NIGERIA: Get up, World Moms, Aisha’s Talking to YOU!

NIGERIA: Get up, World Moms, Aisha’s Talking to YOU!

by | Oct 8, 2015 | 2015, Africa, Inspirational, Nigeria

World Mom, Aisha Yesufu in Nigeria, has an incredible amount of drive. From humble beginnings, she worked hard at her education and it became her family’s ticket to a better life. We’ve had the chance to join her virtually on World Moms Blog’s panel at the World Bank on the right to a universal education in April, and she is truly, an inspiration.

Just in time for International Day of the Girl on Sunday, get ready, women and girls everywhere, to reach your goals and make things happen!…

If you want to reach your goals, start a business, or start doing anything else for that matter, it has to start in your mind. You have to believe in yourself. You have to believe that you can do it, and this is where most times we have a problem. We start something without actually believing that we can do it. Sometimes we just start certain things without truly believing in ourselves.

We are either pressured into doing it, or doing it because others are doing it; and its expected of us. We start never truly believing in ourselves. You just go ahead to start something, and even you, yourself, are not sure you can do it. You don’t believe you can do it and along the way things begin to fall apart and you begin to blame external forces.

There are no external forces affecting us. The problem is our mindset. What is your mindset when you are about to start? That is something that we can change.

Other times we never start something because in our minds we do not think we are worthy of it or capable of it.

You have to realise your mind does not know the difference between reality and what is not real. Let me give an example. You are just sitting down having a nice time and all of a sudden you hear bad news. You know what happens when we hear  bad news? Everything changes, and we begin to cry or scream or feel sad. Your whole body, your whole mind, everything changes. What happened? It’s only that the news got to you!

2015 WMB Quote Aisha Yesufu

You don’t even know if what you just learned is true or not. Have you confirmed the bad news? Fact checked it yet? No! You just heard the news and that’s it. That’s the mind. It does not ask for confirmation whether the news is true or not, it goes into the mode it’s fed. That means your mind does not know the difference between truth and a lie. It is reactionary.

If you have continously been told you would amount to nothing all your life and you feed your mind that same notion, well, then, guess what? You may think this is true about yourself! You have to free yourself from the shackles of mental bondage.

You can always trick your mind. For example, you can tell your mind you are the greatest business person in the world. In fact you are at par with Dangote, a billionaire and businessman in my home country of Nigeria. Your mind doesn’t know whether it’s the truth, or not. It’s going to accept it, but the thing you need to do now is to begin to do what smart business people do. I listened to Dangote once on a live interview on TV sometime in 2001 or 2002, and he said he goes to work around 9am and doesn’t close before 9pm.

For me that was a wake up call. I had one of my “Aha!” moments then. When I first saw him I thought, “If only God will bless me the way he has blessed this man.” And when I heard he works 12 hours a day, for me, that was a wake up call.

If you trick your mind into thinking that you are among the ranks of the leaders, and you begin to work as they do, you may begin to set bigger goals for yourself. You can run with the best of them, but you have to BELIEVE it.

When you are trying something new with the mindset of negativity, it could impede your progress.  At that point, you may not want to even bother starting. It failed before it took off because it failed in your mind, if you did not have the right mindset. But I believe this thinking can be changed.

Aisha on Megaphone 600

World Mom, Aisha Yesufu, speaks out in Abuja on August 17, 2015 against anti-corruption in Nigeria.

Business and goal setting starts in your mind and you need a lot of patience. Business needs patience, patience and more patience. There is nothing like overnight success.

It’s a whole lot of hard work starting something new and having the right mindset. Persevering, focusing on what you are doing. Setting goals and moving on. This does not come easy, but I believe if you keep going that is what leads to that “overnight ” success that a lot of people see. Our mindset is very important and often times when you talk to people the mindset is just not positive. We are looking at our past and looking at who we were and not who we could be.

Where I grew up, we didn’t have anybody. We were born into less privileged homes. It didn’t matter. Whether you are a billionaire; the child of a billionaire; the child of struggling parents making ends meet or from a rich neighbourhood or the slums; it doesn’t really matter. It’s your mindset that matters and determines who you are at the end of the day.

If you don’t believe you are a star you can never be a star. If you don’t believe you are a success you can never be a success.
You can never be greater than your mind.

You have to set your mind higher. Give it goals. Give it targets. Give your mind something to work on. Trick yourself into thinking positively. It doesn’t know the difference between truth and a lie. Tell your mind a good lie.  “You are a big time business person.” “You are a billionaire.” “You are on Forbes list.”  Let your unconscious mind even when you are sleeping work on that.

