 Welcome to The Advocate where we discuss topical issues in a no-hold bad manner. In other words, we call a spade by its name. According to Julia Hart, there's a lot of clarity in hindsight. So today, I'm taking you on the journey I have titled Things I Wish I Knew Before Now. Felix, who makes his debut today, is lecturing us on youth and leadership. Julia, who also makes her debut today, is telling us about how much our environment influences our lives and coyote wraps the show up by asking if we even know that as Nigerians we have rights. So sit back and after this break, we'll be here to dissect it all. Stay with us. Things I wish I knew before now. So here I am, taking stock and checking out things and I decided to do a listing of all I've learnt over the years. So, fasten your seatbelts and enjoy the ride with me. Here goes. One, what my 18-year-old self should have known. Hmm, it's so important to have a life plan. And no, I wasn't too young and neither are you. Two, after law school and maybe before, it would have been a good idea to have a career plan. A little bit of career planning and strategy wouldn't have been so bad, right? But hey, maybe it wasn't so bad after all. Because how would I have gone from a law degree to a master's degree in international law and diplomacy to working in international media and then varying into branding and education? Anyway, you get my drift though. A little strategy would have helped my wanderlust have a path. So, get your digs on and put a strategy on that career. Ah, the one that I learnt and enjoyed and still do is meeting strangers and becoming friends. And I have a story about that even today. It's such a pleasure to walk up to strangers and leave feeling like best friends. A small tip on how to do that. Just find a way to make it about the other person. Remember, everyone likes someone who makes them feel sane. Should I share here my first full on public experience with a f***ing knife? Oh my goodness, my law school dinner. All I thought of was, how is this chicken going to be demolished with a f***ing knife? Like, how do I not pick up the chicken with my fingers? Well, let's just say I'm glad for my mother's lessons and an observant eye that quickly scanned the room. So my dear, dear, dear, grab some dining etiquette tapes so that you don't bump on your next business lunch. See me now. It's hard to believe I was terribly shy at some point, but I was painfully so. But a few lessons on how to build my confidence straighten me out. I do hope that you are also doing some stock-taking because life in Nigeria is hard. But it can definitely be a bit different when you look at your life and all you are where and can become. So like me, maybe you want to ask yourself, who am I? What are my strengths, my weaknesses? What opportunities is life offering me based on where I'm coming from and what I am now? There is a proverb that says, if you don't know where you're coming from, you can't know where you're going. So yes, while the threat to life right now may be Nigeria itself, what are those things you have learnt over the years? What do you wish your 18-year-old self had known and what would you want your 70-year-old self to say about the life you lived? Well, price of rice, beans and curry has increased but we are here and we all need life hacks to survive. This is my own to you today. My advocacy is, find how to mentally survive in Nigeria and become the person that you want to be. So... I guess Juliette was going to have a woman work for you. So what are your thoughts, Juliette? I think she can identify with it. Probably tell us your first experience before her knife. Well, you see, this is what I see. What you just discussed or just presented here is a subject that affects a lot of people. Of course, they're talking about the lighter side of a knife, but a lot of people go through school not knowing what they want. I have a niece who today is into catering and doing very well, baking cakes and all that. And we were talking one day and I said, you know, you just wasted your parents' school. You said, why no? I was like, I've just gone to baking school from secondary school and I started making money a long time ago. And the truth is it was bad in the 80s and the 90s when we were finishing school. But now it's worse because back then you still had people you could look up to. Maybe, you know, we're trumpets, maybe law or engineering or something. You had people you could look up to in the family. You had mentors that were mentoring you directly or indirectly. People whose lives you were shaping yours after. But right now, we don't have quote-unquote father figures anymore. So the youth are a lot more lost right now than we were during our own time. Because though you were lost, you see that people you could see around you that you want to emulate. But now I tell people that a lot of the English, it was like grammarian. It was like bogus. So we use it wrongly for a long time. We picked all that from some big boys in the area. We picked some of these words from music. We picked it from movies. But now, I don't know where they're going. I know that this is the general viewpoint that people hold about how things are worse. But then at the same time, I sort of feel like maybe back then when we were growing older, our parents also felt that things, the older ones felt this as well. I'm sure that somehow, because I was having a discussion, interesting today about a few things. But I feel like there's still area of hope. And I feel that rather than us continuously talking about how things are worse or