The Thing with Growing Up.

Hey, readers!

There isn’t much to say in the way of an introduction to this post, because the tittle is self-explanatory.

There is a thing with the move to adulthood. There is a hidden flaw in growing up. Okay, not a hidden flaw, but we all must admit that on getting to the point of crossing the line of childhood into adulthood, we realise that… IT SOOOO WASN’T WHAT WE IMAGINED IT WOULD BE!

I don’t know about you, though; this is my personal finding.

From the time I was little, I used to say: I hate being a child. I wish I was an adult so I could go out whenever I want and be free.

I remember saying this to my aunties once upon a time. And one of them told me: There are other things attached to being an adult. It’s not just about going out and being free – free, even, to what extent? Being a child is much better than being an adult, so enjoy this time while you have it. Years later, I’m thinking back to her statement and realizing how true it was.

The commitments and stress and hard choices that come with growing up make us realise that we had it way better when we were kids or in our early teens.

I remember, back when I was about seven or so, being obsessed with bras. 😂😂🙈 Whenever my mum or any of my aunties removed their bras and left the room, I would sneak in and wear them. One day, I was caught. But my aunty wasn’t angry at me, she even thought it was funny seeing the oversized bra clasped around my small body. She told me something: You’re eager to wear bra when you don’t even have breasts yet. When you then get breasts what will happen? Don’t rush to wear bras, because a time will come when you’ll even be tired of wearing them.

My inexperienced little mind was flabbergasted at the statement. How could someone ever be tired of wearing a bra?! So I replied her: I’m never going to be tired of wearing bras.

She just told me: Watch and see. One day, you’ll say it with your own mouth that you’re tired of them.

Once again, years later, I really am tired of wearing bras. In fact, I made this same statement just some days ago!

As children and as early teenagers, we want to grow up so quickly. But when we finally get to that border, we begin to appreciate how good we had it back when we were younger.😥

And we can’t reverse it. Once we’re there, we’re there. There’s this pic a friend of mine posted on her WhatsApp status:

Yeah. Sometimes, broken pencils and unfilled homework are far better than the things we experience as we mature. But it’s fine. We always move. Regardless. 💪🏿💪🏿💪🏿

There a handful of cons attached to growing into an adult, there are a lot more responsibilities and stress. But here’s what I’ve got to tell you:

1.Change your viewpoint.

When going through a difficulty, or when you seem stuck in a frustrating situation, it’s completely normal to complain and feel… well, frustrated – and angry, too. But the best way to overcome uncomfortable circumstances is to change your viewpoint. There’s a saying that often comes to mind whenever I’m in sticky situations – I heard it on the radio back in 2017 or so:

When you change the way you see things, the things you see change.

You need to stop and look at things from another angle. Since you’re on the receiving end of the difficulty, why don’t you try stopping and observing the whole thing from an outsider’s point of view?

Doing this really helps, especially when you are in an argument with someone, or find yourself behaving differently to someone as a way of revenge. That kind of attitude weighs you down and makes you unhappy – I know what I’m saying. The unhappiness thus leads to your difficulty and frustration.

Stop and ask questions like you are an outsider: what caused the misunderstanding? What is the story on both sides? Is acting this way really the best? What if I tried handling it this way? And the rest of them.

Remember, in times of difficulty, not just when you have a misunderstanding with someone, always look at things from a new angle. I’m not guaranteeing you that the trouble will end, but it will help you bear it a lot happier.

2.There are always two sides of the story.

A sequel to the previous point. Don’t judge just by what you think you know, or just based on what you feel. Ask, think, and find out the other side of things before concluding or taking actions.

3.Don’t give discouragement way.

Don’t give way to negative vibes. Yes, life’s unfair, and no one is ever really sure of how things’ll turn out. But that doesn’t mean you should sink into pessimism, or listen to those who already have.

Life’s so unfair. Things only go well for a few people in the world, while the rest suffer.

Why bother trying again when all I do is fail?

The divide between the rich and the poor is so wide now. We poor and middle-class people will never have a chance at a comfortable life.

These are pessimistic statements, which should not be listened to, unless if you want to remain stagnant in life.

As you grow and mature, remove from your life all the people who constantly greet you with negative statements and opinions – whether friends or family. The more you do this, the happier you’ll be.

4. In whatever you do, be consistent.

Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

Be consistent in prayer, be consistent in your academics, be consistent in your good side-hustles, be consistent in everything.

5.You’re amazing. Just the way you are.

There’s more than one side to this:

You’re amazing. There are people you might come across in life that don’t just get you. They’ll never be able to understand the kind of person you are. If you are close to that kind of person, their opinions and statements about you and the way you are may begin to bring you down. Don’t let them.