WMB 2015 Achieve Your Goals

Our mindset is of such utmost importance and most often we neglect it. We don’t work on it. There is a need for us to work on our mindset to project ourself mentally where we want to be before we begin to work on that.
Some use Affirmation like repeating to yourself…

I AM THE GREATEST BUSINESS PERSON. I AM THE GREATEST TEACHER. I AM THE GREATEST ASTRONAUT. I AM THE GREATEST CHEF. I AM THE GREATEST POLITICAL LEADER. I AM THE GREATEST MUSICIAN. I AM THE GREATEST FRIEND. I AM THE GREATEST PEACEKEEPER. I AM THE GREATEST HUMANITARIAN.

You can keep saying that repeatedly so it becomes engraved in your mind. Whatever you want to be, you need to let your mind know.

Once you have a positive mindset and believe you CAN, you can start thinking about setting goals to achieve something in your heart. Something that you would ordinarily look at as impossible, but because of your mindset you don’t see the impossibility. You see the POSSIBILITY. You just strike out the ‘im’ and you move on.

Have a positive mindset. Believe you can do it. Why not you? Why can’t you achieve it? If people are achieving it why not you? The difference between the achiever and the non achiever is the MINDSET. Go get ’em, World Moms!

This is an original post to World Moms Blog by contributor Aisha Yesufu in Nigeria.

Photo credit of Aisha to the author. Images to World Moms Blog. 

Aisha Yesufu

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SOUTH AFRICA: Terrible Twos AND Terrible Teens?

SOUTH AFRICA: Terrible Twos AND Terrible Teens?

by | Feb 20, 2014 | Parenting, South Africa, Uncategorized, World Motherhood

Parenting Styles

I clearly remember (as a young first-time mother struggling with my son’s colic and projectile vomiting) being told by other mothers;  “Oh, that’s nothing, just you wait until he hits the Terrible Twos!”

That colicky baby turned 21 last month, and I have learnt a few things along the way!  First and foremost, children tend to live up to our expectations (even our subconscious expectations).  If you’re sure that you will experience the “Terrible Twos” chances are better than fair that you will. The sad thing is that most parents don’t know that it doesn’t have to be that way!

Every child is unique, and every parent-child relationship is different, that’s why there are as many parenting styles and beliefs as there are parents.  That said, most parenting sites and blogs tend to reinforce certain ideas (like that of the Terrible Toddler years and Terrible Teen years) so that new parents accept them as being inevitable stages of life.

“Robert Rosenthal brought to public attention a powerful type of self-fulfilling prophecy, in a classic experiment about the expectations of teachers (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). In the experiment, all the students in a class were given a standard IQ test. After the results were scored, the researchers informed the teachers that five students in the class had unusually high IQ scores and would probably be “spurters” who leaped ahead of their classmates during the remainder of the year. In reality, the five children were picked at random. By the end of the year, all the children had gained in IQ, but the five “spurters” had gained much more than other students. Evidently the teachers treated them differently after being told to expect sudden improvement.”

Since 1968 many similar experiments to the one cited above have been carried out.

“Rosenthal notes that the expectancy effect has been documented in business management (where the biasing effect is the expectations of employers about their employees), in courtrooms (where the biasing effect is the expectations about the defendant’s guilt or innocence), and in nursing homes (where the biasing effect is the expectation that a patient will get better or worse). 

In all cases, the expectations tend to come true, whether they are based on any objective evidence or not. 

 Apparently, as a general rule, people make their expectations come true. Rosenthal’s research shows the Pygmalion effect is not only important; it is robust. It is a strong effect that occurs in many situations.”

I believed in the “Terrible Twos” with my son (because I didn’t know any better) and we battled for 2 years!  By the time my daughter was born, I’d learnt a lot, and I believed we wouldn’t have any trouble at all … guess what, we didn’t! We also haven’t experienced any of the unpleasantness that some believe is unavoidable during the pre-teen, teen and early adulthood years.

Given the above,  I feel that the Terrible Twos and Terrible Teens are only fact if you believe them to be!

Can you think of ways in which your children have lived up to your expectations? Do you believe that by expecting a different result you can create a different result?

This is an original post for World Moms Blog by Mamma Simona from Cape Town, South Africa.

Mamma Simona (South Africa)

Mamma Simona was born in Rome (Italy) but has lived in Cape Town (South Africa) since she was 8 years old. She studied French at school but says she’s forgotten most of it! She speaks Italian, English and Afrikaans. Even though Italian is the first language she learned, she considers English her "home" language as it's the language she's most comfortable in. She is happily married and the proud mother of 2 terrific teenagers! She also shares her home with 2 cats and 2 dogs ... all rescues. Mamma Simona has worked in such diverse fields as Childcare, Tourism, Library Services, Optometry, Sales and Admin! (With stints of SAHM in-between). She’s really looking forward to the day she can give up her current Admin job and devote herself entirely to blogging and (eventually) being a full-time grandmother!

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