Benjamin Zulu Global

If you want a different life you need to create a different small world for yourself: surround yourself with sights and sounds that bring calm and serenity to your atmosphere. Find out what makes you unafraid and joyful, motivated and resilient and plant it in your immediate environment. Whether this means artwork or decor in your personal items like phone or computer, or your personal spaces like house or car, or even a more elegant style of dressing, give yourself the permission to invest in it. People think music is only for entertainment but you need to elevate your game and bring the kind of music that inspires you and keeps you imagining and expanding your mental horizons. Sometimes the only thing we can change is our micro world, but then that in turn changes everything.

You know you've taken back your power when you no longer wait around for people who are unsure about you. You're enlightened when you recognise that you're the common denominator in all your relationships and if you don't set standards for healthy and enriching relationships you will continue accepting the kind of love that mirrors the small view of yourself that you harbor. You're awakened when you finally accept the fact that your self respect and confidence is the thermostat that determines the relationship temperatures in your life.

One reason you need to empower your woman to make her own money is so that she can continue to support her family in her own little ways like she did before. When you married her she became your wife but you need to remember that she will always be a daughter to that family and nothing will ever change that. As long as she balances her involvements and there's no conflict of interests, let her be. Marriage is about partnership, not ownership.

All winners begin with two beliefs: the future can be better, and I have the power to make it so. They know their beliefs will determine what they become and so they set their faith on high and better things. Floyd Mayweather, the only athlete to ever become a billionaire through boxing, nicknamed himself 'Money' when he was broke and average. When he told journalists that he would become the best in the game they laughed. It was unbelievable to the world but it was reality to him, and he proceeded to achieve all his dreams in glorious detail, including retiring undefeated. There are people who are reaching for the stars in the sense of being connected to big people and celebrities and they brag about who they know. As for you, be the star. Identify a spot up in the sky and hang your faith on it. And then advance towards that spot daily and with time you will hear people namimg you what you began by naming yourself. You must be the first believer in your own power.

Ladies, you need to learn the ways in which your man loves you and adjust to them. Some men are not chatty, might not text a lot of 'I love you's' and they might not post you on status because he seems to forget that such a feature exists. He might not send you emojis and most of his texts are brief and transactional. He prefers calling and talking face to face. All in all he may be a little old school but don't lose sight of the larger picture: if he is solid, you know he got your back, he listens keenly and is very caring, if he's reliable so much that he can drop everything and come to your rescue in case you get into a situation, what business do you have kicking dust and causing tension just because you heard your girl friends bragging about how their men chat them all day or post them regularly? If your man checks up on you twice or thrice a day, he is responsible as a father, a provider and a husband, you'll be among the foolish women who ruin their families if you keep complaining over his personality or generational traits. People who are currently in their mid 30's and 40's adapted to technology but they were not born to it, so technological lifestyle might never be their thing. He might not like ro share every post you put up or comment regularly but you need to be contented with who he is and let him love you the best way he knows. In sum, if you chose a rather conservative or analogue man, accept your situation and find a rhythm and flavor of romance that works with him without perpetually complaining over trivial things. Now go home to your man.

If you're a committed person and you give your all to the relationship but the person still leaves you, be sure they'll miss you at some point. When they get to taste the opposite; when they're exploited and taken for granted, when they're made to beg for attention, they will remember how you showered them with love and how easy and sweet you were. If they try to come back pretending to have learnt their lesson and begging for readmission, don't you fall for it. They won't respect you because they see you don't respect yourself, and they will continue philandering only this time keeping you around for social and financial security. You're only safe with a person who sees your worth from the start and never downgrades you.

Only sex within marriage is making love. Every other form of sex is making lust and poisoning of souls. Yes, extramarital sex is sweet poison. Some think it helps them connect or understand each other just because they get to be nude together but that's a total misconception. Being naked or vulnerable doesn't mean removing cloths or having sex. That's a no brainer and people do it all the time, and we all know that you can be lying on the same bed with a person and still feel disconnected and miles apart. Vulnerability means letting someone into your spirit, your hopes, your fears, your plans. Only this kind of opening up can permit deep connection, making love and making life. Indeed healthy people will tell you they only enjoy sex when they're deeply connected with the person. Anything else would be a vain rubbing of bodies, a superficial experience that leaves one feeling empty and guilty. And how many people can you be connected to in such a deep way? Of course only one, your life partner.

