
Cheers to 2025
Every New Year holds promise, as though it is any different from the turn of
“Choose not to be harmed –
and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed –
and you haven’t been”.
-Marcus Aurelius
By Abidemi Adebola.
We go to the school to develop our brain and our mind, we go to the gym to develop our bones and our body, we run to the church, temple, monastery, shrine or the mosque to answer the questions of the spirit, but where do we run to when we need to build or mend our soul? It is only life itself that can handle the matters of the soul and the greatest instrument which life utilizes is adversity!
Nothing has shaped history like adversity; from religion, government, society, education and all. Show me the book of history and I will show you endless lines of adversity in the individual, the community, the republic and the world at large, the same way adversity changes the individual is the same way it changes the world.
A life that will be interesting or count for something must be a life laced with adversity, it is only those that have passed through adversity that can place a true value on life. If we are to remove all the moment of adversity from the life of Jesus Christ what then will remain of Christ? And if we are to remove adversity from the life of Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, Mother Theresa, Wangari Mathai and others alike what then will remain of their lives and will their existence still count for something or anything significant? The world overcome two world wars and became better for it. I imagine the day the world stops overcoming adversities is the day the world will come to an end.
At the individual level, we run into different adversities; loss of close ones, betrayals, heartbreak, disappointments, accidents, poverty and series of unexpected ends but the moment we overcome all these challenges we have taken a leap forward in our lives. Every scar of adversity is a mark of conviction (No pain no gain!) In life, as in most things generally nothing inspires the soul more than adversity, a sense of adversity can inspire gratitude and purpose. Through gratitude and purpose, we change not only ourselves but we change the world. Peter betrayed Jesus Christ thrice and his life was never the same again. Socrates gave his life for his conviction the apology is one of the most well-read classics in the world. Nelson Mandela spent 27 years of his life in prison but his life was never the same again and South Africa was never the same again. When people go through adversity they come out asking for less but willing to give more, when people go through adversity they focus more on values than appearance. The deep calls unto the deep!
We live in a world that is making culture out of vices and carving traditions out of materialism. The social media has turned the world to a billboard, it is now about all that you can see and not what you can give. The speed at which we are inclined to acquire has made nonsense of diligence, purpose and conviction. We search for heroes where they don’t exist and we are digging for mentors where they can never be found. The truth of the matter is that people go through things, and they survive adversities, they are the real heroes not only to others but most importantly to themselves, they are their own heroes. Sometimes overcoming our challenges is a way of changing the world for the better. We all need to embrace adversity as part of progress.
One of our fundamental flaws as human beings is the ease at which we adapt to a routine, complacency or status quo. Few men live a life of discovery we have always stuck to the life we inherited, earned or imagined not the one we discovered. Therefore, it often takes more than the ordinary to reevaluate our values. We need to be at the bottom, some need to be in the ditch, some in pain, some in tears, some in embarrassment, some in inconvenience and some in crisis for a shift in our core existence to happen. The greatest idolatry is the norm.
Even if we are not confronting adversity we should not and never be far from people in adversity, those who are conscious of adversity have the capacity to understand that life could be worst. Those who appreciate that life could be worst are those whom usually lives their life in full. Everyman needs adversity may we never be tempted beyond our capacity

Every New Year holds promise, as though it is any different from the turn of

I want to tell you something about confidence that most people get spectacularly wrong.
And I mean that without arrogance — because I got it wrong too, for longer than I care to admit. I walked into rooms with my chest out and my chin up and told myself that was confidence. I practiced certain expressions in the mirror before big presentations. I rehearsed answers to imagined tough questions in the shower until the water ran cold.
I looked confident. I performed confidence quite convincingly, if I do say so myself.

There is a conversation you have been postponing.
You know the one. It has been living rent-free in the back of your head for days, possibly weeks. You have rehearsed it in the shower. You have drafted opening lines in your head while stuck on the Third Mainland Bridge. You have imagined seventeen different versions of how it could go, and approximately sixteen of them ended badly.
So you have said nothing. You have smiled when you did not feel like smiling, agreed when you wanted to disagree, and quietly let something important fester because the alternative — the actual conversation — felt like detonating a device in a room you still have to live in.

There is a category of question that polite intellectual company tends to avoid: the kind that, if you pull the thread long enough, begins to unravel not just a specific mystery but the entire fabric of what we think we know about human history. The Pyramids of Giza are that thread. They have been standing in the Egyptian desert for roughly 4,500 years.

Let me take you somewhere. Not to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean — at least, not yet. First, to Lagos. Nigeria. Sometime in the late 1980s. A teenager who should probably have been revising for exams is instead sitting cross-legged on the floor of a library, holding a book that is older than most of the furniture around it, reading about a city beneath the sea.

This is my story of discovering a film that challenged everything I thought I knew about the gift of time, every pulsating detail documented to inspire you to leap beyond your limitations and appreciate the beauty of growing old.
This story explores the paradox of immortality and why a movie from 2015 still resonates so deeply with audiences today.
I hope you find it worth your time.

This is my story, every pulsating detail documented to inspire you to question what you know and leap beyond your limitations.
This story is about the audacity of belief, the power of a well-told lie, and the journey to unlearn the things that poisoned my teenage mind.
I hope you find it worth your time.

There is a category of question that polite intellectual company tends to avoid: the kind that, if you pull the thread long enough, begins to unravel not just a specific mystery but the entire fabric of what we think we know about human history. The Pyramids of Giza are that thread. They have been standing in the Egyptian desert for roughly 4,500 years.

There is a peculiar kind of madness that does not arrive with hallucinations or trembling hands. It arrives quietly. At two in the morning. In a small desert town in New Mexico. It sounds like an idling diesel engine somewhere in the distance — except there is no engine. It sounds like a bass note being held by an invisible orchestra — except there is no orchestra.

Let me confess something. Long before LinkedIn articles, podcasts, and leadership keynotes became my world, I was a teenager sneaking to the library

In an era that increasingly demands hyper-specialization, Akin Akingbogun stands out as a refreshing anomaly. He is a man who refuses to be confined to a single box.

There is a particular kind of silence that falls on a man when the phone stops ringing, the proposals go unanswered, and the diary that once groaned under the weight of appointments sits quietly — almost mockingly — open. If you have ever been there, you know it.

Let me tell you something uncomfortable: the most generous person you know — the one who volunteers every weekend, donates quietly, never asks for anything in return — is probably getting something out of it. Not money. Maybe not even recognition. But something.

Adaeze had been awake since 4 a.m.
Not because she was anxious — though she was — but because this trip felt different. After eighteen months of follow-ups, phone calls, and PowerPoint presentations polished to a mirror shine, the deal was finally ready to close. An investor meeting in Abuja. A partnership that would change the trajectory of her small but gutsy consulting firm. She had triple-checked her flight, her documents, her outfit. She had prayed. She was ready.
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3 thoughts on “We all need some adversity in our lives”
Hmmm…. firstly I give a full applause for this write up.
Secondly, I say amen to the last line and finally this line ‘When people go through adversity they come out asking for less but willing to give more’ did send cold chills down my spine. Nice job..kudos to you
Bidemi had it all well figured out. I am sure he would lend a voice to the discussions on the post soon.
Lovely write-up brooo. More wisdom sir