The Happiness Method

Today we're going to look at the learnings that I shared in my book, Happiness is Free. Here we're talking about awakening to the truth that happiness is a choice. Let us start this by first telling you the story about my dad and me as I was growing up as a child.

What are those stories about me and my father?

As a little girl, my father would lock me out of his house for very tiny mistakes. I'm talking about when I was like ten years old. He would lock me out for offenses as bizarre as cooking too much rice for the family to eat. And he wouldn't just lock me out at the time the offense was committed, he would wait until I was already asleep, maybe like 1 AM, and he would come and wake me up and tell me to leave his house. There was no explanation; it's like much later he would tell me it was because I cooked too much rice.

When I left the house, it was dark and everywhere was so scary. Of course, as a ten-year-old child, you don't really know what to do; you don't know where to go. There had been occurrences similar to that a few times, but this one was particularly significant.

What I did this particular day was go into the gutter. I used the carpet rugs that had been abandoned, millipedes and centipedes and all manner of crawling insects were in them. I shook them off and covered myself with them because there were still street cats on the road and I was a bit scared. I was literally sleeping in that situation, hoping that I could wake up the next day. Of course, I was hurt, angry, sad, disappointed, feeling abandoned—all those feelings. I basically slept with them in the gutter.

In the morning when daylight came, I would remove the dirty rugs and come out of there and dust off all the dirt from me, because I didn't want my father to see me in that desperate state I was in under the rug. There was this innate feeling that I had to win. It was like a battle, a power tussle of sorts, and I had to win this. The way to win this was to come out there as a very happy kid.

So, I would talk to myself to the point where I was feeling really ready to face that situation. I'd dust off all the dirt and come with a big smile on my face and knock on the door for him to open it for me. Obviously, he'd been expecting me because he knew I slept out, and he opens the door to this very vibrant, happy kid saying, "Hi! Good morning, Dad. I hope you had a better sleep than I did. I'm going to be late to school, and if I don't get to do the work I need to do from home before I leave..." Then I'd just pass by him, his mouth agape, looking at me like, "Oh my God, what's going on?" And I'd go get ready for school; do the work I needed to do from home, do the house chores, and then leave for school. Of course I was sad; I was pained from the experience. But I still felt like I won because he did not see me sad. He did not see me cry. He did not see me feeling all those terrible things that I felt before. All of these helped me understand that I had control over how the activities of the people around me made me feel. Yes, I could feel bad, but I could still win by taking charge of how I react and respond to situations.

So, I started early to learn to respond in my own way to whatever the world was doing to me, starting with the experience with my dad. For me, it meant that I could live a life that I choose no matter what my situation is. This is what I am telling you so that you can make a choice about what happens with your feelings, and you can make a decision about who you are no matter what the world is doing. A lot of people believe that happiness will come when we achieve certain goals or outcomes— maybe after winning a competition, after buying our dream home, after winning a contract or something. But I tell you, you have to separate those outcomes from your state of being. You have to choose to be happy today, right now, irrespective of whatever outcomes or desires you're hoping to achieve. The outcomes are separate from your state of being.

This helps you see that when challenges, hurt, heartbreaks, or whatever situations come into your life whatever things are affecting you, you have the choice to choose how you're going to respond to them. You can walk out of those situations owning them and being able to use the power within yourself to control how activities and challenges around you affect you. It's when you begin to think this way that you begin to hold yourself accountable for the feelings you build, for the way you express those feelings, and for the actions you take as a result of what the world is doing around you.

Happiness is a choice you can make right now. It's not an accomplishment or a result or a prize at the finish line of any activity or endeavor. It's not something that is waiting for you on the other side of accomplishment. It's something you choose right here, right now.

Don't get me wrong, choosing happiness, choosing a state of being, choosing to hold yourself accountable for your emotional state and for the activity around you can be very painful and can be quite costly. In fact, it can cost you enemies, because a lot of people in the beginning will challenge you and fight you.

For example, with the Nigerian UK Golfing Association, you will see that it's because I made a choice about the way I show up to the world and the way I want to react to the activities around me that a lot of them are at loggerheads with me. I am different, and I am choosing to be me in this situation where everybody is acting in the same way and making their choices in a similar way.

But I looked at myself and said, "No, I don't agree with this system. I don't agree with this way of being, and I choose to be me because me is perfect as I am." Then they don't understand it; they don't want it, and they begin to challenge and fight and discriminate against me because it is almost impossible for the world to take you as you are. But you have to be ready for that rejection.

You have to be ready for the punishment, unfair as it is. But it is who you are, and you have to be able to stand up for yourself. You have to stand your ground, because if you are not able and ready to stand your ground, being happy could actually cost you. It could actually create a narrative for you that you would find difficult to understand, because it is not easy for humanity to accept you as you are. But you have to accept yourself as you are. You have to have a radical acceptance of who you are, because it's from that anchored place that you're able to go out there and do the things you need to do for humanity.

When I look at the experience in New York, you see that I came in from Nigeria having been in the trenches with the elections. But most of them there were supporting the current president who basically stole the mandate of whoever it was that won the election, and they expected everyone which the rest of the platform was doing to conform. I said no. I was there; I saw everything happening, and I don't agree with this point of view, and I stood my ground. "No, he didn't 4 | Page become the president because he won the election. It was rigged.

So why would you guys make it look like the man won the election free, fair, and credible? No, no, no, no, no." And then forcing that opinion on the rest of us who do not agree? No. For me, that was a no-no, so I spoke up. But because I did not accept these views, I became an enemy. I became persona non grata, and they began to make my life almost impossible raising false accusations against me, pinning things on me that are impossible by my nature, just to be able to get rid of me. But the captain they had at that time needed me because I was the only voice speaking against a lot of things that they were doing against him.

They would call him names, they were ridiculing him, they would do a lot of things that were just unacceptable. But I'd speak up because I don't serve anybody. I know what's fair; I know what's right, and I speak up when something is happening that is unfair or prejudiced against anybody. Because I was speaking up for him at the time, he was okay with not removing me. He understood that there was nothing wrong with what I was doing, but it was also that he needed me to speak for him. As soon as the new captain came and began to throw injustices against me, he supported that. He went to that side where I was defending him from and became one of them who were now fighting me for being right, for not conforming, for not agreeing with the decisions or outcomes that the rest of the crew had agreed upon.

So, because I was challenged in these situations and he was no longer on the receiving end of injustices, he became one of the aggressors, I would say. What I'm trying to say is you will face resistance. You'll be fought; you'll be hated because you're being yourself. But you have to stand your ground. At the end of the day, I was expelled. They started looking for injunctions against me and all that. So be yourself. Be happy. Standing up against injustices can be painful, but you have to be ready to tolerate, to understand, to forgive, and to know that you're absolutely okay as you are. People rejecting you is not enough for you to cower, to shrink back, to disappear, or play small because you want society to accept you. You don't want that. You have to stand your ground; you have to know you.

You have to be happy with you because what's happening externally does not matter. And guess what? They will finally come around. If they don't come around because they finally understand you, they come around because they finally have some serious respect for you— 5 | Page because you are not a pushover, because you know you, and they actually admire you. They wish they could be you, but they are afraid to be you because being you is costly. One thing I would love for you to take away from this is that no matter what those resistances are, you have to be sure within yourself that you're acting from a place of love, a place of compassion, a place of impact, a place of opportunity to improve the world for everybody. Others are going to come into that space sometimes, at some point, and you would want them to have a different experience.

So even if you end up not benefiting from the sacrifice of being yourself, you'll create the opportunity for other people to come into that same space and be themselves and not suffer the way you did. Even if it's just a little bit that you shift the situation or shift the mindset—for example, out of 157 me mbers, maybe just one or two will look at what you're doing, what you're experiencing, and learn from it and speak for others tomorrow—at least you have shifted the needle, even if it's just a little bit. Sometimes, you have to be ready to be the sacrificial lamb when you choose to be yourself, because yes, they'll come after you.

Being yourself can be very costly, but you have to be ready to be accepted as you are, and then also learn to accept others exactly as they are. Let people be who they are without judgment. Who you are is okay, but also who everybody else is—you have to have radical acceptance of people as they are, because that's what you want for yourself even though you're different. So some people may think of you as being very unusual, very queer, but you have the right to be you. Then you'll teach people to not only accept you as you are but to also accept others as they are, just as you also accept others as they are. So you create a world that is a lot more just and equitable, with so much more love to spread. There is a lesson for all of us in some of these experiences, and one of them is that being radically you can be very costly, but it is worth the investment. That's my experience, and that is what I'm going to tell you about. Many of us would allow the negative experiences that we have being ourselves to stress us out, but these are things that you can choose to respond to on your terms.

So you decide how you're going to respond to the negative activities, the injustices, and the prejudices against you because you're being yourself. For example, some of my friends and my children will come to me wanting to know how I'm coping with the experiences that I'm having with some of these people who are challenging me or attacking me because of the way I've chosen to be. A lot of times, I just tell them, "Yes, it is very painful; it can be very unnerving. But at least I know that I'm being myself and I'm coming from a place of love, and I can deal with it." So, I can deal with the emotional charges, recover from them, alchemize them, and bring them back into the field to help me face whatever impact and resistance is coming to me. I deal with the processes; I deal with the feelings; I deal with the negative charges, and I continue to be me because I don't want them to affect the next person tomorrow. I want people to understand that accepting people as they are should be the starting point for all of us, whether it's in politics, business, or even in our family life. It is important for us also to understand that our happiness cannot be tied to the situations around us or to the outcomes we're expecting.

Of course, we can have dips. It is natural that when things happen to you, you feel hurt, you feel angry, you feel embarrassed, you feel guilt or shame, or whatever it is that comes to you depending on the situations. But you have to deal with these feelings, convert them, and pull them out of you. Look at them, face them, deal with them, release the emotions, and then alchemize them and use them to fuel yourself. Face again all the things that are still coming, because they will keep coming. It's just life, they will keep coming so that you can come from a place of acceptance to people, free of judgment, and be able to even better understand them than they understand themselves.

This is very critical because it helps you recover from the pain and it helps you show up with your full self.

Let's look at the mindset shift you need to go from the situation of striving to that of thriving. Society has taught us to chase more wealth, more recognition, more security, and hopefully more happiness. But the very act of striving is what is keeping us from that fulfilling feeling of joy, flow, and ease.

Society makes us believe that when we reach point A, we'll feel good, we'll feel happy, we'll have that sustainable balance and fulfillment. But it doesn't work like that. It is not when you reach the outcome that you feel fulfilled or feel happiness—it is from now. Whatever feeling, whatever satisfaction or fulfillment you get at that outcome is only momentary. But if you're already coming there from a place of happiness, joy, fulfillment, and bliss, that momentary joy is just part of the process.

Let's look at the mindset of striving versus thriving. This is a key ingredient in our daily choices in terms of how we show up in our daily lives and how we pick the points that bring us happiness. Society teaches us that when we achieve outcomes, we'll be happy—that accomplishments will make us happy. That is not entirely false. The truth is that the happiness is already there for us to choose. It has to already be there while we look for and pursue whatever desires and accomplishments that we feel will make us feel better.

They will make us feel better. However, you have to understand that the state of mind from which you pursue those things makes them so much easier for you to enjoy when they come to you. It takes away that need for attachment to the outcome. So ultimately, you're already happy even before you receive those awards or achieve those outcomes.

This is very key because whether or not you achieve those desired outcomes, you will still be good; you'll still be happy. So, achieving those outcomes would not necessarily reduce your joy or reduce your blissful state. It could increase it briefly for the moment that you get to feel the gratitude and the good feelings that come with that achievement.

But if you start to attach your happiness to that outcome, you miss out on the feelings of joy that you should have right now. And if, God forbid, unfortunately you did not achieve that outcome, you'll become so miserable because you were not happy at the time you were pursuing that outcome. You'll now really dip into that state of misery and despair that comes with that failure. But if you're already happy at the time when you got there, whatever the outcome is, it will not diminish your feelings or your happiness.

This is very key, and this is what I mean when I tell people that striving for all the things, all the goals, all the achievements that we are pursuing when we feel the grind and perform thinking that when we reach there, we'll be happy... No. It's not when we reach there that we'll be happy. We need to be happy right now. 8 | Page To thrive means to be happy as we go through the journey, and the journey needs to be done with happiness as already a part of it, so that the end result does not matter. If it is good, if it is bad, you're okay because you came from a state of bliss. You kept your joy all the way to the end, and the outcome only adds momentarily to the feelings that you have. You continue with your blissful state, and if you achieve it, amazing—it adds.

