Please note: “IT” here doesn’t mean SEX

I’m sure many of you reading this will think I’m trying to motivate you with my article. However, if you care to look closely, you’ll discover that I haven’t written in a long time on my blog. I’ve had many ideas but I’ve failed to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard as the case may be simply because I’ve chosen not to by allowing e excuse or the other to hold sway.

I’m currently in Benin City in south western Nigeria and listening to my coach, Adeolu Akinyemi teaching a group of people Financial Intelligence. As I sit, I just thought to myself – “Busayo, JUST DO IT!”. My computer (laptop) is being  used to project the slides for the seminar and so I can’t type unto my blog directly but I decide to DO IT all the same. I snatch a book out of my bag and decide to write instead.

I’m deciding to JUST DO IT. I don’t really have  a particular thought to write about other than doing it or JUST DO IT. For lack of ‘substance’ to blog about, I decided to break down the 3-word sentence that is NIKE’s byline as I saw fit.

1. JUST: The 1st word “JUST” seems to point one towards executing actions regardless of the time or situation. It seems to say, despite all that must have occurred or that is occurring, JUST DO IT.

2. DO: The second word “DO” is literally a command in itself. It is present tense. It points to an action that needs to be carried out immediately What actions are you putting off because you think it’s a request and not a command? You feel you don’t owe life and your destiny any obligations? – Think again. You think –  if it will be, it will be. You don’t know that –  if it is to be, it is up to me. In what area of your life are you looking, staying, playing, watching or commentating without doing? Go and DO!

3. IT: Of course, the third word is “IT”. And this seems to refer to a particular thing – an object or an objective. It may refer to a request, proposal, project, apology, training, schedule or task. IT for me today is writing this post. What is your IT? How come you seem to be doing “THEM” and not “IT”. If  you spend your life not DOING IT, then what have you spent your life on?

I really didn’t plan to write long. In fact, I didn’t plan to write at all. I JUST felt that I had to JUST DO IT. If you have read this article, please continue this process by practicing it. Go and “JUST DO IT”.

In a moment of decision,
the best thing you can do is the right thing to do.
The worst thing you can do is nothing.
Theodore Roosevelt

Funny isn’t it? My last post was on hating school. Now I’m hating again and the object of hating is my feeling. Everytime i think of writing a post this year, I end up not feeling like it. Almost everytime I think of doing something that is important and not urgent which is the quadrant highly effective people operate in, I eventually don’t feel I’m in the right frame of mind to do it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not naturally a hater but I’ve tried to motivate myself as much as possible but the motivation ends when the adrenaline is used up.

I haven’t written more than 2 posts in almost 200 days. If that isn’t bad, I’d like to know what’s worse. This feeling that I’m feeling or that I feel regularly is really pissing me off. I’ve come to discover that no one ever makes it in life because of their feelings. I’m sure people everywhere also have the same experience I’ve described above with regards different things. I know you are saying, why don’t you then do it when the adrenaline is pumping? why don’t you eat that frog? As if you don’t know there are 1001 reasons why. The frog is bitter….The frog isn’t well cooked yet…I don’t have a fork…The frog is too small….The frog this, the frog that. Simply put, it wont ofcourse be out of place to say that I’m suffering from a chronic case of procastination.

I hear there’s good procastination and there’s bad. That is it may not be bad if I have acute “procastinitis”. Please forgive my word but I just couldn’t help it. Good procrastination some say is avoiding errands to do real work. I’m sure my own brand is in no way good. I’m tired of responding to my feelings especially when those feelings make me put off important decisions or make me do wrong things. I hate the feelings that I’m feeling.

No wonder success is boring and unemotional. Those who achieved it did it regardless of how they felt. If there was something to be done, it must be done. I don’t want to stop feeling, I want “feeling like”, I just want to do. Nike, I need your inspiration right about now. I hate the feeling, I’m sure of the doing. Can’t wait to start doing in earnest what I’m sure of rather than what or how I feel.

“Procrastination is the fear of success. People procrastinate because they are afraid of the success that they know will result if they move ahead now. Because success is heavy, carries a responsibility with it, it is much easier to procrastinate and live on the “someday I’ll” philosophy.”

A few days ago, I attended a business meeting with my boss at Sheraton hotel. There was not much to the meeting except for welcoming the CEO of an Austrailian company who was coming for a week to hold seminars across the country on the product his company was marketing. Soon after we had held the welcome ceremony, we set out for the office. I got in my boss’s car to drive while he sat on the passenger’s side. We also had a few of our friends and colleagues who had come for the welcome ceremony sitted behind in the car. As soon as I started the engine,  an annoying sound started from the controls inside the car.

The indication light read “Parking brakes disengaged” or something like that. I tried to touch all the buttons I could to no avail. The inside of the car was like an airplane’s cockpit so there were many controls to fiddle with. My boss who owns the car tried as well to set things right but he couldn’t. We decided to keep on going anyway, since we weren’t far from the office. We hoped that one way or another, it would stop or when we got to the office, some techie would come and fix it.

As we travelled towards the office, my boss called the driver who had driven us to the hotel. He had dropped the keys and left because he was feeling ill. My boss asked him what he had done to the car and why it was screaming at us continually. The driver then told him on the phone that he didn’t touch anything. Apparently, the brake lining of the car had issues prior to then and it had been taken out pending when a replacement for it would be purchased. In taking out the brake lining, the sensor for the parking brakes had been removed; the brain box of the vehicle not seeing the sensor where it should be was now giving alarming signals indicating that the parking brakes were faulty.

So my boss was actually trying to find out if he had fiddled with something in that arena. Anyway, when it didn’t seem as if he had touched anything relating to the brakes, my boss asked him what we should do now. “Switch off the engine and switch it on again, and when you switch it on, don’t touch the park brake release lever”. he advised. My boss passed on the message to me. I trafficated and stopped the car and switched it off and on again. I avoided the brakes despite the fact that the noise came up again and after a few seconds it stopped and the indicator light went dead as well.

I laughed at myself and said out loud. When ever you have a problem that you don’t have an understanding of, just stop, go back to the beginning and try and trace the source. That is why I titled this post “Press Enter”. While typing on the keyboard, to return to the beginning of the line, you can press the “Enter” key otherwise called the “Return” key. Many times in life, if only we returned to the beginning when we get hooked on the journey to fulfillment or destiny, we would be able to instantly solve the problems we are facing.

Questions like “why am I alive?”, “why was I created?”, “why did I marry her?” “why did I pick up this job?”, “how did I get here?” and others relating to the afore mentioned questions point you in the direction of the beginning or the source. There’s a yoruba proverb that translates literally as “If you don’t know where you are going, ensure you know where you are coming from”. Wherever you are stuck right now regardless of the situation, please “Press Enter” and go back to the beginning. You may just discover where things went wrong.