A New Nail Tech

 PASSION, CREATIVITY & SHEER DETERMINATION

How my experience with an new nail tech has served as a valuable reminder to remain open-minded, authentic, and committed to personal and professional growth.

It takes an insane level of essentric to do, exceptionally well, something others have done averagely for so long. To so audaciously push the bounds of the accepted norm and reveal increasingly brilliant levels of creative ‘geniuses‘… it requires a level of madness.

That's what my short stint with a new nailtech left me with. This guy has taken the nail tech business to a whole new level, he's developed catalogues, has an academy, has started a clothing line to promote his authentic nail artistry and designs, he ONLY wears his brand, he is also an accomplished artist (I mean the paint on canvass type). He is into public speaking and has given talks and lectures in universities across Nigeria. He is well travelled and has gained commercial experience in nail artistry from other African and non -african countries. The way he put his thoughts together in great literary sequence in those catalogues drew me in.

Yet I met him at a nail studio in Yaba, with no airs about him. He did my nails and treated me like a customer; like a queen. I showed him pictures of 2 acrylic nails sets I loved and trusted him to curate a unique design from them... and I trusted him with the choice of colours and he wowed me….

Half way to finishing up my nails, he pulled out over 3 of his old cataloges and manuals and I saw ART 😍

While I was there, He had a client come all the way from chevron drive (after LEKKI, towards Eleganza) to his small studio in Yaba 

The NailMaestro’s story reminds me of every one of us. 

For some, you’ve let the ‘accepted standard’ put an artificial limit on your ‘geniusness’… 

For some, you’ve dared to dream and act on some occasion but have been silenced by the majority who rather find joy in the camaraderie of band wagon membership

For some, you have experienced your genius but either haven't trusted in it enough or are unwilling to take responsibility for blowing your own trumpet, thinking someone else (a senior colleague, your line manager, your HR) will come along and give you permission to shine your light.

For me, the NailMaestro challenged me to stay grounded in my authenticity and continue to win the internal war against mediocrity and a mild desire to be loved by the majority. He challenged me, just by his expertise, art and commitment to his brand, to stay glued to my personal development and growth goals, to keep on being led by the light I carry within.

The NailMaestro & I exchanged contacts before I went on to get my lashes refilled from someone else just 2 blocs away from his studio.

I got back home and days later, I was seeing ‘evidences’ of everything he shared about him on his WhatsApp status and Instagram page. This reminds me of what we’ve been sounding for years about networking and connection… I encouraged an interesting exchange between the nail tech and I and, in turn, was hooked-up with eye-opening information & details about the nail art industry. Now, either I need to or not, I can contribute to a conversation on the topic anywhere it finds me. It's broadened my perspective to some degree. Now imagine what connections and networking with those within your choice of career field can do for you.

I now consider the NailMaestro and I friends. I paid him by transfer, have his full names... I feel like i’ve known him longer than some who have been connected to me for years. He is Yoruba, his names, instantly yet temporarily, appealed to some deep seated tribal shenanigans in me 😂 couldn't help it. I however quickly reminded myself that the world is too large to let stereotypic considerations like that influence my judgements on anything at all.

For naughty minds like me who are already wondering if he is my ‘spec’ and why exactly I am making a whole blog and LinkedIn post about a nail tech, y’all should focus, that's not the goal of this post.

Somewhere in between my lengthy post, there are nuggets we all should be reminded of. If you find it, your 2-3minutes hasn't been wasted. If you haven't found any nuggets here, try again next time 😂.

I wish you a productive time as we return to work from the year 2024 Easter break.

What withstood the storm

 I have began measuring life not just in numbers and years

But in sunsets and trees blossoming and brilliant views.

You cannot calculate my growth by the notches no one bothered to etch on my bedroom wall.

Neither can you understand my scars by nicks and scrapes, mine are covered decently. 

You cannot grasp my metamorphosis by the skin I’ve shed or the baby teeth I’ve lost.

It cannot be determined in anything I’ve lost or in what’s marred me. It can only be quantified in what remains, in what withstood every storm and every disruption of my heart.

You can see my growth simply by the fact that I am still standing here, believing that this world is still an inherently good place to laugh, to hurt, to love, to lose, to exist, to heal, to blossom. That no matter how undone we were the night before, the miracle is that we are still standing…

We are, essentially, what withstood all the disruption and that’s okay..😍🥰

I Told You I’d Be Okay Someday

 Growth or a change

In my perspective 

Will turn some people off,

Turn some people away.

This doesn’t mean 

I am growing in the wrong direction.

