Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.
This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.
Why You Should Have A Doctor You Know Personally.
There is this man (whose real name I don’t want to mention) who found himself in a terrifically ugly situation. Let me call him Roy for this piece’s purpose. So Roy had been Letisha’s ( also not her real name) boyfriend for almost a half a decade. At one point, it reached a time when dissolving the relationship was inevitable. The dissolution was necessitated by the fact that they were distant relatives and in their community, marriage was strictly endogamous, otherwise, you would live as outcasts. So Roy and Letisha dissolved their union and Roy got another lady almost immediately. Letisha, on the other hand, took relatively long to get a mate. When Roy’s wife was just betrothed, the neighbours told her that her husband is having a lover and she was just brought to please Roy’s parents. Roy’s wife asked Roy about the issue and he assured her that everything between him and Letisha was over and that he would never look back to her.
Roy’s Friend who was a physician Saved the Day.
Five years into the marriage, Letisha was not yet married. At one point, Roy’s wife came to discover that her husband was still communicating with his ex-girlfriend (Letisha). This discovery drastically enraged her. She was expecting her husband to take time and explain to her what was going on, but to her confusion, he never talked about the issue even after she asked. In the morning, as he was preparing to go to work, she was just continued sleeping and this was an indicator that she was not planning to go to work that day. He prepared and went to work, but after two hours at the workplace, something just told him to return to the house. He returned without taking permission. On arrival, he found her lying on the floor, foaming in the mouth and her eyes were stiff. He immediately called his friend who was a doctor and told him to leave whatever he is doing and move to his place which all anti poisons. The doctor arrived just right on time and he gave her medication to vomit the poison and gave her injections which saved her.
The Story Would Have Been Totally Different Without the Doctor.
Without the doctor, Roy would have been forced to look for a car to carry him to the hospital in that short period of time. Avoiding traffic jam without an ambulance or a government vehicle with a specialized plate would have also been a miracle. Then waiting for an ambulance from the hospital to and pick the patient would have taken a whole decade. Only private hospitals can be that swift but with them, you must spend dearly to be able to enjoy their upscale services. But with the doctor, the situation was put under control very uncomplicatedly.
What Are The Benefits Of Having A Physician You Know In Person?
Some diseases are arduous to test and doctors sometimes just make guesses.
An example of such a disease is malaria. There are three possible methods that can be used to test the virus but the two most commonly used methods are, rapid diagnostic test, (RDT) and microscopic examination of giemsa-stained blood smear. The RDT test just provides evidence that malaria parasites are present in the patient’s blood. This gives it a major limitation that it does not reveal which of the four parasites that cause malaria is the patient suffering from. The parasites are falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovale, and P. maleriae. The method also doesn’t reveal the intensity of the infection, that is; how much the parasites have multiplied. This limitation can be solved by using the microscopic examination which is carried out by smearing the patient’s blood on a microscope slide and checking the virus using a microscope.
But for this test to be accurate, the physician should observe one hundred fields. That is; he/she should observe the bloodstain on the microscope slide, then move the slide to observe another area, and continue that way one hundred times. Do you think any other doctor will do that for all patients? Not very easily. But if you have a friend who is treating you, s/he can be of very great help.
They can help during an emergency.
Just like in the case of Roy and Letisha, having a family physician as a friend saved Roy from funeral expenses.
They may handle your problem personally.
When you go to the hospital for a checkup or treatment, the physicians may fail to give you appropriate attention for one reason or the other. Maybe your situation is exceedingly complex and the doctor just doesn’t have time to listen to every single detail from you. An ordinary doctor will just give some medication to try out then advise you to return for checks. But when you are dealing with someone you know in person, s/he will most likely give you an appointment on a future date so as to handle your case with deserving attention if at all it is not an emergency.
Importance of Market Research and How to Carry it Out Before Starting a Business.