But if you did not achieve it, there is no attachment to that outcome, so you already came to that position in a happy state. You're able to continue, learn the lessons that you can take from the experience, and continue with your joy. So that failure does not take you down; instead, it helps you grow. It helps you be better; it helps you be stronger, because there's always something to learn in every experience. There is always a silver lining in every single difficult experience.

As long as you come from a place of joy, understanding, openness, and alignment, you'll be able to find the silver linings. You'll be able to find the information you need from that experience and take it and apply it for your next experience, for your next outcomes. So you always go through life knowing that every experience is an opportunity to learn; every experience is a growth process. Your joy will be yours no matter what is happening around you.

Yes, you will feel the momentary bliss when you achieve your outcomes, but whether those outcomes come or not, whether you achieve those accomplishments or not, you'll still be okay because you come from a place of alignment, and you can move forward from where you got there, good or bad. That is extremely important, and this is the idea that I'm trying to teach us.

The final piece of this learning in Module 1 of Happiness is Free is the idea of understanding that challenges are there for us to learn from them that there's always a silver lining in every challenge. The challenges and struggles are part of the things that help us grow.

This is where I'll tell you about my vulnerable client whose house was to be taken away. I came in to help her; she didn't even have the money to pay for the legal services. But I thought this was a worthy cause to fight, and I could do it on a freelance basis, and then she would pay me at the end of the trial.

I did such an amazing job. This woman got the property back, and she was able to recover costs from the experience. In the process, I became very friendly with her. We had daughters; her daughter's children would spend the night over at mine with my kids. My daughter would go over to hers when I'm out of town and spend time with the children. But at the end of the trial, when I produced my bill, there was this complete turnaround. The lady I knew... I don't know the person that came out of that experience. She was not expecting that I would bill her.

We had become friends; she expected me to work as a McKinsey friend and expected me to be okay working as a friend. I'm like, "I have costs. I didn't just win the entire property, which was predicted to only come to my client at 66%—I got the 100%, and I got costs from the client." The way it works is that you not only use the money that you get from the court from the opposing side for costs, you'll even add money because the court will never pay you everything. You'll add money from your pocket.

So even though you have won, you'll still be out of pocket because you'll still pay for your legal services. But she did not understand it, or she didn't want to understand it. It was just like, "This lady is out here to get me, and she wants to get money from my family." She began to fight this unbelievable fight, paying solicitors to fight me, paying barristers to fight me, applying for injunctions to stop me from reaching my clients, her mother and the rest of the family. I was heartbroken, so heartbroken.

This was painful because I don't have many friends, so this was one person that had become a darling in my life. It was a friendship that was really beautiful because we had so much in common, so this was a really painful experience for me. I'm always helping people fight their causes, and it can be so painful when they turn around and stab you in the back. My daughter was missing out too because she had become friends with this family, and it was painful for her to see me in these very deep-down states.

But eventually, I got myself back to that state where I had to talk to myself: "This is not me. I'm a happy girl. I'm that girl who figures things out, who deals with hurt, who deals with her pain, and who alchemizes her pain into gain." From there, I became the woman who I normally am and started this whole book, Happiness is Free, from that place. 

So I'm telling you, challenges will come. Pain will come. Heartbreak will come. But you can't suppress them; you have to deal with them. You have to allow yourself to feel the pain, feel the negative charges, allow yourself to go down when you have to, and then raise yourself back up because you must forgive the people who are hurting you. You have to understand that human beings are doing the best they can with the resources available to them. So you have to forgive, accept, and understand. But you also have to release yourself, free yourself, and do what you need to do to get what is yours.

For example, in this situation, I still sued my client—the mother of this woman—for my professional fees, because I had done the work, so I should get paid for my work. Even the friend of mine I brought in to support her—I still did that work of forgiving him. That's Muyiwa. He even assaulted me as a result of all this chaos. I forgave all that, but I still took steps to get redress for that. For me, it's more like they need to learn that this is not how you treat people, especially people who are out there to do good for you and for others. So you'll feel heartbroken; you'll feel deeply, deeply hurt by the things that people around you are doing. But you have to find a way around these negative charges.

People will hurt you, but you have to take the pain as the opportunity to become stronger. From the experience, from the negative charges you feel, you can learn, you can grow, you can get stronger. I find out that I'm even able to deal with heartbreaks a lot faster, a lot quicker than I used to be able to, because I think I've become an expert in dealing with heartbreaks because I get them so many times. But I made a conscious choice not to allow all these experiences to change who I am. Being me is the most important thing for me.

All these other things are just challenges and pains that I have to deal with. I have the choice to respond the way that best serves me and best serves humanity, and that's what I'm here to teach you. Happiness is free. Happiness is a choice, and that choice we can make today, right now.

Today's Task: The Three-Day Happiness Challenge I want you to do some assignments.

I'll give you some questions in the quest section for this. What I really want you doing is the three-day challenge to consciously choose happiness, to consciously choose joy for the next three days.  I want you, regardless of your circumstances, to choose to stop postponing joy.

I want you to catch yourself in a moment where you're postponing joy and tell yourself, "Choose happiness. I am ready-made. I am already made. I am already worthy of joy. I have everything I need to be happy." So choose right now to be happy for the next three days. Catch yourself every time you're postponing happiness and make a real decision: "I have everything I need to be happy, so choose to be happy."

For the next three days, catch yourself every time you are postponing happiness and make a note in your journal. Journal how much you are worthy and how much you appreciate everything around you and how much you choose happiness today.

Let's do that for the next three days, and let's also anchor gratitude, because being grateful is one of the quickest ways to recognize joy when it comes to you. I also want us to reflect on some of the experiences we have had, whether recent or old experiences, where we have felt injustice, where we have felt treated unfairly. Look for the situations where you have felt negative charges because of unfair treatment, where you experienced injustice and emotional pain.

Think of how you could have chosen to be happy in that situation, how you could have shifted things in that situation—and then see how you can apply that in your future experiences so that the next time somebody tries to make you unhappy, the next time somebody tries to reduce you, you make a conscious decision to be happy in that moment.

For example, maybe somebody calls you crazy, and instead of getting angry and going back to say, "You're crazier," or whatever, smile and think about it for a moment. What's crazy? Look for interpretations of "crazy" that make you feel good, and that way you would not respond with negativity to that person, even though that person has outright sought to make you upset or unhappy. You have taken control.

This is what I'm telling you we can do. You can choose how you respond to absolutely every situation in your life. You can make a conscious choice to be happy, to choose how you respond to activities and behaviors around you from a place of joy rather than feeling angry, bad, upset, sad, or hurt. You feel joy, you feel understanding, you feel acceptance, you feel forgiveness.

Happiness is free.

Instruction:
After completing this lesson, take 10–15 minutes to reflect and write your answers in your Happiness Journal.

These questions help you embody the truth that happiness is not a reward but a daily choice.

Reflective Questions:

1. What situations in your life make it hardest to choose happiness, and why?

2. How can you bring a sense of gratitude to something you currently dislike?

3. When was the last time you postponed joy—and how could you handle that differently now?

4. List three small moments that made you smile recently. What do they teach you about fulfillment?

5. For the next 24 hours, pause and repeat: “I already am. I already have. I choose happiness now.” Write what changed inside you.

Welcome back. Today we are going into the learnings in chapter two of my book, Happiness is Free.

Here I talk about choosing enough over more. This is about the consistent trap and belief system that more money, more wealth, the bigger house, the designer clothes, the high-status lifestyle equals more happiness. I'm taking us away from this belief pattern to make us understand that this is not true, because often we see physical and material things as the ultimate indicators for a fulfilled life. But countless stories and countless studies show that material wealth alone does not create lasting happiness. They give you momentary pleasures, but long term, sustainable happiness is actually a matter of the choices you make Today.

For example, we hear about the hedonic treadmill, where we get trapped in always seeking more and believing that the more, we get, the happier we get. This is a psychological phenomenon where no matter how much we achieve or acquire, we quickly return to our baseline level of happiness. This is normal, because as human beings, we are designed to desire more and more and more. However, the key is to differentiate between the desire for more and the requirements and necessity to feel content right here in the now. The now situation is what separates you from everybody else who desires so much more.

You have to connect your desire for more with your capacity to be grateful for the now, to be content for what you have now, to feel enough right here, right now, while you look for and do the things you need to do to achieve more, to get more, to accomplish more. Humans are designed to always try to be better than where we are now, to make the future better, to take steps that make us more successful or more accomplished. We have to understand that things will keep coming to us that we want to achieve, that we want to do, that we desire to have. Having those desires and going after those things we need or feel like we have to have must be separated from how we feel right now. We have to feel that contentment and that joy right now, because it is from that place of joy and ease that we'll be able to acquire those things and even enjoy them more.

Even when we don't achieve them, when we don't get there, we still don't feel like the world has come to an end. Don't get me wrong, we have this innate need to strive for more, to go for more, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's for us to know when we are getting to the edge and call ourselves back. For example, I wanted to be a billionaire before I was 30, and I was investing everything I had into this dream, throwing caution to the wind and going all out, doing everything that needed to be done, striving and doing everything.

But of course, it all crashed. I lost all the money and everything else; it was almost like life came to a standstill. But I learned something very important: striving, desires, and all these things that we wish to be and have is one thing, but doing them all from a place of alignment is a different thing. It's extremely important to have that alignment, to have that understanding, to have that knowing, and to be able to have that acceptance and knowing that today is enough. Tomorrow could be better, but what matters are the things that I do now, the things I'm doing today, and the state of mind and frame within which I operate.

That's key, because that state of mind makes everything else so much easier. You will be able to go in there and be in flow, to meet people, see opportunities and everything around you, make decisions from a place of love and impact and alignment, because right here and right now you know that you're already complete, you're already enough, and everything else is extra. It is knowing that whereas you can chase and acquire money, positions, or whatever, knowing that money can buy comfort, security, and convenience, it cannot buy meaning. You need meaning, you need love, you need inner peace to live a fulfilled life.

Many wealthy people experience anxiety, loneliness, and dissatisfaction with their lives because they don't feel that internal fulfillment. That's because fulfillment does not come from all the acquisitions. It comes from the meaning you find within you, the inner peace, the love, the experience of you, the internal you. The more you neglect your inner well-being, the less fulfillment you'll find, the less happiness you find, and the more burnouts and strange relationships you'll experience, and all of this will contribute to diminishing your happiness.

Happiness is a choice that you make by taking steps to avoid attaching your well-being to your accomplishments and material possessions. True happiness comes from within. So you always have to look inward to find your joy, not outward. All the things outside are not as important as the things that are coming from within you.

You have to cultivate the feeling of enoughness, contentment, and joy, and also know that it is from that state that you operate. The easiest way to get to that state is through the practice of gratitude. You can't believe how often people focus on the things that are not going well in their lives. A lot of people I meet focus so much on the things that are not working well.

My clients come to my office sometimes, and they are just focusing on the situations that are not optimal in their lives. I tell them, "Look again. You will always see things in that same situation that you can be grateful for." I have a client who has a job that he doesn't like. He works as a social worker, eight to twelve hours every single day, Monday to Sunday, hardly taking breaks.

He absolutely hated that job, and he used to do it because he needed to make money. He would come to me complaining, and in one of my sessions, I said, "Okay, why are you still doing this work?" He said, "Because of the money." I said, "Okay, so you don't like the work, but you love the money." He said yes. I said, "Is that not something to be grateful for?" And he laughed.

I said, "Okay, ignore the money bit. Now look at your workplace. Is there anybody that is nice to you?" "Oh yeah, there's this wonderful lady who gives us cookies almost every day." And I'm like, "Is that something to be grateful for?" He says to me, "Yes, there's this old lady that brings us cookies, and the cookies are so nice," and he laughed. "That's good." And we continued the game.

This same situation where he absolutely opposed his job and couldn't wait to get out of there because he doesn't enjoy it, but he needs the money. I asked, "Is your immediate boss nice to you?" He says, "Oh yeah, the immediate boss is actually quite nice. She comes to work earlier than everybody else and makes coffee before we come to work." I'm like, "Okay, that's amazing.

She makes you coffee. Is that not something to be grateful for in the same work?" And then we went on and on. By the time we finished, he realized that there was so much in that same negative work experience that he had concluded was not worth it, and there was so much in that same experience he could be grateful for.

