Authenticity: The Great Liberator!

What does it mean to embrace one’s authentic self? It simply means being true to who you really are on a cellular level and answering present in your own life in spite of people seeing you as weird, phony or crazy. Authenticity means having the courage to love yourself while standing firmly in the vulnerabilities of all of those blemishes, ruffles and wrinkles which are often times part of the human reality and experience. Authenticity is a fierce and unapologetic loyalty to oneself!

Why is authenticity so important for our lives?

Because Authenticity means freedom and liberation! It means joy! It means living our lives as us, rather than as others. Being authentic means that we are living our truth especially given that only truth can effectively set one free. Freedom means true courage to soar in most aspects of one’s life. Living our truth almost always propels us in the right direction; ultimately steering us to our right calling, path, or destinations. When we are living our truth, we are approaching life from a path of conviction and courage and in that process, fear is conquered. When fear is conquered, almost every obstacle and challenge becomes exactly what it should be for people who get it; a positive teaching experience. When fear is conquered the sky becomes one’s limit. Throughout history, it has been men and women who are not afraid of being their authentic selves; sometimes being that lone messenger with the courage to voice their truth who continue to leave their imprints on the sands of time.

A lot of us go through life pretending to be who we are not for fear of getting disapproving glances from others or being unpopular. The effect of this of course, is a situation where we become stuck in the rot of a job we do not like, or the company of those that we cannot stand, or remain silent in the face of a glaringly wrong act perpetrated against another in our presence because we feel that if we voice out our opposition, we lose our friends. (Now, seriously! Do these people even meet the definition of a “friend” for starters, they probably do not!)

When we live our lives different from whom we really are at the core of our beings, life becomes unhappy and overly complicated. Our relationships suffer because our partners cannot even decipher who we are and often wonder why we changed when the reality was that we had faked it all the way! Even our professional lives suffer because we never conducted the business from a place of conviction and truth; we tend to be always edgy and angry, ending up infecting and contaminating people who cross paths with us with the same negative emotion we harbor and ultimately, we fail to excel at what we do and even take ignorant hostages along on our failing spree!

Ever noticed what happens to us when we lie? Ever notice our tone of voice sort of falters. We normally do not have the same courage and convictions that we usually exhibit when we are in the right or when we are telling the truth.

Without question, no two human beings are exactly alike. As children, we usually have different personalities and ideas and are usually unafraid to say exactly how we feel.  In that state of absolute truth and innocence, life is less complex and more fun! As children, everything is out in the open and generally we are mostly happy. We are unafraid of anything, (ok, may be . ., except for the boogieman and ghosts or dead people) until that drastic tsunami halts our nirvana. As adults, we try to conform to a set of unwritten norms and become boring and in the process lose our individualities. We begin to exercise tact in the most rigid and ridiculous manner and in the process become bland! Every adult acts just like the next adult and sounds just like someone they are not. Of course we mostly fail abysmally at what we do because we are fake! Many success stories today are about people who are different from the rest of the bunch and most of us fail to notice this or are too envious to acknowledge them.

Understand that I am in no way advocating the reality that an authentic lifestyle means that one becomes an insensitive potty mouth to others out of a need to always voice out one’s opinion, or that you must constantly be in the opposition simply for the heck of it. Not at all! I am merely advocating that a life lived from an authentic place usually is a happier one for the person living it and for others whom he encounters. His endeavors and goals are usually easier to accomplish because of the strength and conviction that backs the endeavor. His relationships are usually happier because it is less complex and not ridden with a lot of unnecessary baggage; business would translate to more clients and customers because nothing sells better than “truth”, plain ole simple truth! Devotion and conviction are by products of an authentic life-style.

Most importantly, the Universe would stand behind the truth, joy, conviction and courage that accompany an authentic lifestyle and knock “it” out of the park for you! Ready to kick start this new reality for your life in 2016! Let’s do this!

Happy Holidays family!!!,

Love,

Ogorgeous

We get served exactly and sometimes super-sized versions of what we dish!

It is an incredibly LOVING, fair and just Universe! Always pause before you think it, speak it, or do it to another!

The skewed definition of friendship in social networking; redefining social media friendship.

