I know I inspire people, especially the young ones around me. Not that I'm old or anything, but I guess you know what I mean. I like to see the relationships I have with people as projects that I must accomplish. The idea of my project with those I come in contact with is always to make life worth living for them especially when they are in their down times. These kinds of projects are often not easy to accomplish, but I try as much as possible to do what I can to push those I'm working on to the point where they can pick themselves up and keep on growing and becoming better versions of themselves.
Lately, I decided I was going to be more intentional about it, so I started talking to some friends who I knew were going through tough times and then I ensured they saw I understood and could relate to what they were going through. From there it made it easy to figure out the major cause of their challenge and from there profer solutions. At the point of preferring a solution, they have come to trust my decisions having walked them through the entire process of digging back to the cause of their challenge and not castigating or blaming them for any decision they made which must have caused the problem in the first place.
Having proffered a possible solution to them, the next thing is to allow them to decide to act upon the solution I've suggested. This is always the most tricky part of all my projects because there's never an exact way for it to work since people vary in character and behavior. There are those I would have to persuade to the the right thing, there are those I would have to be harsh on, and there are those I would have to just remind them that I'm with them no matter what. However the case may be, I try as much as possible to find a way to inspire them to do the right thing.
There's a friend of mine who needed to do something with her life as a fresher in school, she was tired of always begging and borrowing because her parents were facing financial challenges. Her major fear was starting up a business and running it. I didn't have the money to give her to start something up, so what I did was brainstorm with her on a business she could start that would require very little capital. We ended up with the idea of making her own Zobo drink. Zobo is a locally made drink in Nigeria that is made from roots and fruits. The capital required was about 2,000 naira ($1.50) and all we needed to do was find recycled cans for her to bottle up her locally-made drinks.
She found it weird that she would be starting such a business in school, and marketing was another issue that looked like an obstacle for her. So I decided to inspire her by getting her bottles, which motivated her to go get the ingredients from the market. I let her friends who supported our idea do the rest when they supported her in making the drinks. The next morning we were all marketing her locally-made drink in school which was really nice by the way. We sold all the bottles we made that day and realized about 5,000 naira ($3.75) from the bottles we sold.
This time she wasn't afraid to try the next day and that was how we solved her financial issues in school. Today she no longer does that business, she now sells ladies’ clothes and is no longer afraid to try out new business ideas that she can handle. Starting up is always scary and this is one of the many times I have inspired people to do beyond their abilities.
