Fola Daniel Adelesi: A Mind Stretcher

Take a good look at the rubber band and imagine what happens to it when it is stretched. Maybe the women will understand better because they use it a lot for their hair. Just pick anyone and stretch it. When you do that the first time, it will try to return to its original position. When you repeat the process, the rubber will still try to return to its position. After a while, through consistent use, it becomes soft and it is enlarged. It also becomes difficult for the rubber to return to its original position. At that point, a little stretch might just break it.

Many of us need to stretch our minds like those rubbers. Those minds are too small to process the information that we need to get us to where we are going in life. If you do not stretch your mind it will not get you anywhere in life. There are so many things you picked up while you were growing that you no longer need for where you are going to. If you are not ready to unlearn those things, you will try to take them along with you and they will never help.

It is only with a stretched mind that someone will create ideas, not have the resources, but will keep believing. It is a stretched mind that lets him talk to people to convince them about his or her dreams, and there will be results at the end of the day. It is only a stretched mind that can negotiate anything that also seems impossible. When a mind is not stretched, some ideas strike you and you kill them even before they land properly.

I walk on the streets and see the things that are happening, it is always clear that much more than what people think is the problem, there is the bigger problem of the mind. Many of us think that the problem of a country like Nigeria today is just corruption. You will be shocked, if at the end of today corruption is wiped out, to see that we still have many more problems to deal with and they have nothing to do with stealing or being corrupt!

When people have a mind that has been stretched, they will do things differently and will also be easier to lead. When the leaders of a nation also have a stretched mind, they will find it easy to proffer solutions to the myriads of problems that the country has. It is because so many leaders do not have a stretched mind that they travel abroad and they cannot come back home to do simple carbon copy or copy and paste! Do you realize that we would have praised our leaders if the only thing they do in this country is to copy and paste the good things they see in other countries? Let me also add that the problem is not only with leaders but with followers as well.

A mind that is not stretched will see too many problems to deal with. The things that are not even the problems will also be considered as the problems. You will fight the people you are not supposed to fight, and stay away from things that you are not supposed to stay away from. At a point, someone asked us in a meeting to imagine that all the money in the world was gathered in one place. They have collected the money from the rich people and from the poor people. Now everyone has become the same and are to be given the same amount of money. He went further to say that it will only take a short while before the rich become rich again and the poor people become poor again. Why is that? It is because everything begins and ends in the mind.

There are those who can do a lot more but are not doing a quarter of what they can do because they have refused to stretch their minds. As a matter of fact, a mind that refuses to stretch will soon become a misfit. When other people who have stretched their minds start talking, the un-stretched mind sounds absurd among them. He or she says things and they begin to wonder what century this person lives in or where in the world he came from.

You need to know that to refuse to stretch your mind is to deny yourself of how much you can get out of life. That is because someone who is probably born to be CEO of a multinational company might just die as a gate keeper. Another person who is supposed to become an international professor might simply remain a school teacher who is poorly paid. That world acclaimed instrumentalist predestined before birth might just remain the second choice instrumentalist in a local assembly of the church choir!

Until you stretch your mind, you will never know how far you can go. So how can you stretch your mind? My suggestions are:

Relate with bright minds to learn rather than proving you know something.

Go out. Visit nice places, sit down there and imagine yourself doing business with people there. I promise no one will be bold to send you out. If they ask what you are doing there, tell them you are waiting for a client. When you are tired of enjoying the environment tell them your client changed his mind.

Read the biographies of great people and see what they did to become great. Reading stretches your mind and it never returns it to its original state.

If you have the means, you can travel abroad once in a while to see how things are done in other countries. It will greatly help your mind. I am not saying your mind can’t stretch without going abroad but it does help.

Have a really big vision. A vision is something that will keep stretching your mind. When you think you are done with a part, another one shows up.

I will like to see you all operate with a really stretched mind. I should also add that you will get to a level in life when people pay you for your stretched mind, not necessarily as a speaker, but because they value your insight! A stretched mind is like an irresistible fine wine or like putting all the beauty in the world on one woman so go on and stretch your mind!

Photo Credit: sobluk.com

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Fola Daniel Adelesi is a professional public speaker who also trains other speakers, an author, business consultant and highly skilled master of ceremony with excellent poise and diction. He was on the Debaters TV reality show season 1, presented ‘You Can’ on Radio Continental in 2011, did motivational segments on Galaxy TV from Dec 2008 to August 2009 and has authored 3 books including Writing Business Proposals.