He realized that these people were actually approachable, and he could renegotiate his timings so that he would have time to think about the other things he needs to do, find other ways he could improve his work life, find time for himself, do other things, and even begin to make plans and take steps for the next job that he wants to go into that may even be paying him more than this particular work, while giving him enough time to relax, enjoy his life, and do other things with his life other than just work, work, work, work.

Eventually, from that place of being grateful for the little things happening around him, he began to see all the other ways that the workplace was amazing for him. He also realized that he liked working in the medical and social services space, but he wanted to be more in IT. So he was able to create a more convenient atmosphere for himself so he could do his new studies, get training in information technology, and then, while still in the same social services business, he was now doing the IT-related work.

From that experience, we can see that you can look into your daily life from a place of gratitude, and when you do that, you will always find things to be grateful for. From that place of gratitude, you will see opportunities that you were blind to because you were fixated on other things that were not working well. The same experience that you felt was so terrible, you'll be able to see that there were several things about that experience that were very good.

So, in addition to gratitude, I tell us to always look at our situation from the now. We have to be present. We have to live now, not in the future and not in the past, because the future will cause you anxiety and the past will cause you guilt and regret, and you don't need that. Take the learnings from the past, look into the future, apply those learnings, and live for now, because whatever you're thinking you want to have in the future, it is really all about the decisions you're making right now. That future is beautiful; that picture can be amazing.

You can visualize anything and everything there, but what really amounts to something is now. What are you doing with your now? Because it's the mindset with which you're dealing with today that determines the beauty you will experience tomorrow. So, it is most important to live your life in the present while you take whatever steps you need to take to get your future outcomes coming to you.

Another thing I want you to consider is your real purpose in life. Are you living in alignment with your purpose in life? For example, my client didn't think about what he really wanted to do or who he was. He was only thinking about the money, but he needed to take a moment and look within: "Who am I? What is most aligned with my personality?"

My desire for more money, more comfort, and all that—why? How can I bring that together with who I really am, with what really drives me, and then from there, make the decisions that I need to make about the work I do, the ways I do my work, and the steps I can take to get the work that is most aligned with my personality and with the person I am from within? It's not about following your passion, but actually following who you are. There's a difference. It's about the meaning you find in your life, and it is deeply personal.

It's about what you feel about yourself, your life, who you are—not about what the world is saying, what the world is thinking, what the world is demanding, the script you've been given to follow in order to look successful to the rest of the world. You have to ignore that and look at who you are and the outcomes that would always fuel you, the things you can be doing that you would love to do every day of your life. Being able to make choices about the things you do in your life from a place of alignment is extremely important because it will give you a lot more fulfillment and allow you to choose the way your life plays out, even as you do not know how to influence such things actively.

What it comes down to is to be authentic with your true self and to be okay to show up in every situation and every circumstance in your life as your true self. Authenticity is not something that you learn. It's who you are. It's who you were before society started to tell you to conform, to be like others, to keep quiet, to sit down, to shrink. This is something you have to work around. You have to go back to your original you, the you that is there when nobody else is looking, when society is sleeping. Who is that person? Find that person and use all of you to be that person—become that person again, because that is the you that can find happiness in everything and everywhere you go. Then look around: What kind of relationships? What kind of people do you have around you? Because your relationships really affect how far you go in life.

The people around you influence you, whether they are your neighbors or your friends or your family members or your children or your partners. They influence you. If you surround yourself with people who are negative, you are going to achieve less because they are going to influence you with their negative thoughts. So you need to surround yourself with people who encourage you, who support your growth, who give you feedback that helps you to improve your life.

Deep, authentic relationships will show you the love you need, the acceptance and the support that you need to grow and become yourself in a way that is unconditional, in a way that is uninstructive. You need this because as human beings, it is important for us to have deep connections with the people around us, because they foster our growth and our advancement. We have to ignore the material activities and material possessions and focus a lot more on the quality of the relationships that we keep.

The people around us influence how far we go in life, so we have to be careful in picking the people that we surround ourselves with.

Another thing I think about is external validation. Whereas external validation can feel good as it's happening, it also traps you in a competitive and unethical mindset framework, and you need to come out from there. When you look around, you will see people around you that are always in competition with themselves. They want to buy the very latest model of the next car, the next phone, the biggest house.

They want to have the most expensive golf clubs, the biggest private jet. They are no longer happy because their friend has bought the biggest private jet, and they want to buy a bigger one. You find that people do this external validation business in a way that contradicts who they really are. You have to do what you know is needed for your contentment, for your own feeling of well being, independent of what the rest of the world is doing. Because if you follow what others are doing, you're going to keep trying to outdo others, and people will always outdo you. People will always do better and more than you. So, you will never find fulfillment, satisfaction, or joy, and you'll just be miserable because you are too busy trying to compete with other people.

You have to come away from that and look inward. What do you need to be happy, to grow, to feel fulfilled, to feel happy for yourself—not in terms of what the rest of the world around you is doing? You have to detach your success from the validations around you, from the competition around you, from the other people around you. Because if you continue to look at what the rest of the world is saying and doing, you could become dependent on the accolades, the praises, and whatever. Then you never find happiness, even when you have everything you truly desired.

You're controlled by the opinions of other people, and that makes your joy and your happiness very fragile and unpredictable. But you don't want that. You don't want to be dependent on external validation because it will lead to burnout. You'll be very busy trying to prove yourself to other people rather than doing what you need to do to achieve the outcomes that you truly desire and that you need to achieve for the benefit of the rest of the world and for your own fulfillment as well. Operating from external validation actually takes you away from following your own passions. You start to follow that which impresses others instead of doing that which makes you feel fulfilled, which makes you blissful, which brings you to that state of flow and that place of happiness. External validation keeps you away from appreciating and being content with your own life right now, and you need to check that.

Today's Assignments:

The Appreciation Challenge Let me give you a few assignments today that would bring you closer to the place of internal acceptance.

Assignment 1: The Appreciation Challenge I want you to show gratitude every day for the next three days. Look at those things in your situation your so-called not-so-great situation. Find the things in each of them that are actually worthy of your gratitude. Be grateful for something in your current situation. I wanted to do three, but I usually can do ten things to be grateful for every day. But this is what I'm saying: Look for the not-so-ideal situations in your life and find something to be grateful for within those.  I like to do this exercise where I drive, and every green light I find, I am so grateful for having the green light pass without waiting. I'm usually quite grateful for that, and it lights up my day. It makes me feel much, much better.

Assignment 2: Reflection on Misplaced Pursuits I want you to reflect on some of the places where you have misplaced your pursuits. I want you to reflect on some of the places where you have bothered more about the optics than the aligned feeling of joy, bliss, and fulfillment. Where have you focused more on what the rest of the world is doing in place of what it is that you truly want in that situation?

Assignment 3: Journaling Exercise Do some journaling. Check your definition of success. Look within you and look at your personality. What do you say that people feel or think or say about you when you show up? Use that to find out who you truly are and write about yourself in your journal. Then write what success looks like for you from the inside out. What does success look like for you? Then tell us in the community how you're choosing success for yourself, defining it for yourself, and tag me in that conversation.

Thank you so much, and I'll see you in the next lesson.

Instruction:
This reflection invites you to question external validation and rediscover what fulfillment truly means. Journal your responses honestly.

Reflective Questions:

1. What does “success” mean to you beyond achievements or titles?

2. Think of a time you chased something just to feel worthy. What was the real need behind it?

3. When do you feel most aligned, peaceful, or fulfilled—regardless of external results?

4. How would your daily routine change if you prioritized joy over perfection?

5. Write one sentence that defines success on your own terms.

Welcome back. Today, we are going into Chapter Three of my book, Happiness is Free. Today we are delving into the power of now. I want to share this story about when I went to Nigeria for law school and I got into this really terrible accident where everybody was not just injured, but dead, and I was alive.

The whole thing involved three vehicles that collided, and it was such a horrible collision. There were a lot of tumbling and a lot of going back and forth. I think my vehicle must have tumbled like two or three times before it landed in the gutter, but I came out almost unscathed from it all. While all the tumbling was going on, I went into a negotiation with my God. I was negotiating for myself and my children and all the people dependent on me, and I was begging God for one more opportunity, just one more time, to get through life and do the thing that I really, absolutely needed to do, which was to go back and raise my children to be resilient, to get my kids to be able to thrive when I'm no more. It's interesting, my last daughter was two years old at the time, and all three before her were just toddlers. She was two, Ted was three, Troy was four, Melvin was five.

These were like babies, and I was busy going up and down trying to do so much with my life. There I was about to be dead while leaving those little babies. I just begged God to please let me go back and do my work and raise these kids to be resilient so that at least when I leave, they will have it so much easier.

That was the end of me living a life in the future. I realized that tomorrow would never come. So what matters is what I'm doing with today. I was so grateful to be alive, but I was much more grateful for the learning that tomorrow doesn't matter. Today is all that matters. So, it's what I'm doing with now that decides any and everything. I went back and I started raising my children to be more resilient, more independent, very industrious, hardworking, understanding, compassionate, loving children.

And I think that job has been done to a reasonable extent, because I believe strongly that if I were to die today, my children would be fine. Of course, they would miss me. Of course, they would feel bad and they would hurt for a long time, but they would be able to continue their lives without me.  How about you? If you were to drop dead today, do you think the rest of the world around you would move forward, and would you be okay with your life as it ended right here, right now? That's very important.

I need you from today to start living in the present moment, because you don't know what tomorrow will bring. You don't know what today will even end up as. So what matters is now— today, right here, right now. Gratitude. Action from an aligned place. No more procrastination, no more postponing. Joy, being grateful, being joyful, being blissful, being happy today, because today is your last day on earth. That is the mindset with which you can approach life and be truly happy in your life.

Our minds are naturally wired for past reflections and future anticipations, because this served an evolutionary purpose. Our ancestors learned from their mistakes in the past and planned for survival in the future.

But the world we live in today is different, so we don't need to worry so much about yesterday and tomorrow, because technology is already dealing with a lot of that for us. We are able to make decisions now and do the things we need to do now without overthinking tomorrow, because we can always act quickly on the things that need to be done as they happen.

We need to focus more on our purpose, on our people, on enjoying what is here right now, rather than worrying about what is going to happen tomorrow and feeling guilty about what we have done well or not so well yesterday. It's about today. It is from here that we go into these states of disconnection, where our minds wander into all the possible places, causing us to miss out on all the amazing things happening right in our lives right now.

When we look at the high-performance culture we have today, we believe that success requires us to be constantly thinking, constantly acting, constantly achieving, constantly pursuing and performing and chasing promotions, financial growth, and all the social validations that we are surrounded by. But these are all the ways that we end up exhausting ourselves and causing ourselves more unfulfillment and disconnecting from everything that we're actually supposedly pursuing and trying to achieve for our happiness.

It is the relentless pursuit of more that causes burnout, stress, failed relationships, failing sense of purpose, overstretching and achieving much less than we actually could, and doing things that do not lead us to lasting happiness. We get depleted and we get miserable.

We are so focused on the external matters, seeking approval from society, trying to conform instead of defining success for ourselves and doing the things that we need to do to feel and know that we are in alignment with our real purpose. We are busy with the competition, competitive fears, and with the hustle culture, equating our self-worth with our productivity, thinking that anybody who is resting is lazy and living under the illusion that happiness is in the future. "When I achieve this or that, then I will be happy." The thing is, this mindset will never let you find that flow. You need to switch from this mindset of doing to a mindset of being. Stop moving the goalposts for your fulfillment or joy, and bring yourself to the present moment where fulfillment and joy already are. Right now, I will show you some of the techniques that I give my clients.

One: Define success on your own terms. Ignore what the rest of the world is doing. Stop worrying about what is in a bank account or the latest cars or whatever it is. Define success beyond the money, titles, and things—in terms of impact, joy, relationship, health, being in alignment with your purpose in life, your pace, so that your goals, even when they are financial by nature, are still aligned to who you really are. Define your success based on your own desires, not what the rest of the world is doing.

Two: Embrace rest as a strategy to recalibrate, to refocus. Sometimes rest includes the things that you are doing in the time where you are quiet, that involves the thinking that you need to do in your creative energy. You have to also schedule breaks. You have to take time to be joyful, to be clear in your mind, to be still, to think and know that your best ideas will come to you from a place of stillness, a place of complete balance, not from a place of burnout or overstretch. You have to be able to relax and be joyful.

