Jessica Cox: The Pilot Who Has No Arms

Jessica Cox was born 1983 in Sierra Vista, Arizona, United States without arms, and today, she flies airplanes, drives cars and lives a normal life using her feet the way others use their hands. Jessica is the world's first licensed armless pilot, as well as the first armless black-belt in the American Taekwondo Association (ATA). She is also an inspirational speaker who travels around the world using her own life as an example of what you can achieve if you want it badly enough.

As a child, Jessica studied dance in her home town. At the age of 14, Jessica earned her first black belt in the International Taekwondo Federation. She attended the University of Arizona where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Psychology. During college, Jessica found a club of the American Taekwondo Association and resumed training in the sport. The instructors created a curriculum that would be accessible to any future armless students. Jessica then became the first armless person to earn a black belt in the ATA (she now has two black belts in Taekwondo). Her most famous accomplishment has been learning how to fly. After three years of training, she earned her pilot's license on October 10, 2008. She holds the Guinness World Record for being the first person certified to fly an airplane with only their feet. She is able to type on a keyboard (25 words per minute), to pump her own gas, insert and remove her contact lenses, apply make-up using only her feet and she is also a certified SCUBA diver. In 2012, she married Patrick, her former Taekwondo instructor. During their wedding, rather than presenting Jessica with a ring, her husband wrapped an anklet around her left ankle and during the cutting of the wedding cake, she used her feet.

Jessica, whose slogan is ‘motivating people to think outside the shoe’, believes in combining creativity, desire, persistence and fearlessness and that with them, nothing is impossible. She is such a huge inspiration to me. And again, she has demonstrated to me that none of us has any excuse to be less than what we can be in life. According to one of her admirers, she proves to everyone that everything is possible and that you can do what you dream of. I hope that after reading this story, you will be inspired to surmount every challenge and overcome any difficulty on your way in life. I end this piece with the following questions on Jessica’s website: Are you letting fears stand in the way of your opportunities? Is it easier to come up with an excuse than a creative solution to a challenge? What handicaps do you and others harbor that you do not need? How soon should you give up when confronted with a difficult challenge?

Deadlier Than HIV: Hepatitis

The First Service in my church on Sunday is tagged “Empowerment Service’, where issues like entrepreneurship, academics, health, wealth, purpose, etc, are addressed. Last Sunday’s Empowerment Service was on health and it was a revealing and enlightening experience for most of us who were present at the service. The speaker at the programme, a medical doctor, spoke on the deadliness of Hepatitis infection and its prevalence in Nigeria. So, I am using this platform to present some of the things I gleaned from the talk.
A staggering revelation the speaker made was that Hepatitis infection is deadlier than HIV and costlier to manage. Hepatitis B, he told us, is incurable while Hepatitis C can be treated but can you imagine spending 30,000 naira per week on treatment for 48 consecutive weeks? That should be around 200 dollars per week. Please try to calculate what that amounts to. How many people in Nigeria can afford such a treatment? It is however surprising to know that vaccination for this disease is not supposed to be more than 1000 naira (that should be around 7 dollars) and I want to hazard a guess that many people are not aware of this. What is painful about this disease is the fact it is prevalent in Nigeria and many people are ignorant about it. How many Nigerians have died from Hepatitis infection with the death attributed to something else? How many Nigerian are carrying the virus around now? We may not know. I believe that our society should embark on an aggressive drive to sensitise and vaccinate people against this deadly disease.

The Hepatitis infection is an inflammation affecting the liver. It can be contagious or non-contagious. It can also be fulminant. I looked up ‘fulminant’ in the dictionary and I got these meanings: coming on suddenly and with great severity; (of a disease or symptom) severe and sudden in onset. This means Hepatitis infection can come upon one suddenly with very severe effects. Some cases of Hepatitis infection may give you signs, some may not. There are different types of Hepatitis: A, B, C, D and E. Some of the symptoms of Hepatitis infection are: passage of dark urine, yellowing of the eyes (jaundice), abdominal discomfort on the right side, weight loss, easy bruising, bleeding tendencies, swelling, and it can be contacted through blood transfusion, sex, seminal fluids, etc.
My advice to you is to go for Hepatitis test, if you have done that. And if you test negative, please go for vaccination against this disease. If you test positive, please seek medical advice immediately. I have done the test and I have been vaccinated.

