ungenerous to others.

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To be highly esteemed by someone you highly esteem is the greatest thing in the world.

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Learn the primary languages of your spouse and send love over those channels, not over the channels you prefer for yourself. We tend to give love through the channels in which we like to receive it.

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The point is this—truth and love need to be kept together, but it is very hard. When we are hurt, we use the power of truth without love. The fury and pain of such encounters can lead to the mistake of trying to just love without telling the truth, though in the end this does not lead to anyone feeling loved at all.

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What we need is the two together, intertwined. We need to feel so loved by our partners that when they criticize us, we have the security to admit our faults. Then we can come to know and face who we are and grow. That’s what should happen, but it usually doesn’t. Why not? Because when we see our spouse’s flaws we get too angry. It is extremely difficult to use the truth in a loving way, to keep truth and love together.

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How do you get the power of grace? You can’t create this power; you can only reflect it to others if you have received it.

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No wise person rejects a gift from someone who loves them without at least giving it a look.

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The English word “helper” is not the best translation for the Hebrew word ’ezer. “Helper” connotes merely assisting someone who could do the task almost as well without help. But ’ezer is almost always used in the Bible to describe God himself. Other times it is used to describe military help, such as reinforcements, without which a battle would be lost. To “help” someone, then, is to make up what is lacking in him with your strength. Woman was made to be a “strong helper.”

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The air is filled with blameshifting, finger pointing, and accusation. Rather than their Otherness becoming a source of completion, it becomes an occasion for oppression and exploitation. The woman remains dependent and desirous of her husband, but it turns into an idolatrous desire, and his protection and love become a selfish lust and exploitation.

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Let me emphasize that Jesus’s willing acceptance of this role was wholly voluntary, a gift to his Father. I discovered here that my submission in marriage was a gift I offered, not a duty coerced from me.

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If it was not an assault on the dignity and divinity (but rather led to the greater glory) of the Second Person of the Godhead to submit himself, and assume the role of a servant, then how could it possibly injure me to be asked to play out the “Jesus role” in my marriage?

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Male and female are invited to mirror and reflect the “dance” of the Trinity, loving, self-sacrificing authority and loving, courageous submission.

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The master has just made himself into a servant who has washed his disciples’ feet, thus demonstrating in the most dramatic way that authority and leadership mean that you become the servant, you die to self in order to love and serve the Other. Jesus redefined all authority as servant-authority. Any exercise of power can only be done in service to the Other, not to please oneself. Jesus is the one who did not come to be served, as the world’s authority figures expect to be, but to serve, to the point of giving his life.

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Both women and men get to “play the Jesus role” in marriage—Jesus in his sacrificial authority, Jesus in his sacrificial submission. By accepting our gender roles, and operating within them, we are able to demonstrate to the world concepts that are so counterintuitive as to be completely unintelligible unless they are lived out by men and women in Christian marriages.

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Gilligan argued that while men seek maturity by detaching themselves, women see themselves maturing as they attach.

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Men see women’s need for “interdependence” as sheer dependence, and women see men’s need for independence as pure ego.

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sin will lead men to try to dominate women (Genesis 3:16).

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rigid cultural gender roles have no Biblical warrant.

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one can always begin to serve without waiting for permission.

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But you can be sure that if you aren’t getting any satisfaction from obeying God, you surely will get none from avoiding his pattern.

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So what motivated me to preach about marriage to the unmarried? The answer is that single people cannot live their lives well as singles without a balanced, informed view of marriage. If they do not have that, they will either over-desire or under-desire marriage, and either of those ways of thinking will distort their lives.

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Here we see that behind “the time is short” phrase is a sophisticated view of history. Paul taught the “overlap” of the ages. The prophets of the Old Testament preached that the Messiah would end the old order—the world of “swift death and little bliss”—and then begin the new age of God’s kingdom, in which all things would be put right and death and decay banished. When Jesus came, he announced that he was the Messiah, but to everyone’s surprise, he did not ascend a throne. Instead he went to a cross. He did not come to bring judgment but to bear it. What did this mean? It meant that Jesus did bring the kingdom of God. Through repentance and faith, we enter it now (John 3:3, 5). His reigning power is among us now, healing people by putting them right with God and each other (Luke 11:20; 12:32). And yet, this present world is not over. We still live in a world of decay, disease, and death. This is what is meant by the “overlap of the ages.” The kingdom of God—God’s power to renew the whole of creation—has broken into the old world through Christ’s first coming, but it is not fully here. The old order is still here, though it is doomed and living on borrowed time. It is “passing away,” as Paul says.

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If single Christians don’t develop a deeply fulfilling love relationship with Jesus, they will put too much pressure on their dream of marriage, and that will create pathology in their lives as well.