Three: Invest in those things that truly fulfill you. Your happiness is not in the amount of work you do or how productive you are. It's in the meaningful relationships you cultivate

In this practical session, we turn the lessons from this chapter into action.
You’ll walk through simple but powerful exercises designed to help you reconnect with yourself, release emotional pressure, and practice mindful awareness in real time.

These exercises will help you:
• Observe your feelings without judgment
• Slow down your thoughts
• Anchor yourself in the present moment
• Strengthen your emotional resilience
• Apply the “Happiness is Now” mindset to your daily life

Take your time with each task.
Pause, reflect, and let the process work on you.
Your only job here is to show up honestly — the transformation happens from there.

Instruction:
After completing this module, take time to explore your relationship patterns and define what authenticity and intimacy mean to you.

Reflective Questions:

1. How do your current relationships reflect your values and boundaries?

2. What patterns in love or friendship no longer serve your highest good?

3. Describe your ideal partnership or tribe—what does it look and feel like?

4. What does vulnerability mean to you, and how can you practice it more?

5. Who in your life truly “sees” you—and what can you learn from that connection?

Welcome back. Today, we are delving into one of my favorite topics in this whole happiness journey, and this is the learning from Chapter Four of my book, which is about choosing the right intimate relationships for you.

For me, our relationships could literally be the beginning and end of our life when it comes to choosing happiness, because our intimate relationships have very, very significant influence on where we go in terms of our bliss. The very foundation of humanity involves pairing. When you look at the teachings in the Holy Books, we see that God created man and created woman and made them companions.

So, we're fundamentally built to live in pairs or in groups, and by nature, we are always looking for pairs, and this is even how we procreate and multiply. So intimate relationship is an intrinsic part of our humanness.

This is a topic that really means so much to me because I'm a love girl. I love to love. I love to look at people. I love to understand human relationships. I like to see people from diverse angles, and I love being able to pick out the different constellations that exist in this world. And I find beauty in absolutely all of that. And I encourage you to start now to look less judgmentally at the relationships that you find around you, because there's so much to learn from how human beings relate with one another.

One of the things I want us to understand right now is that we have the power to choose the ultimate relationship for us. Whatever it is that you want for yourself, you have to make that choice. What kind of relationship do I want? Do I want to be monogamous? Do I want to have multiple partners? Do I want to marry many spouses? Do I want to be free and just do my thing? You need to look inward and find your truth. Who are you? Who do you want? How do you want to play in terms of relationship? What's your heart calling? What's your love calling? What's your love language? Find it, choose it, and own it.

Forget what the rest of the world is thinking and doing. You pursue your right to love—take it because it's yours. You have to choose the relationship that works in your advantage. You don't have to do what the rest of the world is doing or do what people are telling you is right for you. You have to find what is right for you, choose it, and own it. I'm very lucky because even though I grew up with very strong Catholic tenets, I was able to very early in my life pick the direction that I wanted to go in terms of my relationship. I am very monogamous by nature because of my upbringing, but my family situation was a bit different. I grew up with parents who, even though married in a monogamous setting, had interests or desires for other people.

My father was seeing a lot of other women, and it was upsetting my mom, and my mom was always reacting in a way that got her beaten up. But at some point, I told my mom, "Why are you bothering when you could do the exact same thing?" And then eventually she took my young girl advice and began to see other people, which kind of twisted my dad's head. He literally turned around and began to chase her back. He became so focused on her and almost completely stopped seeing other women in order to get his wife back.

Eventually, they figured themselves out, and they stayed married until my father died. This shift happened when my mom took advantage of her opportunity to choose, and she chose to, you know, distract herself with other men, while my father did the thing he needed to do. Dad didn't want to leave Mom. Mom didn't want to leave Dad. They didn't want to be without each other. But they had desires for other people, and my dad expressed his desires, which was very common in the community. And my mom eventually took advantage of that right as well. And then it brought them together in a way that kept them together until one of them died. So bottom line for me is you need to pick what works for you.

My parents didn't want to live without each other, but they had desires for other people. And I said to them, what's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with that. You have to have that communication, because human beings were created in my understanding to have desires and to have variety, but you have to create that environment to be able to operate within that field easily from the diverse constellations we find in our time on Earth. Being Catholic and having all those tenets helped me personally, but having a family that had that dynamic as my parents had also helped me to be less judgmental about other people and how people choose their relationships, and then also helped me to be okay with my own decisions and my own choices when it comes to relationships. And I want you to do that. I want you to be able to look around you and stop blocking your mind to what's happening around you in terms of the decisions people are making, in terms of the relationships that they are having, and be more open, because it will make it so much easier for you to find yourself, understand and accept yourself, and accept your desires for what they are. Because who you are and what you want is valid, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Let's have a look at my situation. Just a few months ago, I decided to get into the dating scene. My daughter had been like, "Oh, Mom, it's time for you to get a boyfriend. You've just been focusing on us all this while. You have to look after yourself as well." So, I picked one of the guys in our local joints where we normally play pool after playing golf and all that. And I ended up in that kind of relationship where I had a partner who wanted to have relationships with other people and who wanted to keep his ex-girlfriend in the constellation. And I was okay, let's see. I was willing to bend over backwards to accept whatever he was coming with, be non-judgmental, be open-minded, and be loving, no matter how difficult.

But I realized I was very unhappy. I was in pain a lot because of the ways he was treating me. And I started questioning this. I'm like, "Okay, I'm not supposed to feel this kind of pain." I mean, there are certain kinds of jealousy that, okay, I have to learn how to handle. But this deep pain, this feeling of unworthiness, this feeling of abandonment, and all the other crazy things that were coming—those were not for me and were so much more than what I had bargained with in terms of being in an open relationship. So, I ended it because I didn't want to feel the pain that I was feeling. I was hurting too much because what he was doing was not working for me, and I could not accept it. Even though I was okay with him being as he was and enjoying whatever it is that he has chosen for himself, I was just not the right woman for that relationship, and that's what I tell everybody. Whatever it is that you choose, make sure you communicate it to your partner or partners, and make sure you're on the same page.

And when you see, when you realize that you are unhappy, uncomfortable, that the situation is unacceptable to you, you don't feel whole, you don't feel loved please walk away. You must not stay there. Your peace, your joy, your love, your happiness, your bliss is priority, not whatever you're giving, doing, or presenting to the other people. Their happiness is important, but not as important as yours. Yours is first for you, just as theirs is first for them.

So please do not stay in relationships that do not fulfill you, that do not permit you to thrive, that do not allow you to get that bliss and joy and happiness you came in there for. Your relationships are key to your peace. So, you have to be very careful how you choose the people that you give the right to come into your space and take love from you. Don't stay with people who are draining you, because you need to be full within you to be able to gift out this love to the world around you. So, you have to refill. You have to be good to yourself. You have to love yourself before you can love other people.

So, let's talk about the different models of relationships. The most common one is monogamy. It's the most common form of relationship, and it's one of those places where people feel most adored, most loved, most committed, and all the things that they are looking for in the relationship. But there are angles to monogamy these days, because I think it's different from the way our forebears saw it. In the past, you marry a virgin, she stays with you, or sometimes both of them are virgins, and they stay together just a man and woman for the rest of their lives.

Well, nowadays, a lot of us don't go into marriages as virgins anymore, and then we come into marriages and we divorce and we marry other people, or we date other people. So, it is still monogamy, but it is what I call serial monogamy because it involves a lot of other partners in our lives. So, it's not just the monogamy of our forebears, the way our ancestors did it, or the way the designers of this monogamous system preached that we should live in today's society. It's no longer the way it is in reality. So, people are moving from relationship to relationship at a higher rate. Sometimes people are divorced two, three times within five years. And the level of connectivity in the world makes it so much easier to get into relationships and leave relationships. You just go on Tinder, or whatever the platforms are, swipe, swipe, swipe, and then you have relationships.

So, monogamy is one of the models, but there is that serial monogamy type that I need us to consider. The other one that is out there that is becoming very common is polyamory, which is like what I had with the partner I was talking about. In this situation, you are in a relationship, but there are more people in the relationship. Sometimes it's like in my case, the guy was the only one I was seeing, even though I reserved my right to see other people. He had multiple other partners that he was seeing, and I knew it, and he had this other deep emotional relationship with his ex 28 | Page girlfriend, very deep emotional connection with his ex-girlfriend that was pretty much another relationship, but just didn't involve sex. But then there is the hierarchical way that polyamorous relationships work. You have situations where couples come together in a polyamorous relationship, and you have maybe a partner who is married to someone and is dating another person, but they all know about these relationships.

And then you have the polyamorous relationship where all the partners are considered equal in hierarchy. And then you have the types where there's hierarchy, they're not all equal. In my case, with my ex, I would have liked that hierarchy where he could have all the other women, but I would have been at the highest level, and everybody would have been subspecies in the relationship. But I found myself in a relationship where I was at the bottom and everybody else had higher priority, and I didn't like that. I didn't like that at all. And I thought, "No, I was open to having a relationship that was polyamorous in nature, but I didn't want to be trampled upon," let me put it that way, and that was why I left that relationship. And you also have the solo polyamorous relationship, so you can have someone in a relationship where you have one lover in one city and another one in another city, and then the other person has their multiple relationships.

So, you guys have your relationships independent of each other, but you all have multiple relationships that you all know about. So, these are all the different angles to polyamorous relationships that I know of. I'm pretty sure there are so many more out there, but these are the few that I have seen in reality. The next thing is polygamy. Polygamy is where you have multiple spouses in a structured marriage. This is very common for both cultural and religious reasons. Polygyny is when the man has multiple wives, and polyandry is where the woman has multiple husbands. Polyandry has become quite common these days, even in the West.

In Africa, we have cultures where women marry a lot of men for protection and for what I would call existential reasons. But in the West, it's just a thing about liberation, and I find it extremely fascinating. In fact, on the socials these days, I see women marrying two husbands and they have a boyfriend on top of that. And I see situations where women are marrying multiple husbands, and everybody is still happy in the situation and working together. I'm like, wow, this is amazing. I'm talking about America, Germany, UK, where, you know, polyandry was for a long time a taboo.

So, polygamy is a situation where you marry multiple spouses and everybody is committed, usually in this almost monogamous relationship. But it can also be polygamy plus polyamory, where they have other girlfriends or whatever they are not married to that the whole team knows about. Then we go to the level where it's open relationships, where there are really no rules per se, but there are agreements. So, you have the constellation of, for example, partners who are romantically committed, but they still have sexual and romantic experiences with other people, and it is okay. There is no questioning, there is no judgment. It's all about understanding and dealing with the jealousy maturely. And there are different levels of open relationships. There are negotiated open relationships, because similar to the polyamorous relationship, they have outlines of what's acceptable and what is not. And then you have the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" arrangement, where nobody discusses what's happening. Everybody does their thing. And then you have the swingers, who are couples coming together and having sexual experiences with people in a social system, a social network, or in the community. So, people are openly exchanging partners.

Open relationships work best when partners are on the same page. In fact, all relationships, no matter the constellation you choose, work best when the partners operate from a very high level of honesty and openness. And there is even relationship anarchy, where people are just being whatever they want. Personal autonomy is key—very fleeting connections, one-night stands are okay. You define for yourself where your relationships go. No social constraints, no responsibility for anything or anybody. You are just here when you're here, and when you are not, that is okay.

So, this is relationship anarchy, and it's about prioritizing freedom and allowing everybody to just do whatever it is that works best for them, and they're all okay. What matters in whatever type of relationship you choose is your personal aligned choice. Is this relationship right for me? That's all you need to know. That's all you need to do. This brings you to the topic of fidelity. Now, in all these types of relationships and options that are available to us, the question now becomes: When is it okay? When is it offensive? When is it not okay for my partner to sleep with other people?

Now, fidelity, for me personally, is something that I consider a choice. And I believe everybody can define fidelity for themselves, because whereas one person may feel the need to have somebody's sexual activities exclusive to them, it could also be about being open and honest and staying in alignment with whatever is agreed with your partner. For me, for example, as long as you're within whatever the agreement is, it's okay. I don't consider you unfaithful because you slept with another woman, provided that is the agreement that we had. Because I don't believe that human beings were created to be monogamous, to just have sex with one person for all of their lives. I actually believe that we're created to explore, to try out different things, and to keep trying and finding all those things that could give us joy and fulfill our desires.

