Midnight motivation and musings

Midnight Motivations and Musings 109…

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The niggling doubts that hound our efforts are the enemy of our progress and once undue attention is paid to such doubts, fear sets in.

It’s natural to question and think through a project that you want to embark on, but our reasoning and decisions have to be taken from a logical standpoint.

Like my people would say ‘not everything that crawls on its belly is a snake,’ in other words, not every doubt that comes up is worth the time of the day. Keeping focused may be difficult but it’s worth the while to keep one’s eyes on the objectives.

Over the past few months, I’ve had struggles, but I’ve refused to let these struggles define nor stop me and each day, the burden of doubt reduces.

Jacqueline


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Everyday People

Excellence! I am proud – Everyday People 94

“Excellence is not a skill. It’s an attitude.” Ralph Marston

“Excellence is not being the best, it’s doing your best.” Anon

“Every job that you do is a reflection of you, therefore, you need to make your job a self-portrait of who you are and affix your autograph of excellence, which can only be achieved by doing your best.” Jacqueline

Awards[1]
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When your Main Bloke, Sweetheart, Heart-throb, Darling, Better-Half, Best-Friend, Husband and Life Partner wins an Award for Excellence, you can’t help but feel proud of his achievements.

So allow me to preen a little bit. After all, there’s a saying that states that “behind a great man stands a great woman.”

Congratulations my dearest. I celebrate you. Many more deserving awards will come your way. Unfortunately, I can’t be there physically (someone has to look out for the children), but I am fully there in spirit 🙂

© Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha


Below is my first just published Poetry Book “Out of the silent breath” which is available on Amazon and Smashwords.

When you buy my book, you support me in an invaluable manner.

Jacqueline writes from her heart on passion, pain, suffering, loss and LIFE. I have been incredibly moved by her poetry and I know I will return to “Out of the Silent Breath” again and again.

Out of the silent breath

If you enjoy my works and would like to do so, you can fuel my creativity with a slice of cake or coffee😉

Life · Three quote challenge

My recent thoughts…

Cybernetic blonde invited me for the quote challenge and my mind drifted to African proverbs.  Thank you, Brenda 🙂1465108007692[1]

From time immemorial, proverbs have been used by elders in my place to punctuate and convey important messages during a conversation.

When I was younger and my parents or grandparents spoke in proverbs, idioms, and all the wise words, I barely understood, but as I age, I find them worth ruminating over especially when I find myself in a quandary of thoughts.

“Even the best cooking pot will not produce food when no fire is lit underneath.”

“When building a house and the nail breaks, do you stop building or do you change the nail?”

“If you run after two Hares, you will catch neither.”

These three proverbs above reflect the thoughts that have been going through my mind of late. So let me briefly explain them.

The first is an advice to myself that even though I have all the storyline of my second book known to me until I sit down and flesh it out as I should, those ideas won’t miraculously turn into a book.

The second one has to do with some mind distractions that I’ve been having of late. So many loose ends of things to tie up and I’m using them as an excuse to digress from doing what needs to be done. It’s time to drop that tack and get serious.

Lastly, I remind myself to taper off unnecessary things and concentrate. Running after too many things at once will all make me harried and at the end of the day, nothing would have been achieved.

So, back to tapering off, tacking with the right nails and cooking up those stories.

Do you fancy a whirl at quotes? Indulge 🙂

Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha


Below is my first just published Poetry Book “Out of the silent breath” which is available on Amazon and Smashwords.

When you buy my book, you support me in an invaluable manner.

Out of the silent breath

 

Midnight motivation and musings

Midnight Musings and Motivations # 45…

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A lot of times, we have challenges that we face but lack the zeal to take them on.

Once our spirit to take them on is down, we find that the voice of pessimism and all the possible excuses will offer themselves on shiny platters for us to choose from.

However, the downturn to helping ourselves to the platter of excuses is that it’s often accompanied by a cane for self-flagellation and guilt, which will eventually show itself when the consequences of our actions or inactions dawn on us.

Sometimes, we need not have huge amounts of faith or courage.

Indeed,  a peanut-sized one will suffice, but if we can dig in our heels and get started with it, you find that the zeal and courage required to continue surfaces.

© Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha

Midnight motivation and musings · Self Help

Midnight Motivations and Musings # 42…

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It should go without saying that the voice of the giant in us should be the one that makes the most noise.

Alas, it’s hardly ever so. For the fact that the voice is not often heeded to, it lies dormant in us, while the screeching empty voice of the coward that knows all the negative, pessimistic words takes pride of place.

It does take a whole lot of paradigm shift and practice to drown the voice of ‘I can’t’ and ‘impossible’ to ‘I will and I’m possible.’

