THE LOST TALENT

  Right from when he was a kid, Yemi knew he wanted to dance. Dance was his life. There was no dance move he couldn’t do. He told his parents as a kid, they laughed that he was just a kid. When he was filling his JAMB form, he wanted Theatre Arts but his father reminded him that je was a Doctor and his father was one too. James filled in medicine. He became a doctor, a good one at that but there was something missing. Dance was gone, so was the light in his eyes.
  All Daniel could see was colours. He could create something out of nothing. He had the touch. Best in art class. He could see shapes and sizes that others couldn’t see. He got

LETTING GO OF 2020 AND HER DRAMA

It's a New Year!

Also available on podcast via Buzzsprout : https://bloomwithfrances.buzzsprout.com/

CHANGING TODAY

 You might be looking at your present situation in despair. There’s no money in your wallet,

MOMENT OF HOPELESSNESS

A friend asked me a question, days back, “Frances, what do you do when everything is hopeless, when people

Motivation Tuesday: GIVING UP

  Sometimes, it seems like the easiest thing to do. You just want to stop struggling and survive. The weight is just too

Motivation Tuesday : VISION BRINGS PROVISION

Have you ever heard that Vision brings provision? I heard that a while back at a lecture given by a successful business man who owns

IS HOPE ENOUGH?

  I hear people say all the time;
 "We hope for the best."
 "All we can do is hope."
 "There is nothing we can do but hope and pray."

 What then is your definition of Hope?

 ‘To have a wish to get or do something or for something to happen or be true, especially something that seems possible or likely.’   
      
 ‘A feeling that something desirable is likely to happen’.   
   
The above definitions are according to the Encarta dictionary.

  Should you keep waiting for a wish to get or

YOUR WORST ENEMY

   Michael flew from one church to the other. He was told his mother was a witch, another said he was dealing with an ancestral curse. He heard one story or the other everywhere he went. Michael is handsome, brilliant and was voted the most likely to succeed in his high school. He is thirty now and stuck in the same dead beat job he got after he passed out of the NYSC programme. The plan had been to work for two or three years and then start up his company. It’s been eight years now and he is still there. He had applied for other jobs but never got any. He had told his friends and family his plan but they all told him to

PATIENCE AND TIME.

Patience, that ability to wait, to endure, to tolerate, is really a virtue. I know that very well maybe better than most because I lose it sometimes. Sometimes, patience can seem like stupidity but it is

KEEPING HOPE ALIVE

 I remember one of my favourite stories of all time ‘PANDORA’S BOX’. If you are a lover of Greek and Roman Mythology you must have heard of it. Pandora’s curiosity got the better of her and she just had to open that box and out into the world came; misery, famine, hunger, hate, sadness and everything evil  known to man was released. Looking into the box, thinking it empty but alas, one was left. One had refused to escape. It was hope.

  In everything there is always hope. Hope for a better life is what wakes you up in the morning. Hope to put forward your best to leave your mark in the world. Hope that you’d find love someday pushes you into relationships with arms wide open no matter how many times your heart gets stomped on the floor. Hope that they’d spend forever with you makes you stand at that altar and say ‘I do’.  Hope for good education, takes you to the university. Hope, that there’d be electricity makes you pay the electricity bills even though your light bulb never blinked last month.

  Hope, there is nothing as powerful as hope. Hope lifts the human spirit. Hope is the reason we all still live in this country. Hope that the missing Chibok girls would be found. Hope that Nigeria can get better. 

  Hope no matter how bleak is hope. It can be a bright burning furnace, it can be a dim matchstick light, and it is hope. Without hope, all is lost. Hope to me is what the religious sects tag as faith.

  They say without faith you have nothing, so I tell you; without Hope you are lost.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever come across the lifeless body of one who has committed suicide? That is a person who had no ray of hope.

  Please keep hope alive. No matter how bleak your future looks right now. You might look around you and you see poverty . You’ve been searching for love but you’ve been thrown to the wolves every time. You’ve been hoping for a better country but the state of your country leaves tears and disbelief in your eyes. Don’t give up. Never ever give up.

  When everything looks bleak and beyond your control, you still have control. That control is hope. Hope will never leave you. Hope has the ability to manifest from your thoughts. Imagine if every citizen stopped complaining and calling the situation hopeless but held on to believe in the future, hope. Hope, I can’t explain it is like a spirit. It brings the right things to help you manifest it your way.

  During the slave trade, the slaves hoped that someday they would be free.  They held on to it tightly. With time, freedom arrived, their hope became real. Then the generations after them hoped for equal rights, to be free and seen as human. With time, segregation was gone and blacks and whites became equal. That hope gave birth to the future which is today, that undying hope has put a black man in the White house. I’m not a preacher but that’s the power of hope.

  People can say what they will about you, about your works, and about your circumstances but only you can change it. Do you believe the picture they have painted? Or do you hold on the hope in your heart that things will change, that where you are now isn’t the you of tomorrow?

  The power lies in you. That power is how big your hope for change is. Forget what you say to others. When you sit down and listen to yourself in the silence of your heart. Do you really have hope?

  I beg you, no matter where and what you find yourself in, there’s always hope. Suicide isn’t the way out. Only you can change that situation if you believe it can change. Your mind and hope becomes you. No one, absolutely no one can take that away from you.

  Keep the hope in you alive; keep the hope in Nigeria alive.

  Don’t lose hope. Cheers to the future you and your future situation. 

STAY HAPPY AND GRATEFUL

                                                             

  Sometimes we look around and feel unsatisfied with where we are in life. It’s a natural human emotion to want more, to need more, to want it all. We all have complaints about one thing or the other in life. Even the richest men in the world, need and want some things in their lives. Sadly, no one’s life is perfect they say.

  Well, maybe it’s our wants and desires that make our lives seem less than perfect. With our wants always in sight, we often forget to be grateful for the things that we had and still have.

  It doesn’t mean we should compare our lives to that of others but we have the greatest gift that some don’t have; Life. We breathe, we move, we eat, we think, we stool without aid, we can run, dance and so many other things. We are hale and hearty. There is no gift in the world that beats it. Even all the money in the world, all the love in the world can’t buy life. Life is one thing everyman be he rich or poor covets. If there was an elixir to life, people would kill to have it. 
                                      

   If you think your life is in a rut, look around you to the beggars on the streets with various ailments, if that doesn’t cheer you up that your life is great, think of people you know who’ve died and others cut down in their prime. What they say is true, 'when there is life, there is hope’. You have a chance they do not have. No matter what you think that problem is, how great it seems, how depressing, embarrassing, you are alive. That problem hasn’t won you yet. When it wins is when you let it kill you and stop you from living your life. You become so obsessed with making money and gaining recognition and respect that you lose yourself and forget to actually live and enjoy the little things. Life just passes by you. You fill your life with fake appearances and people.
                                                

  Life is short ,true but it isn’t how long you lived nor how rich you were but how well you lived the life you had, especially to yourself. Did you stay true to yourself and your beliefs? 
                                         

  Your life isn’t bad, no matter how sad, dreadful, heart breaking it is. You are alive! If nothing else can cheer you up, that should. When you take a step, smile. When you put that spoon laden with food into your mouth, smile. When you pass in the loo, big smile. Take a deep breath and smile. If you are reading this, give your brightest smile. You are alive and that’s bigger than your problem, no matter what it is. Stay happy!
                                      

  If you enjoyed this post, do check out other posts such as; COMPETING WITH OTHERS. MAKING LEMONADE, UNGRATEFUL MUCH and others. Cheers!