We will use 3 easy methods in this session
- I’ll teach what I can
- You’ll ask what you want
- We will discuss whatever’s unclear.
My annual calendar every year begins in September, not January every year. My Q2 ends in February so I tend to go on leave in February for a week or two.
This feels strange to some people but it is accurate for me because when I look at my year, my work begins during my birthday and business anniversary in September and gets intense to November when I take my annual leave and gets really busy in December all the way to February.
Why does this matter?
- Your year begins when you decide.
- Your year begins when/where you put in the work
- Your year begins when you follow your own rhythm.
I have a word for the year 2026. But I also have a word for the year 2025/26 calendar year. As this New Calendar Year runs, I merge it in my mind to what I was looking forward to. The implication of knowing my year can be January – December or September – August also means I have liberty to begin projects any time. Fail any time, restart any time. Cry any time and very well choose to get back on my feet. It is an awareness that the days and the weeks are in motion and whenever I jump in, my new calendar can begin.
I want you to think of three things right now:
How many of your friends share your birthday? It means their consciousness of turning a new age does not start at the same time as yours does.
How many countries share your timezone? Even Ghana is not in the same timezone as Nigeria even though we are both in West Africa. Australia is 10 hours ahead of Nigeria. New York is 6 hours behind Nigeria. Chicago is 1 hour behind New York even though they’re both in the US
How many businesses or projects do you have that all share the same launch date? It means you have multiple New beginnings in a year.
If we do not understand the concept of time, everything in life will always be too fast when we are under pressure. Everything will feel too slow when we are desperate for the next phase. Our minds will always be locked into the fear of “I’ve missed my slot” whereas, there’s a new slot coming and we are not prepared.
In 2019, I was serving in Ondo state. I had gotten a scholarship to school in Amsterdam but I was serving, so I told them I’d rather come in September than in April since my service would finish in June. The school then said they’d postpone my final interview from January to March so they can cater to April students first.
In February, I got an opportunity to write a few pages of research for someone and I was so happy about the side 20k or so. March 4th, my Dad called me right after I had mistakenly closed my Microsoft word document and didn’t save the research, so I was frantic. I told my dad I’d call him back.
March 5th & 6th, I finish & submit. That 6th, I took myself out, cut my hair and I was feeling great.I was to call my Dad, remember. They called me from home that evening that my Dad died in a car accident on impact. I called a grief therapist who told me to go to a friend’s place because that night would be long and I needed someone to be with me. I went to a friend who was kind enough to keep quiet for 24 hours while I slept, prayed and rant.
March 8th, I’m travelling back to Abuja. It’s funny because I was to be in Abuja for women’s day and I refused. Well, guess who’s on the road.
I got home, did the first daughter thing and went back to my service station waiting for burial. That’s when I remembered my Amsterdam interview was the first week of March and I had missed it. I emailed them and they never emailed back.
I lost my Dad… and the interview.
Meanwhile, while this was happening, my friend’s birthday was March 6th. Another friend lost her aunt two weeks after my Dad.
I go to the village for my Dad’s burial that’s slated for April 12th. That same April 18th happens to be my best friend’s birthday. Every March 6th, I get the option to celebrate a birthday or get stuck in the idea that my father died that day. Every April 18th, I get a choice to celebrate my best friend’s birthday or focus on it being my “Dad’s birthday”. Every first week of March, I get the option to live a New life or complain about missing a scholarship interview (that there was no guarantee I would have passed) in 2019.
Later that year, I met an amazing man and we dated for a few weeks. Things did not work out as we both envisioned. Not too long after our break up, he starts to travel out a lot and do really great things in his field. I get the option to wonder if I’m cursed or know that although we were two great people, we didn’t pay the price for a great relationship. He got married and I am single. I get the option of “swearing for him” or realising no one stopped me from dating.
I have seen my mates travel out, get married and do all sorts of things. But I also I read of a young woman who lost her husband in the first year of marriage. And I have seen another woman whose family didn’t like her husband last in that marriage for 8 years.
I am not speaking to you from text books today because I want you to come out of your head and look around. Touch grass as they say.
There are only 365 days in a year!
8 billion humans are sharing those same days. It means good things, nasty things, sad things, happy things will always happen simultaneously and the state of your mind at every given minute of the day is showing you what you are focusing on.
I am not denying that I lost multiple things in 2019. I can’t even deny the grief in that year. But by 2026, I have a choice to move towards healing or not. If I am stuck after all these years, it has nothing to do with my Dad dying, my relationship ending, my scholarship falling through, my quitting my job to return home to take care of my family. It has everything to do with what I have been focusing on.