And whereas fidelity is a choice we have the right to make, the right to also define that fidelity is there as well, because you have to make it about what feels most aligned to you. If you are monogamous by nature and you find a partner who is also monogamous by nature, then fidelity to you will be in alignment, because it will be just you, just me for the rest of our lives, and that's perfect. But if you meet a partner who is not monogamous by nature, then you need to come into an agreement. You need to come into that conversation to figure out how best to accommodate their needs and your needs. You need to do that deep work that is required to know exactly what works for you in order to approach your partners with that which feels most aligned and which you know would fulfill you.

Those of us who are inclined to be monogamous believe that true love means choosing one person, being committed to a sexual relationship with only that person, and this is absolutely okay, provided your partner believes that as well, because it's important to ensure that both of you are operating from the same frequency. Sometimes people assume that everybody is monogamous, and they're coming with the expectation of monogamy, and then they are disappointed when the partners go off and do what is their true nature, their true feelings. And this creates conflict and jealousy because you are believing that you are the only one and your partner does not have all these other entanglements outside, so you get so hurt that you begin to feel betrayed. 

Fidelity is something that monogamous people argue is the most authentic and most reliable form of giving and loving. But those who do not believe in monogamy argue that monogamy is a social construct, and that human attraction is wired for variety and new experiences and experimenting, and this makes fidelity feel very restrictive and unrealistic. And that makes sense when you look at it, because when you look at this serial monogamy— going from one partner to another, you're actually having multiple sexual partners.

You could easily have 10, 15, 20 different partners in your lifetime, but because you're having them at separate times from one another, you're not in an open relationship. You're not in a polyamorous relationship, yet you're not really monogamous, because you're not sleeping with one person for all your life. You have slept with so many different people at different times. So, I believe that there is quite a lot of truth in this belief that monogamy is not really the true construction of humanity, but it has become part of our culture, and a lot of people have taken it as the norm. We need to still leave those who have not accepted monogamy as their way.

We need to still be able to understand and accept them and be less judgmental about them. So, for me, for example, whereas I'm so big on not having multiple partners, I believe I'm actually fundamentally a one-man woman, however, I like the leeway to be able to explore if the opportunity or the interest comes up for me. That's why I've never married in the church, because when you go to marry in the church, you have to make vows to be faithful forever and have sex with only this partner, and be obedient and all those things. And these are not vows I can take. I'd rather create my own vows that conform with my truth. And I think this is something we all have to think about. What works for you? Agree with your partner about what works best for you. Don't make a commitment for the rest of your life that, even though you know at the time you're making the commitment that you're not going to be able to fulfill it, particularly for the next 20 years or so. For the rest of those 20 years, you will only be having sex with this one person? Life is for you to enjoy. So why restrict yourself?

If you end up being with just that person, having sex with only that person for the rest of your life— amazing. But then I would rather give myself the opportunity or the freedom to be able to make that choice or make that shift, or enjoy that moment when it comes to me. What matters is to have the commitments and the shared values and to be able to understand and accept people as they are. It's not so much about fidelity in terms of sleeping with just one person for the rest of your life, but it's the commitment to be very honest, radically honest with your partner. Enter whatever agreements that you need to enter and stay true to whatever those agreements are. I personally don't like it when I come to court and my clients are fighting over fidelity.

I find that it is such a misplaced pain. You are angry and judgmental and feeling bad because your partner slept with somebody else. But have you tried to look at it from the other perspective? What does he need? What does she need? What is it that is driving that desire to sleep with somebody else? I think we should create more time to understand ourselves, to judge less and ignore more of what society is saying. Share with our partners what our true desires are, so that we have a situation where we are operating from the same frequencies with our partners. Because this is, I believe, one of the many major reasons why marriages are breaking. The altar of fidelity is breaking. I don't believe that infidelity is actually the issue. I believe that the communication or the lack of it is the real issue. So, for your relationship, the most important thing you should focus on is that radical, radical honesty and open communication. Because whatever you choose to do in your relationship, the commitment to speak up, the communication, that's what matters. I'll give you an example. My ex-husband, when we were still married, while I was in law school in Nigeria, one of the guys that had been chasing me when I was so much younger—at this time, I already had my fifth child; Mia was already two, three years old at the time—but he was still so attracted to me when he saw me in Abuja then, and he started coming after me. And I came back to my husband because I didn't want to sleep with him without clarifying with my ex-husband that this was okay. So, I came back and I had a conversation with him: "Look, there's this guy that I would really like to sleep with, because I'm very curious about it, and we're not even really having sex anymore. You don't really like me anymore. I had so many babies that I was not looking the way I looked before, so you weren't having sex with me.

So, I thought I should have this conversation about going off with this guy, even if it's just once." He was so upset. He didn't want to hear about it. He was really angry. I broached the topic again a second time. He didn't want it. Third time, he didn't want it. Six months later, he came to me and he was like, "Look, the fact that you came to me with this situation meant that you at least appreciated the need to clarify with me before doing something that may be offensive to me. Because even though we had our situation at the time, I was still your husband and you were that faithful wife, even though I was free to do my thing. You felt I still respected you enough to stay faithful, even though I was free to have sex with everybody, including your friends at the time, but you still brought it to me. You still wanted to make sure that we were still on the same page." Yeah, our marriage was not working for other reasons, but the sex-related reasons did not affect us both. So, he appreciated the way I dealt with it, and out of appreciation for me, he permitted me to have sex with this guy, and he started actively trying to save the marriage.

But for me, even though I didn't sleep with the man, I was very happy. And I learned so much from that experience, because I realized that when you are in a loving relationship with somebody, and you're able to bring this type of taboo topic to the table, it could cause friction, but it will bring you closer to each other. It will actually create the opportunity for you to connect on a level that is a bit higher than whatever it is you had thought. So, whatever the expectations your partners have of you is something that you have to consider in making your decisions about having affairs or not. But even if it's your right to have the relationship, you have to consider those expectations, and communication is what you owe in order to carry your partner along. It doesn't mean that if they say no, you couldn't go off and do what you want to do, but at least live and be true to your reality, to your commitments, to your relationship, and be fair. Allow yourself to be able to come out of every relationship with that feeling of liberation, knowing that you did everything within the agreement and you did not fall out of your own self-imposed levels of delivery and expectation. So, it is important to support your partner, and it's important to explore and have fun, but it's also good to support your partner so that whatever the pains are, they feel them less.

Finally, I want us to think about our relationships, our tribe. This is no longer the partner relationship, love, romantic thing, but the people around us. It is extremely important to fit people in our environment, in our energetic space, who are aligned to our reality, to our truth.  You don't want people that are always judging you, always trying to pull you back, always trying to show you what is wrong with you, what is bad about you. It is extremely important that you create a tribe that is aligned with your authentic self—people whose mindset and belief patterns are similar to yours, and people who are willing to accept you as you are, to engage with you in a way to improve you as you improve them, move closer to you as you move closer to the light with one another and help one another to grow. Your intimate space is the most sacred of all the spaces in your life. And by tribe, I'm not just talking about your romantic relationships.

I'm talking about your relationship with your family, your business partners, your playgroups, your romantic partners, your sports colleagues, whatever it is, your community, the people you allow to come into your circle and share your intimacy with you, because they can affect how far you go in life. So, you have to be very careful in choosing your tribe. And with this, we conclude this part of our learnings.

Do get the book Happiness is Free, because there's so much in there, so much detail, and quite entertaining too, from the feedback I have had. Because I tell you as it is. I open up to you. I give it to you as it is. I tell you everything as it happened in my life. In fact, a lot of the stories I'm telling you are current situations that are happening in my life right now, and I'm taking the learnings from there, and I'm bringing them to you and telling you these are ways that you can sleep and live better and be more fulfilled and be more productive and be more impactful in your life and to influence society.

Today's Assignments: Defining Your Relationship Truth Let's do some quests. Let's do some assignments. So, let's take time to journal about your authentic relationship based on who you truly are and what you truly want in your life. What structure of relationship works best with your values and your desires?

Assignment 1:

What are your desires? What are your values? Who am I, and what are the things that absolutely matter for me in my relationships? What are my non-negotiables and what are my absolute musts?

Assignment 2:

Determine what kind of relationship you desire, and don't be afraid to make your choice. It's your right.

Assignment 3: Reflect on your current tribe. Are the people around you aligned with your authentic self? Journal about the relationships that support your growth and those that might be holding you back. Thank you so much, and I'll see you in the next module.

Instruction:
After completing this module, take time to explore your relationship patterns and define what authenticity and intimacy mean to you.

Reflective Questions:

1. How do your current relationships reflect your values and boundaries?

2. What patterns in love or friendship no longer serve your highest good?

3. Describe your ideal partnership or tribe—what does it look and feel like?

4. What does vulnerability mean to you, and how can you practice it more?

5. Who in your life truly “sees” you—and what can you learn from that connection?

Welcome back to the happiness method. Today we are going into chapter five of my book and getting the learnings from there.

Here, we're talking about rewriting your inner script. In this chapter, I am talking about identifying and replacing your limiting beliefs with empowering beliefs so that you can reprogram your subconscious and be intentional in your life. I talk about visualization, manifestations, the art of surrendering, and I touch on healing your inner child and releasing past trauma by integrating your inner child into your present-day manifestations in order to accelerate them. I also talked about abundance, where I tell us that shifting our mindset from scarcity to abundance is the only way to go with ease to whatever desires that we want to manifest into our lives. And we do this by our thoughts, our words, and our actions. In my opinion, all of us were born with the ability to co-create our reality.

And in this session, I am going to show you how you can activate this ability with conscious intent. All my life, even without realizing it, I relied on the universe, the whatever you call it, Infinite Intelligence, God, whatever. I believe there is a power that responds to clear intention and surrender. I learned from Opus Dei, for example, when I was at University of Ibadan in Nigeria, that you can plan your life minute by minute. You can get up every single day of your life and write out your intentions, your plans for the day, and see them unfold from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day. And this habit has become my normal. So it helps me to visualize my day and see it unfold before me. And I think it's a very powerful thing to do—to wake up, whatever time it is you normally wake up, and then draft your day. Take a pen and put it on paper and work out what your day would be like from the moment you wake up until the time you come in for your next sleep. I sincerely recommend this activity to you, because it's actually easy to do. It's basically making lists. And I did one day list, then I went to weekly, monthly, yearly, even five-year, ten-year lists—what qualifications I want to have, how many children I want to have, where I want to go, what handicap I want to play. I just literally did day by day, put these things down, and at some point, you see that you've done them. When you come across those lists in the future, you realize: I have done a lot of these things.

So, I know that your mind is an extremely powerful instrument, and it is a really terrible thing to waste. So, you have to use your power, use the power of the mind, to call in all the amazing things you dream of in your life. And you have to do this in alignment with who you truly are. Manifestation is not wishful thinking. It is setting a desire and allowing it to come to you by vibrating at the same frequency as all the things that you are calling into your life. When I went through Regan Hillyer's program, the art of manifesting in the Mind Valley application, I was perplexed to find that so many things that I'd been doing without even realizing that they were a part of a formula of achieving things in life were coming through this lady, and they had a structure. She had a pathway that took you from A to B in a system, the energetic architecture, I think she called it and I found it extremely useful.

So, I copied it and used it to prepare for one of the most amazing golf competitions I've ever had. And this was a competition where I was up against a player who was absolutely amazing. I was playing off 32 handicap. He was playing off 13. But I had to shed 10 shots to play in the competition because the maximum handicap was 22, so I had a 10-shot disadvantage to play against this amazing player. So, it was an impossible match, as far as reality was concerned. When I made up my mind I was going to win this match, I called in on the powers I knew, and I used this energetic architecture thing, and I won the competition. And I realized that it was using that structured conscious manifestation process that helped me to achieve it. Yes, I had to practice day and night. There was a lot of physical physiotherapy, practice, training and all, but I know that it was mostly the mindset with which I went into that competition that made it happen for me. And I see it happening in many, many things in my life. When I went to law school, for example, I was pregnant with Mia. Ted, Troy, and Melvin were toddlers, breastfeeding and all that. And my school thought, "No, this is impossible. You can't do this." Coming from Germany to come to the UK and do law. But I said I didn't just want to do law, I had a timeline within which I wanted to do these things: the Graduate Diploma in Law, the LLB, the Legal Practice Course, the LLM, and I wanted to also go to Nigeria and do the bridge course, and then do the final qualification to practice in Nigeria. And I wanted to also practice law, and I wanted to do it in three years. This is something that takes the average person 12 years or eight years, or maybe five years. But I wanted to do this in three years, and I really wanted to achieve good grades. My teachers, everybody, my friends—they all thought, "You're crazy. This is impossible." But I said, "No, I know it's possible because I've done something similar when I was in Germany, and I knew that you could shrink the time and do a lot of the modules concurrently." So, I did my business degrees in Germany along with other qualifications, and I compressed them. So I kind of knew that in the West, you could pick up the modules, as long as you're working within the semesters where they are happening. You can do them, and you didn't have to do year by year, module after module, the way it works in Nigeria.

