coco olorunfemi

Hello and welcome to a piece of peace. Your weekly dose of motivation and inspiration. This week, I would like to share with you on the topic of “overcoming adversity”. What are you made of? When the chips are down and push comes to shove, what lies beneath all the bravado and ego? Life has a way of knocking us down in a way we never saw coming. Sometimes recovery from such a set back can be one of the most difficult things to do. I read somewhere a long time ago, that successful people in life are not people without life problems, they are people who respond to problems quickly and positively.

My friend’s dad has gone through a series of traumatic events recently. He lost his wife about 10 years ago to breast cancer. It was the most difficult thing for my friend and her family to handle. They battled the disease for a number of years before he lost his wife. My friend was a young girl at the time and the loss of her mother was something that she could not handle on her own. It took the whole family pulling together as a unit with love, care and determination and taking each day at a time to be able to overcome that set back.

10 years later, my friend’s dad re married. The pain of the old wife was still there but over the years, it became easier and easier to deal with. One day on a routine trip to the doctors, they noticed a lump in the breast of the new wife. Turns out she was also diagnosed with breast cancer. The cancer was aggressively spreading and she had to undergo chemotherapy. That was an even bigger blow for my friend’s dad. For months he would not talk to anybody including his own children. He felt as though he had been cursed. How could the same difficulties he faced several years ago return? It takes a special strength to be able to move past such a difficult situation as the one he was facing. Whether we like it or not, adversities are one of the biggest hurdles we will face. As a wise man once said, pain and death are part of life and to reject them is to reject life itself.  Learning to deal with and overcome adversity is what builds character and resilience.

Every adversity and difficulty we are able to successfully overcome in life serves to strengthen our will, confidence and ability to conquer future obstacles. It is only in our darkest moments that we see how truly strong we are. Adversities draw out our strength and unique qualities that are God given.

When you respond positively and constructively to your biggest challenges the qualities of strength, courage, character and perseverance emerge from deep inside of you. Through your struggles and challenges, it is important to remember one important key when dealing with adversity and that is to avoid or resist it will only make it persist. Everywhere you look in the world there is one form of struggle or the other. Whether we are dealing with floods, poverty or even terrorist attacks.

Even within your own circle of family and friends there is death, loss and tragedy. Although pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. The way you choose to deal with your adversity will make all the difference in the world. Remember, there is a time for everything and that adversity you are experiencing will also pass. Happiness and joy is at the end of that dark tunnel of pain and suffering, all you need to do is to take that bold step to walk through the pain until it is no longer with you.

You are much stronger than you could ever imagine and always remember to be yourself because everyone is taken.

This is an exclusive Pulse blog by British-Ghanaian television presenter and actress, Peace Hyde. "...For months he would not talk to anybody including his own children. He felt as though he had been cursed..."

"Overcoming Adversity"  by Peace Hyde

The person of colour is absent again from the 88th Oscars nominees . Are they not given a leading role or is their movies not up to Oscar standard? Maybe we should say it has a Political undertone abi ?

During an interview, One of the Organisers of the awards said the problem is beyond Oscar, which means there are some persons or group of people who thinks it's a crime for the blacks to be on that list.

In my opinion, I believe David Oyelowo, the lead actor in Selma should at least  be one of the best actor nominees for his outstanding role and for the fact that the Actor received the Golden Globe and other awards.

Also, the Britsha actor Idris Elba, Warlord in 'Beasts of No Nation,' is another actor that should be one of the nominees. This year's Oscar is just an all-white Oscar that was why Will Smith and other top black actors pulled out from the event scheduled to hold next month. They call it 'the boycott move.'

Meanwhile, Chris Rock, the host of the glamorous event  is not saying anything about boycotting the event. The last development shows he is not  turning  it down. Chris even calls the Oscars 'The White BET.'

In my #bookiamreadingnow, David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. The author talks about some of the struggles people of colour faced before Martin Luther King, Walker and Fred Shuttlesworth came to fight for the right of blacks to vote.

Malcolm shared what happened when white angry Mob surrounded the three men where they were about to preach to fifteen thousand people at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery. King said "The only way we are going to save the people upstairs, is we who are the leadership have to give ourselves up to the mob."

I believe those angry white mob are still around, they are just showing themselves in different sectors. The fight for equal right is not over, let us join our voices with other human-right activists to say equal right must stand in our industries, communities and nations. Your Selman road is where you are now.

The story of David and Golaith has written by Malcolm Gladwell also shows how Small Fish survive in Big Ponds and The story of Ava DuVernay, the first Africa-America to receive Best director at the Golden Globe Awards for Selma described how a 'nigger' can be celebrated in an industry that does not give them chance.

Ava said " I am in an industry that does not honour black women or even black people but that will not stop me from making movies." injustices should not also stop you from bring out the best in yourself.

