What a wrong detour could cost

If the wrong idea takes root in your thinking it could take you off course.

For some it could be twenty years before they come back to their senses and by the time they do, they could have lost so much time and so many lifecycle-dependent opportunities could have been lost forever. No one is going to give you an entry level job at 45, you are supposed to have placed yourself at middle management in the career path of your choice by then, that's why career changes can be very difficult at certain ages except of course you bring transferable skills with you.

The wise king Solomon said 'there is time for everything'. It is important to make sure that wrong ideas, and experimental ideas that lead most but a very few to ruin don't take root in you and equally important to look around and see what others are doing and take a kind of 'bearing' check from the activities of your age cohort. Be aware of certain things you should be doing at certain times in your life even if you do decide eventually that you do not want these things. If you hope to pursue them then make sure you are attending to them when you should.

Yes it might seem boring and conventional to trace out your life path along the same lines as the rest of humanity, you may kiss your teeth at having the same mundane choices to fulfill as your mother and grandmother before, indeed there is this push in society now for people to cast off 'structure' and just float or not commit, for many though there will be lots of regrets. Often travelling in certain sections of my metropolis, I see many older gentlemen who didn't put down roots, making a nuisance of themselves accosting women, looking for the attention they should have secured earlier on in life. But many of these men felt they would be tied down or trapped to 'commit' to their girlfriends at the time. Many found it hilarious and macho to play about with their 'gals' feelings and need for commitment.  

There are too many ideas floating around in our world today that can transfix people and take them off a healthy life course. They might be in a strange place for 40 years just like the children of Israel in the wilderness, before the 'spell' is broken. You have to find a way of directing yourself aright and have some anchors to a place of sanity and commonsense, especially in this day and age where people create social theories (some just for the heck of it) and push these ideas out there for the most gullible to test it out for them.

I have argued that black women are acting at a disadvantage because there is a clear and critical component of guidance and direction that is missing for black women. Some of us are actually the first in our families to experience certain achievements or get to certain social levels therefore no one has gone before us and can show us the ropes. Parents and elders who often know less about the social terrain and how to make it work for them are in the position of guides for black women! They thus offer no insight, no principles that can form the foundation for a successful life or enable their daughters survive the hostile and predatory wider world. Often there is also the toxic dynamic where black women are structured to just be there to resource others and a specific kind of 'training' that turns black women into community mules is delivered from a young age until she becomes a person who acts against her clear interests and becomes adept at forming relationships in which she is host to parasitic others.    

Some 'pyramid selling' ideas are all around you: single parenthood, careless living and not forming attachments and commitments, putting your hope in 'big' government. These ideas will fail the bulk of those who adopt them (that's why I call them pyramid selling ideas because only a few at the peak of the pyramid who embrace these ideas will come out unscathed while most who form the base will rue the day!). 

Humanity has indeed evolved but not to the point where we can jettison tried and tested principles that have worked for past generations, no matter how far removed our lives seem . The principles of commonsense acting, thrift as a lifestyle and building healthy networks and connections will out last shiny modern day gadgetry.

Next blog post 1st Dec

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Do Black Women in Afros
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Supposing I wanted to
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She who has much, more will be given

For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. Matthew 25:29

I used to have a problem with this saying from the gospels. It seemed so cruel and so unfair to me. I used to think about all those around me who didn’t have much and how that even what they had, God would cause to be taken away. That didn’t sound like God who was supposed to be caring and loving especially of the downtrodden. In fact this particular saying comes from one of Jesus famous parables; the parable of the talents and in it God (who in the story is the talent giver) sounded positively capitalist through and through in that scripture, bang smack in the center of the 1% with all his talk of giving his money to the bankers for profit. He sure wasn’t on the side of those who wanted a redistribution of wealth!

Now for those who don’t know this parable, it's the one where a man goes on a journey but gives each of his stewards varying amounts of money to trade with while he is away. On his return, the steward with the least money has done nothing with his 'talents' and throws the money in his face. The steward, receives not just a dressing down but some humiliation and punishment (you can read the whole of Matthew 29 for the full story).

Well I have somewhat grown up since feeling upset about unfair dealings, and there are two things that I have learnt about that parable.

