FIVE LESSONS I LEARNT FROM MEGAMIND

Isn't it funny that I would be writing about a blue, bald-headed guy from an animated movie? But that's exactly what I would be doing in this post. Megamind voiced over by Will Ferrell happens to be one of those animated superhero action comedy films I have watched for more than six to seven times. The story is about a guy who decides to become a villain and not just any kind of villain but the "baddest" of them all in the place where he lived called Metro City. He possesses unique gifts and abilities but was always treated as an outcast by his peers at school. He grew up in a prison where he was taught that evil was good and good was evil. He tried so hard to please his teachers and friends but every effort was met with rejection which made him feel worse about himself. On the other hand his arch rival, a handsome hunk called Metro Man was treated to much fanfare while Megamind was sent to quiet corner. But the movie ends with Megamind, the much hated villain dedicating a museum that had been built to his honor for defeating a ruthless villain he mistakenly created called Titan. Of course, he also got the girl Roxanne Ritchie too. After all don't they say the good guy gets it all?

Anyway what was Megamind's beginning like and what are the five lessons I learnt from his story? Megamind, a super intelligent extraterrestrial mastermind was born on a dying planet and sent off to earth in a capsule accompanied by his minion when he was barely a few months old. His father and mother remained behind and died with the other inhabitants of their planet during the explosion. But before he was sent off, he heard his father telling him what he was destined for. Unfortunately, all he could remember were the very first lines, "you were destined for...." because his little capsule's door closed up, setting his capsule off at lightning speed on a long journey to earth. It also happened that as he set off to discover his glorious destiny, a little handsome looking baby with great hair did the same too from another planet and they were all headed for the same destination, Earth. This little baby's name was Metro Man and it was on that day that their long lasting rivalry was born.

The 5 key lessons I learned from this...

1. When the purpose of a thing is not known, abuse is imminent.

I have heard this phrase a countless number of times yet many do not truly understand how potent this statement is to set them free to pursue their calling. Megamind was destined for good not evil. But because he didn't get what his father told him, he spent his teenage years trying to gain acceptance amongst his peers and everyone else to no avail. He tried many times to be good but kept on getting bad results. Every attempt at doing something was met with contempt and at the end of the day because he didn't truly know what his purpose was he began to feel dejected and the next thing he resorted to was full scale evil.

There are many people today who are living the kind of phony lifestyles they have adopted because they felt as if being the guy or girl who didn't conform wasn't the "in thing" anymore. Every guy/girl is losing their virginity so why keep mine. Everybody is shagging around so who cares if I do it too. Hollywood marriages don't last therefore marriage must be old-fashioned. A couple of flings around is good for me. And I can go on and on. Like Megamind we came from a Kingdom above with clear instructions on how to live life down here on planet earth. But we have forgotten all that because we don't spend time with our Bibles which is our manual for living and instead we look to Celebrities, Billionaires, Athletes, TV commercials, Soap Opera's for how to live the abundant life in Christ. Christian Rapper Da Truth says it's like "Looking to Bruce Banner (Hulk) for anger management classes." Megamind misused his gifts and abilities because he didn't know what his purpose was.

2. Don't compete with anybody

Megamind spent his early years trying to out do his rival Metro Man and this was the major reason why he gave up doing good in favor of evil because he really couldn't measure up even though he too was extremely talented. Some people are naturally gifted at certain things. I mean if I try to compete with a Lionel Messi on the soccer pitch today, I will always feel inadequate and untalented meanwhile that isn't the case. God has blessed each and everyone of us with unique gifts and abilities and things that only we alone can do excellently well. Our job here on earth is to find out what those things are and do them to best of our ability. In that way we get to enjoy each others gift rather than trying to compete or out do one another. I love Lionel Messi and I enjoy watching him play soccer. I equally know that there are things I am naturally good at in other areas and everyday I work at becoming excellent at what I do. Never compare yourself with anybody rather work at being the best you year in year out.