So I was able to agree with my school what I wanted to do and how I was going to do it. And it earned me a scholarship, because they thought I was really crazy to be coming in there to do all these things, pregnant and breastfeeding babies and carrying toddlers with me all the way from Germany and all. It was amazing, and they decided to support me by giving me this scholarship. And that was such a relief, because it helped me, it encouraged me, and it helped me to apply myself so much more. At the end of the day, I made distinctions, and the places where I missed distinctions, I made very good 2:1. So it was not just coming in to get the grades, but to also get them at exceptionally good levels. So I found it exceptionally interesting, because you have to apply yourself. But the physical application is something you have to understand is a small part of the full picture. The main work is up here. It's that knowing, that faith, that confidence, that trust that the universe has got you. "I am going to get it done." You won't know the how. You won't even know what you're doing when you start out. But starting out and taking that step-by-step approach is going to get you there. Your mind does 90% of the work, and your physical aspect is just a tiny little bit of it. So pay attention to the way your mind is programming, what your gut is telling you, what your intuition is telling you to do, because once your mind tells you, you can do it, you can do it. And your mind is going to show you how. You don't need to know the how. You don't need to be interested in the how, because it will take care of itself.

Let me take you through some of the manifestation tools I use to manifest some of the really, really easy things in my life. I have the "set it and let it go" system where I write out something that I want and I see it happening in the future, but then I let it go.

So whether I have in mind to get a qualification and I want it done by a particular time, I write it down, I read it out, and then I fold it and leave it, and I know it's going to happen. I've already seen it. I've visualized it, and I just now, today, begin to do the things, take the steps, take the studies, take the lectures that I think I need to do in order to achieve that outcome. So taking the action is important, but setting it and forgetting it is a process that helps me to get it done. So I see myself in a situation where it's already done. I fold the paper and put it away, and then I trust that it will be done, and I take the steps I need to take in getting to that destination. I already know that it is done because I've seen it, I've been in it, and in fact, I'm already in it while I take the steps which are considered necessary to get to that ultimate outcome, just basically doing the needful in the physical for something that I've already seen in the future. Then there's the "wouldn't it be nice" technique that I use, something similar to what Sonia Choquette teaches in Mind Valley, where she says to wonder, like "I wonder about this and that." Yeah, so it's similar to say, "Wouldn't it be nice for me?" Like, wouldn't it be nice if I could go to China, for example. If I really desire to do something, and instead of worrying about it being possible or not, I just think of it from the perspective of "wouldn't it be nice if this could happen?" And most times they do happen, even if not at the time that I am thinking about it.

Eventually, at some time, they do happen. So I tell my mind what I want to do or what I want to have. I wish it, and then eventually I see that it happens. I do a lot of visualizations. I start with the plan of life, and I write out what I want, and I actually see it. So if I have a desire, I see it in the future, and then I try to bring it to me by taking steps that I feel are aligned towards that particular action. So I also release my desire to the universe and trust that everything will happen exactly as I see it, or even better. Then I have another style I do, which is another tool I use, which is to train my mind to release control, to trust that everything is unfolding for me. I release attachment and I surrender to the magic of the unknown. I do this because I believe that releasing attachment to outcomes is one of the fastest ways to accelerate our desires and to get the outcomes that we want in quicker succession than we know, because our subconscious mind absorbs whatever it is that we believe. So it's easier to manifest from a place of surrender than from a place of control. And sometimes I use the "Do Nothing" experiment. I set an intention and I just let it go. I use this mostly when I think something is way, way out there.

So for example, when I was younger and I wanted to travel, I just thought, "I'm going to travel, study abroad," and I just set it and I left it. And when I told my mom that for the first time, I was barely seven, and she laughed at me. And by the time I was telling her again, maybe at the age of 16, I was already on my way to Europe to dance. And by the time I told her I was relocating to France at 20-ish, she was still laughing. But all those times I said them; I let them go. And then they eventually happened. So these are things that usually look impossible, but then they come because I've set them as intentions and let them out there as already in the universe. So they eventually happen for me. Then I have my trust list. So in this situation, I write out things that have worked out better than I had expected. So, for example, making a distinction in my legal experiences were outcomes that were so much better than what I had expected.

So I was traveling with young children, pregnant, coming from Germany into the UK and all that, and taking examinations, even while breastfeeding my babies. So realistically, a 2:1 would have been an amazing outcome, but I really wanted to make a distinction. But then it didn't matter—I expected that worst-case scenario, I'd end up with a 2:1. And then when I made a distinction, it was like, definitely one of those places where it worked out much better than I expected. So I usually write those lists where things have worked out a lot better than I expected.

For example, the case that I did for my client where we got the property 100%—that was a situation where the outcome was so much better than I expected. So I usually just write them down, and I'm very grateful that, yes, there are times in my life where things go better than I expected. It's very good to remind yourself of the times when things have gone much better than you had expected, because it helps you to solidify and stay in that belief and in that trust that things can actually go well and even much better than you had expected. So write them down and be extra grateful for them. These are very, very powerful manifestation processes that bring you more and more and more good things. And I do take challenges with myself where I say I would let the universe surprise me. So sometimes I come out for the day. I have my intentions for the day, but I tell the universe, "I want you to surprise me. I'm going to expect good things. And I know that surprises are coming my way." And sometimes things happen for me that are much better than I would have expected. So yeah, these are all very little things, very tiny little things that we do that can actually influence our day and give us so much joy on the daily.

Another aspect I want us to look at is trauma. Oh god, I'm an extremely traumatized woman. I have experienced so much, so much, so much. I mean, look at the story I told you a moment ago about my relationship. That's trauma. That's real trauma. It even got worse. I didn't even tell the full story. So when I look at my life, I see that, oh my God, I'm an extremely traumatized woman, yet I find joy in my everyday life.

You know, in this situation where I was, I didn't tell you the whole story. There was so much more—police, stalking, arrest and phone seizure, business stopping, my life, my children in trouble—all of those situations still happened just recently. Yet I'm here talking to you and making you understand that happiness is indeed a choice. The heartaches will come. They will be painful. You are going to be facing a situation where you are only there to love and be honest and be good and to do things that favor other people, and they turn around and hurt you. But you still have the opportunity and the choice to decide how to respond to all these negative charges.

And this is what I'm telling you: that you can learn. You can design the way your life goes by choosing how you respond to these charges. You can be deeply, deeply disappointed and hurt and pained by all these things. Be ashamed, be guilty, whatever it is that you feel. You feel molested, you feel violated, you feel angry. You feel all these things, but you have the power to alchemize them, to turn them into gifts, to get through the pain, to heal, to uproot all this pain and turn it into a strength, and turn it to something that you can use to remove the negative charge, and even help others—to help them uproot pain, let go of pain, and deal with their trauma. And one of the ways that I realized is very powerful to deal with trauma is my inner child work. So a lot of these things continue to happen because of the attachment we have to some of the negative experiences we have had as children. So I think it is important to go back there and heal from that inner child space so that all those things that are holding us back, stopping us from achieving today's outcomes, can come out of that place where it has become part of our subconscious, and release it and alchemize it so that we can use it to do better, to get our desires to come to us faster.

So I do a lot of this inner child work to heal my trauma, and of course, I do a lot of stuck emotion work, like getting rid of all the stuck emotions in my body, whatever ways they come, and alchemizing these aches and pains and wounds to help me to show up from this happy place and not be held back by all these painful experiences and traumatic experiences that I have had. I actually ended up bringing my little self, the wounded little girl, I literally uprooted her from decades ago and brought her into my daughter so that I could give her that love, I could give her those reassurances, I could give her that protection that she never had as a child through my daughter. And this has made my manifestation processes a lot faster, strangely enough. So I think everybody can get creative about the way they work with their inner child. It's extremely important to do this inner child work so that you come to a place where your childhood is supporting your today's manifestation practices and getting your desires to you a lot faster. As I keep saying, happiness is a conscious decision. Happiness is a choice for you to make now. It's something you can have now, not an outcome in the future. And part of it is what leads to your state of abundance, because from a happy place, you'll be able to manifest so much more abundance in your life, because you appreciate your life the way it is right now and then you are able to call in more good things into your life.

You have to have the mindset of abundance, and not that of scarcity, because when you allow yourself to have limiting beliefs, they cause you to focus so much more on the things that are not working well in your life, and these things do not serve you. For example, you tell yourself, "I don't deserve to be happy. People don't help me. If I slow down, I'll fall behind"—all those crazy thought patterns that make you do things in a way that does not serve you. You have to come away from that. You have to subconsciously reprogram your mind to take away all these limiting beliefs and replace them with empowering beliefs.

So I tell you that there are tricks. There are tricks you can use to reframe yourself, reframe your mindset, catch yourself from the self-talk that reduces your power, because you can consciously reprogram your mind. Because the truth is that you can have anything you want. You can be anybody you want to be. So when you think, for example, that there are situations where people don't like you, no—you have to pause and tell yourself, "No, there are people who like me." For example, "Everybody hates me. Nobody helps me." You have to catch yourself. It's not possible that nobody helps you. There are people around you who do help you. So you have to reprogram the way you think, so that you stop thinking that you are less than you are. You have to be aware that you are in that frame, in that frequency, where you are telling yourself that you don't have the things that you actually have. You have to figure out what your limiting beliefs are, and figure out where you got them from—your past relationships, your parents, society—where exactly did you pick up that limiting belief pattern from? And then check how that pattern has limited your life, how it has stopped you from achieving your best outcomes. You have to be brutally honest with yourself, create out time, write them down, set out the negative stories you've been telling yourself, and then rewrite them. Rewrite that script and embody the new script. For example, you tell yourself, "I'm not smart enough to build a thriving business. I'm unworthy of love and abundance." You have to rewrite those scripts.

Find out where you got them from. Dig, dig, and discover exactly where they come from, and then rewrite them. And when you rewrite them, embody the new beliefs, adopt the new codes, and instill the new codes permanently into your reality. And then you should challenge those belief systems so you can clear them out of your system, because if you allow them to stay, they feel real, and they become your reality, and they are the position from which you show up in the world. But when you rewrite them, you instill in yourself the frequency of showing up in your new belief patterns, making your decisions and taking the actions you need to take in your life from that new place where you have become the person who believes in the goodness of your life.

For example, where you tell yourself you're not smart enough to grow a thriving business, you reframe that. So you're always growing and you're always doing your best to become the best person you can be for your business and for the things you want to achieve in your life. So these are very easy techniques you can apply to rewire your belief patterns, and you must always take aligned action. No matter how much you tell yourself, no matter how much you recode your reality, you must take action from that new belief system.

So when you think about my story, for example, about making decisions, having my babies at the times I wanted them, finishing top of my class and then doing nothing—I had all those desires. But then I took steps. Because you won't get there if you don't take action, if you don't take steps, whether they are the right steps or not. Because you will not even know what the right action, what the right step is, but the fact that you're taking steps, the right ideas will come to you. Your instincts, your inner knowing, will tell you what you need to do, where you need to go, and you'll see the outcomes coming to you. You just have to have faith that everything you need to know, everything you need to do, will come together for you. In my case, for example, my teachers, my friends, started to teach me things, show me rules, show me shortcuts, and at the end of the day, I wasn't just getting through—I was getting distinctions. I was doing much better, even though at the beginning of it, I had no idea how it was going to work out.

So the mindset work is 80 to 90% of the work, but then the 10 to 20% action part you must do, because without taking aligned action, you're going nowhere with your manifestations and desires. And you have to believe that the world is abundant and everything you need and want is available to you. There's so much abundance out there. You don't have to live your life from a place of scarcity.

So many of us are so afraid of the unknown, but I tell you, let go of all that fear. Let go of the past. Have confidence that everything you need is available to you, and you don't need to be afraid to take action. Because while fear is important and keeps you safe, you have to get rid of the fear of the unknown because it limits you. So you have to stop comparing.

You have to stop believing that success is limited and that you have to compare and compete with people in order to have enough for yourself. It's so unnecessary. There's so much abundance out there. In fact, the more you collaborate, the more you get. The more you share, the more you get. So you have to rewire your mind to know that there is more than enough, so much abundance out there.