1. The world system works to a capitalist imperative as it has done for thousands of years whether we like this reality or not. You and I have to 'make profit', show an improvement, make returns and innovate on what we have been given or we are just a waste of space.
2. The other thing is that it is you who decides whether you have more or less (which will then be taken away)! Phew that one was a revelation to me! It blew my mind when I realized that it wasn’t God or another person that determined that the person who had 1 talent had less, it was him himself who decided he had less by his actions. By not making a profit, by not trying to do something however small and meager with the money he was given, he declared himself to 'not have'. The giver of the talent clearly rated the talent he gave him and saw him capable of making returns on it! 

Folks it's all a matter of perspective. If you feel that you have nothing then you will essentially have nothing. How many of us know people who have many blessings, blessings that the rest of us are begging to have but they don’t rate their blessings and they cant even see it! I know of two people in my circle of acquaintances and friends who always complain about their plight and yet they are surrounded by blessings and good things, the rest of us would give an arm to have.

Many of us can testify that not using our talents and gifts means ultimately loosing them whether this be a musical skill or a knowledge of a computer package. If you do something with what you have however big or small, it will yield, taking you towards abundance. Never look down on the little you have. No doubt this steward was upset at being given the smallest allocation to trade with, but he could have seen it as an opportunity to be creative and innovative or even seen it as an opportunity to do the bare minimum with the money which the master was happy to accept.

Whatever you have to work with be it big or small, it is your attitude to your resource that will determine what you make of it. You might not have loads of talents and loads of money but be assured that the race has quite often gone in the favor of David (with his meager but critical attributes), than the obvious bet Goliath!

It is important that you adopt the mindset of 'I have much', no matter that you think you have little. This is because with this attitude, you put yourself on the path to getting more rather than on the path of ultimately loosing what you have. 

Next blog post 17 Nov

E-books now available on Amazon. Please click on the corresponding links below for more info.

 

First Steps to Personal Empowerment
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Do Black Women in Afros
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Supposing I wanted to
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Your Personal Race

You are in a personal race for yourself, you cant give up. You shouldn’t give up no matter what. Maintain course in the pursuit of your best life possible. Go out with a bang if it comes to it, but never stop striving never decelerate when reaching for the dream you have for life. The fear that you have run out of time or that you were just too thick to have seized your opportunities when they presented in the past, can be crippling. Trust me I know. But if you can maintain motivation for 4 days out of 7 (even if you are depressed and demotivated for the rest), you can make great strides and reverse bad fortunes.

One of the reasons why you need to remain upbeat and optimistic is that when you are optimistic and hopeful you think very creatively and think yourself out of problems and come up with great plans and strategies and one of them will eventually lift you out of your situation.

Sometimes you have the answer there in the mid of the clutter and all you need to do is have a clear mind (often first thing in the morning) to recognize what you need to do. To buttress this point I will say that I have acquired (as most people) a fair bit of clutter over the years. I was recently wondering why I couldn’t seem to unravel a certain situation and was considering blowing some hard cash on a solution despite having bought bits and pieces to tackle the same issue over and over again over the years. After having the issue running in the back of my mind for a couple of days, in a moment of clarity one early morning I realize that I had a certain implement in my possession already that would help me do what I wanted. Clear thinking is necessary in our world of information and product overload.

Upcoming File based loosely on ...

Dido

 

When you are depressed your mind closes in on itself and doesn’t see the breaches in what seems like an unscalable wall. So keep your energies up and your motivation at least for half the days in a week!

Again you might find that sometimes you just have to keep up your motivation to do boring things over and over when you cant even see the point of it anymore. Like a person who wants to play the piano will have to learn their keys, which is so boring running those scales, but guess what, the quality of their playing will be greatly enhanced when they learn and master the notes of the 12 keys.

Money? Sometimes you don’t need that much you just need creative thinking, in fact creative thinking can indeed lead you to put your unique signature on things, on your style for instance, on your make-up on how you carry out your work. Humans are here to innovate, its what separates us from the animal kingdom. After carrying out a routine for a while, humans will discover a better or more efficient way of doing it. It's this unique way of getting results that we can trade with others for financial security. Everyone has something: a process which they have evolved from its most basic formula. Look for something in your life that you have refined and added to and think about how you could make that into a product which can get you financial returns.

It could be anything and it doesn’t have to be a google glass type thing. Maybe you know how to sew skirts and have found a unique way of measuring for a good fit (I give this example because its sheer agony for me to find skirts that fit my shape and I wish I had dressmaking skills!). Maybe you can sew a skirt in an hour and you could set up your website teaching just that: 'a skirt in an hour or less'. Maybe you have happened upon a way to fill out eyebrows more realistically than pencils and powders and you could set up your own little concern selling whatever concoction and process gives you the realistic results.

