A few months ago, I conducted a “Mindstate Survey”, and my goal was to get a brief look into the minds of anonymous participants, just to get a feel of how they were doing and how they were thinking.
I got a few interesting and concerning responses, and I was unsure of how to immediately proceed with all the information, so I just left it.
However, I’ve decided to circle back to the results of the survey and to take them question by question, just so we can talk about them.
The questions I asked were:
= What is/are your biggest struggle(s) in your day-to-day living?
= What issue(s) do you wish more people paid more attention to?
= If you could counsel yourself from 5 years ago, what would you tell him/her?
= What’s your biggest fear?
= What’s your biggest dream?
For this post, we’ll be focusing on the responses to the first questions: The struggles faced on a daily basis.
I split similar responses into different categories so they’re much easier for me to address, and as always, I hope it helps.
(Fair warning - This article is much longer than usual because it’s a whole lot of issues all crammed into one. Enjoy.)
A. Consistency and Discipline.
Responses: “Consistency in my actions”, “Consistency in newly acquired habits and re-sharpening my mindset,” “Discipline,” “Going according to plan.”
Most of the habits and thought patterns that we exhibit or believe in became a staple part of us because they were constantly reinforced in our minds over time.
Whilst many of them were formed consciously, a lot of them were also formed unconsciously, and because they have been part of us for a long time, they are often very difficult to change or remove.
Doing so, or attempting to do so, would require a lot of intense and consistent effort on the part of the individual.
Let’s say you want to build the habit of making your bed every morning. If you have been living life without doing this for twenty-five years, it’s not something you’ll suddenly start doing every day after you wake up.
You might do it for some time, but you’ll most likely forget on some days, and before you know it, you’ve forgotten you were even trying to do it, and you’re back to not doing it at all again.
This is a simple example that points to the fact that you can’t have a habit or a mindset that has been a part of you for 10, 15, or 20 years and think that because you suddenly decided to stop or change it, then it’s going to happen immediately.
It won’t. In fact, it can’t.
This is the same principle that applies to addiction.
The fact that certain indulgences seem so strong and unbeatable is because they have been wired into the fabric of your nature as a result of you doing them consistently for a long period of time.
Your life has been wired around that activity or that mindset to the point that your impulses and emotions – your entire “muscle memory”, per se – have been designed to automatically respond to whatever triggers it.
That’s why I’m saying that these things are not things that you can undo in a short time, even if you have all the willpower and discipline in the world.
And this also applies to the healing from trauma and from mistakes/tragedies of the past.
Scientists believe that a bulk of mindsets that form the roots of many of our actions are formed in our minds without us even being aware.
Therefore, if we’re going to break any of those strongholds, it would require us putting in a conscious and consistent effort of doing so over the same period of time or over a longer period of time than it took to build them in the first place.
I know it sounds overwhelming to think about; that’s why I need you to first take in a deep breath and then exhale.
You have to admit to yourself that breaking this habit or changing this action or being consistent in this action or learning this new habit or changing your mindset about this thing is going to be difficult.
It doesn’t matter what it is, whether it’s going to the gym, becoming more consistent in your devotion, reading books, changing the way you see your friends, forgiving your parents, mending broken relationships, or building a business – whatever it is – you have to be prepared for it to be very hard.
Then the next important thing for you to do is to constantly remind yourself why you are doing what you’re doing.
Make it a mantra:
“I’m hitting the gym consistently because I want to lose weight.”
“I’m forgiving my parents so that if I ever have children in the future, I will not bleed on them by hurting them the same way my parents hurt me.”
“I’m taking this course so I can become better at this skill.”
“I’m building my brand and business so I can become financially independent.”
And so on like that.
You need to have a “why” for whatever it is you’re doing because it will serve as your grounding foundation for days when you’re discouraged, unmotivated, or over-excited by your progress.
I’d advise you to even go a step further by writing it down and putting it somewhere you’ll constantly be seeing it.
For me, anytime I’m trying to ensure something sinks into my consciousness, I type it in bold text in my notes app, I take a screenshot, and then I make it my lockscreen wallpaper.
That way, anytime I open my phone, whether I read it consciously or I don’t, I’m seeing it. The more I see it, the more it settles into my mind, and the more it serves as a reminder.
So far, it’s been very effective.
Once something becomes a part of your subconscious, it indirectly starts to influence your conscious mind; that’s why mental reinforcement through constant imagery is very important.
And that’s why it can also be very dangerous if you’re constantly exposed to seeing the wrong things.
The next important thing for you to master is consistency with the little actions, time after time.
You cannot go from level 1 to level 100 in a day.
If a habit took 10 years to form in you, don’t expect to make 80% of your progress in unlearning it in just a month or in just two months. It’s not just going to happen.
The human brain, as powerful as it is in learning and unlearning things, still needs proper time to make changes and adjustments.
