The April, 1999 edition of Ebony magazine has an article with the banner, “Here’s The Secret: How some women find husband after husband.”
I was fascinated by it. I read and reread it. Then I made a copy which I kept on my table. Early one morning I was going through it and a man came by and read the caption. “Why’re you reading this? Are you looking for a husband?”
“I’ve always been interested in strategy,” I said. “Since I was 11 or 12. There were many things I wanted to do but couldn’t because I didn’t know how.” That brief encounter jolted the memory of an experience into my consciousness.
HOW TO “PICK UP” GIRLS
When I was 16 I didn’t know how to “pick up” girls. You laugh? I didn’ consider It funny. I grew up in Southeastern Nigeria. I was highly unsocial. Fear, unworthiness and inferiority complex held me prisoner. I wasn’t articulate.
My environment helped to reinforce this state of affairs. Let me explain. My opinion, borne out of my experience, is that the Igbo-speaking people of Southeastern Nigeria, especially those in the Nnewi – Onitsha – Enugu axis are the most sexually repressed people in Nigeria. Up to when I was 18, I didn’t observe any of my peers who had a girlfriend. Normal, “healthy” relationships between boys and girls which was tolerated (and sometimes encouraged) in other parts of Nigeria (places like Uyo, Calabar, Port Harcourt, Warri, Benin, Ibadan, Abeokuta, Ondo, Akure, and the Northcentral region) was a taboo where I grew up.
My impression then was that sex was something dirty, “unholy”, which shouldn’t even be enjoyed by married people! There seemed to be a grand conspiracy to exclude all of us young people from knowing anything about it.
THE TALISMAN
One day a cousin of mine told me a Hausaman sold a talisman to him. With this talisman in your pocket, any girl you touched will just follow you and do whatever you wanted. Boy! That appealed to my fertile imagination. That’s exactly what I wanted.
That kind of power game appealed to a primitive instinct in me then. Again, people filled with unworthiness are sometimes driven to compensate for it by trying to acquire one kind of power or the other over other people. The Golden Rule says, treat others the way you wish to be treated. I wouldn’t want anyone to subvert my free will and get something from me without my consent. But here I was excited to do it to another.
This guy was the only one living in his uncle’s town house. The man was 700 kilometers away in Sokoto in Northwestern Nigeria. I prepared myself for the act. I took a bath. Rubbed haircream on my hair and combed it nicely. I was in my Sunday best. I made the bed.
The talisman was something wrapped in black thread in a matchbox-sized container. I put it in my left trouser pocket. There was this cheap Indian perfume. It had a name like “Tabu”. The instruction was that I rub it on parts of my clothes. It was one of those types with the photograph of a beautiful Indian damsel on it. The fragrance was lousy. (Wasn’t it supposed to be romantic?).
Out I went. The bounce of legs was like that of a new helical spring. I was looking for “the” girl: Tall. Shiny skin lemniscate-shaped. Flowing like a divine dream. You know, you don’t waste your talisman on just any girl!
Then I saw her. My legs ferried me swiftly to berth behind her. We seemed to be the only two people on that long, dusty, sandy street. My legs were wobbling badly. I was designing all the wonderful things I was going to do with her. I saw myself touching her in my imagination. And she turns, zombie-like, a Haitian import from the dead, following me to the slaughterhouse like a tethered sheep.
BREATH
I could hear her breathing now. My hands extended and touched her. The earth momentarily stopped on its axis. Was my heart still beating? Time seemed frozen. I saw the object of my fancy turning, and then two pairs of eyes like Olympic torches fixed on me, seeming to be looking through me. At that point I wished I was Houdini. I could have bid the earth to open up, swallow me and make me reapper in my room. “Are you crazy?” The voice sounded like thunderclaps. “Why are you touching me?”
I didn’t hear other things she said. I couldn’t speak. No words. Couldn’t move. After what looked like a 100 years, I noticed she was about 10 meters away. A bicycle was hooting behind me. The cyclist was furious, heaping curses on me.
Somehow I got back to the house and flopped on the bed. I closed my eyes. Why did the stupid Hausaman sell the stupid talisman to my stupid cousin if it didn’t work? Why do people sell formulas that didn’t work?
In retrospect, I suspect the talisman really worked. Maybe the vendor didn’t tell my cousin what it really does and the correct way to use it. Or, perhaps, my cousin didn’t communicate this properly to me.