You'll never heal if you keep pretending not to be hurt. Perhaps you think champions must be invincible or that being strong means never bleeding. Yet the truth is that life is a war and no one comes out of the battles totally unscathed. Even those who win must incur bruises and what distinguishes victors from losers is how they heal and charge back at life without signing out. Every goal you have in mind will take a fight to bring it to pass: whether getting a child, building a business or a home. Occasional setbacks and fails are inevitable and even if they inflict a loss on you, you must keep returning to it until you attain the end goal. That's the mindset of champions. A righteous person may fall seven times and rise again (Proverbs 24:16)

One reason a lot of people are unhappy and oppressed in their personal lives is because they hate truth. On the one hand they want a peaceful and prosperous life and on the other hand they discredit the way to that life as impractical. Truth is never popular with the masses. In fact Truth came to earth as a person and they rejected and killed him. As for you, when you're told the way to find happiness and fulfilment do not answer like the foolish: 'It's not easy, things on the ground are different, this generation won't hear it, times have changed.' What you need is to set standards in your personal life whether those standards are popular with the majority or not. You will find people who think like you for marriage and for fellowship. Narrow is the way that leads to life and wide is the way that leads to ruin. People try to widen the way by saying 'anything goes, live how you want, no universal standards, nobody should dictate to you.' The reality is that truth is strict and uncompromising. If they tell you that you're being perfectionist or judgemental remind tham that God doesn't need perfection but obedience. You may have fallen in the past yourself but when you learned the truth you changed and that's why you proclaim to others the truth that set you free.

Too often people dating you think they're competing with other suitors and they start getting insecure over who else is eyeing you, while in fact you're not comparing them with anyone else but with your own singleness. You're measuring being with them versus being alone to see whether they're worth the shift. Do they bring more energy and growth? Do they cause you to believe in yourself more and imagine better things? Is there fun and laughter in the connection? Do they bring peace or do they take away your peace? If they knew that these are the questions that will either qualify or disqualify them, they would focus more on being a better person, learning you more and creating a better connection rather than worrying about who else is after you. Healthy people are not too interested in perusing and comparing people. All they want is to find the perfect match and they're out of the market.

Silence is a vocabulary as well and you must become fluent in it if you plan on having a peaceful and fruitful life. When you master how to be alone in silence you can see things in their true perspective and plan your moves in a manner than yields highest results. Also, if you learn to feel alive in the absence of much activity and noise you'll have freed yourself from the slavery of having to seek constant outward stimulation. Wild dogs and hyenas hunt in packs and make a lot of noise when they make a kill thus attracting other competitors, but lions and eagles roam in stealth and solitude, and that's how they rule the jungles and the skies. When you reach the point where you can be productive and energised in your own company, your power is unlimited.

A healthy relationship requires healthy spaces between the partners. Closeness and intimacy are the glues of any marriage but this should not become claustrophobic either. You love your parter but they do not occupy your entire life. You also have friends and job that occupy another portion of your life. Your relationship comes first, but it's not the only thing you got to attend to. Also, it's unhealthy to be so emotionally dependent on one person that you become clueless and confused in their absence. It's normal to miss the person you love when you're apart and to keep in touch through occasionally checking up on each other, but if you feel lost and nervous the moment they're out of sight, something is wrong and you need to seek therapeutic solution quickly. You have a deep seated fear of abandonment that came from past relationships or childhood pain. Being too needy and uncomfortable in your own company is tiresome and your partner may not put up with it forever. They may not have the courage to tell you that you're too clingy because they fear you'll take it badly, but you can examine yourself and work on it before it poisons your relationship.

A person who loves you will not continue doing things that hurt you because when you're hurt they hurt as well. They will stop any habit they previously had that brings pain and tension in the relationship. This includes drinking till late or staying with friends till wee hours of dawn or having flirtatious communication with the opposite sex. Relationships require transformation in a person's lifestyle, and a person who is not willing to change for the sake the marriage is not qualified to be husband or wife. No amount of family mediations will make that marriage work. If a person regards you as important they will adjust their life to keep you in it. This is why someone who once cheated will change totally when they see that they could lose you; someone who kept backward company will discard it. If they insist on doing things that hurt you like keeping in touch with exes or staying out late or in other ways ignoring you and your feelings they're communicating that you're not that important to them. People change to keep what they want, if they're not changing to keep you don't argue or retaliate. They have chosen their life, choose yours as well.