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However, if singles learn to rest in and rejoice in their marriage to Christ, that means they will be able to handle single life without a devastating sense of being unfulfilled and unformed. And they might as well tackle this spiritual project right away. Why? Because the same idolatry of marriage that is distorting their single lives will eventually distort their married lives if they find a partner. So there’s no reason to wait. Demote marriage and family in your heart, put God first, and begin to enjoy the goodness of single life.

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I propose that within each Christian community you watch for and appreciate the inevitable differences that will appear between male and female in your particular generation, culture, people, and place.

Wait for them to appear, and know them. Talk about them among yourselves. Notice the distinct idols women have and men have in your generation, culture, and place. Notice the strengths women have and men have in your generation, culture, and place. Notice communication modes, decision-making skills, leadership styles, life priorities, and the balance of work and family. Once you see them, respect and appreciate them. Without the gospel, people often turn temperamental, cultural, and gender differences into moral virtues. This is one of the ways we bolster our self-esteem—a form of “works-righteousness,” a way to earn our superior status. And so men and women scorn and mock the other gender’s distinctive traits. But the gospel should remove that kind of attitude.

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Marriage does and should somewhat limit the extent of friendships you have with others of the opposite sex.

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While the traditional motive for marriage has been social duty, stability, and status, the contemporary motive for marriage is personal fulfillment. Both of these motives are partially right, of course, but they tend to become ultimates if the gospel has not changed your mind and heart.

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when contemporary people say they want the perfect mate, sexual and financial factors dominate the thinking.

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As dating spread throughout society, it not only individualized the whole process, removing the couple from family context, but it also changed the focus of romance from friendship and character assessment to spending money, being seen, and having fun.

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We do live in a far more mobile world, and so traditional neighborhoods and social and family networks are fading in their influence. But can we apply some older approaches to contemporary realities? Can we move the focus away from money and sex back to character? From personal fulfillment to building community? Can we involve the community around us more in seeking marriage? In the following section I will lay out some practical guidelines for doing so.

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So many people choose their marriage partner on the basis of looks and money—rather than on character, mission, future self, and mythos—that they often find themselves married to a person they don’t really respect that much.

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One of the ways you can judge whether you have moved past the infatuation stage is to ask a set of questions. Have you been through and solved a few sharp conflicts? Have you been through a cycle of repenting and forgiving? Have each of you shown the other that you can make changes out of love for the other? Two kinds of couples answer no. The first kind are those who never have any conflicts. It may be they are not past infatuation. The second kind of couple has had a stormy relationship and has the same unresolved fights over and over again. They haven’t learned even the rudimentary skills of repentance, forgiveness, and change. Neither of these couples may be ready for marriage.

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Put friendship development before romantic development.

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Marriage should not be a strictly individual, unilateral decision. It is too important, and our personal perspective is too easily skewed. The community has many married people in it who have much wisdom for single people to hear. Singles should get community input at every step of the way when seeking marriage.

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The Christian community has a deep interest in the development of strong, great marriages and therefore a vested interest in the community’s singles marrying well. Singles must not act as if who they marry is a decision belonging just to them as individuals.

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Sin, which is first and foremost a disorder of the heart, therefore has a big impact on sex.

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The Christian sex ethic can be summarized like this: Sex is for use within marriage between a man and woman.

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The Bible says don’t unite with someone physically unless you are also willing to unite with the person emotionally, personally, socially, economically, and legally. Don’t become physically naked and vulnerable to the other person without becoming vulnerable in every other way, because you have given up your freedom and bound yourself in marriage.

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Then, once you have given yourself in marriage, sex is a way of maintaining and deepening that union as the years go by.

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It is the same with the marriage covenant. When you get married, you make a solemn covenant with your spouse—the Bible calls your spouse your “covenant partner” (Proverbs 2:17). That day is a great day, and your hearts are full. But as time goes on, there is a need to rekindle the heart and renew the commitment. There must be an opportunity to recall all that the other person means to you and to give yourself anew. Sex between a husband and a wife is the unique way to do that.

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Sex is God’s appointed way for two people to reciprocally say to one another, “I belong completely, permanently, and exclusively to you.” You must not use sex to say anything less.

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So, according to the Bible, a covenant is necessary for sex. It creates a place of security for vulnerability and intimacy. But though a marriage covenant is necessary for sex, sex is also necessary for the maintenance of the covenant. It is your covenant renewal service.

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C. S. Lewis likened sex without marriage to tasting food without swallowing and digesting. The analogy is apt.

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If sex is designed to be part of making a covenant and experiencing that covenant’s renewal, then we should think of sex as an emotional “commitment apparatus.”

