Author Archives: 9jagirl4real

Tedx Talk Review: Failing All Way to Success by Jason Njoku

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Jason Njoku is the CEO of Irokotv and founder of Nollywoodlove on YouTube.

Here are my notes from his Tedx Speech..

“People fear failure but what they really fear is the shame associated with failure.

Embracing failure allows you to be completely free from the fear of taking risk.

There’s a point that if you keep on failing nothing matters anymore.

Emotional Capital is similar to money. You make a deposit every time you fail and get back up again. With emotional capital you are unshackled by what people expect from you.

The more we have an open discussion about failure, the more we accept failure as culture and the more people can spend time trying and taking risk.

What’s the worst that can happen? You fail but there’s tomorrow.

Everyone has a challenge to overcome. Failure is ok.”

Please click here to watch his speech. 

A Journal to God..

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Dear God,

I just got off from work. No, I am not as tired as I thought I would after working two shifts back to back.
You know why I volunteered myself to do overtime.

I thank you for the miracle you are about to give me tomorrow.  I can’t write everything I want to say to you on here because I am posting this one on my blog.
I am getting sleepy now.

No, I wouldn’t sleep yet still done talking to you.
Lord, please help me to love you more than my dreams, goals, visions, etc.
Help me to draw closer to you.
It’s crazy, I used to make more time for you in college with a busier schedule than I do now.
I know my time with you is priceless.

You are the essence of my life.
Let this heart only beat for you, oh God!
I am not done yet, but I am stopping here for the blog.
********
I got this creative idea from the book I am reading now.
Have you ever thought about starting a journal where you only write to God?
Try it!

Why we Feel Embarrassed?

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We feel embarrassed because we are scared of what people think about us.
So you climbed the stairs and fell. What is the big deal if people see you falling?
Yes people will definitely laugh.
Would I laugh?
If you didn’t get hurt, I would laugh too.
Get up, laugh it off and keep on going.
There’s no need to be embarrassed.
You didn’t fall on purpose.

There are some people who try to embarrass themselves on purpose for attention.
It didn’t happen on purpose. Again, laugh it off and keep on going.
The truth is nobody wants to look stupid in front of people.
At some point in your life, you will look stupid.
You might say things the wrong way.
People get embarrassed over a lot of things.
Note: Everybody is prone to mistakes. We are not all perfect.

The bible says “the fear of man is a trap” (Proverbs 29:25).
If people weren’t there to see you falling, you wouldn’t feel embarrassed thus, it shouldn’t matter.
God’s opinion matters because he is God.
Your spouse’s opinion is important.
Your boss opinion is important because she or he pays you.
We can’t please people.
Stop being afraid of people!!

Laugh it off and Move on with your Life!

Why He Married a White Girl by Trip Lee

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WHY I MARRIED A WHITE GIRL

Whenever I post pictures of my family on social media, the responses are always fun. The most common are, “Your son is so handsome!” or “What a beautiful family!” But one of the other common responses is, “Is your wife white?” People ask me at shows sometimes too. The answer is yes. My wife is a mix of Hungarian, Italian, and Polish—which to most people just means yes, she’s white. This is irrelevant to some, but shocking or even disappointing to others. I don’t think anyone should be shocked or disappointed by interracial marriages, but I still wanted to talk about why I married outside my “race.

The decision to marry someone from a different ethnic background wasn’t a tough one for me. I never sat down and wrote out a pros and cons list. Though if I did, the fact that my wife has never seen an episode of “Martin” would be in the con category. But honestly, I didn’t agonize over it or seek counsel about whether it was OK. I was convinced that she was the woman for me to marry, even though she wasn’t black.

Some would never consider marrying someone who wasn’t the same ethnicity as them, so let me tell you why I did.

Expectations

To be honest, I always expected to marry a black woman. I found women of all backgrounds beautiful, but black girls were my “preference.” But when I arrived on my college campus in 2006, I wasn’t looking for a wife at all. I just wanted to grow in my faith and get a good education. My first album had just come out, so I had plenty of other things to focus on. But as I met people at the school, a sophomore named Jessica really caught my attention and we became friends.