Carrying out thorough market research is a very obligatory step when starting any business unless you don’t mind seeing your business crumble. And when you decide to undertake it, it should be the second step, coming only after the conception of the business idea. This is because the research will help you come up with relevant and competitive strategies. It is of great significance to let the research take a relatively long period of time since some businesses are always seasonal. For example, if you want to start an online consultancy where you will be assisting students who are unable to consult their supervisors in doing their academic projects/ writing theses and dissertations (but not doing the projects for them), you should experiment for at least a year. This is the reason, from the very beginning; you will be looking forward to hiring other professionals to assist you in assisting your clients as they do their projects since you can’t be an expert in all fields. But since this business is seasonal, you may start it when no student is doing a project/ writing a thesis and fail to get any client. On the other hand, you may start it when every student is writing a thesis/ doing a project and get a false impression that the business is very profitable. So, before you can hire people to assist you or spend much on advertising your business, you should try the business for at least a year then start planning.
How to carry out market research
1. Trying out the business but investing little time and resources.
It is clear from the introduction that trying out the business without investing too much time and resources is the most effective way to carry out market research. This will act as a stick in testing the depth of a river rather than spending all your resources and time and resigning from your job which will be like testing a river with both legs. This will give you the exact idea of what to expect before finally deciding whether the business is worth venturing into.
2. Web search
Both Google and social media can be very helpful in doing this. If your conceived business idea is about selling bodywear or footwear or hairstyle, social media can help you know the popularity of different designs by checking people’s comments on various outfits. If your idea is about manufacturing or trade, google can load you with very helpful statistics.
3. Observation.
You can just look around in malls, streets, schools, etc. to see what people love and base your decisions on what you see.
4. Ask people what they love.
You may ask your family members and friends which designs/ brands they love most so that you can put more of them in stock.
5. Books.
Books are some of the most reliable resources for research.
Importance of market research.
1. Help you in planning
As discussed in the introduction, after market research, you will have an overview of how the business looks like. This can help you in decisions like
- How much time you should allocate for the business
- How many people you should hire to assist you in the business and whether you should hire them on a full time or part-time basis.
- What equipment/ tools do you need for the business?
- Etc.
2. Put you on a competitive edge.
Knowing which brand is more popular, where and among which group of people can help you come up with competitive strategies.
3. Will save you from unnecessary expenditures.
Maybe you initially wanted to purchase some equipment for the business, but after the research, you find it unnecessary. You will save the money you would have spent on buying it.
Five Things You Must Agree on Before Marrying Your Partner
Getting to know whoever you are dating in and out is acutely indispensable. This will save you a lot of tears and days of regret. But even though it’s such a weighty matter, there is no rule of thumb that applies to all relationships as people do have varying degrees of tolerance and patience among other characters. For instance, take a scenario where you are dating someone from a different religion/denomination and you can’t agree whose religion/denomination the two of you should follow. If you know that your partner is tolerant, then it’s obvious that practicing different religions won’t affect your union that much. But if he’s the type who has a lot of difficulty in tolerating other belief(s), you must first comprehensively harmonize how things will work; whether you will convert or he will just have to tolerate you or whether the two of you will dissolve the union. So what are these things you must agree on before ultimately agreeing to move around with that engagement ring?
Religion
The bulk of what can be said on religion has been discussed in the introduction. But just to add on it, some people are not interested in religion and they don’t care whether you practice it or not. Even in such a situation, confirm with him/her if s/he’ll tolerate you. But even if s/he agrees, it’s not a sign that all will be fine, it is advisable to date someone with whom your religious beliefs have a bigger correlation coefficient.
Political affiliation.
If one party is too much interested in politics, it’s only advisable to go ahead with the relationship if either you share the same political affiliation or not so much into politics and can change your stand. This will bring harmony during political periods and can also bring sanity when the other partner, later on, decides to join politics and expects you to be his/her first supporter.
Hobbies.
When you share hobbies, fantastic! You will have lots of moments of fun together. But even if you don’t, you’re not unconditionally doomed; you can still check if the other party can adjust or just allow you to enjoy yourself without interference. But if you have totally antagonistic hobbies like; one loves singing in church and the other love raving, it’s advisable to look for a more compatible partner.
How you’ll share responsibilities.
Traditionally, providing for the family has always been men’s responsibility and household chores women’s. But it’s possible to find a man who still believes that cooking and looking after the children is wholly a woman’s responsibility but he can’t provide everything or a woman who feels that the man should provide everything but is uncomfortable doing all the house chores. So, it’s better to agree first.
Finances.
Financial transparency is very obligatory. Keeping secret accounts is a profoundly misguided idea for a successful relationship. Even if you don’t keep a common account, the other party should know that you have other account(s). And you should also agree on how to spend your earnings together.
How to Quit Masturbation
Harmfulness, moral acceptability and in some cases, the sinfulness of masturbation are some of the most hotly debated topics between the liberals and the conservatives. On one hand, many liberal view masturbation as a not only normal, but an awesome alternative to sexual intercourse that you can use to ease your hormonal urges when the hormones can’t give you a break and you are not in a position to get a partner, hence no need for efforts to overcome masturbation addiction, while on the other hand, conservatives not only claim that it is both physically and psychologically harmful, but some even go ahead to equate it to having sex with demons. In this article, I won’t discuss much of the effects of masturbation. That’s for another day. Today, the focus is on how to quit masturbation. This article is purely meant to help someone who has decided to quit do so successfully rather than to convince you that you should quit doing it.
Decide that you want to overcome masturbation addiction.
You may wonder why I’ve included this point yet for one to seek help on how to stop masturbation, s/he must have decided that it is bad. But get this, since sex starts from the mind, then stopping a sexual practice must also just start from there. Take this example; if someone wants to quit alcoholism, the easiest way to do it is to go for rehabilitation. But if a parent wants his/her child to stop alcoholism before the child decides that enough is enough, rehabilitation cannot work. So, it must start with you and it must disgust you.
Avoid pornographic content.
Pornography is the leading propeller towards the urge to masturbate. When you watch people doing foreplay in a pornographic film or having sex, your brain will also start preparing your body to do whatever they are doing. So, after watching adult content, staying without sex will be inevitable. If you don’t have a partner and fail to masturbate, you may find yourself guilty of bestiality or rape or you may be forced to spend your money on prostitutes.
Pray and avoid erotic music, both video and audio. Listen to spiritually uplifting music.
In Romans 8:5-6, the scripture says that those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on what the Spirit desires. The desires of the body are from the evil one but when we are in spirit, we overcome them. When you listen to holy and spiritually uplifting music, sinful desires won’t find a place in you. Read spiritually uplifting literature when you are free and this will help you welcome the Spirit of God into your life. It will help you overcome the urge to indulge in worldly pleasures including helping you to overcome masturbation addiction.
Set schedule
Insist that you will never do it more than twice a week, then once a week, then quit. If you’ve reached a point of not doing it in two weeks, it’s easier to quit. Don’t do it once in two weeks for the urge may return.
At this point, tell someone
This is now to avoid going back. The best person to tell is the one you are in a serious relationship with. This will be helpful because s/he can engage you in chats during the times you used to do it. You can also tell your spiritual parent or any other person you’re sure won’t tell others about it.
Keep yourself busy.
If you are male, have you ever wondered why sometimes you have sexual feelings when you wake up? When your body is at rest, more testosterone and this is the sex hormone in me. But idleness is a perfect driver towards sexual fantasies which end turn into sexual desires. So, working hard is not only good for your personal economic development but will also act as a therapy to help you resist sexual urges including helping you quit masturbation.
Avoid being alone
You can’t masturbate when anyone else other than your partner is around. So the more you stay with others, the more you deprive your body of the opportunity to push you to the wall and force you to masturbate.
Nine Mistakes to avoid when starting a business
Of the many people who have ever dreamt of becoming successful business people, only a few go ahead to try out their conceived ideas and of the few who give their ideas a try, even fewer of them always succeed. That’s quite unfortunate but it just has to be that way, because if everyone can become a successful business individual, there won’t be customers. So, what do you need to do differently to succeed? The obvious answer is; avoid mistakes that those who have failed in the past did. So which are these mistakes? Before we look at them, you should know that copying other people’s ideas blindly is one of the biggest mistakes when starting a business. This includes avoiding the exact mistakes they avoided without checking out whether the mistakes don’t apply to you. For instance, selling African dashiki dresses in Kabul, Afghanistan will be a business blunder but selling them in Lagos, Nigeria will be a great business idea. But still, you’re not assured of success in Nigeria if you can’t come up with a formula you can use to snatch customers from more established businesses that offer the same. So, which are these mistakes?
Taking a huge loan to start a business you have never tested.
When drawing a business plan, you can fantasize of how successful the business will be in a short while and you won’t even imagine a possibility of any barrier coming your way. But when you go to the ground, things may turn out to be totally different. This can be very disastrous, for instance, out of all the customers you thought you would get, you may end up getting only a quarter of the number. This would mean that the amount of money you planned to receive in a given time period, you will get it in four time periods. This can be drastically harmful to your business if you are working with a loan that you have to repay. So, to be on the safer side, either avoid loans completely when starting a business or just borrow what you can repay with your current source of income. You can comfortably borrow what is to be repaid with your business’ profits after the business has started giving you a steady inflow of cash.
Spending more time looking for advice and strategies than doing the business itself.
Don’t let strategizing and learning how to start the business take too much of the time you ought to be spending doing the business. When you read too much, you can keep procrastinating and postponing the launching of your business until forever. Just draw the whole plan and read what you can start with, then continue reading as you go along. This will be helpful because as you will be coming across difficulties, you will know the exact solution to look for in the books or from the net.
Spending more money on non-essentials
When starting a business, you need to be a very mean person. Don’t focus on showing off what you have achieved to your peers. Avoid the flamboyant lifestyles of the well-established business executives. Avoid expensive jewelry, parties, trendy clothing and all non-essentials which will force you to spend princely. This would be a grave mistake when starting a business.
Desiring to reach results without passing through the process/ avoid shortcuts.
Success is the reward you get for hard work. No hard work, no success unless you have won a lottery. Even sportsmen have to dedicate a significant amount of their training before they can play to earn the insane amounts they earn. Desiring to get rich quickly will make you tempted to involve in dirty businesses/ strategies like giving misleading adverts or selling counterfeit/low-quality products.
Comparing yourself with failures, you’ll be discouraged.
When you keep thinking of people you thought were smarter and would succeed but failed, you will most likely get discouraged. Focus on success stories so that you can get inspired.
Listening to negative people; some people are not happy with your business.
At times, it’s always hard to discern between people who are giving you genuine caution and negative people who just want to discourage you. So, you should be cautious when taking advice. Don’t be quick to either dismiss advice nor to accept them. Take time to analyze them and if they seem fishy, reject. Taking deceptive advice that is meant to ruin you is one of the greatest mistakes to avoid when starting a business for they can lead to a bottomless pit.
If you’re employed, just don’t resign immediately.
When your business picks up well and you are formally employed, it will be quite tempting to quit your job. But don’t let your initial success deceive you. Some businesses are seasonal; for example, school stationaries may sell quite well when schools are opening, hospitality businesses always boom during holidays and household items will also become hotcakes during the Christmas season. Also worth noting, when you are employed, you will have an external source of income to pump into the business and so, you won’t have to worry about running out of stock even if you squander all the profits. This may deceive you and give an illusion that you can live on the business no matter what situation it is. So, before you can save everything you earn and still live comfortably from your business’ profits, just don’t resign.
Marrying an unambitious partner who loves vanities.
Getting a good life partner can be the best thing to ever happen to you. But being single forever is better than finding a bad one. If you get someone who wants a posh lifestyle of a millionaire’s wife but is neither patient enough to wait for you to be stable nor work hard to earn her own money, it will amount to a business blunder.
Why many relationships don’t lead to marriage
Finding someone marrying his/her first love is quite arduous. In a country like Kenya for instance, the scenario is further complicated for those brought up in rural areas by cultural barriers. This is because almost all Kenyan communities consider endogamous marriage (marrying within a clan/extended family) a taboo. Since everyone either start or attempt to start relating during their teenage years, these people raised up in the countryside will have no choice but to just date people they’re sure they can’t marry just for the time being before they can be in a position to increase their geographical diameter of interaction so that they can meet people they can date and marry. And no matter how much you love your relative/ clanmate, you will have no choice but to let the relationship fail if at all you want peace with the society. But you will find that even those brought up in urban areas who interacts with people from all over the country, still undergo a series of breakups before finally settling down with one. What might be the reason(s) why most relationships don’t lead to marriage?.