So, you have to be consistent with it, day by day, and you can build this consistency by starting with the “easiest” actions. The goal is to ensure that you’re doing something to improve at every given time.
That’s why they encourage that even on the days when you’re lazy and tired, you should still show up at the gym and do something, even if it’s not your regular routine.
The same applies to thoughts, even more so.
Anytime you catch yourself thinking in a direction that you don’t want to think in, pull your mind back, and point it to the direction of the new mindset you are trying to form.
It’s these little but regular actions that will compound into growth and changes as the years pass, even if it’s not outrightly obvious.
My final advice on this is that you should focus less on what you are trying NOT to do and focus more on what you ARE trying to do.
I’ve written more extensively about this before:
If you want to lose weight, don’t tell yourself “I don’t want to be overweight”, rather, say “I want to be physically healthy”.
It’s just a small shift, but it makes all the mental difference in the world when you take your eyes off the problem and focus it on the solution you are trying to implement.
Another thing that would help you is finding a partner or a group of people who can hold you accountable for the new habit you’re trying to build.
It could be people you’ll go with to the gym, or a cell unit in church with people you’ll do spiritual activities with, or a savings group with people who also want to build financial discipline. Could be anything.
Accountability helps because we are social creatures, so we like social validation.
When you have a group of friends doing something they enjoy together, regardless of what it is, there’s a good chance it will happen regularly.
So, yeah, these are the few ways I believe will help build consistency and discipline and get you closer to achieving your goals.
B. Procrastination & Distraction.
Responses: “Procrastination,” “Time wasting,” “Doomscrolling,” “Getting carried away by irrelevance,” “Mindless gossip,” “Not having a daily plan.”
Hehe, I honestly love the self-awareness.
I already comprehensively spoke about how to deal with bad habits and replace them with better ones in the previous section.
However, what’s interesting is that we can know the solutions to all of our problems and we’ll still not do anything to implement them.
It’s easy to talk about changing your life or wanting to change a situation, but it’s much harder to actually do something about it.
The fact that you’re hungry doesn’t mean you have an appetite. Same way, the fact that you’re angry or hurt by something doesn’t mean you’re ready to confront or change it (Nigeria in a nutshell).
So, you have to check: This habit I want to change, have I done anything tangible in the past few months to work on it, or have I started doing the opposite of this thing consistently enough for me to confidently say that I am building a better habit?
Yes? No?
The truth is that, many times, we don’t need more knowledge or more encouragement or more advice; we just need to hold ourselves accountable by becoming more consistent with our actions.
One thing I’ll just add is that when you are trying to beat a habit, the best way to do so is by replacing it with another habit.
This is one of the basic tenets from James Clear’s Atomic Habits: Just replace the bad habit with a new, much better one.
Whatever habit it is that you are struggling with, think of something better and more productive, and then slowly – because, like I said, it takes time – start to phase it in as you phase out the other one.
And for the sake of emphasis, you want to: Focus more on what you want to achieve and less on what you don’t want to achieve.
C. Direction & Purpose Confusion.
Responses: “Lack of direction,” “Not knowing who I want to be,” “Indecisiveness,” “Sensitivity.”
Discovering purpose, which simply means knowing who you want to be and what you want to do with your life, is something that’s necessary for everybody to do.
Every life has a purpose, and to live life without one is one of the saddest mistakes a person can make.
I believe that the best way to know your purpose is paying attention to your burdens, that is, the things on your heart that bother you, the things you complain about and wish you could change, and the things you see around you that you wish would be better.
Oftentimes, these things are a pointer to your calling, so you need to pay serious attention to them. And as you start identifying them, you also need to start doing whatever it is you can to address them.
You can start taking theoretical steps, like learning about the issue, and practical steps, like doing whatever you can to change it.
For example, if you don’t like seeing children begging on the streets, you can intern at an NGO that does that kind of work. Or if there’s a child in your area that you see around often, you can offer him/her food as often as you can.
The goal is for you to do whatever you can do in the capacity you can, and then as you grow, you’ll aim to do more and to spread your sphere of impact.
The thing about these burdens is that, more often than not, they are not things that you chose to worry about. They are just intrinsic worries that have existed as far back as you can remember.
We all have these burdens, and the only way you’ll miss out on them is if you’ve not been self-aware, and even then, the fact that you’re not aware of something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Apart from burdens, your skills and abilities also serve as a pointer to what your purpose in life is.
Whatever you are good at, whatever comes to you naturally, and whatever you enjoy doing, you should think of how you can use it to benefit the world and the people around you and how you can also use it to make a living for yourself.
Many people believe that you always have to pick one, but I disagree.
Yes, you can choose to do either, but you can also choose to do both. You can have fun and make a living from doing what you enjoy; it’s not impossible.
If you lack that “sense of direction” with your life, it’s simply because you haven’t found your bearings yet, and regardless of what anybody says, that doesn’t spell the end of the world for you.
Once you start to get an idea of what your purpose in life is, even if you don’t see the clear picture yet, finding “direction” becomes easier for you.
