My work has enabled me to meet different kinds of people and up till this moment, I keep meeting people that I always learn one or two things from. I have always shared some important lessons I have learnt from people on this medium and this piece is also based on another eye opener I had some days back when I met with a young lad, in short a very young one. That meeting has also left an indelible mark on me.

Years ago, I read about John Goddard, a young 17 year old guy in far away America. This young chap did something I have NEVER heard about and he became a source of challenge to me. John, at such a pretty young age decided to chart the course of his life by setting 128 goals that he would like to achieve before he died. To my amazement, John had achieved 117! This story is not about John and it is not about a guy that set the same number of goals, I am not sure anyone has ever repeated such a feat since John. This is about a young 16 year old leading other younger chaps to make impact in their community.

Just like I always did, I received an email from someone asking for advice on the choice of career and course to study in the University after discovering his talents and purpose so to say. I decided to fix an appointment with him and we discussed at lenght on all it takes to change one’s life course and the supposed dangers. It was a routine to me until we were rounding up and this chap told me something that shocked me to the marrow.

The summary of our discussion is that the guy has written UME to study Mechanical Engineering but he is now confused because he is more at home with Writing. When he was dwelling more on his ability to write, I asked if he has ever written anything and he brought out sheets of newsletters he is leading a group to publish. This was not so surprising until I went through the contents. The contents were strictly on motivation and purposeful living! These guys were motivating their mates to have dreams and discover their live purposes! Come to think of it, the oldest is 16 years old!

I had to look at him twice to be sure I am seeing well because the write ups does not represent the person sitting in front of me. I started probing him further and he told me they are a group of young writers dedicated to motivating their fellow students at Vetland Grammar School in Agege, Lagos State. He even told me they run a Motivational Club where they organise speaking programmes for their fellow mates. They even invite speakers to come and inspire the students of the school! Wow! These was just unbearable for me because I just can’t remember what I was doing at such a age. If there was something I was doing, it has nothing to do with thinking about my future talk less of inspiring others to do same.

I have made a promise to always celebrate people with inspiring stories and this is what this is about. I don’t know if you have similar story, but I didn’t that is why this story is worth sharing with all and sundry. If you have kids, you need to give this story to them to read because the world is fast changing. People and most importantly kids, need to know what they want to do with their lives. The era of purposeless living is fast gone and this is what our heroes for today are reminding us of. It is not only when we get to 30 or 40 that we bother to think about what we want to do with our lives.

These kids are role models and they are worth celebrating and that is what we will be doing. Just like we did for Abigael, we are going to get something going in the lives of these kids. Whatever we can do to encourage them will be appreciated. We can call, SMS or do anything to let them know they have challenged our lives as adults. Their Coordinator is Olabode Emmanuel and his phone number is: 2348069256914.

Over the course of this month, I will be sharing some of their inspiring articles with you and I am also going to be calling on us to help enlarge their dreams by making certain contributions in what ever we can think of, to the course they are pursuing.

If you have any story worth sharing, do not hesitate to send them to my email: feedback@naijamotivation.com and I won’t hesitate publishing as long as it will be a blessing to someone. This is our platform and we must contribute to it.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 8:51 am and is filed under Positive Attitude. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.