I’m sitting at my desk with my nose dripping like a salivating doberman that hasn’t eaten in days. Three whole days i’ve had a serious case of the sniffles and yet to my greater recollection it’s been over 2weeks since I tasted the glorious flesh of swine. Perhaps I’m paranoid but it seems to me that everywhere I turn, people are sneezing, wheezing and coughing, don’t you think? I bet your unconciously reaching for your drenched hankie right now to wipe your sore nose, aren’t you? 

Now I’m not an expert in the field of medicine but isn’t this smacks dangerously fishyly smelly considering there is a worldwide Swine Flu Alert in place. Level 5 for that matter. That means like, nowhere in this solar system are you safe. Good grief. Well, despite all they say, I’m absolutely positive that swine flu just can’t be a problem in UG. I mean, the swine is held in culinary deity around these parts. Even the ruling government make no shame in using it as a metaphor when they say “Twa kuuba embundo” which loosely translates, we killed our pig and so now we’re enjoying it. Sorry opposition. But until you can come up with such cool metaphors, I suggest you find your own animal. As Sevo says, “when you get tired of digging, don’t tell the land to go away.” 

I digress. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, flu. My Archilles heel. The one thing that my body refuses to develop any form of immuninty to. Like superman, it’s great to have kyrptonite to remind you that you aren’t totally invicible. Three days of bed rest and Smallville Season 8 reminded me very clearly. But does it have to be so damned inconvenient for a disease that isn’t actually life threatening? The runny nose, the chinese eyes, the Darth Vader breathing, splitting migraines and a vampiristic aversion to light? I mean do you actually know of anyone who died of Senyiga..? I didn’t think so. 

But this post goes out to all the brave heros out there diligently sloggin onwards despite this incredibly annoying and mysteriously incurable irritation of a disease. Stand strong, keep eating that pork and no, you can’t tell the land to go away. Cause no employer in this town gives sick leave for senyiga. Hell, i should know, i’m my own damn employer and I can’t give myself the day off.  

Shalom

So we have finally come to the end of our series on the 9 Habits of Millionaires as i understood them from Adam Khoo’s e-book. Lets dive right into what is probably the most important of all the habits as it directly relates to money and how we see it.

Habit 9: Respect Money

Do you really respect money? If i was to ask you what you thought of money, I’d get several varying answers many of which would show an unhealthy view towards money. The most common beliefs about money are:

• Money is the root of all evil
• Money is elusive and fleeting
• Having money will cause me more problems
• Rich people are greedy, selfish and unscrupulous
• Poverty is a virtue
• Money will change you(into a bad person)
• You have to work extremely hard to make money
• If i become wealthy
• etc

Most of us want and desire to have lots more money but subconsciously, we walk around with these negative associations towards money and this causes a conflict. Essentially what happens is that we sabotage ourselves from getting money. For example most of us have been brought up to believe that money is the root of all evil. As such we feel guilty about money. So we unconsciously do things to get rid of the money in our lives. If you have 5million shillings on your account, you find ways to spend, lend, waste, give it away to abate the guilt you have in actually having that much money. Please note that as long as you have this disrespect for money, you will never be able to truly prosper. 

Millionaires on the other hand have a high respect for money. They see money as a tool, an ally and even as a friend. Millionaires know that money can do a lot for them. Millionaires realize that money offers them opportunity to do the things they really want, go where they want and buy what they want. Money to them therefore is highly respected. They don’t waste it. They don’t throw it away. They don’t feel ashamed of having it either. In the same breath, millionaires are not slaves to money. They don’t work for money. Money is a result of them offering tremendous value in the marketplace. They know that their true worth doesn’t come from money but with the value and ideas they have to offer. Money to millionaires is merely a way of keeping score.

So we must work on changing our beliefs and attitudes towards money into more healthy and empowering ones. I personally have chosen to adopt some of the following beliefs about money:

• Money is abundant and comes easily and frequently to me.
• Money helps me live the lifestyle I desire
• Money enables me to richly bless those around me
• Money is an effective tool that I use in my life
• Money is a reflection of the value I offer in this world
• Having money is generally better than not having it.  
• Money gives me tremendous influence for good
• etc

I’d definitely like to hear your new found respect and beliefs of money. I could use a few more myself. Recognize that most of your beliefs about money are myths that were unwittingly passed onto you by you parents and society. You want to be rich. You can be rich. Give yourself permission to do so. I know i have. And everyday I’m striving to develop all these 9 habits.

And thats it folks. Phew! Thank you for following this series, I do hope you were blessed by it. I will be anxiously waiting to hear your various feedbacks about how easy, difficult or practical it’s been for you to live out these habits. For your reading convenience here are all the Habits listed once again.  

• Habit 1: Give more than Expected
• Habit 2: Be Proactive
• Habit 3: Take 100% Responsibility
• Habit 4: Delayed Gratification
• Habit 5: Do what you love
• Habit 6: Act with Integrity
• Habit 7: Be 100% Committed
• Habit 8: The Ability to turn Failure into Success
• Habit 9: Respect Money

Shalom

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL:
Wealth may be an excellent thing, for it means power, and it means leisure, it means liberty. 