3. Take responsibility for your life

Don't play the blame game. It doesn't help in anyway and neither should you adopt a victim mentality. You will be on the same spot till God knows when. I know someone who back in my University days told me the story of her life and lamented why so and so happened to her. I met her 4 years later and I was surprised that she sat me down and told me the same story I mean without missing a beat that she had told me 4 years earlier. What I then figured out was that she had told this story so many times it had become a rhyme to her. Megamind was disappointed about the fact that life had dealt him some very hard blows. Metro Man his arch rival was adopted by a rich family while he was adopted by prisoners. Metro Man went to school with the rich kids while he was brought in every day to school from prison. Metro man was given awards while he was sent to quiet corner. Was this his lot in life? Was he meant to be an underdog? There are certain things you can't change in life like where you were born or the family you were born into and a host of others. But you can determine to a very large extent how your life pans out because tomorrow is always better than yesterday for those who will take care of their today. Don't use excuses to stay in a rut. Get out of that rut and make something meaningful out of your life. Megamind finally got this message and in the end got the girl he loved and a stature of honor to his name.

4. Beware of your closest associates.

One thing you need to be careful about is who you associate with. There are people who have lost lucrative jobs and deals because the people they hung around with gave off a strong negative vibe. Some have even been jailed because their friends committed a crime and they were innocently arrested too since they hung out together a lot. If you know where you are going in life and what you hope to accomplish then begin to choose carefully the people you hang out with. Preferably your closest associates should be people who share the same values with you and who motivate you. Megamind's closest associate was his minion who felt that he was destined to be an evil genius and praised him for being so. The moment he began to realize that Megamind was becoming soft, he rebuked him sharply and told him that evil was all he was good at. He eventually fell out with Megamind and left him because he was becoming good. Doesn't that sound like you? Bad friends never want to see you climb out of the pit. They will either pull you down with them or insult you from afar. Stay away from people who don't add value to your life.

5. Be Real

One of the reasons why Megamind almost lost the love of his life Roxanne Ritchie was because he deceived her into thinking that he was Metro Man's Museum Curator who went by the name of Bernard. He didn't see himself as good enough as he was to attract the beautiful Roxanne. There are many people today who spend their entire lives living like other people. They spend an awful amount of money on designer stuff, hair, makeup and all what not trying to fit into an acceptable social mold or what the media has defined to be the epitome of true success. Just be yourself and people would accept you the way you are. I once heard a man say, "What you compromise to keep, you will eventually lose." And the truth is every lie always need another lie to cover it up. That is why there are no successful liars for one day the hidden truth would eventually be revealed. Let people know who you are and if they accept you that way then good if not they can bounce right along. God's arms are wide open to receive you. When Megamind was discovered, he finally came out with the truth about himself and surprisingly enough the lady loved the real him more than the fake identity he had been carrying along for a while. Some people are paying the price today for the lies they told yesterday or the personalities they adopted just so they could belong to a certain clique or keep up with the joneses. It's not worth it. In the words of John Mason, author of An Enemy Called Average, "You were born an original don't die a copy. "

GOAL SETTING

A wise man once said, “That he who uses yesterday’s ideas in today’s market wouldn’t be in business tomorrow.” Insanity is usually defined as doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting a different result. Success is a habit and so is failure. But you aren’t truly a failure until you quit trying. However, failing successively may dampen ones moral and end up becoming a bad habit and bad habits are not easily broken. Why? A habit as defined by the American journal of psychology is more or less a fixed way of thinking, willing, or feeling acquired through previous repetition of a mental experience. Old habits are hard to break and new habits are hard to form because the behavioural patterns we repeat are imprinted in our neural pathways.