It will not be an excuse,if you don't make the best use of your God given talent because millions of  people are trading with their own with all the challenges they are facing.

Which is one of the things the Book 'David and Goliath' taught me, it shows me all the possible ways that I can use my disadvantages to my advantages with the stories of brave original people.

This is an exclusive blog post by book reviewer and promoter, ToluBooks. "...Malcolm shared what happened when white angry Mob surrounded the three men where they were about to preach to fifteen thousand people at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery..."

"Black Stage, White Oscar"

If you’ve been looking for ways to get that long lasting natural feel with your makeup, look no further. Have you tried using ‘Translucent powders’?

They are colourless powders usually used to set you’re your makeup. When you apply your foundation, blush or concealer, you use it to keep your makeup in place for a good number of hours. They are colourless and are basically designed to match any skin tone as they do not have any pigmentation.

Don’t worry, they are invincible which means it will sink into your skin without creating any ashen/whitish appearance.

Here are three ways you can use the translucent powder

Have you tried any other ways of using your translucent powder? Do share some of your ideas and best brands with us!

When you apply your foundation, blush or concealer, you use it to keep your makeup in place for a good number of hours...

Makeup Must haves: Part 1- Translucent Powders

Sooo.... A little over a month ago, I did the <a href="http://pulse.ng/bloggers/pulse-blogger-5-things-every-woman-should-know-about-men-id4450373.html" id="85a967af-58be-5626-9102-cd26beb0a3cc">part one of 5 things women need to know about men</a> and I promised to write the part two soon after but what can I say?... Life happend. I apologise for taking sooo long and without further ado lets jump in and touch on the last two points!

4. Men are more of <a href="" id="12c63917-8467-5276-8f98-391904a9a35f">"doers"</a> than <a href="" id="ca52b402-b963-596f-a898-9afb7c8f1869">"sayers"</a>

Simply put, Most masculine men will show you they love you more than they actually say it! Listen well to this because this can cause quite a tricky situation. You see us women are very big on hearing our men tell us how much they love us... how much they want us "right now"... How much we make their hear sing... How much they want to ravish us... bla bla bla. This in itself is not really a big deal. Where the problem lies is in the fact that we want to hear these things as often as possible!

Unfortunately, when we are with masculine men, this will not happen as often as we want! The truth being that it is simply is not the way a masculine man is wired. Instead of spending time being "Unnecessarily" mushy with you, he would rather try  his best to make sure you are comfortable and well taken care of and that all your issues are on the way to being resolved either by offering you sound advice or by outrightly fixing them. These he does because he actually loves you and cares about the things that are important to you.

Unfortunately, yet again, us women are somehow conditioned to forget these acts of love after a while and still doubt that a man truly cares for us because he has not been overtly mushy with us!. It is such a tricky situation so much so that it is almost funny! Please note that I am in no way judging you for wanting to be held and to have sweet nothings whispered in your ear. I want that often too! The truly feminine woman is like this at her core. However, it will pay to remember that your masculine man you crave will mostly show you he loves you more often than he says it.

Also this is a great way to tell a man that genuinely loves you apart from a player. Players always seem to have more mouth than action! Just saying. This does not excuse a man substituting being affectionate with showering you irrelevant gifts to make up for his absence though. You have to be open to identifying  the right balance in a man.

5. Men are just as terrified of rejection as you

Okay so this is quite simple to be honest. STOP THE BAD BEHAVIOUR IN THE NAME OF PLAYING HARD TO GET! Some of us ladies are just terrible with this. In a bid to "Play hard to get", we encourage and participate in the nastiest form of "bitchiness". "I mean he has to know that i'm not cheap" and so you resort to playing mean games to pass across your message.

Well, if you are longing for a real masculine man at his core, you will end up achieving the opposite of your desire. Not only will he not tolerate someone being outrightly rude to him, he also does not like rejection at all! So he will try as much as possible to avoid anything that looks like that.

So basically, while you are there trying to make him "earn you", he just sees a woman who doesn't feel the same way for him as he does for her. And then he turns around and walks away leaving you hurt but consoling yourself that "he wasn't worth it anyway". Build your value and your belief and trust in yourself. By doing this, you don't need to "play hard to get" ...You ARE already hard to get to the low lifes and very attractive to the high value men.

This is an exclusive blog post by female Nigerian relationship coach, Emife. "...These he does because he actually loves you and cares about the things that are important to you..."

"5 things every woman should know about men" [Part 2]

Hello and welcome to a Piece of Peace, your weekly dose of motivation and inspiration.  This week I would like to share with you on the topic, “friendship circle.” There is a popular saying that you are a sum total of the people you have around you. I have come to realize just how true that statement is. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who decided to cut a group of his close friends off. He has been the most successful one among his group of friends for a long time. He is a professional footballer who earns quite a lot of money each month. As a result, he has a number of friends who have consistently depended on him for their livelihoods. He went through a tough patch recently. He suffered a bad injury and as a result was on the bench for quite some time.