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The most rapturous love between a man and woman on earth is only a hint of what that is like (Romans 7:1-6; Ephesians 5:22ff). Knowing this helps a lot. One reason we can burn with seemingly uncontrollable sexual passion is because, at the moment, our hearts believe the lie that if we have a great, romantic, sexual experience, we will finally feel deeply fulfilled.

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There is conscience, there is reason, and there is feeling, and they all rise up and argue that they should do what Mr. Rochester asks.

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Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation:

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But, she says, if she could break them when they appear inconvenient to her, of what would be their worth? If you only obey God’s word when it seems reasonable or profitable to you—well, that isn’t really obedience at all.

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“It communicates, negatively, his obligation to refrain from engaging in sexual relations with anyone other than his wife and, positively, his obligation to fulfill his marital duty to provide her with sexual pleasure and satisfaction.”

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In short, the greatest sexual pleasure should be the pleasure of seeing your spouse getting pleasure.

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Unless your marital relationship is in a good condition, sex doesn’t work.

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Kathy and I often liken sex in a marriage to oil in an engine—without it, the friction between all the moving parts will burn out the motor. Without joyful, loving sex, the friction in a marriage will bring about anger, resentment, hardness, and disappointment.

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Nevertheless, at the end of the day, Christ’s love is the great foundation for building a marriage that sings.

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No human being should give any other human being unconditional obedience.

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The fact is that many wives are more decisive than their husbands.

Knowledge is powerful. I hope to share more quotes from the books that I read.

“Value is rarely a physical attribute.

“The more people are engaged, the richer the platform becomes.

“Behaviour is not a raw material, and yet it is behaviour that gives value to raw material.

“Gather the behaviour data in your platform. Behaviour data are gathered by the actions enabled by the platform. (Actions = retrieved behaviour.)

“The degree to which a technology retrieves latent behaviour is the rate by which a sensed signal becomes precise.

“The value of a platform is the value of the behaviour it has successfully retrieved.

“A retrieved behaviour is a latent behaviour, a behaviour that did not have a media to make it manifest. Latent behaviour is an action you might be engaged in if given the right tools.

Here are my best quotes to strike this point.

“And here is the prime condition of success, the great secret—concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun on one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lend in it, adopt every improvement, having the best machinery, and know the most about it.” __Dale Carnegie.

“Only focused people become first-class citizens of the Earth.” __Bishop David Oyedepo

“What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make Netintui better?” __Joshua Francis

“Make something people want…There’s nothing more valuable than an unmet need that is just becoming fixable. If you find something broken that you can fix for a lot of people, you’ve found a goldmine.” __Paul Graham

Just a few common-sense heuristics for seeing life.

Growth will provoke expansion. Growth will provoke relocation. Growth will excite enlargement. Growth will require a bigger space. Growth will need a thicker material, a larger vessel, a farther vision, a larger shelf, a bigger storage, a sturdier platform, a more refined guard, and much more.

When expansion is a necessity, it is often as a result of growth.

A lot of common sense ideas is not so common among people you expect should understand the common sense ideas. For example, Follow your passion is such a cliché suggestion that you’d expect most people to just “get it”. But, they mostly do not.

Here, I talk about desperate hearts. When a person’s heart become desperate, it’s just normal for them to begin to have desperate thoughts. Well…actually, desperation here is just a variable. It could be replaced with anything, literally. A heart filled with love will suddenly begin to have loving thoughts and promptings to do lovable things. Find a young man who is in love with a maid, oh…they are the most inspiration writers. They don’t lack insight for doing anything loving. The same goes with despicable, thorny hearts. Their minds are the centre for the overload of evil computations.

But truly, you want your heart to be filled with the right essence. I love Philippians 4:8. It says,

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

That’s beautiful.

Some say that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. Well…it could. What you don’t know can hurt you. It can take your life. It can cause you pain.

In fact, it is easier for what you don’t know to distort your reality than it is for what you do know. Because for what you do know to affect your life, it has to be permitted to: through attention, application, practice and repetition. But, for the things you don’t know? You unconsciously, unknowingly attend, apply, practice, and repeat. And you will do it with very little effort.

Now, how many things do you think you don’t know but affect your life in several ways? Perhaps, a few —maybe, a lot. And because you attend to these things effortlessly, your life feels like it’s driven by lusts. There are no set of commandments you consciously attend, apply, practice, and repeat. So, you’ll attend, apply, practice, and repeat for a whole skew of things you’re unaware where they will lead to. That’s the lifestyle of lusts: you live by the your affections and of unplanned agendas.

My friend, Jim Rohn, would say, take a look at the road you’re currently traveling, and if it doesn’t look like it’s leading to a good destination, wouldn’t it be great to change course? Wouldn’t it be great to turn the rudder? Of course, that would be a rational decision.

