Over the last month, several events have conspired together to leave me feeling helpless and lacking control. These included a mini cash flow crisis at my company and being disappointed by a friend. At first, I was left dejected and reacted badly in both instances.

We have two separate minds — The conscious and the unconscious minds. The conscious mind, which represents only 5% of our mind, is the thinking mind, where we think freely and accept or reject any idea. It gets information from our five senses and is rooted in the present, e.g., when we hear a car approaching as we cross the road, we immediately stop.

Jonathan David Haidt is a world-renowned social psychologist. He found that gut feelings(like disgust in his experiment) influence our reason much more than the other way around for his dissertation. He would later come up with the now-famous analogy of the Elephant and the Rider.

I start up my computer to write, but I can’t seem to focus. My mind is all over the place. So I look for the slightest distraction. I see a fly in the room. Yes, a fly and I stop what I’m doing and start chasing it. But, of course, it flies off, leaving me frustrated.

Mother Teresa is well-known as the Catholic nun who devoted her life to caring for the destitute and dying in the slums of Calcutta, India. However, she didn’t speak in front of thousands or write a book about how important it was to help the poor. Instead, she went about doing her humanitarian work in a quiet and unassuming manner, dedicating every minute of her life to that cause, winning a Nobel peace prize in 1979 for her efforts.

All these questions quickly bring on a sense of overwhelm, and anxiety starts to creep up my body, finally resting on my throat, where I can’t speak, write or think about it anymore. So I quickly abandoned my thoughts and let my dream sleep in a far-away place.

My main goal with my blog is to find new ways to increase the number of people who read and engage with me. Again, this would involve a host of things to be done. They include starting a podcast, finishing and publishing my memoir, hiring a new social media company to help me strategically, doing more speaking events and many other blog related activities.

The main problem with hope is that it is based on the fact that it exists in the future and thus is out of reach in the present. When we hope for anything, we generate anticipation and have our eyes focused on the future, expecting something to come that will make us happy. As a result, we miss out on opportunities that make us enjoy the present.

As Blaise Pascal said so many years ago, “I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber”. We do not appear to be able to sit and do nothing in our modern accomplishment-oriented worldview.

Paradoxically, I still find myself trapped in it a lot of the time. I’m conflicted because building a successful company has afforded me both a lavish lifestyle and a meaningful journey that has helped me become a better version of myself.

I’ve written two books already, yet I’m as nervous, confused, and afraid as any of them. Self-doubts and what-ifs dominate my thoughts. The question that is boring into my head is, “Am I good enough?

I’ve been working towards the goals I set at the start of the year. I’ve reviewed my progress with only two months left to end the year and it’s impressive. I’m well on the way to accomplishing everything I’d set my mind on.

To say the conversation went badly is an understatement. He quickly got defensive, aggressive and started to scream at me. I reacted badly to his attitude. I told him point-blank that he was worthless and that I should have gotten rid of him earlier. Finally, he slammed the door of my office. We’ve not spoken since.

In our modern technology age, we are always looking for ways to engage the mind. We think that we can actually save the world. It’s like we’re under the impression that we’ve been given a mandate by God to save our Universe. (The stark truth is that we are destroying it.)

If we accept that change is constant, we need to be more intentional, patient and diligent in crafting the new self we must be. We can’t continue to succumb to external influences like society, family, friends, and our personal history.

There is not enough of it in the developing worlds like Africa and the Middle East. Many in this region (where I’m from) still dismiss all personal growth as privileged and unnecessary information. Here, Personal Growth is seen as a luxury, and the only thing that truly matters is making money and putting food on the table. That can’t be further from the truth.

I also see this thinking with our kids. Whether they are millennials or Gen Z, they unconsciously seem to veer towards this risk-averse concept. Today, most teens are not in a relationship; instead, they’d rather have a ‘thing’ and don’t want to be labelled as anyone’s boyfriend or girlfriend. They don’t commit to any field or subject; instead, they leave doors open to many possibilities.

Stephen Covey’s famous large glass jar metaphor comes to mind. When filling the jar, always start with the big rocks, then add the smaller pebbles, grains, sand and finally water, in that order. Do it in a different sequence, and the jar will be half-empty.

I’d forgotten what Dani Shapiro had enshrined in my heart in Still Writing: “The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks. To be willing to fail—not just once, but again and again.”

James Clear in his article How Willpower Works cites a research study published by the National Academy of Sciences, where psychologists examined the factors that impacted the reasoning behind judges approving parole to criminals.They found in over 1000 cases that judges made decisions not by factors such as the extremity of crimes committed or the behaviour of the criminals in prison, but rather on their own state of mind— whether they were tired or refreshed and most notably the time of the day the hearing was held.