There's nothing anybody has that is limiting you from having whatever it is that you desire to have, and no matter how much you have, it won't stop the next person who desires whatever it is they desire from getting it in their life. So you have to accept that abundance is unlimited. Take away the mindset of competition. Bring in the mindset of collaboration and contribution, because you are not in competition with anybody. Stop hoarding. Stop being afraid to spend or take risks because you are acting from a place of major scarcity, and that only slows down your progress in the arena of manifesting, and in your experience of real, real abundance. And then this attitude of grinding, constantly overworking is also part of your scarcity mindset. You have to rework that and work all you need to, but understand that you don't need to overstretch yourself. You don't need to overdo anything, because that is operating from a place of scarcity, and it only leads to burnout. Because burnout is directly related to your mindset of scarcity, because you are busy worrying about missing out on the action, falling behind, and things that put you under pressure because you're operating from a mindset of scarcity. 

I would like for you to let go of this scarcity frequency and embrace the abundance frequency, because you can do everything, you can be anything, you can have everything, and you can achieve anything. When you know that all the opportunities are available to you, and once you believe everything is available to you, you begin to see opportunities everywhere, even in your setbacks.

Every setback becomes an opportunity. Look at me—the setback I had from the heartbreak from my client's daughter suing me and all that. It's what led to this book, Happiness Is Free, and led to this book, The Happiness Method. So all those heartbreaks and all those things became my gain, and that's what I tell you. There's always that silver lining. There's always that opportunity. There is always that good thing that will come out of the negative experiences, that will come out of the challenges, because in those challenges lie the opportunities. It's a mindset thing, and when you have the right mindset, you will see opportunities everywhere. And the more generous you are, the more generosity will flow back to you.

Most people you are generous to may not be generous back to you, but your generosity will bring more generosity to you. So don't expect to get back from the people that you are being good to, but know that your generosity will come back to you, because many people will be good to you, and they may be people that you don't have to do anything for. So be generous. Be grateful, because gratitude is an extremely powerful tool and a very powerful value in every area of your life. And then have confidence in your worth. You have to know that you deserve your success, that joy is your right, that happiness is your birthright, that you are worthy, that you are enough, because that knowing helps you to access all the goodies that can be there for you, that are out there within your reach. Release fear. Embrace abundance. Shift from the frequency of scarcity into the frequency of abundance. Mind your thoughts. Be deliberate about the things you do, the language you speak, the things you believe, and how you show up in your everyday life. Thank you.

Your Assignment:

I want you to go into your future and see your aligned self, your new self, your fulfilled self—the person who is experiencing fulfillment, comfort, happiness, achievement in an aligned place. And from that future aligned place, write to the you who is here today, and tell us all the amazing things you have done and how you got to the amazing place that you are at right now.

Then I want you to go back and rewrite some of the scripts in your life about your life. I want you to rewrite some of the negative belief patterns and I would love for you to share this in the community. Share your self-reflection, outcomes and then look at the self-reflection quiz and identify your limiting beliefs and reframe them. Also take the quiz on figuring out whether you operate from a place of abundance or from a place of scarcity. There is no judgment. It's just feedback. It's just for you to be able to know where you operate from so you can realign if need be or go deeper if you're on course.

Thank you so much. I'll see you in the next lesson.

Instruction:
Use these questions to connect with your inner child, challenge limiting beliefs, and invite abundance into your mindset.

Reflective Questions:

1. What childhood belief still influences your adult decisions?

2. Write a short letter to your younger self offering compassion and reassurance.

3. When do you catch yourself operating from fear instead of abundance?

4. What would your life look like if you believed you were already “enough”?

5. Identify one scarcity thought you will replace with a new empowering truth.

Welcome back. It's amazing to have you here again. I hope you're enjoying this experience with me, because this happiness journey is something I would really love the entire world to learn and feel and be. And here we are talking about the learnings I shared in chapter six about balance, freedom, and your life's purpose.

So today we're going to talk about the ways that we manage our boundaries, our time, and why hustle is not necessarily the route to achievement and is rather a hindrance to your ultimate intention to find peace, bliss, and happiness and fulfillment in your life. As you know, I am not just an author or a coach or just a lawyer or just a member of a lot of things. I do my coaching. I do my legal practice. I have my five children, my granddaughter, I have my mom and my siblings, and I still have my political constituencies as a leader in my communities in Nigeria. I also have huge responsibilities for my communities and the constituencies that I look after in the political space in Nigeria. So I'm actually very busy doing business, doing procurement for some of my clients, serving some of my legal clients, doing real estate and luxury goods for my friends, buying exotic wines and sending them to my clients in different parts of the world.

There's so much I am doing, you know, even sometimes relationship matters. So I am an extremely busy woman. But guess what? I have never been burnt out. I've never been stressed out. I have been heartbroken. I have been stressed. I have been tired. I've had a lot of negative emotions. But I've never been hopeless. I've never been depressed. I've kind of always understood that balance is key. I think some of it is from those early years learning in Opus Dei to plan my life, to literally start every day, to put everything in segments. I took it for granted back then, but today, I appreciate how that habit of waking up every day and planning every moment of my life, from the time I get up to the time I sleep again—how powerful it became in my life because it allowed me to organize everything I wanted to do. If I want to go for rehearsals, I plan it. I put it on my schedule. I had the time to play, to study, to create. I could literally plan my life in chunks from a very early stage in my life. And because I could do that on the daily early on, it became normal for me to be able to put things in perspective, prioritize, and just get into my calendar, look at my list, and make room for the things that I need to do.

Even when I have new things to do, I create room for it. Balance is extremely important in your everyday life, in your present life and the future you are designing. It is extremely important to create balance. And balance does not mean you have to give up one thing for the other. Give up marriage for career. Give up children for your business. No, it doesn't matter what it is. You can be everything. You don't need to give up on anything, because you can have it all. It's about who you are and what you want, and then making those shifts you need to make to accommodate your desires and then planning them into your daily life. Balance is key. To have balance, it's about planning, knowing what is priority, setting those priorities in a way that nothing gets left out, but everything is done according to the point in time that you need them to be done.

This is extremely important, because sometimes I deal with clients who are suffering with burnout, and there's so much confusion and overwhelm in their lives because they don't realize that a lot of it is coming from their inability to prioritize. They get overwhelmed, and then they are unable to chunk things into time segments, and they're unable to operate from a place of alignment. You can have your husband, your work, your children, your business, your parents, your parties, your goals—everything it is that you want to have in your life, you can have it. But you have to plan them. You have to place them in a way that everything works in alignment.

Some of the tools I use to ensure that I am able to stay in balance—for example, this time segmenting, this timetable, this plan of life I do. You know, I segment my life in small time chunks, 20-30 minute time chunks. So as I plan my day, I look at the things that are coming in every 30-minute segment, and I check after every 30 minutes where I'm at, because it helps me to regulate where I'm at. When I was even doing this script, this writing, this book, I was able to use what they call the Pomodoro Technique to plan each 20-30 minute time segment. And then when I have to take the kids out, and I have to meet a client and I need to take a break and play golf, whatever it is—time segments. Six segments for this particular one, two or three segments, one segment—you just do that, and then it makes it so much easier for you to manage your day.

Then you have to take breaks. I take a lot of breaks, and sometimes people think that taking breaks is a sign of laziness, but it's not true. You have to take breaks to avoid depletion. Sometimes your break is just very short, 2, 3, 5 minute breaks to just reset and recalibrate. But sometimes your breaks could be longer, and then you use the breaks even to go back into your creative mode. You stop your study, you stop your writing, you stop the brief you're writing for that case. But then when you take that break, that 30 minutes relaxing, listening to your music, your mind could actually go into the creative state and begin to give you ideas that you could use for your next endeavor. So sometimes breaks can even end up being not just a state of rest, but an opportunity for creativity as well. So you need to take these breaks, because you can look into your mind, ignore the noise, and key into the things that could help you in your next project.

So breaks are extremely important. They are very strategic, both for recalibration and for creative focus and things that help you in improving your life overall. Then one thing I also always emphasize is to avoid this reliance on external validations. You have to know that you have to plan your life, not necessarily expecting praise or getting carried away by the criticisms you get. So balance your life by applying the lessons from what people are thinking, if there's anything to pick from that, but don't allow those talks, those advice sometimes, to affect your decisions and your state of flow. And then be present. Be present, because balance involves being able to do the things that you need to do right now, like focusing on what matters now and reflecting on the things you have to do, because you need that presence in order to align yourself and restore your energy so you can work smarter and achieve your happiness from that place. Then for your balance, you also have to protect your mental health. Stressing too much, getting into a depressed state, anxiety and all this lack of motivation—experiences you can avoid by paying attention to your mind. Slow down when you must, and try and enjoy the activities at hand. So avoid postponing the enjoyment, because enjoying the simple pleasures and the things that you are doing helps you to create this balance. Balance also is something you could influence by the way you show up—showing up as your authentic self, and being able to be vulnerable, not to overshare or to be unprofessional, but to be able to connect from a place of aligned self in all the things you're doing in your workspace. This helps you to stay in balance and then avoid overworking. And then you need to cultivate the inner balance that also comes through when you know your purpose, when you know who you are, and when you make your decisions and show up in life from the aligned place. It helps you to create tranquility in your life and define your own version of success, so that you're not trying to succeed based on somebody else's impression or intention for themselves or belief of what success is to them.

Success to you may just be to have a comfortable apartment, but to another person, it may be to have a mansion. It may be to have a family, and for the other person, it may be to have a billion pounds in the account. So you have to actually be sure what success means to you, and then just focus only on that so that you can stay in balance and do the things that you need to do to achieve what is success to you. Ignore the rest of society. Make the distinction for yourself. What is it that you want? Why is it that you want it? And focus only on that, because it has to be truly it for you. So you can go for it without worrying about what other people are saying or doing, because those are distractions. Then you always have to schedule time for your wellbeing.

This is important for your state of balance, because your mental health, your time for yourself, the things you do to make you feel good, whether it is music, spa treatment, karaoke, golf, whatever it is that makes you feel good— you have to make time, actually make time for yourself so that you can have your joy practice. Then you have to balance your energy. You have to avoid being with people who sap you of energy. You have to watch out for the people you let into your space, and when you can't influence the type of people you have to be in the same room with, then you have to focus on how you use your own space, how you protect you. You can't influence what other people are doing, but you control how you respond. You're conscious of how they affect you, how they drain you. And then you take time to restore so you can stay high and safe away from the negative frequencies around you. And then your relationship—there's a relationship between your balance and your relationships. So deep communications, deep understanding and deep sharing in alignment with people around you that you have a bond with helps you to create your balance and to live in conformity with who you truly are.

So you have to avoid superficial relationships and prioritize deep connections. And I'm going to share a checklist that I've set out—a checklist for you—so you can look at all the options you have and take action to influence your state of balance, your state of serenity. You have to optimize your environment to allow you to live in a state of balance, because these are all the things that will lead you to that place of happiness. Avoid perfectionism, avoid over commitment, create boundaries that work for you. And don't just say yes to everything when your heart, body and soul is telling you to say no.

Don't neglect yourself. Prioritize your health, prioritize your recovery. Infuse joy and your play in life. Master the art of saying no, and create a life that is uniquely yours. Boundaries are absolutely essential for your energy protection, so you have to know exactly when to say yes and when to say no and own it. Ignore what the rest of the world is doing. Take care of yourself. Your boundary is very important. Set boundaries for your relationships, for your technology, for your giving, for your receiving, and the way you extend yourself. You need to stop overextending yourself, over-pleasing, and avoid all those things because they eat into your self-worth and they make you create a life that is overwhelming and could lead to burnout. So you need to balance your life and avoid overdoing in these ways.

Balance also is something that is necessary, and you have to balance your life to align with your true purpose. You can't force yourself to do things. You do things because you really desire to do them. You're showing up and being desirous of where you are at and doing the things that you're doing, learning the things you're learning, and ultimately living a life that you have chosen, living in alignment with your true identity, in alignment with who you really are. You have to discover your true purpose in life, find the things that make you feel alive, inspired and in flow, and do more of them, because these are the things that would get you to a place of fulfillment.

Ask people around you how they perceive you, people who have known you for a while. What do they feel? What do they see? What do they feel whenever you show up? A lot of my friends, a lot of people I know, even strangers, tell me that when I show up, they just feel my joy, and they can tell that I'm a happy person. And I think this is how I ended up becoming the happiness coach, the happiness girl, per se, because it doesn't matter the circumstances I'm dealing with, no matter how painful the experiences I am dealing with, I am able to walk into the next room with  so much joy and excitement and curiosity and lightness and seeing that life is truly beautiful. So it's easy for me to see the joy, the good things in everything around me, and I believe that my identity primarily is the identity of the happy girl.