A THEORY THAT WORKS
My theory is that the purpose of that talisman was to boost the self-esteem and self-confidence of 16 years-old social phobics like I was then. If I was the vendor, this is what I would tell the buyer: “Look clean. Just dress well. Decide the girl you want to talk to. If possible, find out what interests her. What she considers important. Decide what to tell her. Look for an opportunity. Put this talisman in your pocket and rub this perfume or any other if you like perfumes. With that, you look like a prince in the eyes of the girl. The talisman will give you the courage to say what you want to say. This girl will agree to all you propose, but it may not be immediately. So don’t give up if she plays hard to get. Spend your time and other resources you have foolishly and generously in this pursuit.”
I would also say “there are of course a few girls in this world you should never ever have a relationship with. The way to know when you meet one is that whatever you say, no matter how long you are on it, she’ll say no or even insult you. If you have a relationship with them, your life will be ruined. If they say no, they’re not rejecting you but it’s God that is trying to protect you from harm. Go ahead and do it, you will succeed.”
Later I was able to rise above my social phobia, build my self-esteem and did what I wanted to do in spite of any fear I had. I started building healthy relationships with women. But you see what lack of strategy can do?
If you look at it closely you begin to realize that the knowledge of how to “pick up” girls and re-educating men to see women like human beings who have rights like them are of premium social value. A good proportion of rapists, men who patronize prostitutes, and those who use psychic power to get women to make love to them are men who didn’t know the strategy for “picking up” girls.
STRATEGY IS THE MISSING LINK
Pause briefly. Think of one thing you don’t know how to do or you’re afraid to do. Why is this so? Because you don’t know the effective strategy for doing it efficiently and safely. I have underlined the verb know because when I say know I mean knowing in the fullest sense. You know on all levels: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. If you know how to drive a car, you know how to drive a car; not from taking some driving lessons, reading a manual about driving, or watching others drive. You know how to drive a car by doing these and actually driving a car yourself over time in different types of environments and conditions of road.
When I was in my teens I’d sit down and wonder, Why are some people healthy and others not? Why are some people happy and others unhappy? Why are some people rich and others poor? Why do some people have great relationships and others floundering relationships? Why are some folks magnetic and charming and others repulsive? If someone can produce a certain result, how can I do the same? And, if I desire a certain outcome, how can I bring it about?
Questions. Questions. The answer is simple: strategy. Like King Solomon wanted to say, there is a strategy for everything. If you know the strategy for any thing, you can do it any time.
How does all these concern you? There are many things you want to be, know, experience, do, and have. Often there are only three reasons why you’re not having these experiences:
- Your attention isn’t focused on it
- You don’t know the strategy
- You haven’t done whatever it takes to bring about the outcome you desire
Every man and woman on earth could choose to focus their attention on what they want and resolve to do whatever is required to effect the result they want. Question: How can this be done without an effective strategy?
Strategy is the missing link! I’ve seen thousands of people who desire to be successful in one or more departments of their life wasting away because they lack the strategy to do it. Nike advises you to “Just Do It!” but how can you do when you don’t know how?
BILLY’S GATES
Know-how. Strategy. What is this strategy? Simply, strategy is a series of steps or descriptions of actions to be taken in order to get some end accomplished. The richest man in the world today (Microsoft’s Bill Gates) only mass produces and sells strategies for solving information and communication problems! (A computer software is a description of steps (or commands, functions) to be followed to get to a certain result (output) once an input is fed in).
Look at all the things you want. Peak health and physical fitness; a little happiness here and now; improving your relationships (at home and at the workplace); an improved income and/or financial independence; improving your memory; reading faster; becoming influential; speaking in public; controlling your anger, etc. There is a strategy for all these, I tell you.
I’ve spent the last 10 years studying and testing these strategies myself. I know them! More importantly, I can teach and communicate them in a simple easy-to-understand, memorable and entertaining way. I can show you how to start working them yourself.
I have learned one little thing in these 10 years: That the ultimate goal is discovering your destiny or true purpose. And the ultimate strategy? A strategy for doing something about it, for fulfilling your destiny. My purpose is to LOVINGLY assist you in discovering and tapping MORE of your potentials.
And you know something? I’m still learning. That’s why I was studying that Ebony article!
