IN THEIR SHOES

After a long hiatus, our beloved "Myrtle's Place" Columnist Enewerome is back with a bang with this short mind capturing story  

Rita stood under the shower spewing water hot enough to defeather a chicken. Her tears going down the drain with the water from the shower. She took her sponge and started scrubbing her body with so much force that it hurt and she began to weep. "Was it a crime to trust?" She thought to herself. Her chest felt so tight and heavy and she could feel herself suffocating. The immense pain in her chest numbed out the sting of hot water hitting her hard scrubbed skin. She screamed at the top of her lungs and collapsed on the bathroom floor as she continued to weep. Weeks ago, in a discussion with a group of friends at school, she had openly condemned girls who trust had given a harsh deal saying they should have been wise enough to know no one could be trusted. Who knew that one day the tables would turn? She had trusted Dom her best friend and it had earned her the same title- foolish. Yes, she was as foolish as she had called those girls. Maybe even more because there had been warning signs and she had seen them. She should have known that ignoring those red flags would somehow make her stand in their shoes. The shoes of those she had judged foolish, the shoes of those who had trusted and gotten hurt.

Difference between the wealthy and the mediocre poor

It saddens me that you see lots of people who call themselves Christians criticizing true, God sent men of God because these men have private jets and because these men of God are wealthy.

These people criticizing the wealthy men of God are mostly those struggling with poverty. You will hardly ever see any rich man criticizing a rich man for being rich. Why is this so? This is because the wealthy know that one of the secrets to getting more is by giving. Truth be told, in our society, they poor people tend to be more stingy than the rich, although there are exceptions to this, but 90% of the time, its true. Poor people are more concerned with holding on to what they have than releasing. And by poverty I don't only mean financial poverty, but also poverty of the mind. You wanna be rich? Give! People complain that they work too hard and yet no result. You know why? You are working too hard. Let hard work complement smartwork. The wealthiest men in the world read. You wanna get wealthy and you think its just by working? Nahh! Read! Reading doesn't necessarily have to be academic books, personally I hate reading academic books, although due to my course  of study I have to study my law books. But 1 thing I make sure I do is to stock my library with lots of business and leadership books to the extent that my wardrobe is now filled with my business books. During my service year, I realized that the secret of wealth is looking in the right direction and part of looking in the right direction is 1. Giving 2. Reading 3. Moving with the right set of people. So I decided to use my first allowed in camp plus the little money I took with me to the NYSC Camp to buy books. I spent about N30,000 on books in camp cos I began to realize the importance of books in growing wealth. I read an article about Bill Gates where I found out that he makes sure he reads at least 50 books a year which is approximately a book every week, and this he does despite his very busy schedule. This statistics woke my spirit up because I realized I hadn't started. It was in the course of studying that I realized that I needed to go back to my accounting, a subject I hated and dropped in my ss1. I realized that numbers are integral to a businessman which is why Billionaires often speak in numbers, an example is my role model Donald Trump who knows his numbers from A-Z. If you watch Donald Trump's "The apprentice" you will realize he has his numbers at his finger tips, backing up his knowledge about every company or industry he talks about with their estimated worth. Another example is Strive Masiyiwa, the founder or Econet wireless and Kwese tv this man always talks in numbers, thats the difference between the rich and the poor. One last thing that differentiates the rich from the poor is that the rich pick out their friends strategically and they know that not everyone can become their friends, some see this as pride but its wisdom, the world is so perverse that if you take everything with its face value you'll lose the plot. The wealthy move with people of like minds which means that the only people you can see with the wealthy are those who they can either benefit from or those who care about them and they in turn care about. Do these things and you've opened Pandora's box to finding wealth.
Think on these things!

BREAKING NEWS!!!