The Man who shocked Nigerians

Stephen Okechukwu Keshi became only the second person to win the Africa Cup of Nations as both a player and a coach. He achieved this feat by leading Nigeria’s Super Eagles to victory at the just concluded Orange Africa Cup of Nations which took place in South Africa. The only other person to have achieved the feat is Egypt's Mahmoud El-Gohary. Keshi, who had his coaching education in the United States, was the head coach of the Nigeria national under-20 football team at the 2001 African Youth Championship which also served as qualification for the 2001 FIFA World Youth Championship but did not any record success.

Between 2004 and 2006 Keshi coached the Togo national football team and qualified them, against all expectations, for the FIFA World Cup in Germany in 2006 but was unable to lead the team to the World Cup having been relieved of his position and replaced by German coach, Otto Pfister after Togo failed to advance to the knock-out stage in the 2006 African Cup of Nations in Egypt. Pfister did not last long in the position. He too was asked to go after an unsuccessful World Cup campaign and Keshi became the Manager of the Togo national football. Keshi was later appointed manager of the Mali national football team in April 2008 on a two-year deal and was sacked in January 2010, after Mali's early exit in the group stages of the Africa Cup of Nations.

Keshi became coach of the Super Eagles in 2011. He qualified Nigeria for the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations and shocked Nigerians by leading the Super Eagles to victory at the tournament. He shocked Nigerians again when handed in his resignation a day after leading Nigeria to clinch a trophy that had eluded the nation for 19 years but rescinded his decision the day after. According to reports, it took the intervention of the nation’s sports minister to make Keshi withdraw his resignation. His employers, the NFF, we learnt also begged him to change his mind.

My initial reaction to Keshi’s decision to quit his position as coach of Super Eagles was that of disgust but after some reflection and after seeing his reasons for resigning, I felt he might have been justified. He claimed the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) did not put faith in him and also accused them of undue interference.

Keshi’s story, for me, has some lessons to teach every one of us. This is a man who many Nigerians, including myself, never gave a chance to lead his team beyond the quarter-final of the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations but he surprised all of us. He was probably the only one who believed the team could record some achievements. He kept faith in his team and he was rewarded. And at the moment Stephen Okechukwu Keshi is the toast of all Nigerians. The person who was being threatened with sack is now being begged not to leave the same job over which he was being threatened before.

Keshi’s story has again reinforced the importance of self-belief if anybody wants to achieve anything worthwhile in life. Oppositions will come. Threats may be issued. Discouragement will stare one in the face. Frustration may set in. But one thing will keep one going and that is self-belief. Self-belief has been defined as confidence or trust in your own abilities or judgment that you will succeed in an endeavour and that is what Keshi has demonstrated since he took over as coach of the Super Eagles. He believed that his decision (judgment) to drop some players from the team and include some players, especially home-based players was, a good one and that he had the ability to build a good team. If the truth must be told, his decision has paid off. The following quote sums up what I have been trying to say, “The only person who can pull me down is myself and I'm not going to let myself pull me down anymore.”

Another interesting thing about the Keshi story is the fact that he is being begged not to leave his position. This tells me something. When a person records success in life, he gets to a level where he dictates the terms and conditions under which he will function. He finds himself in the driver’s seat and is able to make his demands on life and from people.

It was these realisations that made me change my initial reaction to Keshi’s decision to resign even if my reaction does not in any way affect the Big Boss.

You are not a Prisoner of Your Past

The ability to recall facts, events and names of people is a trait that is admired by many. I believe this is also a trait that is needed for one to succeed in academics and other areas of life. People are usually pleased when people remember their names and they tend to think such persons regard them as special. So the ability to remember things is one that everybody should possess (and I think everybody possesses this ability to a degree).

Everyone of us also possesses the ability to forget things. It is just natural with us to forget things because of the enormous amount of information that we take in all the time.  My inspirational teacher explained human beings’ ability to forget things in a write-up he titled How Old is Your Knowledge? He explains that human knowledge can easily become stale or obsolete if not used all the time. He explained this with a graphic analogy: Knowledge is like documents that come into a pigeon-hole. The first document to come in soon takes the back seat as more documents are placed in the pigeon-hole. This means, he said, that the knowledge acquired today soon becomes obsolete or forgotten when not applied. So it is just natural that for us to forget things.

