A Fresh Coat of Paint

Dear lovely people,

It’s true and a fact that painting is a way to make a house look pretty. It equally protects the exterior from adverse environmental effects. To do it, you prepare the surface well and apply the best paint you can afford. In preparing the house, you have two options: touching-up or stripping bare. You can try periodic touch-ups with oil but the paint will continue to peel as it oxidizes and becomes brittle. When it does, you can scrape off the peeling portions, prime the bare spots and repaint with latex. Alternatively, you can strip the house down to bare wood and start over with latex. Take this route if you discover widespread paint failure such as cracking or flaking.

For blistering, peeling, or wrinkling — which are normally caused by excessive moisture, heat, or humidity — you'll have to correct the moisture that's causing these problems before repainting. Wow! What an apparently wearisome painting class isn’t it? Whichever path you choose, remember that painting your house with the best paint over an unprepared surface is like trying to hang a plain piece of paper on a refrigerator without a magnet: it just won't stick.

Do you see where I am driving to? Consider for a moment your life and your dreams, reflect for a second on your beautiful plans and strategies to realize your fondest dreams. You’ve been told over and over that even when the rough keeps going, NEVER Give Up, I agree but I want you to keep it at the center of your mind that the statement “NEVER Give Up” has NEVER on any occasion imply that you keep using the same old strategies and approaches that have not worked down centuries to face your dreams.

Some of those plans and strategies you thought where the best soon become old-school and outdated. Come-on, time changes, contexts do change and new ways of doing things come up such that your old and worn-out strategies become like old paint on the cracked, flaked, blistered, wrinkled and peeling walls of your life and dreams.

You’ve got to either touch-up or strip-bare the obsolete strategies you’ve been hanging onto before putting on a fresh coat of paint of reviewed strategies, redirected vision and energy and focus. That is exactly what it means to NEVER Give Up. The good news is that, it’s never too late to start all over as long as you are starting NOW. Maybe NOW is just the best time to go for a fresh coat of paint.

Never Wither Your Dreams in Winter

Dear lovely people,

It’s no news that in winter, days get shorter and so plants can’t photosynthesize for as long in the day and so can’t make as much energy. It is also colder, and so their chemical reactions happen slower. During this period, plants have three options: Try as much as the can to survive; Use more energy to try and keep warm or Sacrifice their leaves, but use less energy all winter.

It is possible that plants tried the first two at some point in evolution, but that the plants using the third option survived better and so this is what stuck and this is what plants use today. Some evergreen plants, survive all year with their leaves. They have several strategies for this. One is to have needle-like leaves – this reduces the amount of heat-loss by decreasing the amount of leave exposed to the air.

Plants can tell the season by both the length of the day/night, and the temperature. Plants can sense the length of the day and the night, and so can tell what time of year it is (days are longer in the summer and shorter in the winter). They use compounds called ‘phytochromes’ which determine the amount of light and then send signals around the plant, telling it to either grow more leaves, or let them wither and die.

Plants also sense the cold – not just the temperature, but also how much cold there has been. Plants will lie ‘dormant’ (when their leaves have fallen and they conserve their energy in the winter) until they have had the correct number of cold days to know that spring is coming. They then send signals around the plant telling it to start growing back ready for the return of the warm weather. Plants also use the day length to determine when to start flowering, which is why different plants flower at specific times of year.

You find that plans have over the years, developed strategies for dealing with harsh weather conditions such as winter that present them with untold difficulties on their growth and well-being path. What do you do when the winter of difficulties strike your life?

Imagine that after all the beautiful dreams to change the world, the wonderful plans, the strategies and hope for a better day in your life, the harsh winter of failure, deception, acrimony, bad faith, discouragement, failing economy etc. hit you so badly. Many are the lives that have been destroyed just like that, millions are those who have given up on trying. If you really want to success as much as you need to breathe, you will dump your leaves of blind-rocking, mediocrity, extravagance, lack of focus, fear, inertia etc. and take time off to reconstitute so that when the summer of a clearer vision, a clearer mindset, and rejuvenation comes, you resume in a better way or start all over?

After all, Winter Solstice marks a central part of nature’s cycle. It is a time of new growth, rebirth and renewal. It is a reminder that in order to begin anew, the old must end. It is the time of year when we pay homage to the darkness of life’s mysteries, while still keeping our faith. Spring will come again and so let yourself and your dreams spring up anew.

Titrate Your Success

Dear lovely people,

I particularly loved Chemistry back in my school days. I enjoyed doing titrations in the science lab. A titration is actually a technique where a solution of known concentration is used to determine the concentration of an unknown solution. Typically, the titrant (the known solution) is added from a burette to a known quantity of the analyte (the unknown solution) until the reaction is complete. Knowing the volume of titrant added allows the determination of the concentration of the unknown. Often, an indicator is used to usually signal the end of the reaction, the endpoint. I particularly enjoyed seeing the spectacular color change signaling the exact endpoint.

Then it occurred to me that the quest for success in life operates in a like manner. You have a dream, you visualize what it will be like living that dream when you achieve it. You establish a plan to realize your dream and then you go for it. Day after day and year after year, you work tirelessly investing energy and time in the actions that will cumulatively and finally take you to your dream.

During a titration, you don’t stop adding the known solution to the unknown solution until you see the permanent color change. There are moments when you use your wash bottle filled with distilled water to rinse all concentrates of the unknown solution into the beaker to make sure all of it is in and that impurities don’t add in. In the same way, while working towards your dream, you don’t stop, never give up until you attain the expected results. Impurities in the form of discouraging messages, temporal failure, disappointments, deception, betrayal and so on might threaten the process but you use your wash bottle filled with distilled water of a positive mental attitude to fight on and on until you reach the end point – Your success.

During a titration, only the endpoint matters, all other happenings are secondary. During your quest for success, all other happenings are secondary, your primary focus should be on realizing your dream. It is your fondest dream after all.