Live your life. Whoever likes you will like you without reserves. You may think that you’re an oddball, or that no one’s ever going to truly like you. Wrong. You just haven’t met them yet. Life is long if you let it. You’re only just beginning.

And, yes, there are the bad aspects of us. It’s okay to be open to people who caution us about them and give us advice. But maturity comes with having sense, as I would say. So, you should have sense enough to detect when the advice becomes extreme and begins to turn into negativity. We shouldn’t be blind to the bad parts of us, and should try to be better people. But we should be sensible enough to spot bad vibes and zoom.

Your style is your style. Dress as you feel. Dress to your comfort. Yeah, sure, decency is a factor we must always respect, but dressing in a way that makes you feel comfortable and confident is most important, especially at this stage of our lives.

My fashion style is cutesy-comfort with a little extra (of course, it may change as the years go by): oversized sweaters and T-shirts, short, flair skirts (pleated skirts, preferably), sneakers, high flip-flops on a regular day, jean shorts, trousers – shorts are my most comfortable regular-outing wear – some body-hugging tops here and there… It’s plenty. 😂

But generally, my style is cutesy-comfort… with a little extra. 😁

So, yeah. There’s a thing with growing up. The mirage thing. It’s not what it appears to be once you get there. But it’s okay. We’ll get through.

But even after all the serious-serious, philosophical talk, let me also say that: you should enjoy your adulthood!!!

Being an adult only comes once, and after that, marriage and a whole container full of family responsibilities. And from what I know, everything just goes downhill from there. 😔

So just…

Take chances, and sometimes, [just do things on the spur of the moment]; no second, once passed, can ever be brought back… Make lots of memories, and never forget the old ones [because at the end of the day, all we will ever really have to hold on to is our memories of these times].

Vanessa Chidi

Let’s keep the conversation going. For young people just stepping into adulthood, is my point of view about it the same as yours? And if you’re already an adult, is there any advice you can leave for us young adults, or anything you’d like to say in general?

Don’t hesitate to reach out. I’ll be waiting. ⏳

Nostalgic about the good old days, 😥

P.S. There’s this song I’d really love young people, and even adults, to listen to, if you haven’t already. It’s tittled Adulthood by a Nigerian singer, Alade. It’s in line with the theme of this post, and is one of the things that inspired me write this. I first heard it when I was in boarding school. You can watch it on YouTube, or listen to it on your fave music streaming site. 💖

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Asking Ourselves the Hard Questions.

Hey, readers!

It’s been a while since I last wrote in the Teen Talk category of Ọlaedo – the meat and bones of this blog. So here’s something I’ve put together for today:

In today’s post, I stress the importance of asking ourselves, as tweens, teens and even adults, the hard questions.

I believe that everyone frequently comes to that point in their life when they ask themselves: What am I even doing? What am I living for? What gets me up from bed every morning? How am I living my life every day in respect to what I hope to achieve in life?

… and a score of other related questions. Towards the ending of last year, I resolved to make a new list of my priorities from time to time, so as to keep them up-to-date with the changes in my life.

But let me not give away the gist of this post just yet.

 It’s important to ask ourselves the hard questions, but it’s even more important to answer them honestly and transparently. I may not be able to think up all the questions we need to ask ourselves, because people and their lives are different. But here are some questions we should ask ourselves from time-to-time:

What do I want to achieve in life?

It’s the same as asking: What do I want out of my life? Everyone has a sum-total dream or goal for their life.

Correction: Everyone should have a laid down purpose for their life.

But it’s sad that many people don’t. Maybe they once did, but now they really don’t know anymore. Maybe they’re just going with the flow of things and seeing where they’ll find themselves.

You might have pledged to become something professionally, or maybe have pledged to do something for society, or have pledged to achieve something you know will make an impact in your generation, no matter the size. But that might have been some time ago.

As we grow, change and get into new environments, we experience challenges in our mentalities, and many times, these challenges prevail and change our mentalities. When such a thing happens, we are to sit down and reason out whether or not the change is positive or negative

As a person, there should be that ultimate dream you wish to achieve. It is important to identify what that is early enough, so that your younger (teen) years can be used to lay the foundation for the work that will begin in the prime of your youth.

But who’s limiting? You can be or do whatever you want to, whenever you want to. In our age and time, there are few limits to success.

The takeaway from this is: Sit down and think of what you want to do with your life. You might have done this before, but if you feel like you have undergone some changes in your mentality and that path doesn’t suit you anymore, it’s okay to make a change.

Just make sure you are happy with your life’s goal.

What actions am I taking every day in order to achieve my life’s goal?

It’s not enough to map out your life’s goal; you should also break that goal down into mini-goals that you achieve every day in respect to the big one.