This is because you’ll start to know the things to learn, the things to give attention to, and the things to tailor your life around, at least on a general scale.
The more you do this, the clearer the picture gets as time passes.
For the people who struggle with indecisiveness, I’d tell you to remind yourself of all the times you were indecisive in decision-making and how much you regretted it after the moment had passed.
Regret is a painful teacher, but it’s a very effective one too.
And like I said before, whatever you’re doing or trying to do, you should have a strong “why”, and you must be ruthless with yourself about sticking with it.
It gets to a certain point in life where nobody will have to advise or encourage you about anything again because you by yourself will decide that enough is enough, you’re making a change, and nothing will get in your way.
The struggle with not knowing the kind of man or woman you want to be traces back to the fact that you’ve not identified your purpose in life yet. That’s the gap that first needs to be bridged.
Once you know what you want to do, then you will have a good idea of what a person that wants to do that has to look and sound like, and then you can work on effectively shaping yourself into that person.
Remember, it’s a slow process, but if you start today and are consistent every day, then by this time next year, you’ll be much closer to being the person you want to be than you are today.
Finally, for those struggling with being “sensitive”, first off, I want you to know that it’s not entirely a bad thing, especially in this age where dopamine exposure and constant exposure to sensationalism has almost everyone feeling numb and unaware of the true depths of their emotions.
You just have to learn to manage your emotions so you channel them to the right things at the right time.
I expounded on a similar concept in this article:
It has everything you need to help you understand how to better control your emotions, especially in relation to the words and actions of other people.
D. Financial & Survival Pressure.
Responses: “Money,” “Family financial struggle,” “Honestly just trying to survive and stay productive,” “Living… not surviving.”
Sighhhhh… the real matters.
Permit me to digress a bit…
Everybody likes money. Everybody needs money. Everybody uses money. Money is very, very important to our lives and to the things that we do.
People like to misquote the Bible and say that “money is the root of all evil”, but that’s very wrong.
The Bible says that the love of money is the root of evil, and the meaning of “love” there is excessive obsession.
And we can clearly see this in play in our world today because 90% of the atrocities committed by humans to other humans on a daily basis all trace back to money and a desire for power.
When you centre your entire life around money, you are making it your identity, so it’s all you think of and it’s all that you are.
When you don’t have it, you’re obsessed with chasing it, and you’ll do whatever to get it. And when you have it, your life becomes about showing off your money and being reckless with it.
Then even after all this, you’re still not satisfied, so you keep going for more, more, more, more, more.
It’s an endless cycle that often times ended in shame, regret, and an outright regression into poverty.
That’s why the Bible warns against reaching that level of money-mindedness where it consumes your soul, and it’s easy to get to this point, especially if you were born or raised around an environment that was characterised by poverty and lack.
So, we have to be very careful.
However, the truth is that we all need money, and we all use money, so never let anybody make you feel bad because you desire a better financial life for yourself.
And never let anybody use your current financial status to mock you as insignificant if it’s bad or to exalt you as a god if it’s good. Don’t also do either of the things to yourself.
At the end of the day, money is a tool, and that’s what we should view it as. When we do, we won’t be afraid to use it, spend it, invest it, give it out, and part with it when we have to.
We all like it, we all love it, we all need it, and we all want it, but at the end of the day, money should never be valued over our souls, over our values and principles, over our reputations and names, and over our friendships or relationships.
It should never be placed above intangible things that cannot be easily replaced, because money is tangible, and trust me, in theory, it’s one of the “easiest” things to get in this life.
Now, back to the original point, I understand the weight of being in that situation where you are struggling financially or where your family or your parents are not so well off, so making ends meet is hard.
I understand the feelings of frustration and hopelessness that can come with it, and it’s a very sad and often lonely path because you might not know who to ask for help or even have anybody to ask for help.
Sometimes, it can also be a road that’s plagued with shame because there’s this stigma around money in our society today that’s especially directed toward people who don’t have lots of it.
And it is very ironic because statistics have shown that Nigeria has the highest poverty rate in the world, so, logically, it’s normal for most of her citizens not to be swimming in millions.
Yet, in all this, we’ve found a way to be classist and discriminatory toward one another, despite a good percentage of the population being in the same situation. It’s insane.
On the same hand, we now also have those people who refuse to come to terms with their financial situation, and they now go about projecting that they are more well-to-do than they actually are, forcing them to live under constant pressure to keep up appearances.
That’s not a proper way to live at all.
In relation to financial pressure, I’d say that, and this might sound cliché, things could always get better.
And I’m not trying to sell you false hope; that’s why I’ll add that if you are currently not doing anything to change your financial status – if you are not reading books, if you are not working, if you are not starting a business, if you are not selling a product, if you are not offering something – then you will most likely always be broke.
That’s the truth.
