Sunday 22 January 2012

The Power of Contemplation Part 3

Continued from Part 2
 
3.       Poor Associations: The people you relate with constantly tend to influence your mental habits: Evil communication corrupt good manners. Who are your buddies? Are they deep thinkers? Do they talk reasonable or sensible talk? If your answer is no, it may mean you may have to change your associations: Seek the company of thinkers. Listen to their tapes, videos or read their writings if you cannot reach them physically. It will influence you positively. You will start developing thinking habits and you will be on your way up.

4.         Sexual Fantasies: When your fantasize about sex, there will be no space in your brain for productive thinking. A mind preoccupied with sex thoughts soon become a sex toy! You become a servant to your sense of sight. Every woman that walks past becomes a thought project! Friend this makes your imagination stifled and you only think in a unidirectional pattern. It stifles your positive creativity and mental power. You need to break free from the habit of sexual fantasies otherwise you remain a fantastic non-achiever! No genuine, original results to show forth in your lifetime. The truth is that the habit of sexual fantasy reduces a man’s time and mental power for productive contemplation. Sometime ago, in the city of Ohio a prominent judge, respected citizen, family man, wound up on the front page of The Akron Beacon Journal and in prison, as a child molester. He was interviewed and he had this to say, He described a “process” – he said, “One day, years ago, I was out watering my lawn, a little girl in a sundress went by and for a fleeting millisecond I thought about what it would be like with her – then, of course, I pushed it from my mind. But a year or so later, at a mall, another little girl, and I held the thought for maybe a minute.” He went on to mention another incident, 15 or 20 minutes of thought. “Then one day,” he said, “I woke up and found it was all I was thinking about. For days, it dominated my thoughts. Then I did it.”

5.       Poor Reading Culture: A renowned and influential senator in bible days named Daniel, made a statement centuries ago, he said ’’ ... I Daniel understood by books’’. A poor reading culture is a major bane to developing the power of contemplation. You must prop yourself to develop this habit. As physical exercise is to the muscles, so is reading to the mind. When you read, you exercise your mind, and an exercised mind result in a progressively exercised life. A man, who does not read, gathers dust on his mind. With time all sorts of useless and vain ideas grow in his mind, which he eventually manifests. Learn to develop a reading culture. Read good books, good magazines. Read Articles that stimulate your mind to think and you will improve your mental power.

6.       VI.   Low Self Image: how do you see yourself? What mental picture do you have of yourself? The picture that you carry in your mind of yourself is your self-image. Do you always see yourself as a nobody? Do you always think you are a no-good? If you do; that thought pattern is stifling your power of contemplation. There is no human being that does not have something good to offer the world. That low or poor self- image has to be worked upon by you. You need to change your self- image. Go get information to help you do that. Once your self-image improves, it will help you enter into a world of positive contemplative power.

7.       VII. Low Self-esteem: Closely related to low self-image, is low self-esteem. Low self-esteem has to do with how you ’’feel’´ about yourself. When you feel ’’good’’ about yourself, it enables your contemplative power to be stimulated. One of the benefits to feeling good about yourself is that it helps your thinking process internally. Great men and achievers have found ways to constantly feel good about themselves. You must find your own key to unlock this “feel good” feeling, practice it:, it is  vital to your overall success in life.

Event and people may make you feel low but understand that it is up to you to work on feeling good. Learn to feel good in spite of your position, predicaments and painful perspective that others may have about you. Poor self- esteem blocks the flow of contemplative power and a block of this power, prevents you from getting the ideas to make productive progress. The Holy writ said ’’ ..let no man despise your youth’’.


8.       Religious Mind Set: A number of folks have a mindset that ascribes all responsibility to God. They think because God is omnipotent, He runs everything on the earth. But this is an error in scriptural application. God has given man dominion to run the earth. However we can engage God’s intervention via prayer; this does not relieve men of his duties on the earth. God created man, put him in the garden and asked him to dress it and keep it. In other words, God expected man to put all of his resources to work, physical (to dress it) and mentally (to keep it) in order to make the garden fruitful. Productivity always involves the physical and the mental. One without the other will not yield desired results. There is a spiritual side to it. However to think it is only spiritual is to become religious in your mind set. While you can get direction from the spiritual to know what to do (as in Adam), God then expects you to put your mental and physical resources which he has given you to bring about productivity in the job which he has shown you to do. So to engage the innate power of contemplation, you must break free from religious mind set and play your role as a man.

Dr Edugbo, O.P. is a medical practioner by profession, and has a ministry towards men. Over the years, he has been involved in numerous medical, church, parachurch, non-governmental and corporate organizational work and development. He conducts consultancy, speaking and training engagements for churches and corporate organizations.
You may reach him on 08130105533, pauledugbo@gmail.com
For more articles relating to men you can visit
Other online resources from him can accessed below

Sunday 15 January 2012

The Power of Contemplation Part 2

Continued from part 1

We started talking about the Power of Contemplation in our last article; we will continue from where we stopped. Now every reasonable thinking woman believes in a man whose actions produce quality results. But then quality results are the results of quality thinking or contemplation. Women are more emotional but they can also think rationally. Men are more rational but of course, they can be emotional. Both qualities are important, hence man needs woman and woman needs man.  However, in terms of family life, I believe the reason man is the head of the home is because of the rational or contemplative power bestowed on man by God, however, the woman’s input can greatly help to fine tune the outcome of family decisions. The feminine advantage can balance family decisions. 