The next big thing in the literary industry after Chimamanda Adichie's "Purple Hibiscus" Our very talented, creative and indefatigable columnist has outdone herself this time around as she opened her heart out to her readers in her new book.
Our Myrtle's place columnist Enewerome is out with her very first book "CROSSROADS". You can't afford to not read it as that will constitute a crime! You can download CROSSROADS for free using this link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2fEys5jT11sd3ZLMzN2aFl1QUU/view?usp=drivesdk

KARMA

Susan stood in front of the mirror and touched her unkempt hair. The spots on her face showed the evidence of age long pimples, her nails were short and ragged, and she couldn't even remember the last time she owned a bottle of perfume. Was that why he was leaving her? Was all these enough for him to leave her with three teenage children? She wiped her eyes roughly, determined not to throw herself a pity party. She would go to the salon, have her hair and nails done, buy new clothes and a couple of really expensive perfumes. She would show him that she was done being a devout housewife whose only concern was the well being of her family. The young woman he had his eyes on had no children so why won't her hair be as bouncy as a basketball? Or her waist as tiny as it is? She cringed as she remembered how she had seen her husband hug the woman and even grinned as he touched her hair. She had followed him secretly the previous day when he came home for lunch and left without any explanation after going to the patio to receive a call. She had always suspected something was up with her husband and her suspicions had grown each day when he came back from work later than normal, put a password in his phone and even sneaked out of bed late at night to receive calls when he thought she was fast asleep. She looked at their wedding picture on the wall and remembered how happy she had been that day. Twenty years of marriage and three children had transformed her from skinny, beautiful Susan to plum Mama twins. She clenches her fists and hit it on her dresser  as she screamed. Life was just not fair she thought. It wasn't fair that she was no longer as attractive as she used to be while James looked like he hadn't aged a day and now another woman, a young girl had stolen him. Stolen!  That same word had been used on her years ago, way before she met James. She had been young and very attractive and all she'd wanted was a maga who would spend his money on her and take her on trips. She had gotten all that and more. Chief's wife had found out about their affair and left him. She'd also confronted Susan and called her some choice names. Over the years, she had totally forgotten about Chief, his wife and their broken marriage. But now, as she looked at herself in the mirror with tears swimming in her red rimmed eyes, she clearly  remembered the hurt on the woman's wife as she said,
"I may not get back at you for destroying my marriage. But karma will. It definitely will."
And it had. Karma had definitely sneaked up on her to pay her back in her own coin. Maybe it would pay back the girl her husband was with in future and then the cycle would continue. Or not
Image credit: rawforbeauty.com

MYRTLE'S PLACE with Enewerome

KALEIDOSCOPE

“I am not pretty”, “I need to lose some weight”, “Why am I not tall enough?”, “If only I was light skinned”.

The list of complaints some people have when they look in the mirror or when people make comments about them is endless. The truth is, no one should define you or tell you who you are because they didn't create you. You are to define yourself, say what you want to see in your life and not what you've been told. This is not just any regular motivational speech someone cooks up, this is the truth you have to know to help set you free and help you live to your fullest potential in the confidence you were created to have.

Mirrors were made so we can see our reflections and know what to adjust right? The thing is mirrors do not show who you really are (those potentials inside of you), they just show your current state or situation and the truth is sometimes you may feel disappointed by what you have seen or maybe if you are lucky, you would feel happy with what you have seen. The question is ‘but for how long?’

All the mirrors in the world put together cannot define you or fix your self esteem no matter how many times you adjust or correct those flaws. Each time you are faced with harsh confrontations from someone trying to put you down or a bad situation you have tried so hard to get out of, you end up seeing something negative about yourself.

 Life is a kaleidoscope; the angle from which you look at it (life) determines what colours you get to see. Bright, dull, white, black, rainbow or nothing….it all depends on you. If there’s a perfect mirror you can look at, a mirror that no matter how bad you think you look shows you a really perfect image of how much greatness you have. Wouldn’t you get that mirror? Then why have you neglected what God’s word (the perfect law of liberty) says about you?

As you behold him as in a glass (mirror), you are changed from glory to glory…..you’d get to see yourself the way God sees you. No flaws, errors, just total perfection. Life shouldn’t define you. Let the perfect mirror do just that.