WOODY ALLEN:
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.

So I have come to the end of my first week on the job. I’d like to tell all sorts of amazing things that happened this week but I can’t. Perhaps it’s the blogks or maybe it’s just that I really don’t have anything to tell.

Well The Master in His mindboggling manner has led me to a place in life  that is rife with financial turmoil. I keep catching myself from screaming at Him. The bible says His ways are not our ways and His thoughts so much higher than ours. I believe I can testify.

I have a seed in my heart that tells me I can do this, transform this like I was Richard Branson or Warren Buffet but it’s challenging in the face of the things I see. Faith after all is the substance of things unseen but I’m struggling in the faith department.

I feel like Gideon when God told him to get rid of 29700 guys and go to war with only 300 warriors to deliver the nation of Israel from armies that were several times larger. I’ve got no clue, no resources and I have major enemies to defeat. I guess, like Israel, God wants things to be arranged so that He can get all the glory and I can’t claim it was my genius or wisdom or business savvy.

Well Lord, have your way. I like Joshua, will remain brave and very courageous for you Lord are with me wherever I go. Though I walk thru the valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil.

Shalom

“Sure I am that this day we are masters of our fate, that the task which has been set before us is not above our strengths; that it’s pangs and toils are not beyond my endurance. As long as we have faith in our own cause and an unconquerable will to win, victory will not be denied us.” Winston Churchill

Greetings good people. And so it is, after a hiatus of 3 blissful months enjoying my personal and marital life, today is my first day back at work. I amazingly got to work at 7:40am which I must tell I have never ever done such a thing in my life.

The Master in His infinite kindness, answered a prayer to show me that He is with me on this new phase of the journey by amazingly clearing the long road from the not-sp-beautiful suburbs of naalya to nakulabye to enable me to impress my new partner the Rogueking-who annoyingly was wearing a black tie!

Well, I now have nice little corner office and a ridiculously loud pc that has like 8 different cooling fans. Yes it’s a monster, nothing less for the Apprentice.

I look forward to communing with you alot more now that I’m back in the saddle.

Shalom

“The biggest challenge you have is your own self-doubt and your laziness. It is your self-doubt and your laziness that define and limit  who you are. It is your self-doubt and laziness that deny you the life you want.”
Rich Dad

Greetings fellow blogriends – yes it’s a weak attempt to create a new word from bloggers and friends. I confess a case of the blogcks. Socks.

After a long hiatus, taking some much needed time off and soul searching, the Apprentice is back for your blogging pleasure. The Master has been graciously dealing with me these past two and half months. About what you ask? Well there’s no simple answer really but suffice to say, about living life in the palm of His hand. Trust. Faith. Hope.

I’ve had the most wonderful time bonding with my amazing wife, watching her belly grow as my firstborn grows bigger each day. There’s nothing quite like feeling your unborn child kicking against her mothers womb or seeing the magic of creation via an ultrasound scan. A mind-boggling miracle yet just another days work for the Master. He’s so awesome.

The hiatus wasn’t exactly self imposed but rather as a result of being downsized from the company I was working at. Yeah I was a victim of the global recession. Pity me. The Great Master, though, in His infinite wisdom had tired of my excusitis and finally helped me make a decision to leave that I’d been putting off forever. A not so gentle shove in the right direction you could call it. And boy am I grateful He did.

As it turns out, I am now come full circle and back to an exciting and daring business adventure with my long time friend and creative extraordinaire, the RogueKing. He and the Master have decided they need my humble talents to further the RogueKings outrageous plans for world domination. Mwa ha ha ha ha ha. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I am totally excited about the idea of working.

All I can say is, we’ll be living on the edge of accepted business practice, innovation and excellence that is unheard of in these dark recesses of this very dark continent. A bold claim I confess, but you don’t know the kind of crazy things the Rogue and I have always dreamed of. Plus, you dear bloggers will hold us accountable to our lofty claims. Look out for more posts. These are invigorating times…

Kiteus, Alteus, Forteous – Bigger, better, faster or is Stronger, Higher, Faster…? Agh! Foreign languages!

Shalom

I hate mondays. Don’t you? Who ever invented Mondays? Who’s brilliant idea was it anyway? It took me an hour of boston legal style litigation in my head just to get outta bed this morning. Danny Krane never loses much to my annoyance today. I just wanted to stay in my warm bed, have my wife to stay in as well and…PG13 blogging doesn’t allow me to continue with that train of thought.

But lets be honest, even though statistically, 85% of heart attacks occur on Mondays, there really isn’t anything wrong with the day itself. It’s just another ambiguous time cycle we use to organise. The real problem is that the vast majority of us, 95% or so, hate the work we do; hence after a weekend of rest from the complaining & whining, Monday is a rude wake up call that we have to go back to that drudgery of a life we call our careers.

Wisdom says, that in order to truly be successful, we need to do what we love and get paid for it; meaning whether it’s friday, sunday or monday, we will love getting up and facing the day with passion and excitement. The real trick here is finding what you love and making a living outta of it? I personally love sleeping in late, so i’m still trying to figure that one out.

