 The power of your environment. Recently, I saw a post online and it reads, if you hang around five billion years, you will become the sixth. I thought it was profound, so I shared it with my son. As an African mother, I tweaked it a bit. So when I shared this screenshot with him, I now wrote in text below. Son, if you hang around five losers, what do you think would happen? And he responded, I would become one of them. My son was 16 at the time and he was always getting into trouble in school with his friends. Well, I'm not going to go into my son, his father is his coach, not me. But let's come back to the power of association. Power of association is very powerful. It affects your thinking, your habits, the way you speak, and what you do. To achieve your goals and your dreams, it is important for you to surround yourself with successful people. Now that we are on the same page, let's take this a notch higher. Beyond your association, your entire environment influences what you do, what you become and what you have. I know people who want to quit smoking, but they spend their time in the same joints. They hang around the same set of smoking friends and they wonder why they can't quit smoking. It is impossible to quit smoking if you don't change some things around you. So there are basically three ways people attempt change. The most popular one is when you change yourself, but you retain your environment. If you use this strategy, growth will be slow and very difficult. It will be like an uphill task. Another strategy people use is that they change their environment, but they remain the same. In this instance, growth is also slow, but not as difficult. The ultimate strategy to affect change and growth is to change your environment and to change yourself. Using this strategy, growth will be faster and more successful. I will leave you with some examples of environment because sometimes it looks vague. And I also want you to know some questions you ask yourself to determine the optimality and effectiveness of your environment. Let's look at music. What songs lifts you up? People that are smart know what songs to play at different times. Imagine, for example, you are listening to Celine Dion, my heart will go on and on and you are in the gym. You will get nothing done. It's a very depressing song choice for the gym. So people that are smart know their song choices. Let's look at the home, another environment. What family members enable your progress? I'm not going to go there. Family is very sensitive. Another environment is friends. What people encourage you and help you become a better person? Since I changed my network, I have some of them here. My growth has been exponential both my personal life and my coaching practice. It is very important that you choose the people you spend time with wisely. Let's go to another type of environment, books. What books add value to you? Check out people who read books on manipulation like the 48 laws of power. Please don't read it. People like these are excellent manipulators. If you want to excel in anything, read books that enable you in that area. Another environment, there are so many examples but I will try and exhaust the few that come to my mind. Let's look at recreation. What activities revive you? For some, it's swimming. For some, it's the movies, the spa. For me, it's sleep. Once I sleep, I'm revived. There is no wrong answer. You just need to know what works for you. What activities ultimately revives you. Let's look at another powerful environment, your experiences. What experiences revitalize you? I have clients who have trust issues. They can't date as a result because of some negative experiences they had in the past. The truth is if you reflect in your life, you reflect honestly. You recall both great and not so great experiences. People that grow focus on the great and good experiences that ultimately rejuvenates them. My dear friends, the simple truth is that growth in any area of your life is enabled or hampered by your environment. So you must guide your environment seriously. Look how you do. When you started talking, the first thing that came to mind was how you ended it. You become what you profess. It reminded me of what my pastor said many years ago. He said, listen, if you're a man that has always been to brothels all your life or for a very long time in your life, then you become born again. You don't choose the brothel as your first place of evangelism, few months. That was a banjo quote. When you said brothel, my mind was going to you like that. But I get it. You get it. You don't go there. You need to leave that world. Go and preach. Maybe after two, three years you've trained yourself. Then you can go back there and say, okay, let me bring you out. You have to change your mind. Because if you don't, we're rather a minister to them. They'll minister to you and win you back. And that's exactly what you're saying. If you don't leave the environment where you are and you want to create a change in your life, what people don't understand is you don't have any reason to change. That's what your environment tells you. And I dare say that is one of the reasons we are where we are now in Nigeria. Because when you meet 10 people, they're complaining about how bad the country is. We know there are challenges. We know it's the worst in the world. If you want to put it that way, but for me it's not. We've seen more terrible countries. But the more you sing that song, the less you understand or see the opportunities in Nigeria. For example, successive governments over the past two tenors or so, the Jonathan Tenor and now President Buyeri, they've hammered a lot on agriculture. We complained Nigeria was bad under Jonathan. We didn't get into agriculture. The President has come, Buyeri is there now. He's still pumping and talking a lot about agriculture. We have all this stuff by CBN and stuff loans. We know everybody that applies to get it. We are in Nigeria. We know, but how many of us have even tried to say, okay, I'm complaining in Lagos. I've not had any stable job in the last two years. Why don't I go back to my village? You have a vast land there. I have cousins I can order. We will with the farm or the land that will grow things. How many of us have tried doing that? But we are not thinking in that regard. Why? Because the people around us are our complainants and we enjoy complaining. Oh, so entirely. I've got to throw things. I've got to throw things off. Go ahead. Go ahead. And I've got to say something first. I understand the power of our environment and all, but the reality, I mean, let's ask. So, where in Nigeria? Yeah. I mean, right now, I should just relocate to Canada first. Because we are telling them, we know the truth is I'm asking them. I really would like to know in this situation, how do we actually get to do this? The environment. The environment we're in. The scenario when we are in. What are we going to do? So, even though truly, I feel like when I was talking before the, before we got on the show, I was having a conversation with Juliette when we were doing what women do best, makeup. You know, interesting. And when she was talking, she had no idea why I was smiling. And I kept on saying, keep going on. Because it was something she said about power of environment and all on your network. And I said to her, when the progress, I said, there was a purpose for which a reason why you had to say all that you said that we had our conversation. And I do understand that issue of a network because one of the things that I try to do every time and everywhere is that because of the complaints, complaints, complaints that we all do, we all put out there. I asked myself that, how are we going to survive this? It grieves, it really saddens me. It demoralizes you. You know, for men, I don't even know if you men understand it as much. When you look at the next generation, and you look at people coming behind, you look at children. So we are looking from 9 to 18. I talk to, I don't do youth empowerment because I feel that there's a lot to be done in that space. But I kind of feel like when you talk to people in their 20s and their 30s and they say, we don't see hope. Then you ask questions and the question becomes, how does hope come? And I think that this part of the environment for me, it's heated, but I mean, my first thought was, can I just escape out of this environment? But then again, I asked myself then, in this same environment, somehow you are thriving. Not the way you want to, not the way you think you should. But like you rightly said, I just want us to be able to really, really drop the complaints curve. It drains us and changes the truth. The experiences I talk about now, when you focus on negative experiences, it's anti-growth. But if Feliz has something to say, Feliz, why are you saying, can you just also talk about how the average Nigerian, who sees that the country is bleak, how can he use his environment and be positive in terms of growth? Well, what I would say is that man at birth is a tabula raza. It means that it's in plain slits. It's waiting to be written on. So the environment is responsible for the rubbish we see in older ages. But the only way to correct this is at this level, when you are conscious, try to be a positive influence in your environment. You don't know who's person's life you are writing on. Very true. So that's how to start. Why we start the process of reorientation on the other persons who can learn from feedback mechanism, from their past experiences, for a good output. Oh my God, there's no... If you don't stop Feliz, you will spend another episode analyzing his words. That was good and I liked that. Thank you so much guys. Even I learned in the process. But the truth is that, if you want to change your life, you have to do some work. Nobody's going to hand it over to you. So after the break, we're going to have a look at your day here. Next.