NEW COLUMN ALERT!!!

So we have been talking of youth this youth that, involving career and growth seeking youths in what we do. and we are proud to inform you that our first growth seeking Youth has come on board and she will be taking over our blog for today, she is a great writer and motivator, which is why she will be writing for our blog on a monthly basis sharing stories and motivating us with her motivational posts. She will have her column on this platform.
She would simply be known as Enewerome and she has tagged her column MYRTLE'S PLACE. Her first post will be coming soon to inspire you for the week ahead, therefore, ANTICIPATE!!ar


If you are a youth and you know you are a great writer and you want your work to be seen or you want to join the Gidi Steel team kindly send an email to us on gidisteel@gmail.com. Your topics could cover a variety of areas including business, politics, lifestyle, fashion, religion and so on.

FACEBOOK’S LUTHERKING

Youths of our generation are so deluded and hide or mask themselves under the cover of generalities, 21st century/social media adages and modern day proverbs, sayings such as “it doesn’t matter whether your peers are succeeding now”, “everyone has his time”, and “the fact that others are succeeding now doesn’t mean I won’t succeed”. As much as these sayings might be true, many hide under them, these people have become social media activists, 21^st century Gani’s and facebook Lutherkings advocating for the rights of the lazy, reposting and sharing them knowing fully well that these sayings doesn’t apply to them and isn’t the cause of their problems and predicaments. These people know fully well that their problems stem from laziness, they are very lazy, gods of procrastination and kings of sleep and yet they say “when my time come, I go make am”, True! Your time will come, True! You will be successful, but your success would only be in your dreams because unfortunately for you , when your time came, you were sleeping, when that opportunity knocked at your door you didn’t recognize it, you didn’t recognize it because you didn’t open the door when it knock because you were busy sleeping or procrastinating by saying “I’ll attend to this later”.

This our shortcomings allow us have the time and energy to criticize our leaders for not making life easy for you, you are annoyed with these leaders because, as a result of your bad attitude and character you’ve made things bad for yourself and you are so lazy to work you way out of the mess you’ve caused for yourself and as a result you look for someone you can lay the blame on for your predicament, unfortunately for the leaders, they become the victim. This is not to exonerate the leaders (the political leaders in this sense) of their sins as they are also guilty of gross misconducts.

This is a wakeup call to Nigerian Youths. “Let’s stand up, rise and work for our future”. Destiny is a delicate thing, pamper and care for it and it will grow to become beautiful, treat it carelessly and it becomes bleak. We hold our destinies in our hands, we hold the destiny of Nigeria in our hands; let’s not destroy that sleep on the sleep, procrastination and laziness. We have our future in our hands; let’s not allow generalities and the social media façade cloud our reality.

This is a message to me and every growth seeking Nigerian Youth.

As part of our initiative for helping the Nigerian Youth grow, GIDI STEEL has come up with a monthly giveaway which was formerly just segmented to the Nigerian Youth entrepreneur but now open to every growth seeking Nigerian youth. This giveaway is tagged #mygillionairestory. You stand a chance to win #5,000 for writing your story about any experience whatsoever in whatever career field you are specialized in, this story might be about an incident in the past in your career, either a good or bad encounter in your career experience and it should carry the ingredient of being either educative, informative, inspiring or entertaining.

                                                                                                                                                                   GIDEON PAUL

    

MY GILLIONAIRE STORY

The theme of the competition that was talked about in the previous post is #mygillionairestory

The competition is plain and simple, as an entrepreneur write a captivating, motivational or touching story of an experience you've had in your entrepreneurial journey, it might be a success story or a failure along the way. This story should be creatively written. The aim is to engage entrepreneurial minds on this platform and for the learning process of the budding entrepreneur.