REMEMBER THIS, How you think determines how you feel and how you feel determines your will. We must be mindful of this because the Bible tells us in Proverbs 23:7a, For as he thinks in his heart so is he. You eventually become what you repeatedly think of. If you think you are a good for nothing fellow then that is what you will become. If you think that you cannot pass an exam, then you will eventually fail. So we must guard our thoughts carefully. The decisions that gave you a certain level of success in 2013 won’t produce the same results for you in 2014. We need to grow. We need to move up higher by making a conscious effort at self-development. That is where goal setting and effective time management come into play. Now let me ask you a few questions,

1.      Have you thought about what you want to be doing in five years' time?

2.      Are you clear about what your main objective at work is at the moment?

3.      Do you know what you want to have achieved by the end of today?

If you want to succeed at any level, you need to set goals. Without goals you lack focus and direction. Imagine playing a football match without a goal post. How do you get to know who has won? In the long run frustration would be the end result. Goal setting not only allows you to take control of your life's direction; it also provides you a benchmark for determining whether you are actually succeeding. As a student you have to set academic goals at the beginning of the semester and manage those goals throughout the academic year. As an Entrepreneur you have to set goals for your business and continually refine and manage them over a set period of time. As a Pastor you have to set goals for the Ministry and manage those goals over a set period of time. Even family’s do set goals. Nobody is exempted from goal setting because that is what gives you the drive to keep on going when the going gets tough. You must have heard of the famous maxim which says that, “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” I would like to add that this is true only for the man who has goals. 

What is a Goal?

A goal is a desired result a person envisions, plans and commits to achieve.

Goals must be SMART. 

S-Specific

M-Measurable

A-Achievable

R-Realistic

T-Time-bound

There are two categories of goals; Short-term and long-term goals.

Short-term goals can go from one day, to one month, one year or even up to five years while long term goals can go from five years and upwards. The interesting thing about goal setting is that the long terms goals are dependent upon the short term goals. In other words, achieving your short term goals will bring your long term goals to pass faster than you ever imagined. That is why what we do on a daily basis matters a lot. Many students would rather wait until an exam is announced before they start putting their legs inside cold water, drinking Coca-Cola or Nescafé all in a bid to stay awake the whole night. Meanwhile if they had started reading their books from day one of the class they wouldn’t have had any reason to do these things. Little wonder a wise man once said that, “the future you hope for comes in one day at a time.” If you will commit to achieving your daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals then life will become more fun, less stressful and very exciting. The number one cause of stress in many people’s lives is the sense of failure that comes with not achieving one’s goals.

To accomplish your goals, however, you need to know how to set them. You can't simply say, "I want" and expect it to happen. Goal setting is a process that starts with careful consideration of what you want to achieve, and ends with a lot of hard work to actually do it.

The Golden Rules for Goal Setting

• Set Goals that Motivate You (The why factor)

• Make sure your goals are SMART

• Write them down

• Make an Action Plan

• Stick with it

Things to remember

• Success in any field requires forgoing excuses and justifications for poor performance or lack of adequate planning.

• Be flexible and willing to revise your goals. Don’t become so locked in on your goals to a point where you develop tunnel vision. It’s like being so determined to score a goal without realizing that the goal post has shifted or been removed.

• Get an accountability partner. This is someone who has similar goals with you and one you can trust to share your goals with. Meet regularly to review each other’s goals and well as reward yourselves for their accomplishments.

• Don’t sweat it even if you don’t accomplish some of your goals. Some people get to a point where they become so obsessed with their goals so much so that missing to achieve one of them appears as if the whole world would come crumbling on them.

Performing at your peak isn’t rocket science. With a proper understanding on how to set goals and achieve them, you are more than half way up the ladder of greater achievements but not without understanding how to manage your time effectively.

