Arthur S. Kimeze

“The fact is, when we truly stare down reality, we prepare ourselves to act in ways that allow us to endure and survive extraordinary hardship. We train ourselves how to survive before the fact.” Diane Coutu

You lose authority when you make your hunger too visible. People do not fear a man who needs to be chosen, forgiven, understood or included. They negotiate him downward. The strongest posture is not arrogance. It is the calm proof that you can survive exclusion alone.

Powerful and true. You should always listen to people you respect, but you have to make your own decisions. My parents often told me that I never listened. I told them that was not true. I always listened very carefully, but I always made my own decisions. You have to live your own life.

Normalize being very direct, very straight to the point, very assertive. You'll get everything you want in life.

YOU MUST BELIEVE YOU ARE GREAT BEFORE THERE IS EVIDENCE

i regret to inform you that personal growth rarely comes from acquiring new knowledge and almost always from: • getting humiliated • showing up terrified and doing it anyway • admitting you might be the problem

A friend of mine used to say: “Show up on time, with a good attitude, and do what you said you’d do. That’s it. That’s 90% of winning in life." The older I get, the more I realize just how right he was.

Underrated life advice: Make yourself easy to root for. Be kind. Be reliable. Celebrate other people’s wins. Work hard without complaining. Carry good energy into rooms. You'll be shocked by how many doors open for you by making life better for others.

"Until death, all defeat is psychological." - Marcus Aurelius Refuse everything that would lead most people to give up. Refuse it. Rise from the dead 1000 times. Commit to never stay down & never give up. Everything you want is on the other side of struggle.

Dad’s look = slap loading

“I believe in one wife, but life happened.” At his thanksgiving ceremony, Jacob Oboth-Oboth openly introduced his two wives, saying he is not embarrassed by his family situation after circumstances led him into a second marriage.

it is an unwritten rule of life that after every prolonged period of hardship and uncertainty, there is going to be a period when you are going to achieve quantum leaps across multiple areas of your life. the only requirement is that you do not give up on yourself

You build competence not for recognition, but for independence, because the more capable you become, the less you rely on other people’s approval, direction, or permission to move forward in your life.

The endgame of competence is simple: you become so skilled, so resourceful, and so strategically embedded that whether it’s a company, a relationship, or a project, the rational move for everyone involved is to keep you, reward you, and bet on you, because losing you would cost them more than they’re willing to pay.

Excellent advice from Li Lu:

“Entrepreneurship is irrational and you do it anyways”

🔴 A diferencia de otros conductores, el conductor del camión con el freno fallido, en lugar de entrar directamente en la piscina de grava, subió primero la rampa y detuvo el vehículo retrocediendo para evitar que el vehículo sufriera daños. La maestría de algunos conductores no debe tomarse a la ligera.

It's just human willpower, I wish we'd stop pretending that humans are more capable at running further from a genetic perspective. No other animals wants to run 30 miles, in fact, it's against their nature to burn so much energy just for the fuck of it. You telling me a horse can't run further than a human if it really wanted to?

My father's best friend was a man called Uncle Bayo who disappeared from our lives without explanation. I was 12 the last time I saw him. He came to our flat in Gbagada, argued with my father in the bedroom for an hour, and walked out without saying goodbye to me. My father never spoke his name again. Neither did my mother. Uncle Bayo became a silence with a shape. Twenty-six years passed. I was in Philadelphia for a conference. A networking dinner at a hotel downtown. Across the room, a man about my father's age caught my eye and held it too long. He approached me during dessert and said my surname like it was a question he already knew the answer to. We sat in the hotel lobby until 2am. He told me the story my father never did. They had started a construction company together in the early 90s. It had failed because of a contract dispute with a senator. The senator had paid only half the money and refused the rest. The debt had crushed them. Uncle Bayo had blamed my father for trusting the senator. My father had blamed Uncle Bayo for not reading the fine print. The friendship had shattered. Two men who had been closer than brothers had become strangers over something neither of them could control. Uncle Bayo had moved to America after the falling out. He had built a new life, a new business, a small contracting firm in West Philly. He had married a Ghanaian woman and had two daughters. He had never returned to Nigeria. He had never called my father. He had assumed the silence was mutual. I asked why he approached me now. He said he recognised my face because I looked like my father at 30. He said he had been waiting for decades to see that face again, to explain something that was never about betrayal. He said the argument had been about shame, not money. Both men had felt they failed each other. Neither had known how to say it. I called my father from the hotel room. It was 3am in Lagos. He answered on the second ring, voice thick with sleep and alarm. I told him who I was sitting with. The line went quiet. Then my father did something I had never heard him do. He cried. Not softly. The kind of crying that comes from a place words cannot reach. Uncle Bayo flew to Lagos 3 months later. They met at the same flat in Gbagada. They sat in the same living room where the argument had happened. They didn't re-litigate the past. They just sat together, two old men with white hair and matching hypertension medication, and let the silence heal. My father died last year. Uncle Bayo spoke at the funeral. He said the greatest thief in life is not money or failure. It is the belief that there is always more time. Call them. The debt is not theirs. It is yours.

The older I get, the more I realize being in a hurry is a terrible way to live your life.