We ran in the same circles and we ended up joining the same church, so we saw each other a lot. And the more I got to know her, the more I was drawn to her. She really loved Jesus and she had this childlike willingness to do whatever He asked. Her compassion for needy people challenged me and she had a humble heart that responded to the Word. Over that first year, I watched her sacrifice countless hours of her time serving at our church. On top of all of that, I loved being around her. Our conversation, whether serious or silly, always flowed with ease. So I eventually started to ask myself, “Should I marry this girl?”

Preferences

Jessica didn’t look like I expected my future wife to look, but honestly that didn’t matter to me. Don’t get me wrong, I thought she was beautiful from the first time I met her. And I was never opposed to marrying a white girl. I just didn’t think I would. But as I grew in my faith and my heart changed, my preferences started changing too. My main preference was that my wife be godly, and Jessica was. So I wifed her.

Never for a moment did I feel like I was settling. It feels more like settling to overlook a godly woman merely because of her ethnicity. I never wanted to value my preferences for a wife over what I needed in a wife.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with having preferences, but we have to hold them with an open hand. I know some people who overlook a potential godly spouse because they don’t fit some random preference. Some of our preferences really don’t matter that much. Some of our preferences may even be foolish, so we have to submit all of them to Scripture.

When you and your spouse are in the middle of conflict, skin tone doesn’t matter. Body type and social status seem insignificant. You want them to be godly and humble. And as my wife and I begin to raise our first child, I couldn’t be more grateful for her. She’s an amazing mom and a godly influence on my son—neither of which have anything to do with her ethnic background. It’s OK to want things in a spouse, but we have to submit our desires to what God wants for us in a spouse. What I wanted and needed most was a godly partner, and that’s exactly what God provided.

Click here to see the article

A Ted Talk Review: The Gift of Blindness By Cobhams Asuquo

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I recently watched a Ted talk by Cobhams Asuquo. He spoke about the gift of blindness.
Here are some of the things I learnt from his Ted talk.

1. Do not excuse failure for any reason on any account.
2. Failure will come the same way it comes; we have to see to it that it goes.
3. Excusing failure by blaming it on a systematic flaw, we miss the opportunity to scale through the seemingly insurmountable obstacles to elevate ourselves and elevate others.
4. Learn to trust even for no reason. Trust has no expiration date.
5. Sight sometimes is a distraction. On your way to your destination what you see can be a big distraction.
6. Learn to be blind not literally in order to be focused.

Click here to watch this Ted talk.
I love Ted talks. Please look out for more Ted talks reviews on my blog.
Thank you!

Not Another Love Song..

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Personally, I think we have enough songs about love, premarital sex and drugs. These types of songs are popular because they sell. Instead we need songs about girls suffering from eating disorders because they don’t look like the girls in the  music videos. We need songs about teenagers who are on drugs, and how they are ending their life before starting it. We need songs about guys in gangs, who think for some reason they are invisible from the law. We need to sing about little pregnant teen girls with no plan for a better future for neither themselves nor their baby.

We need to stop contradicting ourselves. Why condemn the stripper dancing in a club for money and you don’t condemn naked ladies in most of these videos? It amazes me how a lot of kids really look up to these stars. They don’t sing about the importance of getting a good college education and bettering themselves. They sing and rap about all the parts in a female’s body, premarital sex, drugs and shooting someone. These songs paint this fictional world that doesn’t exist. It’s impossible to have that many women without a sexually transmitted disease. Women are not objects that men can toy with and move on. These videos only promote a one-sided type of beauty to women. These videos capitalize on the fact that most women only want guys who have money (Not true).
People have heard enough songs about gangbangers, womanizers, drug addicts and premarital sex experts. We need songs to direct our youth in the right direction.

Single and Not Waiting

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Written By:  Rachel Selinger

I’m 23, I just graduated from university, and I’m single.