Things went from bad to worse when his team decided to trade him to a lower division team. All of a sudden he went from a high salary to quite a low one in contrast. My friend needed to think long and hard about what the rest of his future was going to be like. He needed to plan properly with his money. First thing he did was to cut costs. He calculated that a significant amount of his monthly budget was spent taking care of the needs and wants of his friends. He however did not remember a time when any one of his friends had done anything thoughtful for him. He decided to run a little experiment. He stopped giving all his friends money for a month and decided to tell them that he had to file for bankruptcy on account of his frivolous spending habit. After two months, he moved out of his mansion into a 1-bed apartment and explained to his friends that he had lost his home.

He began asking them for money each week to help him get by until he got a new contract. My friend realized very quickly that all his friends had gone from spending the weekends at his house to not seeing them for months at a time. When he called his friends he got no answer. Over the course of the experiment, which covered a 3-month period, my friend went from being the most popular guy amongst his mates to being completely ignored. He was extremely hurt because he had known most of his friendship circle since childhood. He decided to let all of them go. It was a hard lesson for him to learn that he only had perceived friendship based on how useful he was to the group of boys. Once that usefulness evaporated, he ceased being the center of attention of the group.

It is important to understand the motivation of your friendship circle. Why do some people make the decision to be around you? Understand that it is not everyone that you have in your life that genuinely cares about your well-being. Like my friend realized, everybody wants to be part of the success story but nobody wants to help you grind. It is easy to be your friend if you are successful. Do not get complacent and put a lot of stock in the people you have around you. Ask yourself, if my living circumstances changed today, will they still have my back? If the answer is no, then realize you are investing your time and energy building the wrong friendship circle and adjust accordingly. And no matter what you do, always be yourself, because everyone else is taken.

This is an exclusive Pulse blog by British-Ghanaian television presenter and actress, Peace Hyde. "...Over the course of the experiment, which covered a 3-month period, my friend went from being the most popular guy amongst his mates to being completely ignored..."

"Friendship Circle" by Peace Hyde

Dear Jambite,Do not be brain washed. Do not waste your parents' or guardian's resources applying for courses that are not relevant in today's labour market. Do not apply for a course of study that will turn you into a perpetual job beggar after graduation. Here are a list of some courses that are obsolete in Nigeria and should be scrapped from JAMB brochure:1. Theatre Arts: When last did you pay to watch a stage drama? You don't need a degree certificate to become an actor. Please look for a film academy to achieve your dream within months of intensive training.

2. Mass Communication: The social media has rendered any course regarding Mass Comm a total waste of time and energy. You can communicate globally on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms in a second. Everybody is a potential journalist via the social media. The so called illiterate bloggers are billionaires because they break the news before television and newspaper houses.

3. Agricultural Science: Most lecturers in this department have no practical farming experience. They are not farm owners. The Bank of Agriculture does not require degree certificate to grant you loans. Use your head. Farms are scattered all over the globe to give you practical experience within the shortest possible time.

4. Fine Arts: You want to draw, paint, sculpt or mould? Come on, you don't need a degree to do that. Even make up artistes are making tons of money without a degree certificate. Use your head.

5. Philosophy: Have you seen any job advert seeking for philosophers? Enough said. Think philosophically before embarking on the same journey with Plato, Aristotle and others. Also remember that they wouldn't be here to offer you money to shave your bushy beards when poverty hits you after 10 years of graduation without a job.

6. History: If you want know the history of your fore fathers, google it. Four years is a lot  of time to waste studying a degree to know your past. Oh please!

7. Religious Studies: You have your Bible or Koran and have been reading it from childhood I guess? Why spend scarce resources and years to obtain a degree in religious matters? The writers of these holy books had no degrees!

8. Sociology: Please spend more time on the social media or attend social events online or offline. Don't be stupid. Sociology should be practical not theory.  Use your time wisely.

9. Languages: Studying for a degree in any language at all - Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Ijaw, German, French, Spanish, English - is a complete waste of precious time. If you want to become bilingual or multilingual, spend time with the native speakers and consciously learn. Study online or enroll for a six months intensive program. Use your time and money judiciously.

10. Political Science: Read local and international Newspapers and google topics of interest in politics. Do you need a degree to do that? There's no science to politics.

11. International Relations: Don't be deceived by the nomenclature. Diplomats and ambassadors are not appointed based on their degree certificate. Most of those politicians are not degree holders. If you want to relate internationally, put a visa on your international passport and travel out. And anybody can travel as they wish with or without a degree.

