I like soup. But that’s not what this piece is about. I used to be a terrible cook. My husband will never admit it but he knows it’s true. I used to be very easily distracted, so I’d be writing an article in my head while cooking Oha soup and more times than I can count, there would be so much Achi in the soup that I’d have to pour a bucket of water in it to make it lighter, which often resulted in the soup becoming like rivers of living waters . Why am I talking about soup? Because just as it’s possible to be bad at cooking, it’s very possible to be bad at personal development. So the problem sometimes is not that you’re not engaging in personal development, but that you’re just bad at it. Is being bad at something a reason to stop doing it? Of course not! It’s a prompt to learn how to do it better, and that’s what I want to teach you in this article. Here are some mistakes you might be making: What’s the first thing you do when you decide to make a pot of soup? I used to just...

Let me tell you about my wedding; well, the activities prior to my wedding. I had just launched a new business, my content development agency - Words on Us, and I was very very busy. The only friend I had in the region I was living in then, which was also the location for the wedding, was also very very busy with work. I didn’t know a lot about wedding planning because I'd never really been interested. My mom was also very busy with work and my sister was living far away. Considering all these things, my husband and I agreed to hire an event management agency. Now, this agency was great; they had these lovely videos of their work all over social media and they did have a lot of good ideas. However, they made a huge mistake that so many service providers make without even knowing.  The event management agency forgot about the client and focused on all the wrong things e.g. what is cool, what is trending, what others are doing, what most people like, what they’d been doing, etc. Thes...

A Guide to Positioning Yourself for a Career in Today's Market One of the biggest errors of the education system is not teaching us how to get a job. These days, there are career fairs and career days at secondary schools, though in my day there weren’t, and these events help students understand what careers are out there. It helps them align their interests with actual existing jobs, but that is all students get at school, what jobs are there, not how to get jobs. So, people go from secondary school to university and spend years learning how to do jobs , but again, not how to get them . Getting jobs in this day and age is very different than it was a decade ago, and so it’s a lot harder to go right from university to a job today. The internet has redefined the way everything works including job search, recruiting and positioning yourself for a job. Knocking on doors and passing around printed CVs does not cut it anymore, and neither does knowing CEOs. Here is a checklist I ...

Every day that I’m alive, there are so many reasons why I shouldn’t go after my dreams. So many. I’m sure it’s the same for you. There’s always something, but those things sometimes are just things. Sometimes, you are the problem. You are the reason you’re not doing so great, you are your nemesis, your villain, your ruination, your village people. A lot of times, what you need to do to change your life is sit down for a minute and think, “is it at all possible that I am the problem?” think about it for real, make a list of your problems, and you may be surprised at what you find. This activity could be the difference between mediocrity and success for someone. Now, I’m pretty sure that you’ve been thinking while reading this, “of course I’m not the problem, there are a lot of issues!” Right. Issues. We’ll talk about issues. Here are some things you can do to avoid being your own problem. Even if you don’t believe me, read it and see for yourself. Stop focusing on the “issues” O...

When you think of motherhood, what is the picture that comes to your head? For me, it’s not the image of me smiling, holding my baby in my lap and playing peekaboo or something. The picture that rushes to my head is that one time when I was sitting in my workstation at home, rocking my baby’s rocker with one foot, and guiding my team through a project via a call, with breast pumps attached to me going bzzz bzzz. On that day, it occurred to me that this is what motherhood is. For you, it may be vacuuming and prepping dinner with an infant strapped to your chest African mother style, singing a lullaby while you pack customers’ orders, or answering your kid’s questions about homework while writing code. Motherhood is not childbirth, it’s not breastfeeding, and it’s not changing diapers. It is a lifestyle. It’s who you become when one of these small humans comes into your life. It is hard, it is joyful, it is chaos and it is contentment; all at once. Unfortunately, being a mother comes...

Mothers Day is a day to celebrate the woman's role as a mother. As much as mothers love their kids, motherhood is work. It'll be really bad if you, my good men, were to mess up mother's day. This is not to say that men are clueless about what to get women on mothers Day. But I just saw a gifting agency's mothers Day packages and my chest is paining me (I know I know). If they're confident selling those things, there's a reason and the reason is that some men think it's good. Women like nice things just like you do. Nice things include wigs, jewelry, bags, things that make us feel pretty, things that make us feel seen and appreciated, things that we can look at years later and smile. Nice things DO NOT include any of the things on this list. Utensils - I saw this in a gifting agency's mother's day box and what came to my mind right away was, as what? Am I a joke to you? Do y'all really think that women have nothing else in their lives aside fr...

Self-Love and All That Good Stuff Also, Self-Love for The Average Nigerian Because I Couldn’t Decide On a Title Uncharacteristically, this is going to be a really short article, because, well, because I’m tired. Also because my head is full of tasks that piled up over the week, but mostly because I’m tired. This year, I’ve been thinking a lot about showing myself some love for real. I’m always writing content for clients on self-love; articles, social media content and even books. It’s gotten to the point where it feels like the words I write are mocking me. Self-love is really just showing yourself love, there’s no deep definition for it. You know how you treat people you love? Practising self-love is doing the same for yourself. No, it’s not a spa day, yoga or your skincare routine; all good things, but not self-love. You see, self-love is not a thing you do, it’s how you treat yourself, at all times. Now, this next paragraph cannot be understood by single people, so maybe go a...

One of my favorite Beatles songs is With a Little Help from my Friends , and one of the most prominent lines is “I get by with a little help from my friends.” It didn’t occur to me how clever that line is until I started writing this article. You see, when you find an article or a book on self-motivation, you’re not expecting to read about help from anywhere, friends or not. You expect, like anyone would, that an article on self-motivation would talk about doing it all by yourself. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but you’re going to be glad you read this. The truth is that every human, adult or not, needs to learn to motivate themselves because life demands it. There won’t always be someone to tell you that you can do it or to push you to try regardless. You won’t always have your mom, or your dad, or your sister, or your best friend around to talk you into taking action that you are afraid of. There are days that just plain suck, right? I mean everything is good, we’re all happy ...

I’ve been writing this piece in my head for a very, very long time and finally, here it is, a jumble of thoughts for your reading pleasure. You may be wondering why I’m publishing an article about motherhood on my blog after writing so much on content development, copywriting and the other Cs. Is this about to become a parenting blog? I certainly hope not! But I’ve been away for so long the last time I published an article was January, and so I think some catching up is in order. I started this blog because I needed a place to express myself. Like every writer, my head can become so clogged with thoughts and memories that I can’t do anything worthwhile until I’ve written them out. This is one of those times. I’ve had the most alien experiences of my life in this year, not bad experiences, just alien, strange, different from what I know. If you have been following this blog, you know the theme is “Whatever’s going on in Anita’s head” and in the past, that has ranged from literatur...