Many of my friends are married, and a few are starting to have children. And I feel as if I just graduated from high school again. You could say my life is in transition. And it’s true; I am in the middle of shifting myself from university to the career world. But I’ve started to wonder about whether it’s right to refer to my singleness as an in-between stage.

What exactly am I in-between again?

It’s the first day of the rest of my life.” I recently I heard someone on TV say this about her wedding day, and it really bothered me. While I don’t want to discount the gift of marriage, I must say I’m a bit confused and frustrated with this sentiment. I’ve heard the cliché before, but I suddenly felt the weight of it. As if it equates marriage as the start of life, or at least the good part.

Don’t misunderstand my frustration; I think there is a beautiful element of starting a new family with your spouse. I’m all for godly marriage. But what I’m afraid of is viewing life through the lens of marriage as the goal. For waiting to get married before life starts.

I’m afraid, because I’m afraid it has happened to me. I’ve been living like I’m waiting for someone to get here. And it isn’t Jesus.

I’ve wasted my time, my energy, and my emotions on this concept that singleness is just a waiting room for a relationship. I’m tired of this view that my life begins when I wake up next to my husband, because I’m pretty sure my life began 23 years ago when my mom gave birth. And this mentality has robbed my joy.

As much as I’d like to place all the blame on Christian culture, the perpetual “Have you met anyone yet?” question the world asks me, and the reality that my Facebook feed looks more like a Pinterest wedding board these days, I am convicted of my own failures.

I’ve been living like God owes me something. Like he hasn’t held up his end of the deal. He has given me the desire for relationship and marriage, and he just hasn’t followed through.

I’ve been living under the impression that I deserve a relationship.

I’d be lying if I said Christian culture does much to inhibit this mentality. There seems to be a deep understanding and appreciation for the gift of marriage, but not so much for the gift of singleness (if it’s treated like a gift at all). Rather, singleness is something to be cured. Like I’ve got a disease, and introducing me to your single friend might perhaps cure us both. Singleness is the lump of coal, the gift that is never on your Christmas list.

There are at least a handful or us standing around, wondering what happened. (After all, I have been pretty nice this year.)

But it’s never been about being entitled, or even about being nice. I have to stop thinking that I’m doing something wrong here.

Well actually I am, but it isn’t about fixing something that will magically make a boyfriend appear. It is about changing the direction of my heart.

 “I’d rather have the right God than the wrong man.” –- Christen Rapske

People talk all the time about pursuing people or things for the wrong reasons, but maybe we pursue God for the wrong reasons. Maybe subconsciously I’ve been treating God like he’s a vending machine. And my pursuit of him has really been a pursuit of someone else.

When did Christ cease to be enough?

And when did I stop finding my identity, self-worth, and fulfillment in Him, only to place my life on hold for someone I’ve never even met?

Each day is a gift, and I’m not waiting for it to get here. It is present in every moment, and it begins anew daily.  Man-less or not, I want to wake up every morning and be excited because I get to spend my day with the God who created the universe.

And I want to do that for the rest of my life.

Click here to see the article. 

Nigerian Guys and Chivalry

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A lot of Nigerian guys hate the word “chivalry” or refuse to know that that word exist. I understand our culture supports the idea that men are superior to women, so men feel they don’t need to do much. Your Nigerian lady deserves to be treated like a lady. We make culture not the other way around.

Chivalry is a western custom we need to adopt into our culture. It’s not just about pulling out chairs or opening doors for your lady. It’s about treating your lady like a lady. Most Nigerian guys refuse to recognize chivalry because it acknowledges the woman first. Our aggressive Nigerian men want to be first in everything even before their wives. Practicing chivalry subconsciously affirms to your woman that she comes first before anybody else even you. Guys who practice chivalry are called “gentlemen.” Your Nigerian lady deserves to be with gentleman.

You will discover more benefits as you adopt chivalry into relationship. I know Nigerian women are strong women but we still need our guys to treat us like ladies. Some Nigerian women don’t like chivalry but if your lady loves it, do it!