Principle #5

Yoruba people have words and expressions for every little thing and I’m proud to be a Yoruba geh. Today, I’m borrowing two words ‘orisirisi’ meaning ‘different different things’ and ‘radarada’ meaning ‘arrant nonsense’. I hope I’m right with my translations sha. Anyway, to my story for the day. My story is about MTN Project Fame and the ‘orisirisi’ people that used to go for this auditions. There was this particular year that one guy went for the auditions and what he did was ‘radarada’. This guy went in with pants and chains on his body and when he was asked why he appeared like that, he said he was singing Fela’s song and so, he decided to dress like him. Uncle Dede, who was part of the judges was so angry and disgusted and he said and I quote “who told you Fela used to go about naked? Get out of this place right now”. The guy thought with that, he was going to win the hearts of the judges but unfortunately for him, it backfired. You people will say KanyinWrites has come again; what is she driving at with this irrelevant story she is writing? Well, don’t vex ehn, I’m just trying to be funny and also inspiring. Today, we are going to my principle number 5 which states and I write “copy copy e no good ooo” meaning “Do not imitate”.

It is normal for us to have someone or people that we look up to as mentors or role models in different aspects of our lives. Most times, we always love to be like them, act like them because we like what they do or because what they do is exactly what we would love to do. For me, Fela Durotoye is one person I look up to when it comes to public speaking and being a life coach and that is because one of my dreams is to become a renowned public speaker and life coach in the nearest future. However, I wouldn’t say because I look up to him and I listen to him speak, I will like to start speaking like him or I will start to use his style.

We need inspirations and good examples to follow and fortunately we have many of them. We can learn lot of things by reading about their lives, their struggle and their achievements, their qualities which helped them to overcome difficulties in their lives. You can follow them on social media and if peradventure, your stalking game is lit, you meet them one on one. However, the problem comes when people try to copy their idols, they try to become another X or Y, which is impossible. God has given unique identity to all of us; each of us is different from another. By trying to become someone else we are going against nature. Nature never copies, every living thing produced by nature is unique, and no two things are carbon copy of each other (even a twin has something different from the other).  We all are unique in our own way and have our own nature and qualities but we don't even try to search for them but try to become someone else and in turn we kill our original self. In a process to become someone else most of the time we lose our own identity permanently.

Someone might want to ask “does that mean I should not read about my mentor again? So I should not learn from them again? Of course no. In one of the principles, I wrote about discovering yourself and the previous principle says develop yourself. In the process of doing that, it is advisable for people to go through this stage of getting to know how other people who are excelling in one field or another went about it. For me, in developing myself as a blogger, I have started reading on how people started and how they are making money and all. I will not now say because Linda Ikeji is making it from writing gossip, me too I must change to gossip or because BellaNaija is making it because of her fashion and wedding stories, I will switch to that. As for public speaking, I listen to Fela Durotoye anytime I have the opportunity to and truth is, I am trying hard to make sure I meet this man one on one (please anyone with his phone number, halla). Therefore, we should definitely try to take inspiration from people around us, from all great people who are living or lived on this planet but resist the temptation of imitating them. There is difference between imitating someone and getting inspired by someone and we should understand that. Rather than trying to imitate somebody we should try to discover ourselves, understand our true nature and try to be ourselves. Let’s discover the real us and the fact is no one like us existed before or will exist after, we all are unique. Let’s give ourselves chance to express our true consciousness, our true personality not the one which society or people around us want us to be. Let’s just be ourselves.

Please remember these:

•  No one else is you, so embrace who you are.
• It’s much work being someone else rather than being yourself.
• Your combinations of strengths are unique to you and no one else.
• Your experiences are unique to you and their experiences are unique to them.

Much Love,

KanyinWrites.