Dear Olaedo,

Your greatest fear

What’s your greatest fear in life? If you are anything like me, it would be a failure.

Failure to measure up. Failure to prove to everyone that you are not basic. Failure to achieve everything you’ve set out to achieve. Failure to pepper dem. Or just failure!

Living with this fear is maddening. It is stressful! You keep trying to measure up for all the wrong reasons.

Fear is no respecter of any reason so even if it is for the right reasons, it would still mess you up.

I used to think the fear of failure is a good thing and that it would make you stay on your toes and put more effort into whatever it is you are doing to succeed.

It does the opposite.

When you have pushed all the boundaries you can push and things don’t go your way, you hate yourself. You slowly go into depression. You think you are incomplete.

Putting too much value on things that can perish is not a good idea because as much as you think you have what it takes to get and keep what you want, life still happens.
People still die!

Otedola, Dangote, and few other successful Nigerians you know weren’t the only people with access to capital, wit, hard work, and smart work in their generation.

Time and chance happen to everyone.

This is not to say you should not aspire to be great! I am a hustler! So hustle ooooooo so that…(complete it with what is likely to happen to you. Lol.)

At the end of the day we all die; the rich and the poor, the young and the old.

I don’t know my grandfather. A couple of his direct children are dead. In a few years, every other person who knew him would be dead. Would it be insensitive to say I don’t even care about him?

I hope he enjoyed the short life he lived. I hope he didn’t try to please everybody. I hope he did only what he could and what he was ready for at every point in his life.

I have the same hopes for you.

Relax!

With Love,
Mama

-ChyD
© 2020