I know I sound like a motivational book. But that’s the truth.

Take for example: I want to be a software engineer. I realised that I don’t have to wait till I’m in university till I start learning the concepts of programming and how to write code. So, I took up learning to code with lecture videos on different programming languages. I may not be getting the same experience as a person going for physical coding classes, but my endeavour is of benefit to me; I find that, during Computer Science classes in school, I have already learnt many of the things I’m being taught, through my coding tutorial videos.

It’s a step – maybe a small one – to achieving my life’s goal.

Whether professionally or humanitarianly, whatever you want to achieve in life should begin TODAY, no matter how small.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with [today’s] step.

What are my values and principles?

I learned what values are from a book tittled The Power of Self-Confidence by Brian Tracy. From what he explained, I can say that values are pillars which hold all your actions; they are those traits or aspects of your life that you cannot compromise for anything, no matter what.

And of course, if you have values, you have to have them in order of importance.

I’ll explain the next heading.👇🏿

‘Principles’ is kind of like my synonym for values. Principles are like your personal Ten Commandments, or a personal constitution. You do not break the rules of your principles no matter what.

So values are like aspects of your life that you arrange in order of importance and make decisions in respect to how important one aspect is to you over the other. While principles are the rules you’ve laid down for yourself to guide your life.

Values and principles are important because they guide our lives. There is a sense of pride that comes about whenever we act according to them, and this continuous sense of pride should exist in order to keep us believing in ourselves and taking us through every day.

Do I prioritize?

Like I said I would, I’ll explain ‘prioritizing’ here. Prioritizing comes about when you’re making your values list, or when you’re just making a list of your priorities.

I didn’t state this earlier, but, taking an example from my values list, your values list can be something like this:

Godliness

Happiness

Creativity

Continuous best standard education

Beneficial company

Going by this list of values, it means that in a time when I’m to choose between my friends and, maybe, continuing my education abroad, I would have to choose my education. It means that if I had to choose between doing something of my will I ‘think’ will make me happy and something of God’s will I ‘believe’ will make me happy, I’ll have to pick what God wants first. Why? Because God never gives us more than we can handle; He teaches us, sometimes, with adversity.

So, back to the point. You just need to get some (I’ll call them) traits that summarize aspects of your life and order them according to importance. These will help you whenever you need to make tough decisions. I never forget my values, and they haven’t changed since I defined them in 2019.

Of course, yours can change if necessary, but make sure that the change is for good, that it will make you a better person as you live by them.

And when you come to priorities, they are the sentence form of values. An excerpt from my latest priorities list is:

God

Being a better person (personal growth)

My values and self-confidence (personal life)

My parents

My exams

Coding (career)

… etc.

Usually, your priorities should be a reflection of your values, because your values are – should be – the backbone, the foundation of all your actions.

Prioritization is important at frequent intervals because we, as well as the pattern of our lives, are constantly undergoing change. I advise to make a list of your priorities at least at the beginning of every month. It will help you to take on the month with a sense of control and purposefulness. And if it seems your priorities are still the same, it’s okay to leave them as they are. The most important thing is keeping to them.

And – talking honestly –  I may not have perfected the fine art of prioritizing, or even always sticking to my priorities, but I really do try; I try because I believe prioritizing is a good cause to chase after.

Who are my friends?

Who-are-your-friends? What kind of people do you associate with? What do you look for when choosing close friends? Can you tell the difference between fake friends and true friends?

These are the kind of questions you need to ask yourself now.

From my JSS3 (that should be, like, eighth grade in the American school system, I guess), I told myself that my classmates, the people my age I relate most frequently with, were of little benefit to me, because they cared about the wrong things. As a result, I shut myself out of conversations with those of them I knew were of little benefit, and only talked to a few people about non-academics-related things. I did have a classmate who was a close friend, though, but he was only good for talking about career-related, academics or school-related things, and he was also a boy. I could never really talk to him about, y’know… personal stuff.

But it was ironic, though, that my best friend later on was a boy. I made him my best friend still in JSS3. I was drawn to him majorly because of his coding knowledge. I still say this with pride that: he dared me to take up here-and-now coding; meaning, he made me see that I didn’t have to be in university before I could begin writing code. So, our friendship sprang up from the mutual ground of the quest for coding knowledge… and has continued till today – although not as strong as it was back then. 😥

So the point of this whole narration was that you should be brave enough to decide what kind of people will actually benefit you if they come into your life. I’m not saying you should shut every other type of person out – that was a mistake I made back then that I have corrected. All I’m saying is to choose those friends that you will keep close and those that will be far, in order to avoid corruption and/or diversion.

What kind of relationships am I getting into?