There's another side to getting a child before you get established financially that these young people seem oblivious of: you lose friends because you can no longer hang out with them, also owing to the fact that the baby changes your life and your priorities entirely. All the free time you had to socialise is taken up for the next 2 or 3 years. Any extra money is taken up, juggling parenting and studying or hustling exhausts you totally until any free hours you get you catch the much needed sleep or rest. That is, if someone is kind enough to stop by and babysit for you for a few hours. Sometimes your mother can be left with the baby after a few months, but the child is still a part of your day to day life wherever you are, and you must provide for them and get constant updates throughout the day. This can get mentally draining. In essence the pregnancy throws you to the deep end of life before you learn how to swim, and you must somehow stay afloat or drown. Also remember all these experiences apply when the baby is healthy. God forbid if the baby has a sensitivity or complication that needs frequent trips to the hospital, the struggle is quadrupled. I repeat: the shortest trip to the prison of poverty is sexual carelessness, doing things without thinking just because other people are doing them. If you're not ready to marry what are you doing with a man? And you can afford to undress to a man you don't know if they'll be in your life 5 years from now? That's how your sisters behaved and today they're walking around calling men dogs. You've seen how this path has ruined many but you persist in it thinking your case is somehow special. Most of those men are either unable to help when you get pregnant or they flee. If you've been playing with fire and you're still not burnt take this as second chance to save yourself the agony and focus on developing yourself. The first thing you secure when you leave your parent's home is your financial future, not romantic future. Money is generally more loyal than people. Get ten thousand shillings into your account and you'll be sure to find it there tomorrow. But people? They can change on you at night. It's the height of stupidity to put yourself in a place to be both heartbroken and broke. Permanently avoid one by developing a career first before dabbling with the other.

A quick first date Q & A 'So what kind of person are you looking for?' 'Why? So that you can act like it?' 'No, just so I know if I meet your expectations.' 'But that's my decision to make. And in any case it applies both ways. You don't have to tell me what you're looking for, you just have to decide if I have that. Right?' 'Well...'

If you keep forgiving the cheating partner but attacking the people they're cheating with you're not 'protecting your territory.' You're acting out your cheapness and displaying your total lack of self respect and desperation. Preserve your dignity and never deal with third parties. Deal with the only person who has duty of care: your partner. That other person came in by your partner's choice, they're not really an 'impostor' or someone who broke in.

You would never need to beg the right partner to assist you or come to your aid. A person who loves you would readily jump in and help you to spare you the stress. Even if they don't possess the skills or the money they'll be trying to mobilise the help or reach out to the right people to get it done. If someone can sit pretty while you struggle with a situation that's not a partner but an impostor. Do not plead with them, retire them.

If you look back at your bad decisions in past, the ones that hurt you most grievously, you'll realize you made them in haste or in the grip of strong emotions like desire, impatience and fear. Make it a habit to listen and reflect in a quiet atmosphere. Your intuition isn't loud and you can't hear it when you're constantly on the move. 'Whether you turn to the left or to the right, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying 'this is the way, walk in it.'' (Isaih 30:21) But that voice is still and soft. Elijah tried in vain to find direction in an earthquake, a windstorms and fire. You cannot hear clearly if you're always in war mode. 'Be still and know that I am God.' (Psalm 46:10)

Stop worrying about whether you can really trust your loved ones. Such a worry is a roller coaster that will drain your mental energy and still improve nothing. All you need to know is that you can handle it if they betray your trust, that you can walk away and be happy without them. Do not stress over their behaviour, rest in your own strength instead. This is the key to confidence and mental peace. You hope they behave and keep their promise, but if they don't you would still live.

Green flags: when you see these signs, marry that person quickly! 1. They listen calmly when they're on the wrong, apologise and drop the matter without using it later as ammunition when it's you on the wrong. 2. They're hurt when they hurt you. They care about your feelings as much as their own. If a misunderstanding happens and you're both hurt, they don't pin you down or demand for apology but are rather open to the possibility that they also contributed to the confusion. 3. They approach conflict with hopes of repair rather than threats of resolution. They don't threaten to quit upon every disagreement. Quitting is not on their mind. 4. They're courteous to people and those less fortunate than them. They never hurl insults or say mean things even on a road rage. They can be firm with their rights and boundaries without flaring up. The rule is if someone explodes on the road they will also explode at home. 5. They want to be with you but they don't threaten to hurt you or themselves if you happen to break up, and they don't harbor violent opinions about how people 'should be punished for wasting others' time.' 6. They believe marriage is a team work but it still has structure and order. The man provides and the woman assists. He leads, she deputizes. The woman should be ready to work under him without competition or disrespect, the man should be ready to be out in front and look out for his family's wellbeing at all times. 7. They have healthy horizontal relationships (with family and friends) and vertical relationship (with God and at peace with their journey in life.) A person who is estranged from God will not assist you when problems of a spiritual nature arise. They should be able to transact in the spiritual realms on your behalf. As Joshua was fighting down in the valley moses was praying up the mountain, and it was the collaboration that produced victory. You need someone who can sense when you've entered the 'Valley of the shadow of death' and they ascend to the mountain of intercession. 8. They belief in monogamy. A person who advocates polygamy will either do it or cheat, and feel justified. 9. They're financially balanced. They live within their means without borrowing everywhere or being in a financial crisis. 10. They're not in contact with their exes, unless they work in the same place in which case the interactions are work related and not personal.