Choose to Challenge - Women's day

“Simplicity is the ultimate Sophistication”

Monday, March 8, 2021

I choose to challenge a society that calls me fragile and seeks to relegate me to the background. I might be fragile but not easily broken like glass. My fragility is coated with elasticity. I bend and twist and come back better and stronger. You call it fragile; I call it agile.

I choose to challenge the norm, culture and ways that call me weaker, they say I lack strength, resilience and will power but in this very weakness lies my strength. I am weak enough to bring to birth, to cater to the needs of my off springs, to tend my home, to run my business, to excel at my career, weak enough to be a perfect blend of my heart and my head.

I choose to challenge a stereotype that believes I was brought to life only to also bring to life and nothing more, Indeed, I am designed to reproduce, but I am designed for a lot more. No more will I be held back by your myopic opinions of me. I am designed for more, to bring to life, to bring forth ideas, to strategize, to execute, to lead, to explore, to build; I nurture, I care, I teach, and I raise generations

I choose to challenge a mindset fixated on believing that I am meant to be mute. I am not mute, and I will not be silenced. I am endowed with a loud yet gentle, firm yet loving, deep yet soft, melodious tone I call my voice. My instrument of discussion, deliberation and sometimes assertion.

I choose to challenge a world set in its ways, a way that bends and breaks for a bearded face, whether deserving or not but is quick to turn me away.

I choose to challenge You to lay aside rumors of who I am meant to be, what I am meant to be, how I am meant to be. You have labelled me without giving me an opportunity to prove myself, you have judged me without even opening my book.

I choose to challenge You to face every obstacle, surmount every mountain with locked legs like that of a mermaid, and go for gold.

I choose to challenge You, to look beyond her skirt and the gape in her blouse, rather look at what she brings to the table. There is far more to her than her body.

I choose to challenge You to remain restless, relentless, persistent, and consistent. Your dreams are valid, and you can be all you want to be, if you do not give up.

I choose to challenge You to dare to dream, dare to pursue and dare to realize your every dream. To step out of that cocoon and dare to be different.

I choose to challenge Us to have each others back not stab each other in the back

I choose to challenge Us to pick one girl, two girls, three or even more and teach them, lead them, coach them, mentor them, show them the many possibilities and opportunities around them, show them the often-difficult path to being all that they can be. Show them the way to unlocking their full potentials and attaining success.

I choose to challenge Us to speak up for her

To stand up for her

To help her

To lend her a helping hand

To fight for her

To be her voice

To be a shoulder, an ear, and a compass for her.

I choose to challenge Us to clear the path, lead the way and step aside when all is said and done, and the time has come to let her shine.

I choose to challenge Us to be different to do right by her and to do more for her.

I choose to challenge myself to be a better version of myself, to push myself, to say no to limitations, to dare to dream big and to bring to birth my dream.

I choose to challenge myself

I choose to challenge you

Happy International Women’s Day

 

Related Posts

sylvester, happy new year, sparkling wine

Cheers to 2025

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

How to Build Genuine Confidence

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.

How to Have a Difficult Conversation without Destroying the Relationship

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.

THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZA: A Monument to Everything We Do Not Know Egypt’s Impossible Gift to a World That Cannot Explain It (Part 2)

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.

ATLANTIS: The City That Never Was — or the City We Have Never Found

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.

The Burden of Forever: Why “The Age of Adaline” Stays With You

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.

THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZA: A Monument to Everything We Do Not Know Egypt’s Impossible Gift to a World That Cannot Explain It (Part 1)

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.

THE TAOS HUM: The Sound That Is Slowly Driving People Mad And the World Cannot Explain Why

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.

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE

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

I Parked My Car Five Minutes Away: So the Kids Wouldn’t See It.

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.

Wired for Me

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.

When the Burnt Toast Saves Your Life

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.

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


Discover more from Akin Akingbogun

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

error: Content is protected !!

Discover more from Akin Akingbogun

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Contact Us

Just write down some details about you and we will get back to you in a jiffy!