NEVER TOO LATE TO BEGIN AGAIN

 

THE ADRENALINE RUSH

I can vividly remember like it was yesterday how we threw our caps in midair, with shouts of triumph when the Vice-Chancellor declared that we were now graduates of the University of Buea, Cameroon. It had been a sweet and sour undergraduate experience which had finally come to an end as we all heaved sighs of relief and said a final goodbye to “The place to be” as it was popularly called. Graduating at the top 5% of my class, I was excited, full of energy and believed that I was now highly equipped to go into the world and make a difference no matter how small. Many years have now past by and I can confidently say that I am still walking that line. With a penchant for research, I joined the Laboratory of Research on Advanced Materials and Nonlinear Sciences at the University of Buea, Cameroon headed by Dr. Dikande Alain Moise, a seasoned researcher, Alexander Von Humboldt Fellow and ICTP Senior Associate.

I was under his tutelage as a Postgraduate research student studying for an MSc. in Physics from the Academic years 2008-2009 and 2009-2010. We worked in the following areas; optics and non-linear communication, theoretical condensed matter physics, non-linear dynamics and complex systems and material sciences. The topic of my Thesis was “Mesoscopic electrical circuits with Q-charge states: the quantum Soliton-effect electronics” which has its application in the long distance transmission of power over electric cable lines. My work with the laboratory amongst other well-grounded researchers gave me a deeper understanding on how to carry out independent and collaborative research using the right methodologies and also how to communicate effectively. It also opened up my eyes to the world of publications and conferences. All seemed very rosy until early 2010 when my life came grinding to a halt due to an unexpected encounter with computer programming.

EUREKA! EUREKA!

After having spent over a year and two months at the Laboratory with barely seven months left to bag my Master’s degree in Physics, I withdrew from the Laboratory, abandoned my work, bought an HP laptop and started studying programming. What had happened was that in the course of the Master’s program, we did a course in Computational physics where I had had a stint with programming using FORTRAN and this changed everything about me. I soon began to realize how passionate I was for that course over others. I had done courses like Introduction to Computer Science I and II, Computer Architecture, Artificial Intelligence, Logic programming and Symbolic Computing, Databases and Operating Systems during my undergraduate days which led up to my minor in Computer Science. However, my encounter with computer programming at the postgraduate level was more of a “Eureka” moment for me and this completely disrupted my entire career path. During this period away from the Laboratory, I started playing around with MySQL and Access for fun and began developing websites using HTML and CSS. This I did for over three months until I stumbled upon some information for a postgraduate scholarship in Computer Science at the African University of Science and Technology, Abuja, Nigeria which I applied for. I was selected from a pool of applicants from different Nationalities and awarded a $15,000US dollar scholarship by the integrated long distance Telecommunications Company, Phase 3 Telecom Ltd. to study at the aforementioned University. The Scholarship package also included a 6-month paid internship at the company Headquarters.

While doing my MSc in Computer Science, I took, excelled at and fell in love with courses like Software Engineering, Data Structures and Algorithms, Computer Architecture and Design, Modeling Paradigms and Smartphone Applications development just to name a few. Because of my former background as a Physicist, my Supervisor Prof. Mohamed Hamada, lecturer and Head of the Software Engineering Laboratory at the University of Aizu, Japan and visiting Professor at my University saw an opportunity for me to be engaged in Interdisciplinary research which included three branches; Computer Science, Learning Science and Physics. I defended my Thesis entitled, “A Multimedia Learning System for selected topics of Physics” in December, 2011 from which I published my first paper by the same name with the prestigious Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). The paper is now available on IEEE Xplore for $31US dollars per download. I made my first International travel to Istanbul, Turkey for the paper presentation fully sponsored by my University and through this met and rubbed minds with top researchers like Prof. Oussama Khatib, well-renown Stanford University Robotics Professor, Prof. Okyay Kaynak, UNESCO Chair on Mechatronics, Bogazici University amongst many others. Upon completion of my Master’s program, I was retained by my University as a Teaching/ Research Assistant where I basically assisted on the courses Telecommunications Engineering and Automata Theory at the MSc. level while delving deeper into research work. In August 2012, I joined the newly formed Active and Smart Media Research Group as a coordinator overseeing 5 MSc. students with my former supervisor Prof. Mohamed Hamada serving as Group Lead. We worked on the design and development of Multimedia Learning Systems for different platforms and topics, e-learning supporting tools for active and smart learning, Integration of Artificial Intelligence Techniques to the systems to create Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Integration of Learning Style Index into the systems to measure the learning preferences, Integration of motivational real-life examples into the systems and the experimental evaluations for the systems. In just 7 months since I took up the position of coordinator of the group, we were able to see the following successes; 90% implementation of Multimedia content on Android platform for Automata Theory, Compiler, Physics, Information and Communication Theory, and Data Structures as well as an IEEE major conference paper, two book chapters already published by NOVA Science publications and made available on Amazon.com, and a conference paper published by INTED 2013.

