Equipping young women professionals with young families to find fulfillment, contentment and joy as mothers and home makers without losing sight of who they are as women.

Volume 01, Issue 31: Pass on Your Learning

As I sit under great minds through books, conferences and other learning avenues, I am disciplining myself to take note of what I want to apply, what I want to change and what I want to teach. I figured there’s no point of interacting with life transforming information time and time again only to remain the same. It’s a waste of time. Whenever we pick a material to read, our main objective should be nothing short of learning something to change our lives. Change does not take place without effort. We must apply our learning for change to happen.

It is not enough to apply what we learn, we need to pass it on to others to clarify our learning and commit ourselves to change. When you pursue knowledge with the objective of teaching others, you work harder than when you learn just to benefit yourself. In the process, you get more out of your learning.

We learn better when we teach. When we learn with the intent of self-change and passing our learning to others, our concentration is enhanced and the propensity to apply our learning intensified.

As much as it’s done to benefit others, teaching profits the teacher. It clarifies your learning and commits you to change more than anything else. Teaching continually lifts the teacher to a higher level.

Since it is hypocritical to teach what you are not applying in your life, teaching keeps us accountable. Teaching what we know commits us to live out what we have learnt. The burden of being a credible example of the principles we promote accentuates as we teach.

Live with the awareness that you are here to add value to people. As you interact with people, let your attitude be to teach them something you know in order to help them come up higher.

Use your gifts and experience not just to accomplish your goals, but to help release a dream in someone else. Find something you are knowledgeable and passionate about and teach it to someone.

The beauty of knowledge is that you can give it away without losing it. In fact, the more you give away the more you gain. Joaquim Chisano, 2^{nd President of Mozambique.}

Volume 01, Issue 30: Replenish Yourself

Many dismiss the idea of rest. They don’t think they need it. We live on the fast lane. We are in a big rush day-in day-out that we don’t have time to enjoy the simple things in life; to smell the roses, so to speak, let alone get some rest.

Many live by the notion that the devil never took a vacation, so why should they? But the devil was never meant to be anyone’s example. God took a day off and so should we. We should take it slow every now and then.

Rest is not a waste of time; it is a time to replenish and revive our vital resources. Rest gives us a burst of new energy. We get to think clearer, make better decisions, come up with fresh ideas and be nicer to be around. Sometimes the most urgent thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest.

Rest is crucial to health, just as nutrition and physical exercise are. Having failed to define what success means to us, or wrongly defined it, we are lured by the blinding ambition to rise up the ladder of success. We allow ourselves little rest especially when it comes to pursuit of professional goals. Yet at the end of the chase, our professional success will be hollow without the health and key relationships to enjoy it.

Taking time to rest is part of wholesome growth. There are times to be busy getting things done; living up to our potential, and there are times to sit back and just be. We all need to take regular breaks from life’s constant demands. With all the coming and goings, create balance for your life by intentionally including times of rest on your calendar.

Lillian Chebosi

Volume 01, Issue 29: Leading Sideways

How could I possibly lead when there are no subjects to command? We dismiss the thought of developing our leadership skills for this very reason. Just because you do not have any direct followers doesn’t mean you should not develop and practice leadership. You can lead your peers in what you are best at.

To lead your peers you must earn their respect. Your peers will respond to your influence because of the credibility you have cultivated among them. As coequals with similar accomplishments, only credibility earns you the right to lead them.

Give your peers a reason to respond to your lead. Work hard at becoming the kind of person your peers want to willingly follow. Find a niche in your abilities that you lead at best and develop them into finely honed skills. As you lead, let your goal be to complete your peers, not competing with them.

However, appreciate that you are not meant to influence everyone. Don’t try to bring the whole clan with you. There are people who will not follow you, let alone respond near positively to your influence; and that is perfectly ok.

When all is said and done, keep in mind that the main subject of leadership development is not others but ourselves.

Lillian Chebosi

Volume 01, Issue 28: Create a Brand of Yourself

Many a times as hired hands, we do not take full responsibility for our jobs. We reason that it is not our business after all. We are paid an agreed upon wage regardless of the attention we give our job. The pay is unlikely to be increased overnight for doing a great job. But this need not be our attitude towards work. We can care for our work as though the business were ours, if only for the satisfaction of doing a job well.

Why leave the comfort of your home at the crack of dawn to be away all day doing a shoddy job, better still idling around wasting your employer’s time, not to mention, your time? If you are going to do anything in any given day, make it your best job ever. Whatever job you agree to do, do it well. Cease being satisfied with being ordinary and doing an average job. Expect more from yourself and give more. This will undoubtedly distinguish you from the crowd.

Creating a brand of yourself calls for adopting a new way of thinking. If you are employed, stop thinking of yourself as an employee and begin to view yourself as independent contractor irrespective of your level in the organization. It is the mindset of seeing yourself as a business owner that drives you to passionately deliver an extra-ordinary performance on your job. For unless you own it, notionally or in real terms, you cannot give yourself completely to a cause.

Whether you are employed by someone or working for yourself, give your best effort. If you are a sweeper, let it be said of you after you are long gone that you were the best sweeper that ever lived. Don’t be reluctant to go the extra mile; to give a task your best shot. Determine to autograph your work with excellence.

Resolve that notwithstanding your occupation, whether it’s your job - that which you have to do to earn a living; or your work - the thing you love to do and are passionate about, you will do it well.

Lillian Chebosi

Volume 01, Issue 27: Take Control of Your Cashflow 

Do you often find yourself with more month at the end of the money? If only we could earn more money, our financial problems would be over, so we imagine. However the fact is, if cashflow management is the problem, more money will not make us wealthy. The value of money is not on the amount. The value of money is on its usage.

You may have seen many poor people win millions in lotteries and return back to abject poverty; sometimes much worse than they were before they won the millions. This is because more money does not make one rich if the problem in one’s financial well being is in the way they manage their cashflow.

Children who grow up with the message of poverty reinforced by their parents have instilled in them a ‘we can’t afford it’ mindset. They grow up with a new meaning of wealth; one different from the true meaning of wealth. As young adults earning high incomes, they resort to heavy spending and label themselves rich. To them, wealth is defined by the permanent and effortless flow of cash rather than the quantity of money they are controlling.
 
Our societal view of wealth is defined by the likes of fancy cars, impressive phones, lavish clothes and accessories, and so on. Spendthrifts with or without large cashflows are deemed wealthy. Acquiring toys of heavy spending by those who may genuinely have high incomes is perceived to be wealthy even when their large cashflow is being directed to waste instead of wealth creation.

Our emotions come to play in cashflow management. Each of us has a personal perception of the use of money and we have various emotions associated with spending it. People with a spending orientation feel good about themselves when they spend money. On the other hand, people with a saving orientation feel good about themselves when they save and invest money.

Millionaires live well below their means. In their book The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas Stanley and William Danko observed that affluent people typically follow a lifestyle conducive for accumulating money. Millionaires learn to take control of their emotions, which results in a strong control of their cashflow through frugal financial behavior.

Your wealth is measured by the number of years you can live at the same standard of life you have today after retiring from active work. Take control of your cashflow. Learn the true meaning of wealth and make it your reality.

Lillian Chebosi