It’s important to remember 

No one needs to be in my corner

As long as I am in my corner.

No one needs to witness my comeback;

What matters is I come back.

This isn’t a classic underdog story;

I am not a Phoenix.

I did not rise from the ashes-

I crawled out from under the spot,

Fingernails cracked,

Palms bloody,

Face muddy.

I told you I’d be okay one day.

Today is that day.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=make+something+beautiful+by+ren+rector&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:aa23d1db,vid:8O-8-psiPgo,st:0 

From Pain to Compassion

Recently I had my back up against a brick wall  and found myself struggling in several areas of my life. As pressures mounted, I did what I am prone to do. I began to focus on how to change my circumstances. My brain began to be filled with ideas, plans and schemes designed to get me to a more comfortable place. And, as usually happens when I try to manipulate my circumstances, I came up short, got more frustrated and less content.

It seems to me most of us respond to the issues we face in very similar ways -- our focus becomes all about changing the circumstances that are troubling us, or telling off the people that has caused us pain. Even our prayer life can be all about asking God to fix something to make our lives more pleasant. But while we think our efforts to change our circumstances will make our lives better, the truth is we just end up exhausted and no more at peace than when we started.

Instead of working so hard to achieve a change in our circumstances, maybe what we need more is a change in our perspective.

Recently a friend defined wisdom, which God promises us if we ask for it (James 1:5), as a change from a human perspective to God's perspective. To have God's perspective on the difficult things in our lives would be to see those things through the lens of God's design, purpose and way. God never promises life will be easy, but his word says he works everything to good for those who love him. If we saw every negative situation in our lives as a means for God to work good in us, maybe we wouldn't focus so much on manipulating our circumstances to feel better. Maybe, instead, we would begin to see our issues, trials and struggles as opportunities for God to do something transformational in our lives. And maybe the prospect of God at work in our lives would change us at a level deeper than the surface issues that so often derail us, even when our circumstances never change.

The Bible often uses the imagery of gold being refined as a picture of what God does in our lives. Gold, when extracted from the earth, does not look like gold we find in a jewelry store. In fact, it is not always recognizable due to the impurities that mar its appearance. Yet, for the person searching for it, the ugliest lump of gold is of great value, and the potential for beauty is evident. We, as men and women, are similar to those lumps of unrefined gold. The sacrifice of God's son to reconcile us back to relationship with God shows just how much he values us -- even while we are lost and separated from him. God sees us not full of impurity, but full of potential. He, in the refining imagery, is the refiner and we are the lump of unrefined gold, full of impurity and full of potential beauty.

Sometimes we expect God simply zaps the junk out of our lives when we enter into relationship with him. But that is not the refining process -- not for gold, and not for us. God loves us too much to leave us as we are because our impure selves cannot reflect clearly all of who he is, and our fullest joy is realized in the growing brilliance of our reflection of him in our lives. The refining process is hot. To refine gold, heat must be applied to force the impurities to the surface. As the impurities rise, they are removed and more heat is applied. This process continues and continues, heat is applied and re-applied, until the gold is pure. The refiner knows the gold is pure when he looks into the gold and sees his clear reflection.

God works a similar process in us. Our lives are a process of God applying heat and exposing our weaknesses, our faults, our struggles and our impurities. Heat is hot and uncomfortable, but if we submit to the heat, we are day by day transformed into his likeness. The process ends when we meet Jesus face to face, and he looks into our faces and sees his clear reflection.

So often we seek to place blame on someone or something for the difficult issues in our lives. But things we attribute to evil may well be heat applied by the refiner of our souls -- heat full of purpose and heat that ultimately will result in purity and joy. Illness may be designed to bring fear to the surface so God can build trust. Financial difficulty may raise materialism to the surface. Loneliness may raise idolatry to the surface. Relational struggles may raise bitterness or unforgiveness to the surface. Disappointment at work may raise pride to the surface. The heat and trials of our lives are not evidence God is cruel or has left you, but ultimately are evidence of how much God values you and his desire for you to be all he designed you to be. He values us as he finds us but he loves us too much to leave us as he finds us.

When life gets hot and difficult, human tendency is to run from the heat. When a molten substance is removed from the heat, it hardens. When we run from the heat, our lives and hearts harden, our impurities set and we simply stagnate.

The heat that softens the hardness of our hearts may hurt, but that pain is a sign of life. It is God's way of refining us, making us more valuable, more compassionate. God tells us in Hebrews 12 it will seem difficult for the moment, but it always yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

If most of us were honest, we would trade much in our life for a sense of true peace. Peace does not primarily mean we have peaceful circumstances. Peace is realizing God is in control of all of the pieces of our lives, and even the difficult pieces have an important place in the bigger picture of God's plan for us. It is in peace we find rest. There is joy -- and peace -- and rest -- in the refining process.