This is my personal opinion and reflects values that I hold dear and deep in my heart! If you find them helpful, then incorporate it into your online etiquette folder and use them at all times! The realm of personal choice has absolutely no bearing whatsoever when it comes to family! They are people who you find yourself in the same boat, cruising along through this amazing journey called life! Your best bet? Find a way to have fun with them as you cruise along! Friends on the other hand, are where personal choice reigns supreme! You have ample latitude to choose whom you deem worthy to be part of your circle. You can and have absolute right to exercise that power of choice how you deem fit and narrow or expand your personal criteria according to who you are! As much as people try to deny it, friends are really a reflection of who we truly are for good or for bad!

In the realm of social networking, the same holds true, each person must have a definition of who they call friend and no one should have a say in that definition but them! I find that I have tended to gravitate towards people who share the same interests like me. I love health and fitness, positive living, free spirits, inspiration, beauty, justice, and essentially anything or person that challenges me to be better on a daily basis! As in real life, in the world of social media like fb we run the risk of being in serious trouble if we reduce our standards on who we call friend! Social media should not make us reduce that standard unless we never quite had the standard to begin with! If in four years, (for me) you have never had a “friend” engage you or you engage them, you share nothing in common,. . .they are not your friend! “Engage” for me meaning wishing you a happy birthday, liking each other’s posts that spoke to them, liking each other’s pictures, poking (for some people), saying an occasional hello, or simply poking a friendly jab at you, etc.

Be wary, indeed, be very wary of people who leave no traces of themselves! We must be as territorial and protective of our online spaces/profiles with people who come to scroll through our profiles almost on a daily basis and leave no marks of their visits as we would be in real life about a visitor who constantly drops by our house and leaves no trace of their visit! If there is something about someone that you really like but hate due to your own insecurities (that you need to address) that make you constantly visit their profiles, and then leave feeling worse off, then you must really need that person’s friendship and so must tell them like we usually do when we were 6 or 7 years old. Those good old days, when we see people that we like, our child-like innocence makes it easy for us to say something along these lines, “I like you, can you be my friend”? :-))) LOL. . But on a really serious note, often times, these sneaky visitors never mean well! If they mean well, they would say hello or like a post or picture, etc.

In defense of the world of social networking, I have met so many wholesome and wonderful people through Facebook who I have gone on to have relationships with in real life! There are people on my fb friend list that I have never had a conversation with yet, I find them inspiring and enjoy reading their posts or simply following their lives which I find inspiring, chances are that I must have requested their friendship! Occasionally, I click the like button on a particular post by them that speaks directly to me! Those people reserve the right to unfriend me if they find me unworthy of their “friendship standards”. There are others that I really find that I enjoy nothing about them, we have no interactions whatsoever and the only things that we share in common are “mutual friends”. In reality, I also see the huge possibility that they also enjoy nothing about me, leading to a “friendship” that never quite translates to anything! Bottom-line, they are not my friends and the common sense thing to do is unfriend them!

I read with great sadness the story of this incredibly beautiful and seemingly industrious young girl, Cynthia, who was murdered in cold blood in Lagos, Nigeria, by some psychopaths she met on Facebook! I watched the video of the two men confess and was just so angry that human beings have degenerated to the levels of beasts in the wild who hunt for preys! She did nothing wrong! She trusted someone whom she may have spoken with online over a period of time! They betrayed her trust and murdered her! There are millions of people on a daily basis all over the world that have found true love and romance and sometimes even made serious business and professional contacts on social media sites! She unfortunately fell within the statistics of people that were not so fortunate! I pray her family and loved ones find solace in God’s peace and love through this incredibly difficult time!

In conclusion, start today to redefine who you call friends on social media sites! If you don’t have a true, candid or happy reaction towards a particular social media “friend” or their profile did not meet the standards of what you hold dear and true in your heart, use your DELETE button! It is the most powerful tool for online-self-protection on your keyboard! It probably makes sense to use the same standard that you use in real life! I am game! Are you?

Lovingly yours,

Ogor Winnie Okoye

Are you still living your life in Standard Definition?

Imagine, believing that your life can become everything you want it to become! Imagine, actually believing that those dreams, and  goals are possible? Our choice of core beliefs hugely determine the possibilities and the dimensions our lives will take! Life can be lived in full high definition only when we begin to believe that it is indeed our birthright to thrive and become as happy, peaceful and successful as possible! The problem is that very few are willing to think thoughts like these and to believe in that possibility. Mediocrity becomes their reality, after all, that is all they are choosing to believe for their lives.


