Hard To Grow My Love For Her…

Dear Agatha,

Thanks for your selfless service to mankind. I am 25 years of age. There is this girl I like, but don’t know how to tell her. She is learning textile designing. I made up my mind to greet her each time she passes by our shop irrespective of whether she was responding or not.

Recently I went to the street behind ours to make a phone call when I saw her washing plates at a pub she later told me belongs to her elder sister.

She started greeting me after that encounter. She actually called to ask for my name because I didn’t give her my name.

Agatha, I want to move to the next level. What should I do?

Emmy.

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Dear Emmy,

Get to discover who she is by offering her friendship. You don’t know anything about her to warrant you taking the relationship to the next level yet.

Friendship between the two of you is what would offer both of you the necessary opportunity to know if a relationship between the two of you is achievable or not. As friends, you will have the freedom to exchange information about yourselves, expose each other to the peculiarity of your individual strengths and weaknesses, temperaments as well as outlook towards life.

It is imperative you know what each other want, how far you can each go before approaching her for the next level. She has to know your interest in her goes beyond her body to her welfare. You must each know what you hope to do in the future. At 25, the future isn’t too far off for you. If you don’t begin to think about what type of woman would make you happy in the future, you may end up with the wrong woman by your side.

The time for you to erect the foundation for your marriage is now; so don’t waste it on the wrong values.

Good luck.

Before Coyness Turns Me Anti-social

Dear Agatha,

I am one of your greatest fans. I got hooked to ‘Daily Independent’ just because of your column. I have a problem that I have never shared with any man, but only God. I am a 34-year-old, intelligent and hardworking young man. I grew up to discover myself as a shy and fearful person.

This has not only tormented me over the years, but also limited me from exploring my God given potentials. I find it difficult to relate with people, hence I don't have friends in school.

This has labelled me an anti-social boy, and this is seriously affecting my relationship with people around me. As a marketer, I have been unable to make any meaningful impact, whereas the people I trained are all doing extremely well.

In the church, I had to turn down the many positions to head some groups including the house fellowship because of fear and shyness.

I tried to trace the possible source of my problem and realised it might have come from the many condemnations I received as a child as a result of my left-handedness. A lot of people said so many negative things while growing up which stuck and could have affected me psychologically.

I have fasted, prayed, confessed scriptures and even went for deliverances, but the situation is getting worse. I simply have lost confidence in myself as I have failed in almost every area of life.

All I can think of is failure. Please help me, if you think I need a psychologist, kindly recommend one for me. I know I am meant to be more successful than I am currently. I just need confidence in me to make the difference. Please help me so that I won't commit suicide.

Sunday.

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Dear Sunday,

Unless you have the determination to succeed, there is little anybody can do to help you. Attempting suicide is the final admission that your life isn’t worth anything, that God made a huge mistake creating you and that your place in this world could have been left void.

This is why no prayer, fasting and deliverance would work for you, because in the first place, there is no problem with who you are. Rather, your problem comes from what you think you are. The only deliverance is to change the defective picture you have of yourself and replace it with the one God has of you.

Therefore your drive to succeed begins with the resolve to accept the past. If you don’t make up your mind to leave the past behind, it will continue to affect your present and future.

Depending of what one does with the past, it can make or mar the future. By remembering all those negative things people said about you in the past, you unwittingly continue to give them the power to hurt and determine your future so much so, you allow all their negative assessments of you come to past.

Do you realise by your refusal to let the memories of their opinions about you die? You equally make all their negative predictions about you come to life? Give them reasons to justify all that they said about you then as well as continuous right to have a say in your life?

To succeed in life, you must learn to have an opinion of yourself. What is your opinion of yourself? Remember, there is nobody with a better knowledge of you than you. You are the only one who can make or unmake yourself. You are the one with your own blueprint, your own dream as well as the vision to make it work. What other people do in our lives is to help us achieve the dreams we have of ourselves.

If you see failure all around you, there is nothing anybody would say or do that would change what you see around you to success. They can only try to make you see reason, but if your mind is made up that you will not succeed, it will be difficult to make you succeed.

Yes, you are left-handed, so what? As a matter of fact only special people are so blessed. It is indeed a blessing to do something differently from everyone else. If you make a research of those who are left-handed, you will be surprised at the number of world leaders who are.

Being left-handed isn’t a curse, rather a gift from God to do something that everybody can’t do.

So, from today begin to see it as a blessing rather than a curse. You feel differently, because you think it is a curse, something to be ashamed of, to be hidden. All these feelings are negative thoughts, which will never allow you move forward or do anything positively. As a marketer, you think everybody is conscious of your limitation, hence feel very inadequate to market.

The major question you should ask yourself, how has being left-handed affected your level of intelligence or appearance? How does it make you different from the other people around you? Shouldn’t the fact that you are daily being given higher responsibilities in both the circular and spiritual worlds not tell you there is something special about you?

Wake up from the nightmare of the past else it would continue to haunt you.

You don’t have to be a gregarious person to succeed in life. You can be an introvert and still be acceptable to so many. You are the one rejecting every offer of friendship, not people who see in you what you cannot see.

Once you are able to see the quality so many people are today seeing in you to make them want to train under you, request your leadership of the groups they are members of, so many things will begin to work right for you.

By expressing your fears to people, letting them know that you will always need their help to succeed in whatever position of authority you are, you will get the right support to succeed.

Many of us have foundations capable of making us live in fear for the rest of our lives, but have been able to overcome as a result of the special grace of God. What you need is the grace of God to see the special person he has created you to be, once you see how wonderful He has made you, you will not bother about the nightmare of the past, but the wondrous future He has blessed you with.

Go out there and allow the world see who you really are, because underneath all the shyness, pains and fear is a beautiful person waiting to emerge. You are not a mistake, but someone created in absolute love by the Almighty God, who gave you more than the average person, His unconditional grace to change the world around you.

Good luck.