#DearMentee,

WHO ARE YOU![b][/b]

Once upon a time, there lived a farmer in a remote village. One day, he got tired of the daily routine of running the farm and decided to climb the hills in the nearby bushes to see if the grass was truly greener on the other side. He climbed and climbed till he got to the top of the hill and much to his surprise, he saw a nest full of eggs and immediately recognized them to be eagle’s eggs, he decided to take one of the eggs and carefully put it in his back and began his descent back to the farm since it was already getting late.

Upon getting home, he put the egg in with the few chicken eggs in his yard. The mother hen was so proud of herself, thinking she had laid such a beautiful egg. 3 weeks later, the egret hatched along with the other chicks. Mother hen on seeing the difference between her chicks and the egret, raised them as normal chicks. The baby eagle grew up learning the ways of chickens, scratching in the dirt for worms, flapping its wings furiously and flying only a few feet in the air before crashing back to the ground. The other chickens even laughed at it because it looked awkward and different from them.

One day, much late in its life, the eagle who thought it was a chicken happened to look up in the sky and he saw a bird soaring majestically with scarcely a single beat of its majestic wings. “What’s that?!” cried the chicken-eagle in awe…That’s the king of the birds, it’s a bird of the air not like us, we’re birds of the earth…replied a chicken nearby. Still bothered, the chicken-eagle walked away to a pool nearby to have a drink and upon seeing its reflection in the mirror realized that it looked exactly like the eagle it saw soaring minutes ago. No sooner had he come to this realization, he promptly flapped its wings with determination and never returned to its chicken lifestyle.

Dear Mentee, a lot of people are like that chicken-eagle, they read books, watch movies, listen to other people to find out who those people are, and in the process they forget that they themselves do not know who they are and what their essence is. They fail to realize that “of all knowledge, the knowledge of self is the greatest”! Like the chicken-eagle, they function below their capacity and full potential because they do not understand who they are and what they carry on their inside.

They follow anybody that comes around and says anything that remotely sounds good to them, they jump from one church to the other, switch from one job to the other…they accept offers that is no good to them simply because they think there is no other option…they even follow people who belittle them and talks down on them failing to realize that most times, those people they follow around are not nearly as good as they can be if only they discover, develop and deploy themselves. My dear Mentee, I hope you are not one of them and I dare ask who are you? Look, if you do not know who you are, then you are lost! Whether you know it, admit it or not, there is a subtle social conditioning going on on the various media platforms, whether it is radio, television, internet, social media or wherever…from music stars, actors, the international community etc should you give in? NO!!!!! Why should you even consider it in the first place? Do you bear the same name with them? NO!!! Even if you do, are you one and the same person? NO!!! You see, one of the primary indicators of who you are is your name, you most likely have heard the adage, “give a dog a bad name and hang it!” unfortunately, a lot of people today are ‘hanging’ because of wrong association and their failure to discover themselves.

Dear Mentee, #BrandYourself, never allow people to brand you or give you names, if they do, make sure it does not stick unless you approve of it and it is in line with the you in you that makes you you! The journey to self knowledge/discovery is not an easy one but it is not insurmountable, thankfully, there are a lot of resources/mentors available to help you discover and know you enough to become what you were made to become. But remember, the first step to effectively brand yourself is to define/answer the question ‘who are you?’ in other words, until you know yourself, you will not soar like the eagle that you are!

Until we talk again next week, be the best you can be…

#Live…#Love…#Laugh

Your mentor

George Natural Onuorah