HOW I WON MY WORST BATTLE

 CULTIVATING GROWTH MINDSET

A jubilant man celebrating after winning a worst battle Photo Courtesy/RDNE Stock Project 

Not Scared

Life can be many things. However, life cannot prepare you for your worst battle. It just continues to churn out issues and problems the way it was designed to function. The primary duty of life is to exist in the present and bring up things in the present that the past does not know about. Therefore, people living in the present have to grapple with the problems that life brings until they find the correct solutions. That is at least the experience I had with my worst battle. No one had prepared me for such a moment. But I needed to fight, if survival was my goal. Of course survival was my goal. I was not going to let a fierce battle push me out of life before my time. I was definitely going to fight. I was not going to check out on my knees. I was going to stand firm and look at the battle in the eyes. I needed to look at it to understand what it thought it was.

Did the nastiest battle think that by coming in the name of worst was enough to scare me? No, ‘worst’ is not enough for me. I am my own person. A person with a voice and a mind. This means that I think and see. I can see an enemy from a far. And I can also speak to my mind concerning what I have just seen. This is what the worst battle did not know about me. When the designers of the vilest battle gathered and laid their weapons. They thought they had done enough. That I was just going to fall into their plot and give them a victory dance. They were extremely wrong. I am not a predictable person. That is one of my features. You cannot predict me. It does not matter how hard you work. Or how smart you think you are. I said before that I am an enigma. A complex puzzle that you cannot easily solve. But the worst battle came anyway.

In its initial form, the worst battle thought that it had all the active ingredients. It had created a disastrous circumstance I had never seen. So it was going to win. And I was going to lose. At least that is how the planners thought and build up the battle. It was supposed to catch me unaware. I was supposed to get disoriented that, it will take time to gather myself. And they would leverage on that disorientation to continue fighting me to the ground. However, in their foolishness, the designers forgot one thing. That you cannot just attack a person you do not know and win. A battle has two characteristics. One is that your opponent must be in the same mood as you. There must be an element of enmity between the two of you. You must have something you are feuding about. A battle only ensues when there is no compromise.

No Enmity

And when people begin to fight, they have common reasons. They want to send a strong message to each other. That the opponent cannot play with them. They are not a pushover. And they can defend themselves. These are ingredients of normal battles. They are formed and started on the grounds of enmity. In my case, there was no enmity. I was living my life the way I love living it. And someone was not happy. In fact, it was not just one person. But rather a group of people dispersed across the community. I have my personal philosophies. And one of those rules advises me against pleasing people. It is rule number seven (“I will never be a people-pleaser at any cost”). These philosophies have been defining and shaping me for a long time. I created a ‘Rules I Live by’ philosophy when I was a teenager.

A young man enjoying wining a worst battle Photo/RDNE Stock Project

Therefore, I knew these rules better even before I started working. They have been part of my life for a decade plus. I even did not know that they had impacted my life this deep and became part of my fiber. These philosophies had shaped me into a person that I was supposed to become. They pruned me off all rough surfaces and bad influences. And they left me an honest person. That is how I live. I don’t lie to myself and people. I speak the truth. And I get into a lot of problems when I speak the truth. Some people see me as an enemy when I tell them the truth. Others develop an attitude towards me. But that is not my problem. It is their problem. Because by speaking the truth, I help them to see their weaknesses or unresolved issues. Therefore, when people develop an attitude or hate me. I call that a choice. Because my role was just to state facts and it is their responsibility to determine how they use those facts.

I do not comprise my standards to win favors or attract a following. I also do not act this way or that way to please people. You either like me for who I am or hate me for the person that I am. That also is your problem. Why in the first place would you want people to please you? What is your problem? So when I was living my life normally as I always do. I did not know that some people had made me their case study. That they were watching my every movement and memorizing my routines and schedules. They had observed me for so long that they had found something to hate. And for that reason, I deserved some punishment. And they were going to administer it using their preferred methods, which bordered on Satanism. That is how this battle became my worst battle because it was comprised of idol worship.

Idol Worship

The idol worship part was supposed to speed up my fall and ensure that I was completely destroyed. It was a total destruction mêlée aimed at bankrupting and killing me. It was the ugliest event I have ever seen in my whole life. I had never witnessed people so evil and influenced by the power of envy before. They had built this battle on the foundation of envy and hatred. I did not have prior interaction with these people. They were just people in the community who you could encounter in rare occasions. I did not know them very well beyond knowing that they lived in the same community as me. I had never held conversations with them before. I did not have a relationship with them. But here they were, pretending to know me better than how know myself. And they were determined to destroy me.

An excited woman celebrating a win Photo/Andrea Piacquadio 

And nothing was going to stop them. I was supposed to lose everything that I have ever worked for. Their mission was to see me amount to nothing. And they swore to my destruction. So they came with all their weapons. They laid traps in every corner including assaulting some of my assets. That is how idol worship began. By taking a representation of me to their gods. And prayed for my downfall. The battle was intense. However, they learned the hard way. They came at me with every missile they could find including working with the devil. But that was not enough to destroy a person like me. I live prepared and I have partnerships with the right people. I know how to solve problems no matter their intensity. In fact, problem-solving is one of my strengths. It does not matter whether it is a crisis. As long as, it is a problem. It will be solved.

My Approach

To win this battle, I approached it as a problem. I did not look at it just as any other problem but rather as a chronic problem. A crisis in the making. Once I defined the problem, I knew that my conventional methods were not enough. I needed something stronger that matched the gravity of this battle. So I ventured outside my conventions. I sought the best partner who was not just trained or experienced in this line of problem. But also remarkable and certified. The partner I chose had not just won one battle but several worst battles. And we worked together. It took time to create a custom strategy aimed at the nature of the problem. However, the final strategy we settled for, was the right one. We spent a lot of time working on the strategy. And the enemies thought they had won. When they began to see that maybe, their methods were working, they celebrated.

But I was not done. I had not spent several months putting up a strong strategy for nothing. When the right time came, we rolled out our plan. Our strategy never took months to function. It was effective. Results began showing weeks after implementing it. What was meant to be ruined was never ruined at all. I had control of everything that belonged to me. And while at it, we caught one of the planners. I had been shown how the evil schemes were being laid. I was also shown the key individual behind idol worship. I knew everything that was going on from day one. I knew when this battle was declared. It was a silent declaration. A cold-war type. But I got the message. And I kept watching. In the final stages when the enemies had fought so hard and tried everything they knew. I got to see the number of people involved.

It was a whole generation. A mother and her children. Formed one group. The other group was comprised of a wannabe teacher. Both fronts took part in idol worship. The worship was meant to release a series of diseases, accidents, and death. But none of those things materialized. I have knowledge. All I needed was to convene a meeting with the right partner. And all the help I needed came at the right time. You don’t win your worst battle by engaging your opponents. You win your worst battle by allowing your opponents to do whatever they think they know. Let them exhaust every option on their list. Let the opponents come to you with everything. My best strategy was not to engage at all. I walked away and allowed the right people to fight on my behalf. And I won. All the things that the opponents wanted to happen did not happen. Their plan did not work because I am anchored in the right place. I have always been anchored in the right place. What about you? Do you know how to win a fierce battle?