As God changes our perspective, we will begin to see less of what is wrong and more of what evidences God's refining work in your life -- God bringing weaknesses to the surface so you ultimately will be stronger, more aware of your emotions and that of others, more like him and more reflective of him.

God's plan is not to make us more independent or more self-sufficient. His plan is to make us dependent servants of the refiner who desires to give us lives far beyond what we ever could imagine. In the heat, we see His power displayed and we become vessels for his glory and reflectors of his image to the world -- and that is a life worth living, no matter our circumstances!

Pain should train compassion into us. If the pain made you bitter, you lost.
Engage the pain with Gods love and you'd be good...more than that - You'd win.
Gods love never fails

The offence was a decoy, the real target is the heart- to dislodge Gods word and love from it.

The pain was a smokescreen to make way for the actual assault

Now you know the enemy. Stop fighting the pain, the people, the situation...and start guarding your heart, the content of your character. Once the offense takes root so much that it changes you for the worse, you lost.

Isaiah 48:10
1st Peter 1: 7

What Lobsters Will Teach You About Failure

I actually wrote this around 1.48am

I woke up and I couldn't sleep again.

So, I decided to quickly check my Facebook wall to
see what is going on in the Mark 'Suckabag' (pun intended 😁)world.

Lo and behold, I came across this interesting writeup
about lobsters from my friend, Ronald Nzimora

I read it and I decided that you ought to read it too

Ronald's "Lobster" article starts after the line below

============================

I once read a fascinating story about lobsters.

You know what lobsters are right?

Those giant crayfish-like looking sea "animals" people 
like to eat. 

How does anyone eat seafood? They give me an allergic 
reaction!

Anyway, so here's the story:

When waves roll and crash against the rocks, they will
carry with it tens of these lobsters and when the waves
roll back, the lobsters are left behind.

A lobster when left high and dry among the rocks, does 
not have the instinct and energy enough to work its way 
back to the sea, so it waits for the sea to come to it 
and take it back.

Sometimes though the sea never comes back to roll over 
those rocks on which the lobsters are.

If the sea does not come, the lobster within a yard 
of the waves, remains where it is and dies.

Why would it do this? Why would it choose to die 
although it could have prevented it's own death if 
only it would make the slightest effort to reach 
the waves, that are just beyond those rocks?

Turns out this is a valuable lesson for you and 
I because, guess what?

The world is full of human lobsters.

People who sit and wait for permission to start 
living their best life. People who are waiting for 
the perfect time, the perfect conditions, the perfect 
tools, the perfect amount of money, before they get 
off their hiney and do something to change their 
station in life.

Men and women stranded on the rocks of indecision, 
self-doubt and procrastination, who, instead of 
putting forth their own energies, are waiting for 
some grand wind of good fortune to to blow them 
into the sea and set them afloat.

They are the people who are waiting to "hammer", 
waiting to be handed things, waiting for things 
to be done for them. So they wait and wait and 
wait, like Godot, forever, when they could simply 
have reached out and taken everything they could 
ever want.

I don't want this to be you. 

Please don't be a human lobster.

Have a great September.

ANTI-TITHE and the dismantling of "organized" ministry

ANTI-TITHE and the dismantling of "organized" ministry

We need to be careful that we do not become a seat of justice subtly meeting out punishments. When a brother is struggling regardless of whether he is "in ministry" or not there is a process that the Lord is taking him through and that process has everything to do with God imparting faith. Who of us in all reality, can say that if we were challenged by the entirety of the truth in one huge instant lump can say that we would be capable of responding above the level of the faith that God has imparted to us? Faith is the gift of God. Faith comes by hearing (in one's heart) the Truth. When we are handed a huge steak dinner, do we swallow it whole or do we have to cut it into chewable portions and chew on it for a while to be able to swallow it? It takes time. Some of the greatest works of God in a man are not found in the man who suddenly is enabled to walk on the water but rather in the man who has had to patiently work at swimming across the lake.

It is altogether possible and even likely that an effort at eradicating doctrines (ie tithe, first fruits, etc) by some can become nothing less than wielding a club to beat others on the head as much if not more destructively than those who preach those money raising doctrines for ill advised or even greedy purposes. We are not called to the ministry of beating people over the head with the truth. We are called to assist the Master Surgeon in a very delicate operation to skillfully cut out the cancer destroying a man's life without doing harm to those parts of the body that are healthy or can be brought back to health.