We can barely exceed what we choose to believe possible for our lives. Remember the saying that "anything is possible for those who can believe". I am choosing to live mine in high definition! How are you choosing for  your life?


Lovingly yours,


Ogor

Whose song is playing in your life?

Often times we do not even recognize that we are sabotaging ourselves unconsciously due to the every day choices that we make. Something as innocent as feeling hurt, disappointed, betrayed, belittled, crushed, etc. It becomes even more difficult when it is coming from a loved one. There is absolutely nothing wrong with expressing any of these emotions. Indeed, medical research shows that it is actually better to let yourself feel those plethora of emotions instead of bottling it all inside of you and then having one major our-burst due to the pent-up emotions that you have been suppressing. We see people snap on a day to day basis!


It becomes wrong, counter-productive, and outright, self-sabotaging when we unduly fixate on those feelings and unconscionably let them dictate the course of our lives. There are people that experience a physical revulsion at the mere mention of another person's name. This may be due to the fact that they were hurt, betrayed, or disappointed by those people. When we nurture and allow those feeling to thrive within our subconscious, we are in effect permanently mortgaging our body and soul to someone who had deeply hurt us in the past and essentially telling them that we are open to being re-injured and permanently scarred by them. We are essentially dancing not to our own music but the music of someone who had hurt us!


Do you really want to dance to their music? Do you really want to effectively block off the gates to your own present and future blessing due to those toxic, negative emotion that had taken over your life? As hard as it may be, you must forgive the perpetrator, any and every single thing they had done to you! Total forgiveness means you see or remember them without ever feeling that same negative emotion. By so doing, you are making an unequivocal statement to the universe that you do in fact operate on a more positive and healthier frequency than these other people who had hurt you and in the process, throw open the flood gate of blessings. Those blessings perceive you are housing a powerful and positive force and will easily find your life, a really attractive vault to inhabit! Most importantly, you are choosing to dance to your own music; playing your own tune, just the way it should be, after all, it is your life!


Lovingly yours,


Ogor

Inner Peace. . .Got it?

Ever wondered how one can achieve inner peace?

Personally, I have realized that looking inwards and deeply into ourselves and concentrating on fixing our own flaws and not necessarily the flaws of others is a great route to achieving inner peace. Most people unduly fixate in righting what they perceive as the faults of others and lose out on fixing their own flaws. Each time we see ourselves condemning, criticizing, and coercing others to behave more like we would expect them to; we would almost never attain that state of peace of mind because we are constantly looking outwards of ourselves instead of inwards. Looking inwards makes us shine our heart-lights brighter than ever! Imagine how our world will be illuminated when everyone is shining their heart-lights as bright as they possibly can?

When we unduly compare ourselves to others and forget that the competition is not with any other person but with our selves, then we are getting closer to that path of our own peace of mind. The challenge for each and every one of us is to evolve into our best selves possible and not to become more like another person. We have been endowed with amazing will power (untapped in most people) to evolve and become better than we were last month, year, or even yesterday. The competition is with your past self versus your present self. How have you been doing? If you can honestly answer that version of today is far better than your version of yesterday, then you are a step closer to attaining inner peace. That realization and vindication makes you happy and content that you are definitely on the right path.

Finally, honesty, love, and truth may seem boring and inconvenient at times, but it is still the higher route despite what people would say or think of you. The more your actions are infused with those qualities, the closer you are to attaining inner peace given that you are not worrying about people whom you’ve harmed or hurt coming to get you. . .:-)

Kindly share more of your own tips to attaining inner peace.

Lovingly yours,

Ogor

Are you a true friend?

Instead of focusing on other people, have you ever wondered whether or not you, yes YOU, possess the qualities and attributes of a true friend. If you consider yourself a true friend to another, you owe to that other  person, support, encouragement, love, and affirmation not only when they are present, but more so when they are absent. You must openly commend, defend and appreciate your friends when they are present with you. That duty becomes magnified during their absences when others are present. Do you stand up for your friends? If you cannot stand up for your friend when they are not present but chose instead to throw them under the bus and castigate them, you are not being true to that promise of friendship. 


Every aspersion cast on a friend when they are not around is a reflection of your deepest fears, insecurities, and inadequacies and projects poorly on your character. Finally, as always, the eternal truth is that you will eventually get what you gave. It might not happen right away, but it would eventually happen.


Are you a true friend?


Lovingly yours,


Ogor