Anyways, you can get rid of monday blues by getting rid of that deadend boring thing you call your job and discover your passion. Quit your day jobs bloggers! 

In other news, the monday blues have forced me to do something to shake up my system into functioning. So i changed my theme. It’s very black, strong and eloquent. A tribute to cousin Barry on his inaguration as presidente of americas. Black power people.

Shalom

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn’t have done it. Who was it who said, “Blessed is the man who has found his work”? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work–not somebody else’s work. The work that is really a man’s own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man’s work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great. MARK TWAIN

 

I have honestly tried to resist blogging about Obama and his victory but finally I give in. It’s not what you think. No praises and high expectations here, no sir. Obama’s victory as the first ever black president (forget all this politically correct crap of African-American) is undoubtedly the stuff of history. Martin Luther King Jr. must be jumping for joy in his grave while the KKK must be looking for lots of rope to end their lives. 

Black people the world over are hysterically happy at the reality of one of us being President of the US of A. It is rather ridiculously cool to be honest. I was one of the unbelievers. It is scary too. I remember some hip-hop artiste aka nigga’s, back in the day doing a video about being in the Black House and I thought, God forbid…Uhm…yeah…well….

But enough rambling. The black guy came from nowhere and won. Hoorah. Lets pat ourselves on the back. Those white people have finally got their comeuppance! Life as a person of color is forever going to be changed, right?

No.

The truth of the matter is Obama has only done one thing that we as black people should look to. He has proven that if you have a dream, believe in yourself, commit to improving yourself and working really hard despite what people say about you, you can achieve it. Even the odds are stacked against you cause your black with a terrorist sounding name and have close to zero experience, you can rise above your circumstances no matter what they maybe.

But it is still YOU who has to have the dream and work at it. Obama won’t do it for you. He isn’t the Messiah.

And there in lies the fundamental problem with his win. The black race in general (not you intelligent people reading this blog, of course) tends to expect things to be done for us, handed to us in an expertly weaved kibo basket. The American people didn’t just hand the presidency to Obama. After two years of effective and grueling campaigns; not to mention all the years working his way upto Senate, I’d say he earned it, wouldn’t you?  Everybody believes to some extent or another, that just like that, our lives are going to be automatically improved because the President of the US is a black man. Let the dollars and opportunities flow like the Crystal in a P. Diddy music video.

Sorry, it won’t.

The American Ambassador was on telly last night. He bluntly assured the public that America’s foreign policy regarding Africa isn’t likely to change one bit just because of Obama. He then went on to say, Obama serves the American people and won’t do anything unless it’s in America’s best interest. Ha! Chew on that one abit. Obama won’t be rushing to the aid of Ugandans over the Temangalo saga, or the potholes or the umeme loadshedding.

So let’s all stop sitting around feeling good about ourselves, waiting around for “ebyaffe” to be handed to us by Obama, M7, or even NSSF. Let’s get back to our own dreams, responsibilities and be the change we want to see in the world. Then we too can stand proud as Obama did on Tuesday night. We are all victors. But only when we take responsibility for our own lives and choose to live them well and live them fully as God has called us too. This is the only way, the so called plight of the black man is going to be improved, each individual improving themselves, their thinking, their lives will lead to a global change in us all. As iron sharpens iron.  

Let me end by congratulating Cousin Barry for doing humanity proud by becoming the second youngest and most tanned president in the history of the US of A. Truly it is the land of dreams. God speed ma nizzle, I luh you man. I’m down wit you. Yo off the chizzo. Holla at the First Nizzles.

Shalomizzo

“Yes we can” Barack Hussein Obama, 44^th President of the United States Of America

Darn it, i just couldn’t resist anymore. The Bloggin craze has long been burning like an insane wild fire fueled by a petrol vapor breeze. I tried my best to stay out of it but truth be told, i’ve dying to get into it just so i can rant and rave and wax philosophical and pretend to be really wise and experienced. Life can get downright complicated and stressful that you need an outlet and honestly, people, real people, wont give you the time of day to do so(ironically they’ll read your blog so i guess there’s some wierd kinda secret pleasure that we all get from reading about other peoples rants!) 

So anyways, this is my blog. Who am I? Well I’m a recently married young African black male(the odds are really against me when you read that description?!) whose honestly seeking to become a much better human being and contribute to my wife, family and world in a powerful positive way. To do this, I have taken up an Apprenticeship to the greatest Man to have ever impacted the world, Yeshua a.k.a Emmanuel aka Christ aka Messiah aka GOD. Why Him? Well I love to read self help and I’ve come to discover that certain principles and laws repeat themselves and are indeed straight from the Word of God. Just read proverbs and you’ll find “The Secret” Need a role model, the Teacher Himself is an amazing guy. I often wonder what would happen if He were born in this era of ours? I bet He’d be bigger than all the self-help gurus whose books we like to read.

So the purpose of this blog is to follow my lifes experiences and learnings and share them with whoever is looking for answers. I don’t claim to have them, but I’m desperately looking for them just as you are. Please feel free to comment and contribute. 

Shalom