No shortcuts to success

Stephen is a lawyer, a teacher, and a motivational writer. In summary, the kind of inspirational figure many youths and adults alike like to look up to.  But Stephen fought a good fight to get there. He was born out of wedlock, and separated from his mother very early. As a baby he was also burnt and still has gaping scars that make you shudder at the pain he must have suffered.

With Stephen on his graduation day

Like many children from poor families, Stephen experienced lack his entire school life. After S.6, he didn't get enough points to earn him government sponsorship at university. He pursued a Diploma in Business and got employed as a records assistant at a sub-dispensary upcountry. After five years, Stephen saw no future in that, and decided to repeat A-Level. This time he scored enough points to get admitted at Makerere University on government sponsorship. But instead of his dream course, Law, he was given Education. He completed it and taught Literature in secondary school for three years before he decided to apply for Law on private sponsorship. He was admitted, and quit his school job to pursue his dream course. It was a leap of faith, a great risk seeing that he had not saved enough for tuition. 

He was often chased out of examination rooms for incomplete tuition. Being a go-getter with great people skills, Stephen was not afraid to approach his friends for help. Those who were able to did so but Law being such an expensive course, it was not easy. Whenever he was on the cusp of surrender, somehow a good Samaritan would rescue him with a word of encouragement or a cash bailout.

Four years later, Stephen completed his second undergraduate degree, and proceeded to LDC were he completed his Bar Diploma, and is today a practicing lawyer with a respected firm in Kampala.

Stephen's life is a perfect testimony that meaningful success has no shortcuts but comes after years of struggle, resilience, patience, courage, faith, passion and hard work

A woman called hope

She has a smile like the morning sun. No darkness however thick and no blackness however pitch can override her radiance. If you cling to her for dear life no situation however threatening shall overpower you. Hope will flash her beautiful beam into that despairing heart and flush out that groom and doom, giving you the strength to keep moving and believing till you break through.

The smile of hope cannot be erased by circumstances

Once lived a very influential man in the East whose generosity, integrity and pursuit of purity made God to brag about him. Then tragedy struck. The man lost his thousands and hundreds of sheep, donkeys, camels, oxen, and his seven children through natural disasters. He was also struck by repugnant blisters that made every part of his body to ooze pus.

The man's three best friends came ostensibly to console him but taunted him instead; attributing his suffering to "secret sins". Day and night they harassed him to repent. His wife stopped believing in the light at the end of the long dark tunnel and advised her suffering hubby to curse God and die.

But this man had an ever-flowing fountain of hope in his big heart through which he bubbled: "Thou God slay me yet will I trust Him." It was the voice of defiance reminding affliction that being down is not being out. It was the voice of optimism that should keep resounding in the minds of those who want to make it in life.

People who turn to the bottle completely or commit suicide have forgotten that every hole in the heart can be filled; that no suffering is permanent as the story of our wealthy man from the East proved. He was absolved of any secret sins and rewarded with double for his trouble. No matter what you are going through, your best days are ahead. Be patient in tribulation, pray relentlessly, cope with hope and you will have the last laugh.

Hunting for a wife

The wisest king that lived, Solomon, said he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favour from the Lord. No one finds without seeking, thus the quest for a wife as would bring favour, is not for the fainthearted; it can be arduous like digging for gold. A man who is ready for marriage must be like a serious hunter who won't return home without game.

The kind of marriage ordained by God

A friend of mine who got married last weekend to a Swazi beauty certainly got a better appreciation of Solomon's words when he travelled all the way to the high and rocky kingdom of Mswati III to seek her parents blessing. It followed five years of courtship before both got fully persuaded they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. 

But today most men who decide it's time they settled down make the biggest mistake of falling for eye candy. They forget that Solomon  talking of "a good wife" makes it obvious that there's the opposite number; the bad wife: insecure, a control freak, a nag, vengeful, proud, quarrelsome and quite a handful--the type whose contentions Solomon likened to "a continual dripping of rain". Basically living with her is like living in a leaking house for the rest of your life. Like most fake products, such women are often blindingly pretty and those who fall for the exterior without studying the interior begin regretting even before the honeymoon is over. 

That's why it's prudent to take your time and not let hormones and emotions override your search for a proper wife. Take your time to know that woman before you pop the big question. As a born-again Christian, I believe a woman who professes and possesses Jesus Christ as her Lord and Saviour can make a good wife. Be careful though because not every church-going, choir-singing, tithe-offering, overnight-attending, tongue- speaking lady is God-fearing. Some of them are wolves in sheep skins. If you are alert as you pursue her, you will see and hear things from her upon which you will base to take the plunge or run away before it's too later.