It’s equally a very liberating experience when we let go of some of our unfounded inhibitions and just spread our wings.

Even if we do take a splat in the attempt, chances are we must have gained some worthwhile experience.

When we don’t seek or venture, we shall neither find nor gain.

© Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha

Lifestyle · Writing

Keeping It REAL…Streams of consciousness Saturday.

It’s been a real struggle trying to resist joining a whole lot of challenges that I see flying around the blogosphere.

They always sound absolutely interesting that a tiny voice in me keeps nudging me to do more. My reluctance stems from the real knowledge and fair idea what getting involved would mean in real-time for me. MORE OF MY TIME.SoCS badge 2015

I honestly don’t know how not to give a 100% and over when I am doing something.

I like to be that dependable. When I do less, I gain no real satisfaction and feel as if I am slacking off and letting something down.

I know these are good ways of connecting with others as well as practicing new techniques especially since I advise people to push the boundaries of their comfort.

Ruminating over it, I said to myself, Jacqueline my dear girl, you can’t seem to resist the bait of A-Z and more. Maybe, you should just take a little nibble and shelve something else. Hmm! REAL tussle in the mind. So what do you think?

Now, to get to some real talk on this post of mine.

It’s really been occupying space in my mind of late and each day the question grows.

We writers write for refined, elevated and so many other reasons. A writer will primarily tell you that they write for the love of it and not for the money. Sometimes, it does seem to me that we fail to calculate the real worth of our writing simply because the words flow easily from our minds to the tips of our pens and my wondering is that there might be need for a paradigm shift in this sort of thinking.

When you think about it, that passion for writing that we have, is been paid for with our time and other odd jobs. Won’t it be lovely if we shed other odd jobs and earned decent Ka-ching from our blogging, writing efforts?

I love writing. I love arty things. It’s beyond a passion for me and it’s not an alternative. It’s a compulsory pull.

I am trying to make conscientious effort to explore honest means of earning real cash from my endeavours. That’s the bottom line and it doesn’t make me less a writer to want to earn from the sweat of my fingers.

To live the lifestyle that I want without being enslaved to anybody, it has to work.

My conscientious effort requires reading more, researching more, learning more, having the courage to jump out of the window and all that. All these things will take some real good chunk of my time. There are no hard and fast rules to them.

I am however convinced that with dogged determination, hitting some pay; I am not sure about the dirt part, will really sweeten the pot.

Well there it is. Thank you Linda for today’s prompt word ‘real.’ It’s made me to dwell a little bit more on an issue that’s been running around in my head.

©  Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha

Hope · Memes · Midnight motivation and musings

Midnight Motivations and Musings # 40

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The above quote can be likened to an ailing patient who buys all the drugs and keeps them locked in a cupboard for safe-keeping :/

Of course, the patient will remain sick.

Change can only come about when it’s applied and not from wishful thinking.

Change is a deliberate decision, backed up with actions that over time and practice becomes a character trait.

Some are afraid of trying for change because of the fear of failure, which is a worse scenario.

It’s better to try and repeat over and over, than to sit in the same situation through a lifetime. What a waste that would be!

© Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha

 

Memes · Midnight motivation and musings · Self Help

Midnight Motivations and Musings 39…

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It’s definitely important to review our steps from time to time, to see where we are and where we are coming from.

However, you shouldn’t feel dissuaded if you do a review and find that things are dragging a bit and not working out as fast as you would want, especially if you look and perceive that others might be running faster.

These days, life is on the micro-wave lane and we almost expect everything around us to fall into such category, but there are things that we cannot necessarily change as fast as we wish.

What we have to do, is to establish a rhythm that we can sustain.

Success is built over time, with patience and diligence. It’s not a sprint, but a long-drawn marathon, filled with hills, valleys, cobblestones to trip you up and sometimes muddy swampy pathways with noisome mosquitoes along the track 🙂

Just keep going. Each day, add another jigsaw to the puzzle.

© Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha

Life · Midnight motivation and musings

Midnight Motivations and Musings 38…

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It’s sad and amusing at the same time when people come across with the perception that good fortune comes from luck.

That is absolutely balderdash and misleading. Good fortune has to find you working on it.

Yes, indeed there are those who have been beneficiary’s of fortune that they’ve not necessarily worked for, by virtue of birth or winning a lottery, but the ratio is so insignificant for anyone to fold their hands and expect lady luck to come smiling with shiny teeth.

Remember the saying that ‘HEAVEN helps those who help themselves.

When you take those necessary steps each day, things align and the windows of possibilities keeps opening up.

© Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha