Happy new month friends.

Allow me to say thank you to everyone who read “Welcome 2013” and got in touch with me. I received a lot of responses from people, also, many who hadn’t had new year resolutions in a while said they were going to give it a try this year. The positive responses to the piece amazed me. Once again, thank you.

Now to the business of today. Did you fully realize that one month in this (new) year is already gone? You know that January is the longest month in the year. True, there are still six (6) other months with thirty-one (31) days in the year but workers generally tend to believe that January is longer than the other ‘full’ months, I won’t go into the details here. If January whisked off the way it did then you know February would soon be over with the speed of Bolt.

Having started the year with our goals and aspirations written out, its time to bring them to life, don’t you think so? If you think its still too early you would be surprised that December 31st would meet you suddenly. So, how do we go about our plans? We start!

A friend of mine who dropped a comment on “Welcome 2013” said,
“I never had a new year resolution since the last time I had one……reason is, the opposite happened. Great piece, but you didn’t consider those of us who are but passengers in this life, we are most comfortable when we don’t blaze trails and all we set out for is a nice & cozy abode with food on the table. Brother, what help or advice will you have for us?”

The commenter is someone I know well and I believe he wasn’t talking about himself because he is already a trail-blazer. However, I took a look at what he said and felt the reason someone in that kind of a situation he painted would stop setting goals is because of the fear of failure, such a person is afraid of realising at the end of the year that he was unable to meet his goals. The truth is we all have those fears. Ben Nelson in “Trying and Failing is Better Than Not Trying at All” said,

“One of the major things that stops most people from ever moving forward on their goals and closer to their dreams is fear. One of the biggest fears is the fear of failure, of not knowing if you can actually accomplish the dreams you set out to achieve. We are afraid of what people will say or think if we don’t achieve what we set out to do.” It is that fear, I believe, that makes people act like they don’t care about being trail-blazers in life. We all want to be great. Greatness is innate to man.

I have a friend, a melancholic (I respect melancholics for their talents) and in our discussions I discovered he has the talent of writing but he was afraid of writing. Why? Because, according to him, he has the problem of not completing what he starts to write. And what did I tell him? I told him to keep on writing. It doesn’t matter how many articles he writes and stops half-way, if he keeps at it he will complete some. And he did, he is the writer of the last story on this blog, “Shadows and silhouettes.” Brilliant story. I also have several stories and articles that I started but haven’t completed on my laptop, it doesn’t bother me.

While it is true that the end justifies the means, we usually appreciate those who finish well, I have always believed that we should also praise those who start because the hardest part of a thing is to start it. I attended a great school known for “aluta.” Since I graduated I have heard people say nasty things about my alma mater, some say the school is not cream, that it is bush etc. My reply to all these people will come later, but for now my simple advice to them is to stop feeding on beef, try ponmo! Back to what I was saying about my great school, one popular aluta slogan we had then was this,
“If we don’t fight, we have lost; but if we fight we may win.” If we bring that to our present discourse, we would say,
“If we don’t start, we won’t finish, but if we start, we may finish.”
Only starters complete what they start, as long as you are afraid to start, I confidently tell you that you can’t complete it.

I think it will be nice to end our talk with this advice from Theodore Roosevelt,
“It’s not the critic who counts; Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit goes to the one who is actually in the arena; Who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; Who knows the great devotions, the great enthusiasms, and spends himself in a worthy cause. Who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and, at the worst, if he fails at least he fails while daring greatly; so that his place will never be among those timid and cold souls who know neither victory or defeat.”

Don’t be bothered or concerned with the fear of not being able to complete what you start, go ahead, start now! Only starters can finish.

I am @seunalade.