Most people have skills and have unique formulas but they are just too lazy to take what they have to another level through study, self application and investing time and resources. By applying yourself to your talents and skills you will make them more unique and pick up ways and methods of being faster better and adding an edge to what you do. Just standing back from your skills leaves them languishing at an infancy level.

I firmly believe that we are all given talents so we can feed and cloth ourselves and those who lean on and develop their skills are helping themselves to a more financially secure future.

 

Next blog post 03 Nov

My e-books are now available on Amazon. Please click on the corresponding links below for more info.

 

First Steps to Personal Empowerment
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Do Black Women in Afros
Date White Guys?
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Supposing I wanted to
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A beautiful love story

Dear Halima, my wife and I have been reading your blog and we like it very much. My wife is a gorgeous black woman and I am a white guy. She's laughing at me for writing that. Anyway we wanted to share our brief biographical sketch with you.
 

In the 1960’s when I was a college student at a large university I broke almost every social norm and more in existence for a white, male undergraduate. I fell in love with the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. She was a black, female associate professor who was eight years my senior. I was a dean’s list student, ROTC-type, poor as a church mouse but hard working.

When we met it was like a lightning bolt went through us – our attraction was irreversible. Two weeks after I kissed her the first time, I knew I wanted her as my wife. I shouldn’t have even kissed her – we both could have been killed for that in 1964 but it didn’t stop us. She took a professorship across town.

I graduated from the university, was commissioned in the Army and went to Vietnam. We got engaged. While I was in Vietnam Dr. King was assassinated and my loves house was shot up for being engaged to a white Army officer. I called her and told to leave town to go home to her parents and to tell them that we broke up so she wouldn’t be harmed. She did. I didn’t write her but sent letters for her to my Mom.

Three weeks later I was nearly killed in battle – my mother was told by the Army that I was dead – Mom had a stroke and never regained consciousness. She died while I was recovering and didn’t know it. My fiancé moved to New England and taught there finally moving to Europe to obtain a psychology doctorate. When I was finally able to go back to active duty I couldn’t find her and her family wouldn’t speak to me.

But guess what, forty years later we’ve been reunited!

Neither of us had married. We spent two plus years going over what had happened. We got married last summer. We never stopped loving one another. We don’t know how many years we have but we have each another again. I guess my reason for telling you this is to tell others, do not be afraid to love someone.

Don't let superficial reasons like race or culture stand in the way. I like my wife and I love my wife she’s my best friend ever. The great wounds of the 60's that separated us have reunited us - love has won out.

Never give up.!

 

 

Next blog post 20th  Oct

My e-books are now available on Amazon. Please click on the corresponding links below for more info.

 

First Steps to Personal Empowerment
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Do Black Women in Afros
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Supposing I wanted to
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A great key for pushing yourself ahead

Knowledge is the key. You need loads of it to run modern life. There is information for whatever issue that you need it for out there; just loads and there are people who are not mainstream but have critical information that will give you the victory in any area you seek it. Such knowledge can make you stand out from the crowd (which is what you want). You can pick up an e-book on say dieting today that will give you the necessary info to sort out your particular weight loss issue just like that, but you wont get to the solution if the e-book just sits there on your laptop or at the bottom of your drawer.

How does the modern human however manage the bewildering amount of information out there, sort out the important stuff from the chaff as well as take on-board the gigabytes of important and useful knowledge that is needed to push forward in life? Many of us can't manage a book a month, and with the range of topics and vital info out there that will bring you victory in any area of life including health, work, beauty, finance, home management, time management, most of us are really quite behind and are not taking in the vital info that is available a page away!

Clearly if you have the ability to consume many books in a short spaces of time, then you have the ability to quickly lay hold of vital information that will take you ahead of the queue. Dedicating say a couple of hours to hit the books each week might not necessarily be the most efficient way to go about it. I believe if you are serious about information gathering, you need to learn to 'speed read'. It's a skill that you can learn and perfect so that you are reading a book a day and taking in all the necessary information you need from it! Imagine that!

I highly recommend acquiring this skill. Even if you read at twice the speed you do now, you will increase your knowledge base astronomically and be eager to read more and more. On average people who learn speed reading triple their reading speed, you will get through all those books lying at the bottom of the drawer in no time, gather the information you need and moving on to seek more and more and become better and broader in your skill set and much more. Remember that the thing that distinguishes you from the person in the lead is more than likely the information they have that you don’t.

