What does a life of options look like?

Well, for one, it means you’re able to exercise a level of freedom and power that few humans will ever hear about or even experience.

It means that you’re able to build an enhanced degree of anti-fragility into your life.

It means that your life will be like the proverbial house that was built on the rock… that when the wind and the waves of life came at it, stood tall and strong.

You see, the common man’s life is by default, built on sand - fragile foundations.

Anything and everything that smacks against his life can send him crashing down into the depths of despair - an election, petrol scarcity, a sudden unfavorable government policy, a visa rejection, job loss, inflation, etc.

His options are contained to a limited set of actions or as our people say, in a perpetual state of ‘God abeg’.

Political fanaticism appeals to such people because they genuinely believe that their wellbeing is tied to who the President is.

This fragility conditions his mind to habitual survival - a state of fight or flight.

You will find their angry comments on any social media post that says “I don’t remember the last time I looked at the cost of fuel”.

Sometimes they are unaware of this behavior or the unseen forces that have contributed to making them express themselves this way over a long period of time.

So what does a house (a life) built on the rock look like?

You see, the elite man cares about these political matters, but to a negligible degree because over time, he has built his capacity to be prepared for all eventualities.

His children are insured because with right knowledge of how the world really works, he has set his house in order.

Hoping for the best, he is also prepared and insured against the worst.

When he prays, it is seldom for supplication, and more for personal reflection, moral attunement and thanksgiving for the life of fruitfulness he enjoys.

He operates in quiet wisdom that is not always in words and social media posts. 

The work of his hands bears witness that he’s an uncommon man.

First of all, I need you to understand that at whatever age you are, you can revisit your foundations.

Of course you can, but whether you will, is a different matter.

It takes a superhuman degree of humility and teachability to undertake a course correction after you’ve lived and thought in a certain pattern for decades of your life.

How you see the pillars of life must change. 

The scales must fall off your eyes or you will keep repeating the cycle and bequeath the same to your offspring. 

Alvin Toffler famously said, “The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Tonight on Night School, we restart the series “Designing The Decade”.

We will visit a topic you might remember that I taught once in 2018 but never recorded - “Creating a life of options”.

Time: 9pm tonight (02-06-23)

Join us and invite a friend.

Request the streaming link here: https://hsa.to/decade

There will be no recordings.

See you there.


- John Obidi