And if your brilliant idea to achieve financial freedom is gambling or begging or hunting for giveaways or trying to win the lottery, then I really pity you because you’ll remain stuck for a while.
Those once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-million odds, one-person-in-10,000-people methods of making money will not work for everybody. And even if they somehow work for you, you could end up finding yourself in a situation where you don’t have the structures or wisdom to handle the money that you now suddenly have.
Money is like rain, and many times, there will be periods where a lot of it is pouring down on you. If you’ve not built the right systems to handle and contain that rain, it could well turn into a flood that will wreck you and all that you have.
I see people make jokes about how they wish they had a billion dollars, and it amuses me just how many people don’t understand the power of money; they just talk a lot about getting it.
And many of such people don’t each have substantial things they want to use money for, just frivolities upon frivolities.
No judgement, I mean, to each their own, but the truth is that many people have ruined their own lives because they got into possession of amounts of money that they were not ready, both mentally and physically, to handle.
So, keeping all these in mind, I would sum it up to two things:
Number one, you need to find something to do.
What can you do right now? What can you start with what you have? What is a solution you can provide to a pressing problem?
The basic principle for income is that you’re either selling something or providing a value.
Most people start by selling their time; that’s where 9-5 jobs and the likes come in. Or selling a skill or service that they have.
However, while these things work properly if done well, I believe the foolproof way, especially long-term, of becoming wealthy is by making yourself so valuable that it literally defies logic for you not to be rich.
It’s highly impossible for a superstar musician who is being invited to headline shows around the world to be poor because he’s being valuable to people, and that value is then putting money in his pocket.
The second thing I would say is that, while you are still trying to figure out how to make a consistent income and grow your wealth, you should also be learning as much as you can about money.
Read books, track your spending habits, and build the discipline to have a saving culture, however little.
All this is necessary because you can suddenly come into a lot of money, maybe your business explodes or someone sends you a huge amount of money, so you don’t want to be in that space where you get overexcited or overwhelmed and you don’t know what to do with all of it because you were not mentally prepared.
Building structures will always help you in advance.
Finally, about your desire to live and not just survive.
I understand that sometimes, if you don’t have a lot of money, it can be difficult to enjoy certain experiences.
It’s even worse if you are in a society like here in Nigeria, where the cost of living is always reaching all-time highs, and “fun” activities are often gatekept behind relatively expensive costs.
However, I strongly believe that the notion and conditioning around our society that you always have to be outside doing something expensive before you have fun is very wrong.
You can create your own memorable experiences absolutely for free.
The reason people don’t seem to enjoy such activities anymore is because they’re not always so aesthetically pleasing to post about online or to show off to strangers on the internet.
I saw a video about a friendship/romantic date idea that literally cost nothing but a few hours of video watching and a few hours of conversation, and the idea made total sense to me.
Apart from it being free, it is also an effective exercise for gauging the intelligence and articulation abilities of the person you are talking to, so you’ll effectively be killing two birds with one stone.
And there are thousands of other similar ideas all around us.
The harsh truth is that, whether you are broke now or whether you are rich now, life is going to keep passing, and trust me, you don’t want it to pass you by.
In 10 years, you’ll be 10 years older than you are today.
If you keep waiting till you have millions to tour the world or till you can take aesthetic pictures or do things on a grand scale, then you’re doing nothing but denying yourself of the many pleasures in life that are freely available.
You’re already alive, so now you have to live.
Certain financial situations might put you in circumstances where you know you have to be in “survival mode”, and you might not have the liquid cash flow to do many things.
But even in that, you should still always look around to find the littlest things that will put joy in your heart because, as it is, life is already hard enough.
E. Spiritual & Moral Struggles.
Responses: “Keeping a consistent relationship with God,” “Lust.”
I know by personal experience that spiritual fervency can sometimes feel like this never-ending cycle that has you drifting from progress to struggle to progress and back to struggle again.
However, all broader ramifications considered, I believe that the path of spiritual consistency, as difficult as it gets, is one everyone should be on.
Not to the point of being wholly consumed by religious activities, but also not to the opposite point of being completely apathetic and indifferent.
That being said, I’ll be speaking to this section from a Christian perspective, and the first thing I want you, and anybody else who is struggling, to know is that absolutely nobody has it all completely figured out.
Trust me, nobody does.
Even the best of preachers have days of struggles. Even the best of scholars have days of doubts. Even the best of teachers have many unanswered questions.
People like to embody perfection and project sainthood, but no human can ever truly reach that point. If we could, what then is the point of relying on a perfect Creator for anything?
What many “spiritually fervent” people do differently than others is to have two things in their lives: Faith driven by knowledge and a system for consistency in spiritual activities.
However, before we dive into that, I need you to know, as a matter of foundational knowledge, that God, God in heaven, wants this relationship with you more than you could ever think of wanting it.
So, no matter how much you struggle, no matter how much you try, no matter how discouraged you feel about the fact that you just can’t seem to “get it right”, God is not angry or annoyed.
