A few years ago in one a of the first jobs I had after leaving university a colleague of mine walked in the room and told one of my other colleagues that they had made an error that morning. The response this person gave shocked me a little bit, they were so angry that this person would dare to suggest that they had made an error. What was even more incredible was that this person refused to go back and correct their error because they were so instant that they had not made an error. I was so surprised by this reaction because the error was so small and it could have only taken a few minutes to sort it out. I met this lady a few weeks ago and she told me she was on her 7th job since I last worked with her and she was telling me…read more >

A few years ago I was working with a very difficult person, I would get home everyday and I would be so angry about what happened in the day. The weeks that followed were the worst weeks of my short working life, I dreaded going into work, I would stay up all night worrying about what the next day was going to bring. The next day I would try my utmost best to be friendly to this person but nothing seemed to work. I had been looking forward to do this job but now that it was here I found myself living in a nightmare. I was completely stressed-out; I was not eating or sleeping well. I did not feel like I had a lot of control in my life, I did not feel like I could control any part of this situation. Before this experience I would say thing…read more >

In August 2015 I joined Gloucester Speaker’s club with a dream of following a speaking career but very soon I realised I was not as good as thought I was. I had enthusiasm, ambition and determination but I was not a great speaker by any stretch of imagination. I did my ice breaker ( the first speech in Toastmasters) a few weeks after I joined and I quickly followed it up with another speech and another. However I was not very happy with my progress. Very soon I started to wonder if following my dreams of becoming a motivational speaker was a good idea. By the time I got to my fourth my confidence had not grown, in fact I was less confident in my speaking ability however I realised that if I did not speak I would lose all confidence so carried on signing up for more speeches, I…read more >

In 2015 my wife Suzie and I bought the house we live in at the moment and I remember how exciting it was to get our first house which we were going to call home. We looked at all the rooms in the house with so much excitement, every room looked clean and you could tell that the person who lived in the house really cared about the house. We then went to see the garden; the garden was big with so much space but something caught my attention, the rose flowers in the garden had dried out but the weeds were growing like no man’s business. You see the roses needed looking after and the weeds did not need any care at all and if I wanted a lovely garden I had to ensure that the roses are looked after and the weeds are taken out. As I was…read more >

Last Saturday my wife was busy in the kitchen preparing our evening meal when she realised that we did not have some of the ingredients we needed so I put some trainers and ran to the shop so that i can come back to the football match I was watching. I got the things we needed and I went to check out. As I went to the check out looking for quick getaway I realised that that was not going to happen because I had ten people in front of me. I did what I do every time I find myself surrounded by a lot of people, I just started watching everyone and very quickly I realised that every person who went to the checkout was buying lottery ticket, by the time I got to the check out, every single person in front of me had bought a ticket. When…read more >

It was cold Monday morning, and my friend James was anxious as he was every time he went to work. He turned his computer on, went to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee as he did everyday. Work had become predictable the sparkle that once existed in his life was long gone. He walked back to his desk and some people were complementing him on how smart he was and others were laughing at him. He saw one of his managers he admired a lot and he went to talk to her but she did not want to talk to him, she went to talk to a different person about sports. Suddenly, he remembered he had dream but the fear of failing was holding him back. He had thought of working on his dream but all the time he thinks about failing he settles for his day job.…read more >

Dear Frank, I am writing to you today to tell you that it time you let go of the pain you have having being going through. I know you did not have a lot of peace in your life, every day was a full of uncertainty, you were told by so many people that you can do great things in your life. Remember the year one teacher who called you a fool and Mr Bean? Of course you do, you carried those feelings in your heart for so many years and sometimes I feel them even today. It was tough been labelled a waste of space at a very young age, it was tough not having proper friends in your life, remember how you had to steal money from your mum’s pace so that you can buy things for other people so that they like you, you would get in…read more >

He looked at me and said “sorry Mr. Saliki but you can’t drive”. This was a day that I found out that I will never get to drive a car for the rest of my life. Time stood still for a few minutes as my consultant handed me a piece of paper discharging me from his care. I had gone to see him hoping that he was going to help me, hoping that he was going to find what the problem was and he was going to sort me out. I left the hospital with the diagnosis and also with the knowledge that my eyes will never get better. This got me thinking about a lot of things that I could not do because of my eye condition, I needed to get a job in a place that was in the centre or a place with public transport. For a…read more >

Do you remember your first day of school ? How were you feeling? I remember mine, I was so nervous and this was even made worse when I was bullied on my first day of school. The next day my year one teacher encouraged all my class mates to sing a song with a following word “ Saliki Chama is a fool, Saliki Chama is Mr Bean” with those words going around school no one was ever going to be my friend. I was laughed at wherever I went around the school. I am sure you all had that kid in your school who was always on his own, I was that kid, segregated from his peers by a teacher who was supposed to help him on his journey. It took me a long time for to start making friends, for me to discover who I was and to be…read more >

When you hear the title of the book you think Dale Carnegie is trying to teach you how to control other people but from the first page you realise that this book does the opposite, it teaches you how to ensure that people feel they are in control. The first thing that Dale brings to the reader’s attention is the fact that we all feel like we are right and justified in doing whatever we are doing. I Think he was trying to tells us that we all have reasons why we think what we think and do what we do. The first point that came to me was that if we feel like our beliefs are being challenged we are going to fight tooth and nail to defend them, however if the person we are talking to acknowledges that there is sense in what we talking about and Marely…read more >