As the head of the home, you must use your head. When your head stops working, the respect from your wife and your kids starts waning .Therefore, you must learn to constantly use your contemplative power as a man or you lose your respect in life. It’s been estimated that human beings use less than 10% of their natural brain capacity. The people, we  call genius use less than 10% of their brain capacity. This means the generality or majority of persons use just about 2-3% of their brain capacity. Talk about gross under-utilisation! There is an awesome room for improvement in our contemplative ability; we can and should improve our contemplative power. We can become genius in our own right. If not world renowned, at least family-renowned!

 A study of society today reveals that we are at greater advantage for developing mentally than in previous generations. Technology has made it a thousand times easy for us to become genius in our own right. But this is only if you as a man is willing to do so. Technology itself will not confer it on you. You must rise up and use this advantage bestowed on our generation to develop your contemplative power to become a star in your generation or at least in your home or family. This is will cheaply guarantee your place of dignity on the earth. However, in today’s world there are some hindrances that stand on the way of most men to developing their contemplative power. Let’s identify them.
Common hindrances to developing the Power of Contemplation?

They in include the following:
  1. Weak mental habits
  2. Amorous affair
  3. Poor association
  4. Sexual fantasy
  5. Poor reading culture
  6. Low self-image
  7. Low self –esteem
  8. Religious mind- set


We will now examine each of these habits
       1.        Weak mental habits:
A habit is a way of doing things that has become a way of life to you. Every man has thinking habits—good or bad. Weak mental habits simply refer to ways of thinking that are shallow. It is an approach to situations that is only surface deep. The good news is that new thinking habits can be developed. But you must commit to developing new thinking habits. It takes about 3 weeks to develop a new habit and it involves commitment to doing things in the new way you want to develop in you.

To develop strong mental habits, commit yourself to spending time to think deeply few minutes every day. This involves thinking about possible solutions, and outcomes of what you are presently confronted with. Seeing things from different angles. As you do this consistently daily, it will eventually become a habit and the time will come when you will then do it spontaneously on different issues at the same time. Remember it is not just taking action as a man but engaging in quality contemplation that matters. So begin to develop strong mental habit.

    2.          Amorous Affairs
         These are affairs or acquaintances that are geared towards sexual ends. They are sexually-motivated affairs. It takes time to develop any affair, whether long term or short term, whether as a single man or a married man. If you estimate the amount of mental energy you use in pursuing amorous relationships, you will be amazed at how much of your mental energy it consumes. The amount of contemplative energy that goes into these pursuits limits the use of your thinking power towards more productive ends. It limits mental productivity. The habit of disciplining yourself to one affair (with your fiancĂ© if you are unmarried or with your wife, if you are married), helps to protect and conserve your mental power for more productive ends including building personal discipline into you.

Dr Edugbo, O.P. is a medical practitioner by profession, and has a ministry towards men. Over the years, he has been involved in numerous medical, church, para-church, non-governmental and corporate organizational work and development. He conducts consultancy, speaking and training engagements for churches and corporate organizations.

You may reach him on 08130105533, pauledugbo@gmail.com

For more articles relating to men you can visit


Other online resources from him can accessed below

http://winninghealthplus.blogspot.com

Tuesday 10 January 2012

The Power of Contemplation Part 1


The Power of Contemplation

To contemplate simply means to think, to study, to reflect, to reason or to meditate. There is dynamic relationship between contemplation and action. Have you ever heard the saying ‘’ that man is an action man’’. They mean to say the person takes steps to carry out some things. However, while it is good to take action, it is more important to contemplate your actions before you take them. Many men are in two extremes, on the one hand, they never take action, and on the other hand,   they always take action. But as a man who wants to produce quality result, we need to learn to contemplate before taking action that is being balanced.

The quality of a man’s outcome or result in life depends not on the quantity of his actions but on the quality of contemplations that  precede his actions. A lot of men do not have the habit to think through in their minds about what they want to do before they do what they do and they thereby produce weak results. Great achievers produce great results because of their habit of great thinking. Mentally examine that project or problem you are faced with and see how you can bring forth solutions to it. There is a fundamental difference between men and women. As men, God made us to be more rational than emotional, while women are more emotional than rational. Please don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that men are not emotional or that women are not rational, rather what this statement means is that each gender has its unique share distribution of emotion versus rationality compared to each other.

Therefore based on this premise, we see that, God made man to be a contemplator (so to speak).He made you the man to be able to think through things to arrive at decisions having considered various options. Infact the scripture says ’’... come now, let us reason together’’. It is reasoning that makes for rising. Until you practice reasoning, you cannot rise. There are solutions all around you but you may be allowing your present circumstances, or friends around you to blind from seeing the solutions to the problems. You do not just get up and take action. As a man, you think first, reflect on the outcome of that action you are about to take before you take action. You ask yourself “Are these steps going to be beneficial?”, “Are there alternative or better ways of doing what i am about to do?”, “Will what i am about to do enhance or denounce my reputation?”, “ What will be the aftermath of my actions, both on me and to others involved or not involved?”

Dr Edugbo, O.P. is a medical practitioner by profession, and has a ministry towards men. Over the years, he has been involved in numerous medical, church, para-church, non-governmental and corporate organizational work and development. He conducts consultancy, speaking and training engagements for churches and corporate organizations.
You may reach him on 08130105533, pauledugbo@gmail.com
 For more articles relating to men you can visit
 Other online resources from him can accessed below