Features
How to live life to the fullest and benefit from all of stages of life
“New year, new me!” This is the sentence we all hear coming from every corner once the year starts. We all want to become the better versions of ourselves, to turn the next year into an adventure.
But most of the time, all we notice is that our lives are growing duller, and we seem to be going down rather than up. So how do we live life to the fullest and enjoy all four stages of life?
The answer is variety. When you wondering how to live your life to the fullest you don’t just have to think of one way to improve your life. If you feel as if you have reached a standstill, try changing more things in your life. Add some spice.
Take a break from ordinary activities and do something for your life. You don’t want to reach your old days, thinking “I wish I did that.” Do it now to spare the regrets! Here are some ways to make your life a lot better this year and live your life to the fullest.
Equipping yourself with a few enjoyable habits can make every stage of life youthful and smooth. Especially as a millennial person, so well known for delaying the commited aspect of life, you can make the third phase less scary.
1. Watch the sunrise
We know, this isn’t what you may have been expecting when you read the word “fascinating” – but our bodies sure agree to it. Have you noticed how dull you feel the entire day, when you wake up with the sun already up, leaving you in a complete hurry to get to your workplace and – once more – go forward with your dull day? Not to mention the stress that the day brings about.
Even if you aren’t a morning person, try to be one and watch the sunrise. Brew some coffee, go on the balcony, terrace, or whatever place brings you a good view, and watch how a new day begins. Not only is the beauty of it enough to brighten your whole day, but it will also make you start the morning like every human should and make you feel more productive in your tasks.
2. Quit the jobs you hate
Life is short, so why should you be torturing yourself by doing something you hate? Say you graduated with a major in biology, dislike working with kids and have a curious mind. Still, you decided to become a teacher since it seemed like less of a hassle at the time – only you realized it’s more of a struggle than it’s worth. You wish you went for a career in research, where you would continue to learn fascinating things.
Well, what are you waiting for? Sure, it’s risky, and it may take a while to reach success, and you may curse your days when you see your wallet. What do you want to be – broke and happy, or rich and miserable?
3. Get out of your comfort zone
Meet new people. Go to new places. Having a better life doesn’t mean that you only have to improve your current social life – you need to expand it. Sure, it’s crucial to groom your relationship with your close friends, but that doesn’t mean you have to say no to new people. Every person comes with new knowledge, a new adventure. Who knows, maybe that person that has been trying to understand you is someone that will rock your world. Many opportunities for an infinitely better life may come from you simply shaking hands with a new person.
4. Be kind to random people
By performing random kindness acts to people, you’ll not only bring about a positive outlook on your life, but you’ll be lifting their moods as well. Hold the door for someone at your job, treat someone to cake, send a random thank you e-mail or simply give some spare change to a homeless person. It won’t only make you feel good throughout the entire day, but it will extend to the other people as well. Studies have shown that helping others significantly increase your own happiness!
5. Get a gym membership
Going to the gym may seem like a drag that you associate with sessions of torture, but you will be thanking yourself later on. Not only will regular exercising make you look like the Greek god you always wished to be, but it will also improve your productivity by increasing your stamina.
Long story short, you will not get tired as easily, and you can get more things done without feeling like you’ve reached a new level of hell. Plus, this will also improve your immune system, and you will no longer feel weak.
If going to the public gym is not your thing, you can make your own training zone at home. Websites such as garagegymplanner.com could help you choose what equipment you should get.
6. Start saving money
Wouldn’t it be better if you drove a car to work every day instead of taking the overly-crowded bus? Sure, there are still traffic jams to keep in mind…but you will at least be sitting in your own space, maybe sipping a coffee without a bunch of other people breathing down your neck.
Saving some money can help you achieve that. Instead of blasting it on stuff you don’t actually need, start a savings account. Eventually, you will save up enough money to buy whatever you want, such as a decent car that will get you from point A to point B.
7. Travel more
The world is big, full of fascinating stuff that you need to see. We’re not trees, so we don’t need to have our roots stuck in the same place for our entire life. Seeing these places on TV won’t compare with the feeling you get by going there yourself. Once you start seeing what the world has to offer, you won’t get enough and will continuously want to learn about different cultures.
Go to places that don’t share your customs or even language. Dare to do something different. Make memories. What you’ll learn this year by traveling will definitely be something to tell your children when you’re old and gray.
8. Learn how to cook
As a man, you probably think that cooking shouldn’t be in your area of expertise; however, knowing the basics of cooking will save you a lot of time, money, as well as indigestion caused by bad food. Plus, if there’s anything that ladies love to see in a man, it’s the ability to cook. Surprise them with a romantic dinner and homemade pasta, and they’ll be yours forever.
8. Pick up dancing
This one is another thing that men probably don’t associate with themselves, and here’s where they are wrong. Even if you aren’t the king of the dancing ring, learning a few dance moves won’t hurt. It will improve your balance, increase your stamina and boost your self-esteem. Plus, just like with the cooking part, many women find this characteristic extremely sexy – so by showing off your tango skills, you might actually be getting yourself a girlfriend this year.
You should never be afraid to go out of your comfort zone. These exact ways to do so may turn your life around for the better so that you’ll have the best year of your life. Why be miserable? Strive to change your ways: read a book, learn the waltz, or try lifting some weights. No matter how simple it may look, it will definitely be worth it in the long run.
Source: get-a-wingman.com
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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