THE LESSON

The truth is a whole lot has happened in less than 3 years and I will share more of that as time progresses but let me send a few points home so that you get a holistic view of what I am trying to convey in this post. Many people find themselves stuck on a job or a career because they are too scared to begin again. Either they think they are too old to go back to school, learn a new skill, or simply get a new job. In my opinion the fear of beginning again has held more people in bondage and limited their capability to achieve more than the worst financial crisis has kept people in poverty. I see this every day of my life and it saddens me because the question I often ask myself is, “How long do they think they are going to be here on this planet earth?” Why tie yourself down to a job just because you want to pay the bills, feed and clothe yourself when there is much more than you can be doing that will automatically take care of these basic needs? When I made the decision to quit the MSc. program in Physics it was a tough call which dealt me some serious blows. My supervisor who had specifically chosen me out of 7 others in my class to work with was utterly disappointed. My parents couldn’t imagine I was about to quit school to go learn computer programming after all the money they had spent. In fact an uncle of mine who happened to be an authority figure in my life told me that there was no money in Computer Science and went as far as equating it to what computer maintenance professionals do and suggested that Electrical Engineering would be a better option. Within me too were internal wrangling’s which took away my sleep and left me wallowing in a gulf of confusion. But once the decision was finally made I felt an overwhelming peace on the inside knowing that there was light at the end of the tunnel and it wasn’t an oncoming train! It appeared this somewhat “dumb” act began to attract all the resources necessary to take me to where I wanted to go and today after 3 years and 7 months, I am a PhD candidate due to graduate before the end of this year 2014. Now listen to this very carefully, 

• A baby shark kept in a small aquarium would only grow to a few inches in length. But the same shark placed in the ocean would grow to become a giant killer. That’s the same debilitating effect fear would have on you. Super achievers have fears too but the difference is that they refuse to be overcome by them. 

• Make a plan for your life before life makes its plans for you. I can guarantee you with all certainty that life’s plans for you are not what you desire. They say he who fails to plan by default plans to fail. You can’t coast around with no definitive goals in life and expect to win big. 
• Expect to fail along your way to succeeding. The difference between successful people and the unsuccessful is that successful people fail many more times than the unsuccessful yet refuse to be seen as failures. Someone once said that, “Success is on the far side of failure.” If you are afraid of failing then you probably would never achieve anything substantial. See failing as an opportunity to learn something new and then start all over again with this new knowledge in mind. 

• Be cautious when you listen to the “experts”. The “experts” sometimes are the people in your life, who believe they know you better than anyone else, want the best for you and also know which course of action you ought to take. They might be sincere in their suggestions to you but they might also be sincerely wrong. So listen to them with caution and be very selective with what you adopt from them as best practice.

• Finally, don’t be afraid to begin again. It might just be the best thing that ever happened to you. It makes no sense to have raced up the ladder of life at full speed only to realize that it had been leaning against the wrong wall. You are not in a competition with anybody. You have your own race and you are on your own lane. Stop trying to keep up with the Joneses. Stay on your lane and win.

          
          See you at the top!