12. Public Administration: You want to be a civil servant? Is that your ambition? The civil service is downsizing ooo. And you can't withstand the bribery and corruption in Nigeria's civil service. The grand fathers there are not ready to leave. And how much are they paying civil servants? Servants! That's what they are unless you want to be a thief or rather pen robber.

13. Psychology: In Nigeria? You want to study all those bombastic inapplicable theories  for four years and then graduate as a jobless psycho? Please google everything you need to about psychology and move on. We have enough mentally deranged people on the streets due to the harsh economic condition. A psychologist has no job in Nigeria. We are all psychos including me!

14. Library Science: When last did you visit a state or national library? The last time I visited the library at Yaba, it was dirty and dusty and filled with outdated materials. Now tell me, is that what you want for your life? When last did you even read a book if not for examination purposes? And on gaining admission to study some scrap course you will end up reading some scrap written by your archaic lecturer as course material to put food on his table. Anybody can learn how to organize the library. Save your time and energy.

15. Physical and Health Education: Register with a  sports organization and study the rest on the internet. You stand to learn more about sporting and health activities in practical terms than applying for a degree program that will clip away at least five years from your life. I hope you know that the great sports personalities you watch and argue about everyday are not degree holders? Find something better and study as a degree!

16. Music: The food for the soul! Michael Jackson and Tuface Idibia are not degree holders ooo. If you want to learn how to play an instrument, there are lots of institutes of performing arts. They will help your ministry faster. Most classical and jazz musicians in Nigeria are struggling with life. Truth be told. You cannot vigorously pursue your music talent in the four walls of a university. Are your lecturers super stars?

17. Anthropology:  The study of mankind. You are not the messiah. After studying mankind as a degree where do you hope to work in Nigeria? At Ogbunike cave or Olomo Rock? Don't confuse yourself with nomenclature. Unemployment is beckoning at you with a degree in culture and evolution. Confirmed!

18. Zoology: You want to study animal life in Nigeria? Go ahead with your passion. The zoo in Nigeria is facing more hardship than Nigerians because we can't feed wild animals and go hungry. A lion recently ran away from Jos all because of hunger. Unless your father is the owner of Nat. Geo. Wild and has created space for you, don't say I did not warn you. Even in politics, zoologists may not be allowed to contest elections again after the harrowing experience we had six years ago.N/B. There are so many other courses apart from the above mentioned that will leave you valueless and unemployed after graduation. If you are already skilled and employed, you can apply and study them as a hobby and to answer a degree holder. But if you are hoping to earn a living and add value to the society via a degree paper, please do yourself a favour and ask relevant  questions regarding the course you select to study.

The craze for  paper certification has put most of your predecessors in abject poverty. Learn a skill or trade that can keep you self reliant and financially independent. Don't use your money, intellect and time to buy a degree certificate that can't feed, clothe or shelter you after 10 years of graduation.  No employer will employ you with an obsolete qualification. Apply wisdom in choosing your course of study and thank me later. Cheers!!!Yours Sincerely<a href="http://www.uzorngoladi.com/" id="ec263169-f131-5b61-8afd-ad5797940b64">undefined</a>

This is an exclusive blog post by author of Toxic Eucharist, Uzor Ngoladi. "...Have you seen any job advert seeking for philosophers? Enough said. Think philosophically before embarking on the same journey with Plato, Aristotle and others..."

"Letter to all Jamb Applicants"

If you are as inquisitive as we are about everything that goes on your skin, then you should continue reading this article. As it is the start of a new year, you may have set some goals (some realistic, others not so much) that you are bent on seeing through the year. You make want to set some for your skin and beauty; which we are certain are pretty achievable.

We ask the question: is natural boring? Simply because some people are of the opinion that when a product is or contains pure natural ingredients they may not be as fast effective or as pigmented as expected; when in actual fact, you wouldn’t know unless you have tried it.  No natural is not boring, rather it’s a safer option especially if you are looking to be older and still glowing.

The skin is the largest organ in the body which helps to protect you and also helps you keep warm when you’re cold and cool when you are hot. Your skin works overtime on your behalf, the next best thing you can do for your skin is to feed it with the right ingredients. Think of it like saying thank you to your skin for going over and above for you lol.

This year, make a conscious effort to learn more about your skin type, look for the right products that best suit you and most importantly, check out the ingredients and research on them before you spend a fortune on them

Not sure how to begin? No worries, follow these guidelines and you are well on your way to being a #naturalista.

It may seem like a lot of work but at the end of the day you are probably making the best decision for your skin. Just like the saying goes “you are what you eat”, your skin is what you put on it!

Your skin works overtime on your behalf, the next best thing you can do for your skin is to feed it with the right ingredients...

New year beauty goals: Is natural boring?

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