I suppose you must have guesstimated (can’t believe this is a word 🤯) what will be contained in this heading.

Yes, at that point in our lives when we will, we will begin to feel for someone, and a relationship might start to bud. Decide early if you’re ready to have a serious relationship, so you don’t go playing with someone’s heart 💔 and wasting their time.

I highly recommend you check out my post, Don’t Settle for Less. After reading it, I know you’ll be convinced of the importance of setting standards for the kind of relationship you wish to have.

Look before you leap. Nowadays, people with true intentions are becoming harder and harder to find. Look well before you pour out your heart and life and time and opportunities at the expense of a person.

As always, I recommend prioritization, and discovering first who you are and what YOU want out of YOUR life, before you begin to lean on someone else.

Am I academics-inclined, skill-inclined or talent-inclined?

Yes. A very important heading to discuss. The failure of most people stems from the fact that they do not know their inclination.

By default, parents want their children to be academics-inclined, and that is why they send us to school. But as the years go by, our true inclinations surface, and it is only the discerning, brave people who realise them and make a shift.

The academics-inclined person dreams of becoming some professional, like a doctor, lawyer, geologist, software engineer, 👧🏿✌🏿 or any profession that involves study and training in order to actualize.

The skill-inclined person does not really focus on academics or study or stuff like that. He only learns the skills he needs for his profession. Such a person could go on to become a baker, a furniture maker, a hair-dresser, a fashion designer, a crafts-maker, a salesman, or even an electronics expert of some sort. All skill–inclined people need is to learn the skills they require or are interested in, and they’re happy doing what interests them.

The work of the talent–inclined person originates from within. Before any advanced formal education, such a person already begins to show special prowess or expertise in doing something. And out of their love for something that feels natural and easy for them, they go on to pursue that career or line of study. Talent-inclined people often go on to become dancers, writers, 👧🏿✌🏿 artists, hair-dressers, bakers, crafts-makers, comedians, musicians, actors, makeup artists (who are also artists) and many more. The main thing here is that their career choices stem out from their natural, default likings and expert abilities.

BuuUUUUt. Before you begin to claim that you are skill-inclined and not academics-inclined, or whatever, carefully examine yourself and tell yourself the truth. I believe that the academics-inclination is the hardest to pursue, but we should not run away from something and begin to make excuses against it just because it seems hard.

The joy is always in the chase… the struggles of the chase, that is.

Make careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.

-Galatians 6:4-5. The Message Bible.

Do I believe in God and/or religion?

Notwithstanding the stereotypes that exist in our society (when speaking from a Nigerian’s perspective), we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in God and/or religion.

I hear many people say nowadays that they are ‘agnostic’, some others say they believe God exists, but they don’t believe in religion, others say they don’t see the need in going to church, others challenge the doctrines of whatever church or religious institution they wish, and some others, like me, stick to their religion and live by it the best they can because it gives them satisfaction.

The truth of the matter is that humans were created for supplication. A person must always feel the need to acknowledge a supreme or controlling force for certain things happening in his life. It just puts us in perspective.

Nowadays, there is more freedom for things like these, people now define their religiosity. That’s fine. Even God gave us the freedom to choose. Ask yourself whether or not you believe in God or religion and give reasons why, so that you can convince yourself, and anyone who asks you, on the reasons for your decision.

What do I see as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’?

I was discussing with my best friend two Sundays ago, and he told me that the best way to live my life is to: do what I know is right and don’t do what I know is wrong.

I still marvel at how wise that boy’s words always seem to sound to me.

Define what you believe is ‘wrong’ and ‘right’, and live accordingly. Always remember to be honest, and to try your best.

Who are the important people in my life, and how am I reciprocating their impact on me?

The heading is self-explanatory. There must be people who impact positively in your life, in whatever aspect. Make sure that their love, care and support is not one-sided. Anyone who cares for and supports you should be important in your life. Always make them see that their care and support are being acknowledged, and try your best to show them the same in return.

Remember that no man is an island. We’re all in this together. You can’t do it alone, so don’t push away the people who love, care and support you by being so self-centered. Pay attention to everyone.

Love’s repaid by love alone.

And after a ton of finger movements over my keyboard, and a million typing errors, I reserve the right to say that this post is done. I know it’s long (if you were so polite to read it all till the end), but I also know it’s not boring. (Yup. I said it.)

So be brave enough to ask and keep asking yourself these questions, and answer them truthfully. You’ll be amazed at how much more organized your life will be, how much clearer your vision will be, and how much more fulfilled you’ll feel as you take on every day.

Yup. Still sounding like a motivational book.

Ciao, 💋

P.S. I guess you’ve noticed my featured image.

*wink wink*