In fact, that you’re even trying already makes him happy and excites him, the same way we get excited to talk to people who we love.
Another thing to know, foundationally, is that God’s love for us is not predicated on our activities. The love of God for us is constant and permanent regardless of whatever we do, and it doesn’t ever change.
He doesn’t love anybody more because they pray more or because they know their Bible more; the love is equal to all, on the same plain level for everybody.
The only things that differ from person to person are the level of love we have for God and our revelation knowledge of him.
And it is in our bid to understand and know him more that we then engage in spiritual activities.
So, with the knowledge of these two things, even if you’re struggling, you should be encouraged.
As long as you are trying, as long as you are doing something, as long as you’re really making an effort, then you’re already on the right path.
This doesn’t make sense to the human mind because 90% of our relationships are based on one condition or another, but God’s love isn’t.
That’s why even if you go days or weeks without reading your Bible or praying, whilst it’s not ideal, God doesn’t get angry with you or start to keep malice against you.
Whenever you come back, he’s ready for you to continue.
With this foundation set, let’s track back to our two pillars of spiritual consistency: faith by knowledge and consistent systems.
You know, in our Christian faith, we talk about a man who did miracles and was hung on a cross and then rose up again after dying; we talk about otherworldly realms and angels; we talk about moral uprightness and self-denial; and we talk about many other things.
Many of these things defy logic to an extent.
They are not all completely “foolish” because we have historical and scientific bases for a lot of them, but many of these things also can’t be perfectly “proven” by the wisdom of men because they are spiritual things.
Therefore, we need a level of faith – faith that extends beyond reasonable doubt.
The same faith you have when you board a plane without knowing who the pilot is, the same faith you have when you eat food in a restaurant for the same time, and the same faith you have when you ask a total stranger to go out with you.
And this faith must be driven by knowledge because the more we learn about these things, the more our belief in them grows.
At least, ideally.
For many people, the more they learn about spiritual things and Christian things, the less their faith becomes, and that just shows that there is something wrong with the way they are going about it.
Either they are not asking the right questions or they are getting the wrong answers.
The bottom line is that a level of faith is needed to believe in these things because when “atheists” and “deconstructionists” start to do their little breakdowns and bring their tricky questions that are perfectly designed to throw you off, if you are not careful, you might start to find yourself having doubts.
Now, asking questions is not a crime; in fact, it should be encouraged more often.
But if your basis for believing in God or in the Bible is that everything in it must be 100% comprehensible by your tiny human mind, then you’re already wrong.
Now, to the issue of deconstruction.
First off, I don’t believe it’s a sin or a Biblically wrong action.
Many people try to shut people up when they start asking uncomfortable questions about the faith, and it goes to show how shallow their own beliefs must also be.
“God is perfect and should not be questioned” can no longer fly as an answer anymore, especially in a generation that has access to more “knowledge” than any other in history.
The full ways of God in His divinity might not be questionable, but we’re allowed to have questions about His actions in the activities of men.
Questions like ‘Why did God order the genocide of inhabitants of many nations?’ ‘Why did God wipe the earth with a flood?’ ‘What happens to children when they die?’ ‘Why do women seem so “subjugated” in biblical texts?’ ‘Did God support slavery?’
Many questions like these and many more.
The problem is that when you start asking all of them, overtly religious people who also had these questions but never had the courage to ask them will try to shut you up and to make you feel like you are doing too much or that you’re a child of the Devil.
But the thing is that God loves you, and he wants you to come to him with your questions so that he can answer them. And then after you get your answers, your faith would then increase.
We might not get all the answers we want. But we can get the ones that truly matter to our journey on Earth.
That’s why I said faith driven by knowledge is the first important component.
Many people who are spiritually consistent have certain knowledge about spiritual things that they’ve learnt over time through personal experiences or through teachings that have now solidified their faith.
So, I’ll encourage you to never feel discouraged.
Yes, you have questions and you have doubts, but they should never make you feel guilty. Just focus on bridging your knowledge gap.
You should find a proper spiritual teacher or mentor; listen to sermons that answer these questions – from the right people too, so you don’t get deceived – and build your knowledge base so you can build your faith.
Bonus Tip - You can also subscribe to Counter Cultural, my other newsletter where I try my best, as inspired, to write knowledge-based articles on the Christian faith, answer questions, and clear misconceptions.
And since the timing is perfect, I’ll plug in this excerpt from my church’s Bible Study on Tuesday.
For those with certain questions…
The second pillar for spiritual fervency is a system for consistency.
I’ve spoken a lot about consistency in this article, and that’s simply because it’s the driving factor of growth in any area of life. Once again, the best way to be consistent is by starting with the little things and doing them as regularly as possible.
In this context, those things include: Studying the Bible, praying, and learning the Word of God.
We need to build a system that allows us to do these things consistently because we can’t truly say we want to grow and then leave it all to chance.
