A few days ago, I read an article about a football player who I like a lot. Romelu Lukaku. He's a Belgian international who plays for Inter Milan. He made the switch to Inter from Manchester United about a year ago.  Back at United,  he had good times and not so good times. He played well for the most parts and scored vital goals. Especially that night in Paris. 

         In this article, Lukaku revealed a side of him not too many people knew about. He talked about his rise from "ashes to classy" as Biggie would put it. He talked about coming from poverty to being a football star today. It's been a long road for Lukaku. Most people don't know that this guy who has banged in over 30 goals for Inter this season couldn't watch football for a couple of years because his family couldn't afford cable TV. Yet, that didn't deter him in his quest to be a Professional Footballer. Instead, he flipped these limitations to confidence, to drive, to motivation, discipline and rage when he was on the pitch. He was literally banging in goals for fun when he was playing at the youth level.  He set a goal to play for Anderlecht's senior team and be a professional at 16 years old. He did it. He set a goal. It wasn't easy but he did it. He even had to share boots with his dad to play. His driving force to achieve this was to change his life and to take care of his mum just as he promised his Grand father. There's a whole lot more that took place between when he set his goal and achieved it but this is a basic summary.

We've talked a lot about lukaku and if you don't know him, you're probably getting bored and wondering if this is his Biography. So let's talk about something that I'm sure would interest you. Let's talk about.... You. That's right, you. Before we have this talk though, you must have a plan and a goal to achieve. 

So, how's it going with You? How's that plan of yours going? That goal you set to achieve, what's stopping you from getting it? Not enough funds? No support? What exactly? 

I'll try to use Lukaku's story to show you why you aren't achieving your goals and how you could better achieve them. I'll be diving straight into this because I want to give you value for your time. I'll give you 3 killer tips that are guaranteed to get you results if you apply them properly as detailed in this article. They are:

1. Break it down: 

When you want to eat, do you swallow the entire food at once? Well except you are Popeye, I doubt it but never say never. If you eat your food in bits, spoon by spoon then why do you only consider your goals as a whole? You can't just say I want to get richer or I want to lose weight. That sounds so vague, brpad and non specific. If you made 1 more dollar this month than you did last month well you're richer. If you drop 0.5kg in a year, you've reduced in weight. You need to break down your plans and be more specific. 

Success is not instantaneous. Some people say the youngest overnight success is at least 10,000 hours of devotion to a particular thing. Whether you agree with it or not doesn't matter but understanding that chieving the ultimate goal is dependent on what you do every second , every minute,  every hour and every day. Setting vague goals will not help you achieve that. You might be wondering at this point what exactly breaking down and being specific entails. You would find out in my next point.

  

2. Think like a criminal:  

I guess you didn't see this one coming. Some months back, I was binge reading some articles on Wikipedia. I found the articles on the biggest heists that have aken place in the world quite interesting. Before you suspect, I'm not a criminal but I love crime themed movies and books because of the detailed nature of how they carry out their plans. When you read it,  You'll observe a high specificity to each of their actions. From the start right to the finish. Every single action, second or detail is vital to achieving the plan. A single slip or an extra minute could foil the entire plan. This is because crime is high risk. It's either they succeed or they fail and if they do, they are caught. You have to think like a criminal (don't be one). Believe that you've only got one shot at this. It's either you succeed at this or you don't. No place for complacency. 

You need to be more serious and specific with your goalS.  You are probably wondering what it means to be specific. Well, this is how. 

 You need to add a target, why, when, how and where to your plans. These little details determine if how successful your plan would be. Let me explain:

Why: Above all things, before you start planning you need to ask yourself some questions.  Why exactly do I want to achieve this goal? What do I stand to gain? How relevant is achieving this goal to my life? What happens if i don't achieve this goal? Most of us don't know why we do what we do. Sometimes it's a trend and we feel the urge to jump on it. Sometimes its societal or peer pressure. If there's no actual reason for your goal, there's hardly the motivation to get it done and quitting is always very easy. From lukaku's story we can see he was desperate to change the life he was living. He wasn't happy with the status quo and was willing to change it. You need to know the "why" and reason behind your plan. That would be the extra gas that keeps you going even when it seems like you are gassed or burnt out sometimes. 

Target: Have you ever watched a football player try to take a set piece? Do you watch how he positions himself aims at the goal and focuses intensely? Have you seen a hunter aiming at an animal? He points the gun and watches closely and then locks in his target before pulling the trigger. This is how you set targets. You have to gauge your goal with other factors and then set a reasonable and specific target you can attain. Losing weight is a target. Losing 10kg over 3 months is a specific target. Being richer is a target. Being $1000 richer in a month is a specific target. Your target has to be specific. The player has the whole goal to aim for but he targets a specific part of the net to score. That's how you should be. 

When: What time of the day, week, month or year would be best to 

work towards achieving my goal? If you want to start reading more frequently, Ask yourself: what time of the day would I like to read? How long do I plan to read for? How frequently do I plan to repeat this every week? If you want to exercise more, Ask yourself: What time of the day would I want to exercise? How long would I exercise every day? How frequently do I plan to exercise every week? What day do I rest? 