But there is another aspect to forgetting that I want to discuss in this piece. That is the ability to consciously forget things. The ability to consciously forget has to be learned; it doesn’t come naturally. This is because the things we have to consciously forget are things that are really hard to forget. In fact, some of them are things we don’t want to forget either because we want to use them as excuses for our state or because of complacency. It can be due any reason under the sun. One major reason you have to learn how to consciously forget things is because though you are a product of your past, you are not a prisoner of your past. And your past will have as much influence on your life as you will allow it. So what are those things we should learn to consciously forget?

Your failures. Yes, your failures. Some people allow their failures to hold them down. Free yourself from the clutch of failure. Take the sting out of failure by refusing to allow the hurt you experienced when you failed to affect you any longer. Don’t allow the memory of failure to prevent you from attempting new things. Don’t allow the embarrassment of failing stop you from becoming what you are capable of becoming. Use failure as a springboard only. Thomas Edison has helped us see failure in a new light by regarding it as a lesson on how not to do a particular thing. Do you still allow the memory of past failures to haunt you and pull you down? Make the decision today to erase such memory. Learning to forget your past failure means not allowing the negative emotions you experienced when you failed

Your successes. Everyone wants to succeed in life. We all want to flaunt our achievements. We all want people to remember us as successful people. We all want to feel good about our achievements. And if it is possible, we never want to forget about our successes. But the truth is that we must learn to forget our successes. My reasons? If you fail to forget about your successes, complacency may set in and you may not ultimately fulfill your potential. Here are some quotes I came across which I believe convey my thoughts on forgetting your successes: "Good is the Enemy of Great." “Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.” “The good is the enemy of the best.” “Good is often the enemy of best. Too often in life we miss the best by settling for the good.” Do I need to add anything? If you continue to bask in the euphoria of one success, you may find yourself settling for less in life. I believe success in an endeavour should give you the confidence to attempt greater things. It should boost your belief that you are packaged for greatness; that you are capable of great things.

I end this piece by asking you this question: What is it that you need to forget so that you can realise your potential?

Two Things You Should Do This Year: Make Your Demand; Build Your Network

Last week, I took my wife to the hospital for treatment of cough and catarrh. It was our first time of visiting that hospital to see a doctor so we had to obtain a new patient’s card. We paid for the card without stress but it was not the same with obtaining the card. Since my wife was not feeling too well, I had to help her obtain the card while she sat down. The queue that confronted me where I was to obtain the card was scary but I did not have any option but to fall in line if I wanted to get the card. There were about five disorderly lines (the disorderlines actually accounts for why I cannot be exact about the number of lines) being attended to by two persons – the number later increased to three.

While waiting to be attended to, I observed something: some people who just joined the queue were attended to before those they met on the line. A man who was behind me found his way to the front and he was attended to before me. My first reaction to the man’s attitude was to wonder at his impatience and disregard for order. But it didn’t take me long to come to terms with what I concluded was the reality of life. I thought to myself that there was no need to blame him because his action only exemplified that life will hand you what you demand of it and not necessarily what you deserve. In life, some people wait for a good fortune to drop on their laps like ripe mangoes while others go about life with such a determination to make life give them what they want. This does not mean I support disorderliness. In fact, I am a firm believer in the first come, first served principle.

Another observation I made while waiting to get the card was that patients who knew hospital officials enlisted the support of such officials to help them get whatever they wanted quickly. This also did not anger me because I have come to realise that relationships can help you get ahead in life or take you where your knowledge or status may not take you. These patients who knew hospital officials were only enjoying the benefits of the relationships they had developed. And I am not one to blame the hospital officials for calling in favours in ther workplace. Where else would they call in such favours if not in their workplace?

I eventually obtained the card ahead of some people I met on the queue but my wife and I had to leave because the hospital was apparently short-staffed and the crowd was too much for the doctors on duty – I think there were just two doctors on duty. We went to another place (we didn’t go there at first because my wife could not locate her card). On getting to the other place, my wife saw a number of people she knew and she was quickly attended to. She saw the doctor who prescribed drugs for her. We got the drugs and left.

I learned two lessons that day.  Number one: make your demand on life. Demand from life what you want. Stretch forth your hand and grab or seize from life what you want. Don’t just sit down waiting on life to give you your desires because most times life will not give you what you want or even deserve but whatever it feels like giving you and that is why some say life is not fair. I am sure the prosperous -those who have learned how to make their demand on life- will not tell you that life is not fair. The second lesson I learned was the need to build relationships with people. We have to make relationship building a top priority. We need to be aggressive in forging relationships with people because we do not know when such relationships would yield great rewards for us. My inspirational teacher would always say that your networth is determined by your network. The network you build will ultimately determine where you get to in life. Your relationships determine how strong you are. Your network is an indication of how influential you are.