When do you pray? Immediately after you wake up or before you sleep? When do you read your Bible? Do you attend church regularly? All these things need defined structures.
Feel free to start little, you know, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and then you scale and you grow from there.
Don’t let anybody make you feel like because you’ve not done a 100-hour prayer marathon, you are a failure and God will not answer your prayers.
Don’t let anybody intimidate you or belittle you, because, at the end of the day, it’s not a competition.
In fact, I strongly believe that it’s better to be consistent with the little things than to be doing the “big” things all the time and not be consistent with them.
Of course, growth is also as important as consistency because it doesn’t make sense for you to be doing 15 minutes of prayers for 5 or 10 years. That’s extreme stagnation.
The more you do something, the better you get at it, the more you should be able to grow in it also.
In summary, to improve your relationship with God, you have to build your faith by learning more about him and then have a system for consistent fellowship with him.
Honestly, it’s much “easier” than many people think because there’s a lot of grace available for us.
I used to think these things were unattainable till I started to learn and build consistency.
The “hack” I’ll recommend is that you listen to sermons regularly. It’s a perfect way to learn fast and the best system for consistent spiritual consciousness.
Just find two to three preachers who resonate with you, check their messages on Spotify or YouTube, and then listen, listen, listen, and apply, apply, apply.
You’ll be surprised by how much you’ll grow in 3 months.
I understand that many people are scared of taking their spiritual lives more seriously because they’re worried about how much they might change and just how many things they’ll have to put off.
Well, your fear is not invalid or completely irrational, but I’d just say this:
Unless you believe there are absolutely NO BENEFITS to having a good relationship with God, then you can continue, but if you do, then the earlier the better for you.
If you don’t find God in the days of peace, trust me, it’ll be much harder for you to find him in times of trouble.
He’ll be there, of course, but if you’ve not mastered Him when there’s no pressure, when pressure comes, you won’t know exactly what to do to get what you want.
At the end of the day, we seek God for who He is and not for the things He can give.
Now… let’s talk about lust.
I have written an article about this subject in the past, but it was mostly directed at the male gender.
I also have a follow-up article to it that hasn’t been published yet, but that is also focused on the male gender.
I know that women struggle with lust too, but I mean, according to social observation, it’s more of a struggle for men, especially if we are to consider the expressors of its grave consequences on our society.
So… how do we deal with lust?
Well, there’s the spiritual manner that involves prayer, meditation, and all those other things, and there’s the mental/behavioural manner which involves the rewiring of the mind to replace the habit with something else.
I think for something as addictive as lust, and also because it takes lower effort to express than other negative traits, you’ll first have to really decide within yourself that you don’t want to entertain it anymore.
Then you’ll start to make conscious behavioural adjustments.
Defeating lust is in two phases: Cutting it off at the root and expunging it from your heart.
God and prayers can help you with the second part, but nobody is going to do the first part for you.
You must become very aggressive about the things you think about and the things you spend time concentrating on.
So, if it’s the movies you watch, or if it’s your TikTok For You page, or if it is your playlists, or if it is the books, you’ll have to do a thorough and honest review on which and what has to be cut off.
You see this our human brain? It loves reinforcement.
So, you cannot be constantly feeding your mind with a particular thing and not expect that thing to become a part of your nature, whether it’s good or bad.
Anything around you that constantly brings those ideas or thoughts to your head has to go, and then you have to replace those things with something else because that void needs to always have something that’s filling it.
Read new books and read different genres of books; it’s not every time that you must read fantasy romance stories with the billionaire CEO and his shy secretary, come on.
Find new things that are just as interesting to fill your mind up with because it always starts with a thought.
In life, once you can master controlling your thoughts, you will master your actions, and then you will master being the kind of person you want to become.
Lust is a very common struggle, and yet it’s one that’s often spoken about with so much stigma/condemnation or not even spoken about at all, especially in spiritual spaces.
You must understand that the desire you feel and the thoughts you have are rooted in a completely natural impulse, so there’s nothing “wrong” with you.
However, as with many things that relate to life, anything that’s done at extreme levels or done perversely often has adverse effects on the doer.
Effects that are different from the regular benefits that the action/thought was originally meant to provide.
So, we have to be careful.
I understand that lust also has spiritual originations (it’s the opposite of the first fruit of the spirit, which is love), so you can’t completely throw away your responsibility in that realm, but your physical actions matter just as much.
If you’ve consumed 100 GB worth of pornography over 10 years of your life, a few hours of prayer or a few days without watching porn WILL NOT undo the impact it has already made on your mind.
You’ll first have to cut off the influx of any new material, and then you’ll now start to work on consistently consuming 100 GB of non-porn content over the next 10 years of your life to replace what was there before.
That’s how it works.
It most likely won’t be easy. In fact, I can guarantee you that it won’t.
I can tell you that you’ll have many moments of struggle and even many times when you’ll stumble and fall, and then shame and guilt and condemnation will come.