ELIGIBILITY:  those eligible to participate in the competition must fulfill the following criteria:

1. Be an entrepreneur between the ages of 18 and 35.

2. Must be following this platform.

3. Your story must be realistic

4. You must be a Nigerian.

5. You must have a Nigerian bank account

How to participate:

To participate, you simple post your story on your page and tag @gidisteel and also use #mygillionairestory hashtag, your story will be reposted on this page, then you invite your friends and family to like your story on this page, the story with the highest like wins the cash prize of 5k which will be given at the end of the month, as such you have a whole month to garner as many likes as possible to increase your chance of winning the 5k at the end of the month.

PS: in a situation where the most creative story doesn't win the competition for that month, I'll give the writer of that story a special gift. The competition starts from 1st of June, 2017

THE NEW LEVEL OF WEALTH

As a young boy in primary school, I had many dreams, goals and aspirations, part of which was to become the richest man in the world. I dreamt of becoming the richest man in the world but I didn’t know the path I would take to achieve this or get to that level of wealth, as a matter of fact I didn’t have any idea or knowledge of the word ‘entrepreneur’ talk more of taking entrepreneurship as a career path. I also dreamt of becoming a soldier (I’m guessing someone is saying “this guy is confused”, a guy is allowed to dream *smile*).

When I grew a little older (by this time I was in secondary school) and realized that the richest man in the world (Bill Gates) was worth billions of dollars I began to dream again and made up my mind that I would be the first trillionaire in history, mind you, I’m measuring these wealth in dollars. This mind-set made me so allergic to the idea of ever being poor.

I started studying about wealthy guys, guys like Mansa Musa 1 of Mali who is regarded as the richest man of all time with a net worth of about 400 billion dollars, John D Rockefeller, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Carlos Slim, I even started to estimate how wealthy Solomon I the Bible was.

I felt if I had attained the level of a trillionaire (in dollars), I had attained the highest level of wealth. How wrong was I! I couldn’t be any wronger! (Excuse my French)

As I grew older, I started to learn about entrepreneurship till it became my passion. I started many entrepreneurial ventures and small businesses (mind you entrepreneurship and business have different meanings although commonly used interchangeably, but they are closely related), some I failed at, others I succeeded at, most times I just blew my profits, but I learnt a lot and I’m the better for it. Today, I have many stories to tell in my business/entrepreneurial journey.

Along the line, I stumbled on my biggest discovery yet; I found a new level of wealth in which I will reveal to you. This level of wealth is called “The Gillionaire’s” level. Meaning we have, the millionaire, the billionaire, the trillionaire…and the gillionaire.

Unlike the other levels of wealth earlier mentioned where your wealth is determined by how much you have, the gillionaire level is determined by how much you don’t have, that is, how much you give out. It doesn’t necessarily have to be cash; it is just how much of yourself you give out to the society, how much the society feels your impact or how much you do to improve your society. Based on the Holy Bible in Acts 20:35 where it is said that “it is more blessed to give than to receive”, the ideology behind the word “gillionaire” is captured in the first letter “G”. The letter “G” in gillionaire connotes many things as you will see.

A gillionaire is an entrepreneur who is God fearing, a giver, a goal chaser, an agent of real and positive change, a gillionaire impacts his society for good.

It is often said that givers never lack, a gillionaire carries the “givers never lack” mind-set which makes them exert themselves more to the betterment of the society. A gillionaire is active and has the strength and vigour of a youth.

In its entirety, a gillionaire is an entrepreneur with a difference, an entrepreneur who is anointed for business and uses his/her influence in the market place to touch lives and help make the world a meaningful place to live. Once you’ve reached this level of wealth, you earn joy, true satisfaction from the insatiable wants of man and you become the wealthiest man in the world. 

    ARE YOU A GILLIONAIRE?

Gidi Steel is a company that wants to help build a generation of gillionaires by helping start-ups and young entrepreneurs in Nigeria grow. As part of our mission to help and support start-up businesses and young entrepreneurs in Nigeria, we’ll be introducing an online Gillionaires competition and give away from next month (1st June). You have the opportunity to win cash prize from this competition and gain a lot. Don’t miss out of this opportunity.

This competition will be specifically for IG, so check out our IG page @gidisteel for details of the competition.