Doing a Leicester

'Doing a Leicester' is the newest and hottest expression to enter the unofficial football lexicon, and it means to succeed beyond wildest expectations. It was coined after the 'underdog' Leicester City embarrassed the naysayers and stunned the big cats by winning the Barclays Premier League with two games to spare.

Nobody is a nobody if we quit excuses and fight Leicester-style

 According to a BBC pundit, "They were a team of cast-offs and bargain buys written off before the season had started, led by a manager who had been sacked in five of his previous jobs."  

 But as the wise King Solomon, once said, the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong. The Foxes have proved that much is true by outfoxing their  opponents with a fighting spirit that adds sense to the motivational saying that it's not the size of the dog but the fight in the dog that makes all the difference.

Their never-say-die attitude saw them come from behind to win, and in several contests won 1-0; endearing themselves to football lovers with the knack with which they defended their narrow wins.

 One of my favourite preachers Clovis G. Chappell, once said that the very poetry of living is in lifting the lower into the higher and changing the useless into the useful. That is what Claudio 'Tinkerman' Ranieri has achieved with his team of "cast-offs and bargain buys". They identified with him because he too was a 'nobody' who had been sacked by many clubs for failing to win anything worth winning. The Italian also rummaged through his bag of experience and found many tricks that kept his players energised; he bought them pizzas for wins, gave them quick holidays and turned them into his best friends. 

They rewarded his faith in them with robust performances; their fearlessness and hunger for success shooting through the roof match after another. Now the underdogs are the new Premiership champions; a fascinating odyssey that demonstrates that nobody is truly a nobody if they quit excuses and 'do a Leicester' by activating a heartened fight inherent in every person.

Disarm them with charm

"The Mask of Zorro" is the only movie with blood and gore that I've watched repeatedly because it is entertainment par excellence. Incredible action, incredible lines. But the bit that applies to this piece is when Don Diego (Stuart Wilson) tells Alejandro (Antonio Banderas), "You have passion and your skill is growing. But to enter Montero's world, I must give you something which is completely beyond your reach."

 "And what is that?" Alejandro asks.

"Charm." 

Indeed when Alejandro acquires charm, he becomes the unstoppable and irresistible new Zorro as the disarming Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) will tell you.

Charm is the most potent weapon in the marketplace

There you have it, ladies and gentleman. Charm is the magic bullet that never misses the target. It's the most potent skill in the marketplace. It opens the most tightly closed doors. It wins you friends that can get you big projects that previously seemed unattainable. 

 Charm is the light that dispels the darkness in your business world; it's the fuel that keeps your engine roaring; it's what keeps you performing with pleasure in spite of the unpleasant circumstances surrounding your life and work. 

Charm does not come easy but it's not beyond attainment. It takes brick by brick to build a skyscraper, you acquire charm step by step. When you explore your world; read great books, watch fine movies and interact with informed people, it increases your knowhow. When you do exercises, be clean, feed well, have enough sleep and give your best to what you do, you stay focused and refreshed. 

There's a whole lot you can do but ultimately charm is all about having a positive mentality. It's about deciding to be the man or woman God created you to be. God didn't create shrinking violets otherwise He would not have commanded us to subdue and rule the world. 

Be charming.

Naked courage

There's a drop of madness in every person, it is said, and I can hardly question the veracity of that after witnessing a sizzling bout that took place at Makerere Institute of Social Research early this week.

In the red corner was Dr. Stella Nyanzi who has garnered quite a following on social media for her lewd witticisms, and for projecting herself as a nonconformist who doesn't care what the world thinks about her words and actions. And in the blue corner was Stella's immediate boss - Prof. Mahmood Mamdani - a man of monumental intellectual pedigree who wanted Stella booted out of her office for insubordination and for allegedly using the office majorly for private work. 

Dr. Stella Nyanzi stripped [internet photo]

 Stella hit back that she was not Mamdani's tenant, and teaching a PhD course was not part of the contract she signed. The fight culminated in her unleashing a jab queerer than Mike Tyson biting off part of Evander Holyfield's ear in 1997. She stripped  to complete nakedness and shot a video of herself in that bare form while a trajectory of cusses directed at Mamdani rumbled out of her mouth at gunfire speed. And when she was spent, she loaded the video onnto her Facebook wall, where it enjoyed viral viewership.

The trick worked like magic; Stella was soon restored to her office and poor Mamdani was left licking the wounds from the 'knockout' and a haunting reminder that no man can fight a woman and win.

 The reactions thereafter were contrasting. Some said it was uncouth for a woman of Stella's age (42) and education to undress in public. Others hailed her as a woman of "courage" who like a cat pushed to the wall did what she had to do to save herself. 

It's that aspect of courage that piqued my interest. In Uganda, courage is the most misunderstood word; blackmail, recklessness and shamelessness are equated to courage. But courage without equanimity, propriety and rationality is a good looking apple rotten on the inside.