If you want to make your life count this year, then do these two things: make your demand and build your network.

HAVE YOU WRITTEN YOUR OBITUARY?

Recently, I wrote my obituary. Yes, my own obituary! I am sure that may not make sense to you. But that is what I did. Why? You may want to ask. Why not? If I may ask. Before I tell you why, let me tell you what I wrote about in the obituary. I wrote about my service to God, my family life, my purpose and achievements. Yes, those were the things I wrote about in the obituary. Let me also state from the outset that the aim of this post is to encourage you to write your obituary TODAY.

During my final days as an undergraduate, I was opportune to listen to a motivational speaker who came to speak to us. This man asked us all to write our obituaries and you can guess what the reaction of the audience was. But after listening to him I realised that writing your obituary is one of the best decisions you can take in life. I left the venue of the programme with the resolution to write my obituary immediately. I can’t remember if I eventually wrote it or not but recently I remembered about it and decided to write my obituary.

Your obituary is what is written about you when you die. So writing your obituary when you are alive gives you the chance to influence - I think dictate is a better word - what will be written about you when you die. This does not mean you should go about showing your obituary to everybody (that is why I didn’t publish mine). Your self-written obituary is for you eyes only and anybody you want to show it to.

Writing your obituary is a way of giving direction to your life. Since your obituary is a summary of how you lived your life, writing it ahead will guide your decisions and actions. How? Since an obituary contains the activities and achievements of an individual during his lifetime, the obituary you write should contain those things you hope to achieve in life. Write it in a way that presupposes you have achieved these things. This will give direction to your life, since you already know the goal you are working towards. Writing your obituary is a way of writing down your dream in life.

Writing your obituary well ahead will give you clarity and focus. Clarity of purpose and focus to follow through with it without distractions. So, write your obituary and place it where you can see it constantly. This will help remind you about your dream(s) and give you the spur you need to achieve your purpose.

SO ARE YOU READY TO WRITE YOUR OBITUARY NOW?

A Big Fish in a Big Pond: The Messi/ Ronaldo Rivalry

A Big Fish in a Big Pond: The Messi/ Ronaldo Rivalry

I love Lionel Messi. I admire him. He is the best footballer I have ever seen. Messi is not just a footballer, he is a phenomenon. He is from another planet. He is just too good. He is the greatest.

There have been comparisons between Messi and Christiano Ronaldo. Some claim Ronaldo is a better player than Messi. I beg to disagree. I admit that Ronaldo is an amazing footballer. It is only an amazing player who can score 150 goals in 149 matches. That’s a remarkable feat. Ronaldo is extremely gifted. He is one of the best footballers around but there is one who is better than him: Lionel Messi. Messi is miles ahead of Ronaldo. You can call that a subjective assessment and I will not disagree with you.

I believe the debate on who is better between Ronaldo and Messi would not have arisen if he had not moved from the English premiership to the Spanish la liga. It is usually said in my workplace that it is better to be a big fish in a small pond than to be a big fish in a big pond. This is because in a big pond, there will be many big fishes while you will have very few big fishes in a small pond. I strongly believe this applies to the Ronaldo/Messi rivalry. While I do not mean that the Spanish la liga is bigger than the English premiership, what I want to bring out is the fact that Ronaldo’s move to the la liga means two of football’s greatest names now play in the same league.

When Ronaldo was in Manchester United, his exploits were usually hailed and people would usually wonder how it would be like if he was playing in the same league as Messi. He was the biggest thing in English football. He should have enjoyed his dominance of English football but no, he moved over to the la liga and he has since been eclipsed by the phenomenal Messi. Frankly speaking, Ronaldo has displayed wonderful and amazing feats since coming to the la liga. But unfortunately, his performances have been overshadowed by Messi’s.

Take Messi out of the picture and what Ronaldo has achieved in the la liga would have earned him more accolades than he is receiving now because no matter how well Ronaldo has performed, Messi has performed better. Messi has succeeded in diverting most of the attention in the la liga to himself, so Ronaldo’s achievements have not received the reviews and attention they deserve.

What can we learn from the scenario depicted above? Don't go to where you will be choked. Don't shine where your brightness will not be seen.