What Happens When You Stop Protecting Your Vision From the Wrong Voices

On Environment and Vision

There are certain experiences, spaces, communities and content you are connected to that do not look, sound, feel like the vision you have. They are beautiful places, great people. Entertaining content but they do not water your garden. They might fit into, or flourish another garden but not yours, but you keep staying there, consuming the content, visiting the places and gisting with the people. This starves your vision and destroys your desire to grow. The spaces look harmless but they stand on your way to materialisation and growth.

For instance you believe in business, trading and turning money around but you consistently listen to people who don’t. They are beautiful people but they are genuinely and logical conservatives. They fear they’d lose their money. They guide their safety with their lives. That relationship will not take you forward.

You believe in sharing knowledge but you surround yourself with folks who do not believe knowledge should be shared. They move with trial and error. They live their lives as experiments and they do not seem to get bothered about knowledge. They accept whatever comes their way and they just get it going. They do not believe that buying a book, enrolling for a class, listening to those who know more than them is a profitable decision.

Many years ago I was a youth corp member in a secondary school in Akure. After school, one day, I moved with my colleagues towards the NCCF family house in Alagbaka where I stayed. It was a group of 4 corp members. At about 15 minutes to my destination, we passed a bookshop and I persuaded the group to check their collection. We did. I got a book and we all had a great discussion about the books we’ve read in the past. But one of us was adamant. He visibly condemned buying books. We laughed and tried to convince him about the benefit of reading but he would not be persuaded. He would rather get into a restaurant and get a good meal.

While he was a great guy, I instantly knew he couldn’t fit into my circle. I love and respect him but his relationship with knowledge, not books was a problem. He was hardworking but ignorant on many issues. He was impatient and hasty. Even when he had a hot drive and impressive work ethic, his motivation was uneducated. I could not belong to him. He would dilute my intentions because he could not understand them.

The Psychological Mathematics of Alignment:

There’s psychological mathematics that goes into the alignment that feeds a vision. What you belong to, the people you engage with gives you undocumented permission to be yourself.

We speak among speakers, build among builders, sing among singers, write among writers, do among doers, preach among preachers etc

The mistake you will ever make is to pitch your camp among those who psychologically attack your ideals without even saying a word. People whose marriages are not working do not need to say a word to you. The energy they exude makes your investment in your spouse look like a joke.

Those who don’t build do not give other people the permission to build. Those who don’t drive cannot tolerate those who do. They have all the logical reasons you should not try that business.

Your relationship, community, space, must be an extension of your possibility. It must agree with what you are building, if not your land will be tough to till.

I know ‘mentors’ who belittle the efforts of their followers. They demotivate their aspirations and call it ‘starting too early’ or ‘building too fast’ or ‘building too big’ These kinds of people will make your land too hard to till. You will walk under enveloped heavens. This is not looking for yes men but working in alignment with your dream.

The spouse who supports. The friend who says yes to growth. The family who does not fight progress. The community that pushes excellence and execution. The environment that breathes positive energy. If this is not the place you belong to, you are living a sabotaged life. You will keep fighting against what should be fighting on your side.

The beautiful thing about this is that you can choose. You can create the environment that feeds your dream.

On Content and Belief

For some of you. The enemy is not the friends, but the community. It’s the content. The content you consume has created a sludge and rock at the belly of your belief system, fighting your ideas.

The metabolism of content does not end with consumption. It is broken down to become a feeder. It will either feed your fear or your faith. It will either clog your system or aid your machine. It will fight for you or fight against you. The content you consume can be a weapon fashioned against you.

A few years ago, after listening and opening myself to certain content. I rammed into a deadly communication block. These guys expressed strong and negative opinions about motivational speaking, life coaching, mentoring and ministry. While I have never actively used most of these words to describe my endeavours, my desire to publish my insight dried up.

God did not stop passing insight through me but I disregarded them because of the attack I opened myself to.

So I stopped sharing for many months. Wisdom is a rare gift, insight is God given and heaven inspired. But I questioned the pillars my ministry stood on and asked why it was even necessary to even publish my thoughts. This attack took me several years behind and I got stuck for months. I stopped sharing. I stopped walking and operating in my calling. It affected my professional life and I stopped growing.

If you want to destroy God’s investment in you, open yourself to content that does not support your calling. People who were not in the place of your consecration will put a stop to your assignment before it starts just by spreading their toxicity. People who try to enter the city without success will often weaponize their frustration and sell it as a seed, they will disarm you of your conviction, they will take you grade and classes behind. You must ferociously guard your door. If not, they will make you unprofitable for your calling. They will take you out of your calling and make you look the way they look.

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Have a great weekend and breakthrough from me.

Image: with Funke Bucknor-Obruthe of Zapphaire Events at one of FATE foundation’s event in 2018