they're getting bad or like young people don't know what to be, maybe we should start shining the light on how they will actually find their own pathway. Change is the only constant thing in life. And I think Juliet may have some views on this as well actually. So Juliet, what are your thoughts? I mean, this was very profound. I was actually lost in the entire text. I was just like, wow, the context of the lesson was very profound and it was very clear. Where you're coming from actually helps where you're going to. It was so, so, so out and it resonated with me. But one thing I also know that people should look at is determine where they are going to. Where are you going to? Where do you want to be? We just go through life without planning, without like an idea on the final destination. I think the educational system helped us to think like that. I think this is my opinion because for some reason you just don't do a lot of things. You get into primary one. You finish school. The school pushes you here and there. You do lessons. You get into the university. Everything just seems to be automatic. Then you graduate. And it becomes what next? And you are like, the government is not doing anything. The place is not safe because there's no more enabler like the school system helps. So you've been sport for like 12, 15 years on automatic growth and there is no plan. Very true. But what I tell people is you have to define your destination. What do you want? I know the country has issues. We all agree. But in this rut, people are still successful. Very true. What are they doing differently? And do you know that is one motivation? That's one thing that pushes me. What are your own thoughts? My thoughts, I agree with what you said but I will slightly differ. What you said is systemic. You go through like a robot and then you come out and finish primary to secondary school. You think the socratic distance and examine life is not what you live in. You go into adult world. Think about your life in retrospect. Just like what you're trying to say. Just like how you have to learn how to use the fucking knife. Environmentally centric. Environmentally centric. That is your way of the environment. And then you see like feedback mechanism in engineering. You take back your errors. Take it internally. Internalize your mistake. Learn from your mistake. Move on. And write your script. The future is a script. Write it out. What you're saying now, I agree with both of you. Strangely. Let me start with you. I'm going to use a very simple example. Something happened recently. My wife took a course online. After she did the course, she submitted the assignment. There was a feedback. She still worked on the assignment because it was an assignment-based course. Certification. She worked on the assignment. Interestingly, they gave bullet points of what she was to write. I'm like, why are you giving the answer already? But you know what I noticed? By the time she started answering those things, she discovered things she never knew. Because she now had to research. Do new findings to answer. Though they've given her all the points. But the amount of work that went into it made her stronger in that course. Compared to ours where you don't tell you where to study and we feel we are being so strong. You do all your career and drop and all that. Coffee and pastry. I don't understand. I don't understand that. In the long time. In my school it was coffee and pastry. That's one man. On the other hand, where I tend to agree slightly, we use that. It's good to have a retrospective view at life. However, you can only be retrospective if you have an understanding of where you are. And that's where we're getting it wrong. A lot of people don't even listen. A lot of people don't understand until it's too late. When they're in their early 30s and they realise what brings about the understanding, it's not an introspection. It's the reality that everybody around me is gone ahead of me. I'm 30. I haven't done this. Wow. So then you start looking at life. So there has to be an awakening element. And like you said, something has to shield you or guide you, not necessarily shield you. All through life. Like, I mean, the school, unfortunately, is the school that does that for us. But if you're able to develop the brain to the extent that you have M and E mechanisms around us, you know, exactly, then we'll be able to grow better. And you've got to listen. We're not going anywhere. I was just telling someone recently that listen, we seem to focus a lot more on entertainment. Okay, I think we haven't had discussion earlier on. There are no more values. When I'm buying exercise books for my kids and I see a sports person on a celibate, I'm like, no. Give me one with somebody wearing suits. You know, there's time for everything. Well, I can say something quickly. I remember when my son was in primary school. They told him to write their top ten celebrities or popular people. Famous people. Famous people. So I was really interested to see who he considered famous. He was in primary school. He had Justin Bieber. He can imagine. He can imagine. But there was Mandela and Jesus. And eight people. I didn't know some of the people. But I knew there was Bieber. There was Michael Jackson. There was Nicki Minaj. And I was like, did nobody have success with mom? There's also success. So which is in line with what you don't know? Anyway, people, this has been quite an interesting one and I believe that the process of becoming successful is just as important. So up next is Felix after the break. Stay with us.