There are deeper issues here that the man is struggling with in his walk with the Lord in faith. When someone has arrived at a point that they are standing by way of misguided "faith," it is not always the way of the Lord to suddenly pull the boat out from under his feet and expect him to walk on water by a faith that has never been exercised in him to arrive at that point.

We have to be careful here because the brother is beginning to approach a truth that he needs to cross over the lake and as the Lord moves to cut out the cancer of the doctrines of tithe, etc, he will be representative of many others in similar circumstances. We are not in the ministry of stumbling our brother. We are not in the ministry of standing over him to judge his faith (or lack of it) or the ministry of sentencing him.

I have to say this that there is a certain trend growing alongside this move that is poison and that is the desire for vengeance upon all those who have not walked uprightly prior to this move. How did we learn the truth except for God's grace that was given for us. And if it was a gift then why are we glorying in it as though we remotely deserved it ourselves seeing that we would be equally as ignorant had we not received that gift of awareness of this truth?

The issue here for the brother is the need for further revelation. That this move of God in not about just "eliminating the tithe" it is about the restoration of Christ as SOLELY preeminent above all in His body. It is about the restoration of His rule in the Church. Just correcting the doctrine of the "tithe" itself will not bring that about of itself. In fact in the whole scheme of things that is not even the issue. As Christ takes His rightful position in His body, everything that is not built in Him and by Him will collapse and fall away.

The issue for the brother and others like him is to find the ability to let go and let Christ rule supreme by faith. That will involve the distribution of "ministry" to be shared by all in the assembly and MIGRATING to that goal with those who are more mature able to come to the forefront as examples of servants walking in the Lord. (and you will know who they are because they will not be beating their fellow servants but seeing them with an outstretched hand grasping the hand that is faltering)

Part of the brother's quandary is that he has allowed himself to become stuck in the ministry of performing a "job." I'm not saying it would be easy and neither should any of us, that migrating from that personal economic dependency of that "job" to a more scriptural spreading out of ministry to where he is able to do other things to support himself, if necessary, is an "easy" one. That battle for him and others is not just a physical challenge but a mental challenge as well. The concept of one professional man leading the assembly is ingrained in the psyche by centuries of "accepted" error.

The other struggle he and others may be facing is the deeply ingrained dependency of "operating" an assembly in a building reserved for it. It is not easy for most men who have entered "ministry" to even begin to related to an assembly that has no certain dwelling place or has nothing about it in the natural that men would desire it. No fixed location, no relationship with the government and no separate identity to distinguish them from others. That is where the Lord is heading in guiding His assembly. Stripped down, naked and eventually crucified with Christ so that the body is a mirror reflection of Christ. To focus on the tithe is a big mistake both for those who practice it and for those who are detractors.

There is also something else that the Holy Spirit is working on in the Body and those who are making a ministry of solely focusing on preaching anti-tithe may very well find themselves unable to discern when they are falling under the power of anti-Christ as well. To teach against a New Testament tithe is good and well provided that we are actually under the influence of the Life giving Spirit of Christ but it can equally be used to destroy and circumvent what God is building.

Yes there is no New Testament law of the tithe but only because Christ purchased with His blood something far better. Something that better reflects His glory and uniqueness in His Body. It is the transformation of human beings from self-worship and self-preservation, so much so that the assembly on earth reflects that in the daily life and gathering of the Body:

"And they shared all things in common and no man had anything he called his own... (and no man lacked among them.)" The ultimate expression of "Little children love (AGAPE) one another for love is of God." and "By this shall all men know the love between Christ and His Father... That they may be ONE even as You and I are one." If one suffers all suffer. If one is blessed, all are blessed."

God is not after our tithes. He's after our hearts....

Whose Benchmarks?; The Voice of Growth

I am too focused on my next move to worry about what everyone on earth is doing next.

I don't need to beat down who I was yesterday, or anyone else for that matter,  to grow.

I don't take advantage of the disadvantages of others.

I refuse to race against time, other women, or men.

I can only reach my next level, not anyone else's.

I compete with my own benchmarks,
My own comfort zones,
My own inner strength,
And my own voice.

These things, no one can take away
Except I give them away.

They are makeup my personal growth arsenal.

I am the voice of growth, the unbroken stride of purpose.

I mount with my feet holding fast to my milestones as I reach for my next level

I am the unstoppable voice of growth.

.......................................................................

currently listening to:
Tim McGraw's "Humble and Kind"

I hope this inspires you.