Invest in learning this skill, I tell you it is worth it especially for knowledge gathering books (I enjoy reading novels and such at my normal slower pace because novels are about savoring a story, while I speed read with books for knowledge). I wont say I am even anywhere near good at speed reading but the ability I have now has lead to a marked improvement in my information gathering and my willingness to purchase books now I know I can be done with them in no time rather than have them gather dust!

As we move towards the last quarter of 2013 it might be a good time to look to clearing your reading back log and set yourself up with necessary knowledge for 2014.

Tony Buzan the mind-map Guru has a number of books teaching the speed reading skill but there are also other good books out there which you can research by reading reviews on Amazon.

Next blog post 6th Oct

My e-books are now available on Amazon. Please click on the corresponding links below for more info.

 

First Steps to Personal Empowerment
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Do Black Women in Afros
Date White Guys?
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Supposing I wanted to
Date a White Guy...?
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The New Year is less than 4 Months away, what's the score?

Hello all, its been a while.

I decided I would, and will be taking the summers off because I get furiously busy at this time of year and of course I don't live in a place like sunny California where summers last and never leave! All too often summer is gone and then its a hurtle down to Christmas and the New year which is indeed just less than four months away! -I thought I’d give you a jolt.

If you are one of those women who promised yourself to be engaged or married now and it hasn’t happened I guess this is a teaching moment. You know I asked you to get some matchmaking services and other heavy duty help in the area...well I want you now to calculate how much you have lost in terms of not paying up for services to help you with that goal. Do you think you have lost a thousand pounds a month for not being where you want to be? How about two thousand pounds. If you are older and moving out of the child bearing season then maybe to you, this situation is more costly than money!

Anyway who knows what time costs to you, only you can tell and put a value on not doing all you can to be were you are in any area of life from weight to health (maybe buying that rowing machine a year ago or going on a weight loss plan might have fended off your diabetes or high blood pressure but now it has cost you big time). Never joke with time because you cant get it back. I used to really dither over pressing the 'pay' button even when I knew that what I was buying was essential (comes from being raised cash poor I suppose), now I know that I may get back the 100 dollars but I might never get back an opportunity missed by not just going for what I need.

If you are a black woman as a rule you are swimming against the tide in so many ways (often not your fault but you live the consequence anyway and that's what you must keep in mind), to get married, get a job, get good health and secure your future. You can moan about it or get up and do something to get yourself where you want to be.

I must add a warning about procuring matchmaker services though. A lot of matchmakers are are cashing in on the desperation of women to sell a 'non-service' to them. In other words they take your money and are not do their best to get you a relationship (they might just send you on dates or avail you of a dozen or less men on their books and that’s it!). I am seeing this happen more and more as the demand for the work they can do in today's dating climate becomes inflated. In truth even if you employ the services of a matchmaker, you must still do a lot of work on your end. Don’t look at it like you just have to plop yourself down and say 'fix me up.' Trust me, your membership will expire and that will be that. Look at it this way, you are simply paying them for a 'good lead'. Some matchmakers guide the process e.g. giving pep talks to the candidates allaying their fears that Mr A or Miss C deserves a good consideration. In our very flighty world and one which doesn’t even know what it wants or is confused because of so much choice, this is an invaluable service, however this kind of personal touch has more or less disappeared in the lower and mid end of match maker services. The other thing is also that sometimes you do need someone to broach things that you might have developed a blind spot on, issues that range from how to present yourself in manner and appearance.   

I am having discussions within the BWE network about putting a service in place and I will speak on that once concrete structures for it are in place, however in the mean time please be careful, do your own investigation, read, ask for help, be smart, be creative because there are men out there (of every hue) who want to be in a committed relationship.

Next blog post 22nd Sep

My e-books are now available on Amazon. Please click on the corresponding links below for more info.

 

First Steps to Personal Empowerment
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Do Black Women in Afros
Date White Guys?
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Supposing I wanted to
Date a White Guy...?
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Your Letters Continued

Your Letters Contd

...From Question on Previous Post

No one knows for sure why they get rejected in many instances.