Lusts are never by rationality. They are by feelings and by ignorance. If you are not living by some commandments — or set of values you list for yourself — then you will live by the lusts of feelings and ignorance.

Isn’t that true? Casual devotion is as a result of casual focus and will lead to casual results. (The rhymes are not necessary, but…just for the fun of it.)

The idea is for you to pick something you know you want results on, and focus on it. Give it all the attention you can put together. Learn as much as you can about it. Ask as many people as you can about how it works. Seek as much help as you can from people who have been in the arena. Publicise it as far and passionate as you can. Just be married to it.

As best as I know, that’s the key to getting results. Be deliberate, intentional, and predictable in your focus. That’s how we know serious people.

Be on the cutting edge of things. You don’t want to be making mediocre stuff. It will affect your consciousness. It will shift your character. It will affect your productivity. You do not want to be making average stuff.

Whatever opportunity you have to do something for other people, they might pay you or they might not, but regardless, you want to give in your best work. You want to do the best you can on the project. Why?

This builds your character as an excellent person. This gives you credibility with people. (People would want to do deals with you, and they will be willing to pay you for the work.) This also stretches your skills and hones your craft. (You grow to become a master.) Lastly, when you build at the cutting-edge of your work, you average out excellence to the rest of humanity. Imagine counterfeit work do not exist — how much would everyone just have access to quality stuff, and not only to those who can afford them.

Jeremy Utley asked a 7th grader about creativity and the little girl said that creativity (or excellence, in my transposition) is doing more than the first thing you think of. That is so apt! You want to be known for doing great work, or at least, something excellent — to the best of your ability. Stretch your ability at each opportunity to build something for yourself or other people. That’s a frame.

The giving of oneself is from the consciousness of the richness and reason of the deposit of essence within that person. Simply, if you don’t know what you have been given or the reason for which you were given, you’d not find it necessary to present it to others or utilise it. Reasons reap results. Presentation is dependent on reason. Presentation is showing up. Presentation is making something; it is building; it is forming; it is creating, nurturing. This could be anything worthwhile: a product, service, family, research, program, anything that can better humanity as a whole.

I have three principles of presentation: Command presentation, Called Presentation, and Ephemeral Presentation. If there’s no reason, there will be no presentation. (Some argue that “no presentation” is still because of a reason, and the reason is “no reason”.) Let’s get into the list.

Command presentation is the presentation by necessity. It is inspired by external factors to handle pressing needs. It is need-based and very transient. This could be because of hunger, responsibility, need, fear, etc. This is when people are forced to present themselves or something because there is a consequence if they don’t.

Called presentation is presentation by one’s purpose. It is this intrinsic, purposeful presentation inspired by the consciousness and conviction of one’s life’s calling. This could be vision, talent, gift, passion, etc.

Ephemeral Presentation is the presentation propelled by emotions, culture, ill-feeling, and pleasure. It is the motivation to be present as a result of some short-lived internal fuel or short-lived external instigation. Examples are pride, shame, glory, fame, money, complex, etc.

It is not possible for man’s will to be enough to make everything or anything he desires to happen. That should be straightforward enough. But if you care for some commentary, then let’s walk it below.

I come from a culture where the majority of the macho men believe that they have the power, by will, to pursue anything with passion, diligence, discipline, intensity and resilience, and they must have their way to make that thing possible. I speak with both simplicity and understanding, it is not true.

A man’s willpower to exercise agency and thrust in pursuing his goals is not a guarantee that he will accomplish any such goals. Some things are locked. Some things are locked till a time. I don’t know how. But there is something as timing in the realisation of goals. This timing is a result of many variables, including man’s partnership with other men. It is almost impossible to make some things happen as a single man. Partnership is very important.

Now, even with the partnership of men, there are some things that, even with resources by and of the most capable of men in the world, you’d still not be able to unlock some realities. Why? Some things are locked. I currently cannot explain how. But some things are locked.

Some things are sealed, permanently, until…a time it becomes unsealed. Who sealed those things? I can’t say—powers beyond those which man has.

Now, frankly, I am more laissez-faire with things. I do not believe any longer that passion, discipline, perseverance, knowledge, and capital are the unequivocal keys to accomplishments. No. I pull these things together, but my confidence has been detached from them. I live per time on the possibilities that can be accomplished with the creative synthesis of my labour, coupled with purposeful partnerships. When some things do not come, I wait for them. I do not press beyond my bounds because of the notion that persistence breaks resistance and discipline is the key to accomplishment.

Call me confused. That’s the stuff of the growing life: changing your mind. (I can’t imagine how often I change my mind these days.)