Evans Akpo

“Life is meant to be easier and enjoyed more.” – Sure, I agree that life should be enjoyed (as many of us do) but the problem is that the idea that life should ALWAYS be easy and enjoyable is used to justify all kinds of lazy behavior.  Might as well sit on the couch and scarf down those potato chips, because hey, life is meant to be enjoyed, right?  Nope.  You can do without junk food and still enjoy life.  You can exercise and enjoy it.  You can give up a lot of comfort in your life and not lose a thing.  In fact, the path of least resistance is often the path of least reward.  You need to do hard things.  There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.  As Einstein once said, “Genius is 1% talent and 99% hard work.”  You must run to be a runner.  You must write to be a writer.  You must actively work on a business venture to learn how to run a successful business.  There is no substitute for doing the work.  So meditate on this every day: “I will do the work.  It won’t be easy.  It will be worth it!”

“I can do it later.” – Sure, you can always do it later… but your later self will feel the same exact way.  Think about it: Why should your later self be more disciplined than your present self?  In fact, because you’re allowing yourself to slack off now, you’re building a habit of procrastination and actually making it less likely that your later self will be more disciplined.  So today, stop making excuses for why you can’t get it done and start focusing on all the reasons why you must make it happen.  Stop talking about what you have done or what you are going to do.  Just do it and let your actions speak for themselves.  Most great things in life don’t happen by chance, they happen by choice.  You never know what’s possible until you risk finding out.  In the end, there is only one thing that makes your dreams and goals completely impossible to achieve:  Your lack of action today.

“The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism….The male and the female were made to be combined together in pairs, not simply on the sexual level, but totally combined. The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union. The Christian attitude does not mean that there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating. It means that you must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get the pleasures of taste without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again. As a consequence, Christianity teaches that marriage is for life.” — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

A person’s actions rarely match their words. – Everybody deserves somebody who helps them look forward to tomorrow.  If someone has the opposite effect on you, because they are consistently inconsistent and their actions don’t match up with their words, it’s time to let them go.  It’s always better to be alone than to be in bad company.  True friendship is a promise made in the heart – silent, unwritten, unbreakable by distance, and unchangeable by time.  Don’t listen to what people say; watch what they do.  Your true friends will slowly reveal themselves over time.

You catch yourself obsessing over, and living in, the past. – Eventually you will overcome the heartache, and forget the reasons you cried, and who caused the pain.  Eventually you will realize that the secret to happiness and freedom is not about control or revenge, but in letting things unfold naturally, and learning from your experiences over the course of time.  After all, what matters most is not the first, but the final chapter of your life, which unveils the details of how well you wrote your story.  So let go of the past, set yourself free, and open your mind to the possibility of better relationships and experiences on the road ahead.

Someone expects you to be someone you’re not. – Don’t change who you are for anyone who demands it against your will.  It’s wiser to lose someone over being who you are, than to keep them by being someone you’re not.  Because it’s easier to mend a broken heart, than it is to piece together a shattered identity.  It’s easier to fill an empty space in your life where someone else used to be, than it is to fill the empty space inside yourself where YOU used to be.

You catch yourself obsessing over, and living in, the past. – Eventually you will overcome the heartache, and forget the reasons you cried, and who caused the pain.  Eventually you will realize that the secret to happiness and freedom is not about control or revenge, but in letting things unfold naturally, and learning from your experiences over the course of time.  After all, what matters most is not the first, but the final chapter of your life, which unveils the details of how well you wrote your story.  So let go of the past, set yourself free, and open your mind to the possibility of better relationships and experiences on the road ahead.

You truly dislike your current situation, routine, job, etc. – It’s better to be a failure at something you love than to succeed at doing something you hate.  Don’t let someone who gave up on their dreams talk you out of going after yours.  The best thing you can do in life is follow your heart.  Take risks.  Don’t just make the safe and easy choices because you’re afraid of what might happen.  If you do, nothing will ever happen.  Chances must be taken, mistakes must be made, and lessons must be learned.  It might be an uphill climb, but when you reach that mountaintop it will be worth every ounce of blood, sweat and tears you put into it.

How you feel when you’re stressed is not a true measure of reality. – Just because you’re afraid, doesn’t mean you’re in danger.  Just because you feel alone, doesn’t mean nobody loves you.  Just because you think you might fail, doesn’t mean you will.  Look beyond your doubts and keep searching for the truth.  Despite the struggles that you might be facing, never give up on yourself.  You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think, and twice as capable as you have ever imagined.

How you feel when you’re stressed is not a true measure of reality. – Just because you’re afraid, doesn’t mean you’re in danger.  Just because you feel alone, doesn’t mean nobody loves you.  Just because you think you might fail, doesn’t mean you will.  Look beyond your doubts and keep searching for the truth.  Despite the struggles that you might be facing, never give up on yourself.  You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think, and twice as capable as you have ever imagined.