HEALING IS A CHOICE
Between 2019 and now, I’ve built a business. I’ve experimented with businesses. I’ve lost some businesses, lost all my social media accounts at one point, my fashion magazine website has crashed about 3 times, people have looked at me like I’m balling, people have asked me why I still live in Nigeria, some people have questioned why I am a therapist and I’m single, some have wondered if I sleep around as a sex therapist and some look at me hoping I’ll get married soon and they can be at peace that I’m having sex now.
Understand that people’s opinions of your situation very rarely translates to your feelings, your experience or your support in the situation. However, if you don’t take care, you will start to mirror people to yourself. ‘People are looking at me like I am broke’‘, ‘People are looking at me like I am not successful’‘, ‘I told everyone I’ll travel but I did not again. Now, they think I am a liar.’‘ etc
Last year, I got admission to study a course in Florida, raised funds and went to the American embassy 4 days to my trip and my visa got declined after people had chimed in. Someone had offered to pay my $1k for the trip the day before the interview.
This was September 19th by September 20+ or so, I got funding to test the idea for my tech company. Two things can coexist. Just because it’s 8:02 AM in Nigeria now does not mean it is not 6:02 PM in Australia or 1:02 AM in Chicago. Time is moving. What are you doing with the time? Grieving the past or Moving forward?
So, let me give you a few tips to handle yourself as you move forward even when life is happening
1. Move Regardless.
The idea of perfect healing before you move forward will keep you permanently stuck in life.
The environment that hurt you cannot heal you. Besides, until you move into a new and better place, you don’t even realise how much healing you need.
For example, around some people, you are called too ambitious because it’s a poor environment. Yet, there are areas where people are not even striving to be rich. They’re just rich. Until you enter those types of places, you will always apologize for your desires.
So, move. Move clueless. Move! Move often ! Heartbroken, move! Succeeding, move!
2. Healing is a process.
I stopped crying about my Dad really quickly but it didn’t mean I did not sleep off any and everywhere for months. I was sleeping around the day of his burial. I slept off everywhere. I gained weight.
Then a point came where I wasn’t sleeping off everywhere but I was talking about him everywhere. In fact, on my way to his burial, I accidentally dialed his number to tell him I was at the stop in Delta or something.
Now, I am set to release a prayer album on his birthday but with joy. See that? It’s a process. Be gentle with yourself.
3. Build relationships before your rainy day.
I did not try to become besties with my best friend after my Dad died to use her as a substitute. Babe and I were grounded long before.
The friend I went to stay at her place, did not get manufactured the night my Dad died.
The mentors whom I went to after doing first daughter duties did not miraculously appear that night. In fact, this family is the place I have spent the longest time after my parents and they were not even family friends. I cultivated this relationship without any external motivation brick by brick.
Who in your life can you spend 9 months in their house right now if you were in a hard season that are not your parents friends?
4. Therapy is always cheaper than the problem.
In cash, I know therapy is expensive. Yet, when you weigh that beside the emotional torture of say a heartbreak, you will realise that doing that work with an expert is easier than binge watching movies, hating yourself and focusing on everything that’s wrong in your life.
5. Time is your friend
Time does not heal any wound but time gives you the opportunity to do the work required to heal any wound.
Start again. If it does not work today, start again. If you don’t like this therapist, find another one and start again. Your ex broke your heart? Move, lean on community, get into therapy and start again. You did not get the visa? Take a break, lean into community, get expert help and start again.
Time will be what you do with it. 6 years of building the same thing and failing has more weight than 6 years of doing nothing.
As a therapist, I know some people’s next relationship will fail even if it’s in 10 years time because they’re doing exactly what they did 4 years ago that sabotaged them. Time is only as useful as what you did with it.
6. Learn.
Everything you know now may not be useful tomorrow morning but if you learn something new, you can weigh this and that and have something in your tool box to deploy.
I missed a scholarship to the digital society school of Amsterdam. I focused on therapy that year. In 2024, guess who ended up owning a tech for wellness business? Me. Both eventually came together
7. Know what you have faith in.
If you have faith in failure, you will fail. If you have faith that you’ll eventually find a way, you will. If you have faith in God, then have faith well. Your faith cannot be random. It’s easy to know what you have faith in; what you always think will happen to you is what you have faith in.
I hope I have helped you to realise that Time & Choice are always available regardless of the situation.
Thank you very much ladies.
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