Courage to leap

I am still astonished with myself that, since when I made the commitment to write into my blog every month, I have successfully kept up with a ones in a month posting into it. Big ups to me!!!

Its now two weeks since I arrived into Nigeria and quite a number of things have transpired, obviously; but as you must have known me by now that I always bring out the stories that flashes your eyes wide open or make you want to drop that one emotional tear. Well this post is to continue from where I had stopped from my last one and hopefully intends to touch that emotional side of you ones more.

Nigeria, a country endowed with loads and loads of natural resources and yet is still very poor. Well, Nigeria is not a first of its kind but as we all know, our leaders (or so they call themselves) have failed to do the right thing for the country and now it has led us to the state we currently are. A country which cannot even boast of one thing it is good at, even at the midst of all of our abundant resources. Ok, this is not where my post really intends to lead us to, so I'll stop here!

So on arrival back to motherland and after a couple of days of trying to decipher my left from right, I finally got my way through most of the challenges of transportation (though I had to take taxis most of the time due to fear of getting lost). One of the first places I visited was the AIESEC Nigeria office. You guessed right! How the hell could I forget my home boys and brothers in the game! On getting to their office, I realised that really, nothing there had changed. As a matter of fact it seemed to look a little worse than I had last seen it two plus years ago.

One thing for sure that has changed are the leaders of the organisation. The guys on the current AIESEC Nigeria National team - Niyi, David, Olaoluwa and Fisayo have all been old time friends in the game with me. All formerly LCPs at some point and had created a lot of results for their LC, Niyi had been a guy I had worked on the same stage with on the LC level, but now he is the MCP of AIESEC Nigeria. This wouldn't surprise you why they immediately jumped at me to become the chair of their National Training Seminar at the first site of me in their office and at my second day in Nigeria. Who would have said no to such an offer so tempting?

So I started my role as the chair of a conference which was less than 7 days old to the date the conference was meant to begin. Honestly I was prepared for what ever was to come from this role, but sadly and very depressingly, I had some other major personal commitments that was to be a big hindrance to me. My parents were not even willing to listen to the fact that I was less than a week old in Nigeria and I had not thought of what my main reason for coming back home was, before taking up another responsibility which was completely away from why I was here. As you all know that parents are very influential when it comes to decisions such as this one, after doing my first pre-meeting with the Faci team, all ready to make a blast of this conference, I suddenly had to turn down the offer.

For me, it now seems to be unbecoming of me. I seem to always over promise myself and others about certain decisions and responsibilities and fail to fully deliver. When this issue became this way, I had to pause and reflect a little about some recent decisions I had taking unfulfilled; Like the position of MCP for AIESEC South Africa. Its a lot better for me not to even make a move at the role than for me to do it half way and turn back afterwards.

After this happened I made a promise to myself that I will never step into a shoe I don't intent to wear for a walk. I will think long term and make a decision based on it. I will not make rash and rushed decisions without looking at circumstances surrounding it first. I will be a lot wiser with decision making.

Fortunately this guys understood my dilemma and still wish I could always chair their conference in the near future and I am totally open to this offer; But one highlight of this incidence is that even though I know I had obstacles ahead of me, I still took the courage to leap into the challenges and even if it did not come out positive at the end of the day, I still learned something from those experiences and next time, I have a foothold to thread upon on any similar role to be filled in the future. Thats the power of courage to do the unthinkable and this still makes me proud of myself.

So my quote for today is very synonymous to the title of this post and here goes...

"Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose."

-- Tom Krause, motivational speaker