Setting these markers makes it easier to achieve because your brain is then consciously wired to work towards achieving that. By consciously doing that, With consistency you'll find yourself unconciously planning your day around your goal. 

Everything you do would be towards ensuring the goal is achieved at the time it's meant to be. Assuming, you plan to exercise for an hour and would like to do so in the morning before preparing for work. Then you'll have to wake earlier and exercise so you can prepare and still get to work early. By setting this plan consciously, your brain is now wired to wake earlier. I've personally had this experience several times where I plan to wake earlier to achieve something and I do. Being time specific about your goal makes it more deliberate for you and also measurable in terms of success. 

How: The method used to achieve your goal is very important. If you're a student gunning for the summa cum laude, you must plan the "how" to achieve that. If you're taking maybe 6 courses, you need to rank them ccording to their level of importance. After you must have planned your reading times, you need to plan your reading in a manner such that more time is spent reading courses with a larger impact on your CGPA. If you need to lose weight, You need to know what kind of food you should or shouldn't eat. You should know the process of losing weight is not exercising alone but also diet. Knowing what kind of exercise to do to produce maximum result is also important. The same applies to every oter goal. 

If you plan to be a $100,000 richer by the end of the year. Well first thing would be to break that down. That would be $273.97 every day, $1,923.08 every week and $8,333. Now you need to ask yourself how to create a mechanism that can create this amount of money on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. 

It's important that more time is spent working on activities which have a bigger impact in achieving your goals. The only way to find out which activity is the most necessary is first identifying what you need to do to achieve it and then weighing them on a scale of preference in terms of their efficacy in achieving the said goal. 

Where: It's not enough to do the right thing at the right time but also to do it at the right place. Your productivity is strongly linked to your location. Whatever it is you plan to do, you have to look for the best location to achieve it. You might feel reading in your room wouldn't work because of distractions so you might need to use a library. If you don't have enough space in your home to work out, you could consider a gym. Sometimes, our environment is ideal but it needs a bit of tweaking. For example, if you work from home and need to get some work done with minimal distraction and high productivity, you could create a work space at home which would only contain your work tools while take out anything which can possibly distract or hamper you from being productive and achieving your goal. 

Despite all of this, there's a final step which I consider the most important. Without which, all other steps would be useless. This final step is what makes the successful men successful. It is:

3. Discipline: 

It doesn't matter how well your goals are set. If there's no discipline. You'll be running in circles. Most people say they lack motivation to achieve their goals. Well, motivation is hardly ever enough because it won't always be there. Even if you love doing something or really want to achieve something, it doesn't mean you'll love the process but you have to work through it remembering that every second of work counts. Two major ways I know to increase discipline is:

-To have someone to keep you accountable. This could be in form of a coach, mentor, partner or even just a friend who would guide you and ensure you are strictly following the necessary regimen in achieving your goals. It's always very easy to slack and relapse when we are not accountable to anyone. It's quite different when we know  we always have to report to someone at some point.

- Also, you may not like the idea of having an external person involved in your goal and you would like to keep it personal and do it yourself. That's fine. In this case however you have to reassure yourself that you must not give up and you'll need to be very strict with yourself. This involves constantly reminding yourself of your goal every day. You could set it as alarms. Have it written on your wall. Have it as the wallpaper of your laptop or phone so it's the first thing you see whenever you open it. The more you see it, the more this goal subconsciously sinks into your mind and you work towards it every day. Through this means you are constantly reminding yourself of where you are and what you want to achieve. 

There you have it. These are the three steps I believe will guarantee you a higher chance of achieving your goals provided you strictly adhere to them. If you read all the way to this point, Thank you for your time and would like you to look through my other posts which would be beneficial to you.

Dear men, be careful of sleeping with these girls, don’t think you can play a fast one 

As December approaches, the tendency is for many guys especially in the Southern part of the country to be under pressure to make money and flaunt their affluence in public. In many cases, this show of affluence is basically aimed at impressing the ladies as it seems money have become the key to their hearts.

In the other hand, ladies also are not left out in their struggle to make ends meet. Some have taken to harlotry while some others indulge in what Nigerians call ‘Runs Girls’ or of late ‘Slay Queens.’

Comrade Deji Adeyanju has taken to his official Twitter handle to warn men to be careful of the kind of ladies they sleep with. According to Deji, some of them are walking native doctors. By implications, it means that a good number of them may be fetish and may have some fetish means to put men who sleep with them under spell. Aside that, Deji also Warns that some desperate ladies may end up coining false allegations to nail such a man in a situation where their plans didn’t work. Below is Deji’s tweet:

“Dear men, be careful of sleeping with these girls. Some of them are walking native doctors they will destroy your live with juju & others with false allegations if their plans don’t work. Don’t think you can play a fast one & break their heart. Be careful.”

Deji Adeyanju

Some other persons have come to share their experiences while others continue to say what they know about the matter. Below are some of the screenshots.