It was towards the end of May 2011 and Manchester United, my beloved football team, was going to face Barcelona (with Lionel Messi) in the Champions League final at Wembley in England—a stadium that I knew well.

We are just like the many different trees standing in a forest. No two are alike. Perhaps one is more beautiful to look at, another can bear more fruit, and another has the strength to sustain a large area of earth through its extensive roots. However, they are not ashamed of their inadequacies, but rather stand tall in their true, special nature.

The price of entrepreneurship is uncertainty, and the prize is a vision fulfilled, success even in the midst of uncertainty. Much of the process of entrepreneurship involves tremendous risk taking. Risk that is buoyed with competency, skills, ability, networking, service excellence and good fortune. It is often the uncertainty in those moments that fuel your drive to success – and I think that is what Anita Roddick meant when she said that the survival nature of entrepreneurship fuels creativity

I write because I’m not blessed by any other means to access my mind. I write to make sense of myself—how I feel, what I want, and what I fear. I write to make sense of the world around me and to notice things more carefully. I write to understand what exactly I am meant to be doing in my life.

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realise that it had passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life, but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”

“Whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect— between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.

One trait that I constantly see in many of the terrific business leaders that I come into contact with day in and day out is courage. Courage can be defined as many things. Indeed it is defined as many things, but I guess one definition that really resonates with me is the definition of courage as the willingness to be afraid and to act anyway.

One morning, while taking a walk along the corniche, I saw a tattoo shop and went in out of curiosity. A short, boyish man with tattoo-covered arms looked up at me. “What do you want to do? I’m free for the next hour, and then it’s booked till next week Thursday,” he said.

The Gifts of Adversity are those things that seem like detours, but which turn out to be tiny re-adjustments that help guide us to our destination.

The feelings that arose from “that hug” with my son contained both love and fear, and the mix was so compelling that I only remember how I felt whenever the image of that moment comes to mind. Not what anyone wore, not the speeches, or any of the details we had obsessed about preparing the reception for months in advance.

It means that life is more than mere chance and coincidences. Everyone and everything is connected in this universe like the cells in our body. It means that we believe in living and, more importantly, that there is a meaning to life and that our life matters in the grand scheme of things.

Rumi’s words came at a time when I was no longer enjoying my writing about self-help and spirituality. I felt that the oversaturation of blogs, books and podcasts in that genre was beginning to have the opposite effect on many readers (like me) who felt fed up with the repetition of specific messages in the form of “do this” and “do that.”

The Four Steps of Living a Joyful Life

For the past seven years, I’ve journalled at 6 a.m. for 30 minutes in a black Moleskine soft-cover notebook. Sometimes I write five pages, and others (especially when travelling) I miss a day or two. But I can’t recall a month that has passed that I haven’t completed 90% of my journaling days.

In this state of being, we see ourselves as we are within. We don’t base our self-worth on exterior values. And as we deepen this love for ourselves, we begin to look at others more compassionately. We accept ourselves—and those around us. We come to understand that they, too, have weaknesses. Thus we learn to set the right boundaries in alignment with our core values; we know when to say ‘yes’ and when to say ‘no’ based on our internal needs.

However, this all changes when the information we take in becomes charged with emotions; our odds of getting into action rise dramatically. When we—as bloggers, writers, or even motivational speakers—share our personal experiences, we help others to viscerally relate to our material. In effect, we become memoirists: “I’m telling you what I did. See if it helps or works for you.”

While Margaret Thatcher was fighting all kinds of men and unions, I was busy becoming English. I read my newspapers without looking up, ate fish and chips, and frequently ordered Indian takeaway. During my teens, football became my religion; I played, watched and fought over it. I played snooker in the evenings and watched the BBC and ITV. Terry Wogan, Michael Parkinson and Cilla Black became household names.

Mo Issa on The Shift

Elizabeth-Irene Baitie, Nana Awere Damoah, Nesta Jojoe Erskine and Senam Fiagbenya came together to review Mo Issa’s The Shift. The Shift is available at EPP Bookstore, Accra, Vidya Bookstore, BookNook Online Store and Writers’ Project Office.

Since then I’ve become a true fan of TED talks and I try to watch at least one talk a week. These talks are not only inspiring but also informative and entertaining. Learning is addictive and so it’s no surprise to see how the popularity of TED has soared. There are over one billion views of various presentations on their website and two million people watch different videos on TED every day.