Iman and David Bowie (such a beautiful couple)

For some of the things a person is rejected for, it might be a good idea in the long run and in terms of personal development and being the best you can be, to change whatever it is. For instance if you are rude and abrupt and this came out during a date, you can and should adjust this attitude. In other cases it's just the taste of the person sitting opposite you (or scanning your picture etc) and you should not bother over-thinking it and trying to adjust to whatever it is. For instance if you are a tall woman and a man wants a woman under 5'5, then there is absolutely nothing you can do about that.

And to make it more complicated, sometimes you could be nigh on 'perfect' but the person sitting across from you is in a head space that will prevent them from taking up the opportunity to be with such a wonderful match to them. I know a case where the woman was more or less a perfect match and the man admitted it. She was polished, upbeat and pleasant, easy on the eyes etc etc. The man in this case admitted that now that they had met he realized that he just was not ready to settle down/commit even though he thought he was. Indeed the reality only crystallized for him when he saw the perfect woman sitting opposite him and then he realized he just couldn’t take the jump.

I have seen (and experienced) this situation time and again and so no one should beat themselves up about being rejected as long as you have done the nest you can and no don't beat yourself up because there are still bits and pieces you have to work on.

This is why you need to keep going and going and going. Finding a partner especially as you advance in age is almost like finding a job. When you are turned down you must not or cannot just give up and say, 'I have been rejected for 20 jobs, so I wont work...' I don’t know if anyone ever sees it like that, in fact people might disconnect from the whole job search process form time to time but ultimately they pick up heart again and start to look and to eventually find where they fit in job wise, because really not working is just not an option for the average person, there is no way around this.

The job employers (like a man or woman in the dating market) might be looking for someone younger (which you cannot do anything about), they may be spoilt for choice (like in a recession), and want a worker who combines multiple job roles (now you may or may not consider this trend and seek to improve your resume with regards this reality). You can get so much help by signing up to agencies as you well know (the parallel in the dating market is a match maker). Ultimately as a woman you need to switch off emotions and make the process as dispassionate as possible to yourself so you are 'processing' scores of men for their suitability as well as they are being processed in or out naturally for their willingness and openness to be in a relationship with you. It is indeed one of the quandaries of life that people often say they want something e.g a relationship but in reality and from their actions the truth is they are not ready or are not serious or are not open to any particular person.

I believe black women would go far if they just took their heart and feelings out of the process of finding a partner and reintroduced their feelings at the point where there are signs that the connection is going somewhere instead of getting 'heart' involved from the beginning before even meeting a man so that a single negative action from a man sends 

them into a tailspin and TKOs them from the dating market for months and even years before they recover!

 

Pray to come into a ‘prepared’ place

If you are a person of faith or who believes in divine order or a higher power/God, like I do, I would suggest that you pray to be favored or to come into a prepared land, so to speak.

A while ago I went through a series of job positions where I was 'the first.' And when I say first, I mean that I was the first to challenge one thing or another; the person who broke into the negative culture or situation first and as a result I had a sore head! After me the boss or the organisation realized they shouldn’t do A, B, or C or they should put in place X, Y, Z. When I got another job offer after those other trying roles, I remember asking God to insure that someone had gone before me to clear the way as I had done for others in those other jobs where I had to battle management or battle for a general change in the work culture. The first day I arrived the person who was showing me round commented that 'we are trying to be more friendly to new comers because someone who worked here before said we were not really friendly'. It was the sign I was looking for to confirm that someone had passed through and ironed out the wrinkles and hiccups that would have caused me to have a not too pleasant work experience!

Now how does this relate to dating and relationships? Well sometimes a man has to go through some experiences so that he becomes prepared and open to what comes next. Some men have to be disappointed with a certain type of woman before he says to himself 'duh big breasts are not everything', or 'race means nothing.' etc etc. Some of us are often the ones who help men along to this life transforming wisdom, and unfortunate we do not get to reap the benefits of his adjusted mentality instead a woman who comes after us then happened upon this well aerated and transformed man!

If you feel that you are such a woman who more or less gets to do the work for others to enjoy, then send up a prayer or two that you will come across a man whose life experience has prepared him (not just another woman but life in general) to be open and fit for a relationship with you.

Halima is on Holiday

My e-books are now available on Amazon. Please click on the corresponding links below for more info.

 

First Steps to Personal Empowerment
Amazon

 

 

Do Black Women in Afros
Date White Guys?
Amazon

 

 

 







Supposing I wanted to
Date a White Guy...?
Buy Here or Buy at Amazon