Media portray casual sex as “cooler” than marriage. Successful marriages hardly appear in the news
Many television programs are dedicated to airing problems people undergo in marriages, and this can bring among unmarried. To make matters worse, there’s no single program dedicated to celebrating successful marriages. (You can tell me if you know of any). When someone sees more of these ugly stories, she will start looking for ways to avoid them. One solution is to avoid relationships like a plague. In some cases, many people, especially women are advised to read red flags from the very beginning of a relationship and run away whenever they see any. With this plan in mind, it’s possible to let a potential relationship fail.
Many relationship experts always tell women that it is impossible to change a man, and this can make her walkout even before asking him if he can change. There’s a man I know who was struggling so much to quit drinking but was afraid of telling anyone. Even though he wasn’t in any relationship at that time, it’s a possibility that a man like him can be left somewhere because of drinking, yet he is struggling to quit.
Pride.
Pride is always manifested when a misunderstanding arises between a couple and one will feel that the other is the cause of the problem should initiate the process of reconciliation. The other will also be feeling the same. There may be a period of no communication between the two and this may end up being a bigger problem. Initiating a reconciliation process neither means you are desperate nor tolerating nonsense. Even if you’re sure it’s the other party that is wrong, you can take the lead by telling him or her that s/he is wrong and wait for what s/he will say.
Little attention, people value other things.
People these days give very little attention to their love life as it is something they don’t need to remain alive. This has made many people to first focus on what you can’t do without first, and that is; how to put bread on the table. Once financially stable, there is always a sense of independence, especially in women. For men on the other hand, many tend to be bossy as their bank accounts continue to read bigger figures. When people with these viewpoints happen to come together, it’s highly unlikely that the relationship won’t anywhere. If a man who thinks that he is a boss and should be bowed to couples up with a woman feels that being with a man brings very little if no difference in her life, who do you think will initiate the process of reconciliation when a misunderstanding arises or will admit that he/she is wrong? In such a case, very little disagreement can cause a breakup.
Wrong pairing.
Have you ever heard of a man who doesn’t love his firstborn as other kids simply because he or she was born out of wedlock? You will be left wondering why he went for a lady with a kid in the first place if he’s uncomfortable with raising another man’s kid. This is an example of a mismatch; a matching where the two parties aren’t fully in love with the state they found their spouse.
In some cases, you find a man telling his wife to quit her job so as to look after the children for he is able to provide. This can be only reasonable if it’s a mutual agreement, but if the man just woke up with the idea, it’s totally unjustifiable. This lady has been working towards this career from kindergarten up to wherever she is. So, if you want a housewife, look for an unemployed woman or first agree before you go far with your relationship if she will be comfortable with being a stay at home mom.
Cheating.
In the case of cheating, when the party that is being cheated on prefers being single to sharing, the relationship will remain history. Cheating remains a major reason why many relationships fail.
Higher expectations.
If you are a fan of romance literature, soap operas, and telenovelas, they may raise your expectations to an extent that landing in a normal relationship will seem to you as a disappointment and many relationships don’t lead to marriage because of this.
Promiscuity.
Some people just find jumping from one partner to another giving them a lot of fun and they will go around bragging how they have many partners or how they are good players.
Immorality
Ways through which people define morality greatly differ depending on one’s religious beliefs, sexual orientation, and environment among other factors. But despite how you define morality, immorality is a big factor in relationships. Someone who has been hiding some immoral characters from his/her partner will piss off the partner when the characters are eventually manifested along the way and may cause a break-up.
Introduce Yourself (Example Post)
This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.
You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.
Why do this?
- Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
- Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.
The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.
To help you get started, here are a few questions:
- Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
- What topics do you think you’ll write about?
- Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
- If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?
You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.
Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.
When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.
John Michael 