All this is a part of the process and is to be expected.
However, the BIGGEST MISTAKE that you can make is to stay on the ground and to give up. You can’t do that.
This path is not “streaks” that reset back to zero every time you fail. No, it’s a path of freedom, and all that matters is that you are fighting to stand at all times, even if you’ve fallen before.
Always remember:
Change your thoughts, change your actions, change your life.
F. Social Boundaries & Relationships.
Responses: “Not knowing how to say no to friends,” ”Fellowship struggles.”
Based on everything that has been covered in this article, loose ideas on how to face these struggles have already been suggested.
Once again, I recommend you read my article The Art of Never Getting Offended.
Many people struggle with saying “no” to friends or setting boundaries in relationships for two major reasons.
For the first reason, we need to do a little background review.
As we should all know, our childhood experiences play a more than significant role in determining how we live and think for the rest of our lives.
If you’re someone who was brought up in a home where your relationship with your parents was a top-to-down one, meaning that you had to do every single thing they commanded, regardless of whether you liked or understood it or not, it could result in you not being able to have autonomy in your friendships.
Ironically, it could also result in you having a lot of autonomy in friendships and in your life in general, up to the point where you never want anybody to tell you what to do or to advise you because for so long you were not able to do anything else apart from what people told you to do.
While that’s another extreme, that’s not the focus right now.
The focus is if you’re from that kind of home where all you did for 18 or 19 or 20 years of your life was to say “Yes, Ma” or “Yes, Sir”, without really understanding why, it might be difficult for you not to become conditioned to doing so in other areas of your life.
The second reason, which I believe is more common, is that you have a low self-esteem or a very bad perception of yourself.
If you’re someone who is constantly seeking the validation of your thoughts and actions from people, you’ll always be too afraid to say or do anything that might upset them, even when you need to.
And that includes times when you have to put your feet on the ground and say “No” or express your displeasure about something.
There’s the place of sacrifice and compromise in relationships, yes, but when it gets to the point where you are now infringing on your values, belittling things that matter to you, afraid to step on toes, afraid of confrontation, or afraid of having difficult conversations, then it starts to become a serious problem.
It will be difficult for you to “reject” and say “no” to people when you’re constantly tiptoeing around conflict and being the only “odd” one out in a situation.
So, that self-esteem issue you have is the root, and everything else you’re experiencing is merely a symptom.
The only treatment for this is that you become more self-assured and more grounded in your person.
The more confident you are in yourself and with your values and your personality, the easier it becomes for you to set boundaries against the things that don’t align with who you are or what you want.
And as you’re working on doing that, sometimes you’ll just have to fight against all the resistance you feel within you to force out the “No!”
At first, it will be difficult to tell your friend that you can’t hang out anymore, and it will be hard to insist that you no longer do certain things, but the more you do it, the easier it becomes.
In fact, sometimes, you might almost feel like you’ll die, but you won’t die.
I know this because I’ve been there.
Anytime I speak on all these issues and I write expansive articles such as this, it’s because I’ve been in these situations, I’ve come out, and now I have an idea of what it takes to bring other people out.
Other times, it’s that I know someone who has been there, who has come out, and with the knowledge I got from their experiences, I have a strong understanding of how to do the same if I ever find myself in that same position.
So, yes, I know it can be difficult to reject people, to be scared of offending them, and to confront them when they hurt you, but it’s something you’ll have to master.
Especially if you’re going to live a principled life that’s devoid of people-pleasing and unnecessary compromise.
At the end of the day, habits, once again, are built by little but consistent compounding over time.
That’s how you get your results.
Finally, for fellowship struggles, I’m guessing this has to do with you not being comfortable with being in a group of people or doing things together with other people.
Well, I’ll be honest and just say that I don’t have a specific answer to this because I also don’t always enjoy being involved in things that have to do with other people, especially when they’re strangers.
It’s not even a struggle for me; I just don’t like the idea or the reality because I enjoy working by myself.
However, I know that it’s something I will have to work on becoming comfortable with as time goes by because with the plans I have, the projects I’m building, and the things I’m getting involved with, I will eventually need a team of like-minded people around me to work with.
I’ve barely started, and some things already seem like too much to handle alone.
So, let’s just decide, you and I, that we are going to step out of that box of complete dependency on self and source for help whenever we need it.
It’s a necessity because if anybody is going to do anything long-term and substantial, and if they are going to be consistent at it, then they will need partners and people who support them and keep them accountable.
We’re human beings, and, like it or not, we need each other because no man is an isle.
Even Jesus, the most powerful human being to work on Earth, had a group of 12, then a group of 70, then a group of 700, and now he has billions of people around the world doing his work for him even in his physical absence.
That’s a simple example to show that on the path to greatness, we all need people to help us.
If one can chase a thousand, and two can chase ten thousand, then imagine what tens and hundreds will do if they’re working in the same unity of mind.
Remember the story of the tower of Babel? It’s the same vibe.
I’ve actually promised myself that I would start to try to be more involving of people in my plans, and even though the mere thought still makes me cringe sometimes.
This whole teamwork thing comes easy to some, but for others, it’s more difficult.
Some people are firstborns who have had to shoulder the bulk of responsibility by themselves all their lives, while some others are only children who have had to do it all on their own since they’ve been born.
These and others are the reasons many people don’t understand how to open up to a team, or how to be vulnerable, or how to work with people, so they just prefer to work alone.
For me, I like working alone because when I have my ideas, I feel like nobody else would “get it” as much as I do. So until it’s something I can’t do or learn how to do or just don’t want to do, I usually go solo.
However, at the end of the day, the point of building a team and building people is getting them on your wavelength and taking charge from the front as a leader.
That’s what it’s all about.
We’ll just have to learn how to trust, be patient in disappointment, be forgiving in betrayal, and be enlarged in our hearts to the point where we can allow people to help us with things and to do things for us.
The earlier we start, the better for us, so let’s just try.
Okay?
G. Existential / Emotional Weight.
Responses: “Being alive.”
I believe that life is a beautiful gift.
Everything around the human condition, both positive and negative – joy, happiness, laughter, pain, grief, remorse, success, failure, ups, lows, downs, highs, pleasure, despair, agony, every single thing, every single emotion, everything we do in life, the things we enjoy, the things we don’t enjoy – everything around the human experience can only be felt by us because we are alive.
Once we die and we leave this earth, that’s the end of all those things.
We can debate all day on whether the afterlife exists or not, and while I believe it does, the honest truth is that the activities in the afterlife and the activities here on Earth are completely parallel and a billion, infinite miles apart.
The things that matter to us don’t matter to them, and the things that matter to them at the moment currently don’t really matter to us.
My point is that being alive is a very beautiful gift.
So many people have passed away who we wish were still with us. So many people have died early in ways that were shocking and unexpected, and the grief left with their loved ones is never ever painless or easy to bear.
As long as we are alive, we need to appreciate the privilege of being alive.
I’m not denying the existence of pain and struggles.
And I know people say, “I’m suffering, I’m struggling, my whole life is pain, I don’t know happiness. What kind of a life is this? I’m sick; all I know is pain. Why should I want to continue living? ” and many other things like that.
I’ve not claimed that life is a bed of roses or that it’s easy for all.
I understand struggles to an extent, but I also understand that there are certain struggles that I can never understand.
I know there are people who are going through a lot of insane, unspoken things, pain, haunted by trauma from the past, and by decisions in the present, and by fears about the future.
There are certain situations that I might never be able to know or relate to the pain they carry, so I’m not trying to be insensitive, and I’m not saying, “It doesn’t matter; just live.”
I’m not a prophetic seer that’s coming to claim and tell you that “everything will get better”, because the truth is, sometimes, life just seems to get worse.
Sometimes it doesn’t get better; sometimes it doesn’t look like it’s getting better anytime soon. I understand and I relate to most of those feelings.
HOWEVER…
The bottom line at the end of the day is: No matter how low you get and no matter how bad shit turns, as long as you are still alive, there’s a chance that things will get better.
And even if that chance is a tiny one in a billion, I believe that the joy, the relief, the happiness, the peace, the fulfilment of purpose, and every other beautiful feeling and emotion that could potentially come out of that chance is worth taking a gamble on to fight to remain alive.
No matter how bad or dark the tunnel gets, as long as you are alive, as long as you are still breathing, there’s a chance that things will get better.
And the higher your will to live and to conquer life gets, the more you increase your chances of things turning around.
In this fallen world, only the stubborn will survive.
Often times, when people are at their lowest lows, they don’t see any end out of the tunnel, and that’s why they remain in the tunnel for a long time.
But when we can rise up through our challenges and despair and look forward and see forward and picture a better life, a better way at the end of the day, we will give ourselves better chances of reaching there.
This is not a one-size-fits-all principle, but the constant is that: As long as you are alive, as long as you are living, there’s a chance that things will get better and that you will be your hope.
I believe that hope is worth holding on to.
So, please, I beg you, live on and keep living.
Whilst reading the responses and writing this post, I realised that, at least on a surface level, many of us wrestle with the same issues and the same thoughts on a daily basis.
The challenges might come in different shapes and sizes, but if you look around you and pay a little more attention, you’ll realise that you’re not as alone as you think.
That’s comforting, in some sort of way, because, even if we can’t all understand each individual’s pain and their experiences, we can use the things we do know to help one another.
Which is why I want to encourage you to share this article with as many young people as you know or with anybody whom you believe it might help.
I usually leave the sharing to your discretion, but on this occasion, permit me to appeal to you to share it with someone or people who you know might need to read it.
If you got a lesson or two from it, it won’t hurt for someone else to do the same.
And if you’ve one to share, feel free to drop it below…
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