So I have accepted that whatever I'm doing in life, I come from a place of happiness and love, and my core values are these things that have become the foundation for everything around me. So all the businesses I do now, I do from a happy place. So you have to find your identity, so you can do everything else from that place. Because once you find who you are, it becomes so much easier for you to align your future, your current place, and do the things you want to do. For me now, I want to see aligned leadership. I want to see leaders connecting more with their teams, with themselves, with their purpose, coming from a place of happiness, into their work, into their families, into their daily life. I believe we can achieve so much more in terms of how we lead—how we lead the companies, the family, the countries we lead, how we operate overall, how we even resolve conflicts.

I believe that coming from a happy place—and I believe in how we show up. If we can show up from a place of happiness, I want to see leadership from a place of love, a place of joy, a place of happiness, because when you're happy, most of the things you do come from a place of alignment, a place of acceptance, a place of love, a place of humanness, and you're always thinking about how to make the life of the next person better. And I am dreaming. My dream is to see a happier world, and I believe that the leaders that I work with will eventually create a world that is happier. And you have to understand that when you know who you are, you may begin to doubt what you're doing. You know the impact you want to have, but then you're doubting, "Can I do it?" You start to have those negative belief patterns coming back in. "This is such a big dream. Can I make it?" What I tell my clients is: start small.

Purpose doesn't require a big life overhaul. You just start with small, intentional steps, intentional shifts that will help you get closer to your destination. You take the 2% daily actions, the tiny little steps that will become the compounded action that becomes the big thing that you wanted to achieve, that is even beyond what you wanted to achieve. When you realize who you are, take that person to your work environment, because your work environment is where you work, where you spend most of your life. So take your purpose into your work so that the purpose you have come to serve is now part of your daily life, is the work you do. Surround yourself with purpose-driven people, people who are absolutely determined and committed to do more for themselves and for humanity.

Because there you can get, unknowingly or unintentionally, mentors and coaches and voices that encourage you to do more, to be accountable to your purpose, to provide more and give more of yourself in order to see that the impact you want to have in life may come to be. So you have to limit the amount of time you spend with people who reduce your energy, who will take away from your power, because being with people who help you fuel your energy is much more advantageous to you than being with people who drain you. So purpose is not something you go outside to search for. It's something you go within you to find. You find your purpose in your life, within yourself, from inside out.

That brings us to the end of this lesson. I encourage you to still go off and look, read the book, Happiness Is Free, and then use this summarized deeper dive to take the daily action, practice some of the teachings in the book to improve your situation and your life on the daily. Combining the book with this course is such an amazing way to get the lessons and apply them in your reality. Your Exercises: So let's do some time-blocking and plan of life. What are the things you have to do today? What are things you must do today, and what are the things that you can delete or delegate to other people? So yeah, do this for your work week, and let's see if you can do it for your family life as well. Then I want you to use our boundary builder. Script out what you want as your boundaries at work, with your technology, at play, at home, yeah. So map out your boundaries and begin to apply and implement them unapologetically.

Instruction:
Find a quiet space and reflect deeply. These questions guide you to align your actions with your purpose and inner joy.

Reflective Questions:

1. What activities make you lose track of time and feel most alive?

2. What values or causes ignite your passion and energy?

3. How does your current work or lifestyle align with your purpose?

4. What fears keep you from pursuing what your soul truly desires?

5. Write one small, purpose-aligned action you’ll take this week.

Welcome back today. We are looking at the lessons from chapter seven of my book, Happiness Is Free. In this happiness method here, we want to release the invisible barriers to happiness. And in this lesson, I am taking us through the lesson about releasing control. And we find that many of us postpone happiness because we believe it's something we have to earn or something we have to chase. So we create these invisible barriers to our happiness. For example, we see that a lot of us believe that we'll be happy when we achieve one outcome or the other—maybe when I have more money, when I have a perfect relationship, when I get the promotion I am after. And this mindset convinces us that happiness exists in the future, after the next achievement, after the next promotion or whatever. But the reality is that happiness is never found in the future. It is found in the now. It is not in the destination. It is in the journey. So if you are not happy now that you don't have the money or the promotion or the wife or the house, you won't be happy when you have all those things, because your mind will always create a new next goal for you, because that's just how we are. We are people of desires.

So you have to learn to let go of control and appreciate where you are right now in order to find your happiness and keep it for the long haul. You have to stop seeking external validation and over-identifying with other people's success, because this will diminish your capacity to enjoy where you're at right now, while you build the future that you dream of. You have to detach your identity from what you do and connect it with who you truly are, whether you are the minister or the Pope or the judge or the Senior Advocate or the Queen's Counsel or the president or whatever it is that your accolades and titles are. You have to detach your person from those titles, from those roles, whether as a parent or whatever accolades they are. You have to detach from them, because your true self is what matters, and you need to live within your true reality, independent of all these outside accolades and what the rest of the world is doing and saying. You have to stop being afraid of letting go. You have to trust life's flow, because when you hold on to control you create pain and you create expectations, and the fear of not meeting those 55 | Page expectations creates a deep sense of unfulfillment for you. You are so afraid to surrender, but in this surrender is actually where you find peace and flow. You need to understand that our brain is wired to focus on the problems, the fears and the risks, because this is a survival mechanism, and this is natural. We needed to be aware of all the situations. Fear was a survival mechanism that was needed in our evolution, but it's not necessary anymore because of the advancement in technology. So you have to avoid falling into the trap of the negativity bias of the mind. So you have to actively reduce your interest in the negative voices in your head. You need to rewire your brain for gratitude, mindfulness and conscious positivity. To be able to do this, you must shift yourself from the doing to the being. Yeah, it's not all about all the things you're doing. It's about who you are being. So instead of doing more, practice being more. Take a moment to feel, breathe and exist without the need to accomplish anything. Just enjoy the moment. Once in a while, just tell yourself it's about now. Learn to live your life for yourself, not for anybody's approval. Detach from external validations, external approval, and live for the things that make you feel good, for your personal joy, and maybe for the joy of those around you that you feel a need to improve their situation. You have to do it all from a place of authenticity. You don't have to worry about what the next goal is and how the next person is seeing you, and then you use that to disrupt your capacity and ability to enjoy the moment. You must accept that you cannot control everything and release and surrender to life's flow, because even the unknown has its purpose in your life. Control is a major setback when it comes to enjoying your life in the present. So you have to watch your mindset and shift it from that place of control to a place of total surrender. Happiness is not found in more achievement and more possessions or future events. It is found in how you choose to experience life in this moment.

So many of us struggle with control, because the very mindset that drives success is actually the same mindset that can become a barrier to our happiness, inner peace and fulfillment. So control is such a struggle for professionals and entrepreneurs because control is also the same way you check to be sure that the outcome you are desiring can be achieved. But in that control also comes the lack of surrender, the lack of trust, the lack of faith in the universe to do for us what is needed to get us from where we are to where we want to be. So we have to figure out that fine line and find the balance. We have to bring ourselves to the place where we can balance the need 56 | Page for control and being in a state of balance, allowing ourselves to surrender and trust while still maintaining that fine line where we need to get things done and get results to get the outcomes that we want to have.

Many of us have to be in charge. We have to do A to get the outcome B, and we want to see the processes and the systems working. But this is absolutely okay, because we have to do this, make decisions, shape our destiny and get things done. That's a measure of control. So the trick is in having the ability to control and anticipate results and also be able to balance it so that we are not overdoing one or the other. The ability to control variables, anticipate challenges and drive results fuels our success, but we must check to avoid being overwhelmed, or that we become over-identified with control, and then allow the control to become a source of anxiety, stress and burnout for us. We have to get that fine line between the necessity to have a measure of control of the activity around us and the necessity to trust that life is unfolding on our behalf. It is a very fine line, and we need to be able to recognize this and know when we are crossing the line and pull ourselves back. So while we build our businesses, manage our projects, build our families, build our careers by controlling processes, making decisions and taking steps, we need to be careful not to cross the fine line between control and balance. We shouldn't allow our need for control to become problematic in our lives and make us into entities that are too focused on micromanagement, fear of delegation and resistance to uncertainty. So we have to be careful to keep that balance, so that we don't slip off and get into the unhealthy bits of control.

We have to have control in alignment, so that we maintain balance, so that while we are controlling, doing the systems and processes to achieve outcomes, we also have the balance to prevent us from slipping off, so we can achieve at our ultimate levels, because balance is key. Control is important. Control is good, but balance is key. We need to be careful and cautious of the perfectionism trap. We tend to give ourselves unrealistically high expectations. We struggle to delegate tasks, fearing that other people will not meet our expectations, and we push ourselves relentlessly and end up being burnt out, overwhelmed, tired, because we are taking up too much. We are trying to be perfect. We are trying to do it all by ourselves, instead of getting the work done to the point where it is good enough, where you can get it out in the world and then get will do what they're supposed to do for you. And even when there are mistakes, you'll be able to adapt and pivot and work around and get the things done that need to be done, because it's not about the control, it's about the adaptability, it's about the emotional resilience, and you can still get all that done without necessarily being in control of everything. And when you have an empowered team, there is a common goal which everything is working towards. So even when there are mistakes, the learnings from the mistakes help you foster growth and develop a closer knit group and come closer from where you were to where you are right now. Another thing you need to do is define your success beyond your working and your achievement, because as long as your identity is tied to your work and your achievement, you will always feel the need to control outcomes. So you need to reconnect with your passions, away from your work. Spend more time with your family, your hobbies, nature, doing whatever it is that makes you happy and takes your mind away from the need to control outcomes, especially outcomes that are beyond your control. So the less you control, the more you live. Success does not require control. It requires trust and the courage to let go. It is so important to understand that freedom does not come from control. It comes from surrender.

Happiness does not come from control. It comes from surrender. Because surrendering is the first step towards freedom.

You have to learn to trust rather than force. You have to let go rather than resist. You have to learn to release the urge to control, because when you surrender and trust, you experience a profound sense of ease, trust and joy as you achieve success beyond your imagination. What does it mean to surrender and trust? Surrender doesn't mean giving up on your dreams, becoming passive or careless with your life, or letting your life just happen to you without direction. It means releasing attachment to how things must happen in your life, trusting that your life is unfolding for your highest good, and letting go of that fear-based control and moving with flow. The truth is, control is an illusion, because no matter how much you plan, life will always have its own plan, and life will always unfold as it wishes, at its own rhythm. So the more you try to control, the more stress, frustration and resistance you create. So you have to understand that surrender is not a weakness. It is a profound strength. It is the wisdom to know when to act and when to just allow things to happen. We struggle with surrender because we thrive on structure, predictability and control.

So letting go of certainty feels like stepping into the unknown, and the unknown is risky and scary. But the reality is that certainty is an illusion. The most successful people don't control—they learn to trust and adapt. Surrendering helps us to stop overthinking and over-analyzing things, so new opportunities begin to emerge for you. Creativity flows and you trust more in your intuition. When you surrender, you stop forcing things that are not meant for you. You align with the opportunities that are meant for you. Instead of choosing the things that do not work, you realize that life isn't a struggle. It is meant to flow effortlessly, and you tell yourself that what is meant for you will come to you with ease and flow. Surrendering is trusting your ability to navigate life's challenges, so you no longer fear the unknown, because you trust that life is unfolding in your favor. You move from control to confidence and from fear to faith. And when you surrender, you stop micromanaging every outcome. You allow things to unfold naturally for you. You set your intentions. You take aligned actions. You trust the process, because when something feels forced, it is out of alignment. When something feels forced, it is not aligned.

Surrendering means staying present instead of worrying about the future, because anxiety comes from living in the future, whereas happiness—you only find happiness in the present moment. So you must engage fully in what you're doing right now and trust that the next steps will reveal themselves. This is actually how I played that game I talked about with my opponent Adeyinka, who was a much better golfer than I was. I literally just allowed myself to go with the flow and believe that the next step, the next step, will reveal itself. And of course, I had a really good caddy with Muyiwa, so he would give me the right clubs, he would give me the right tips, he'd give me the right positions. He would tell me what I need to know and get out of my way and allow me to do what I needed. In fact, I don't think I've ever played golf as good as that day. I was a 32 handicap playing off 22 against a strong player who was playing off 13. And I still won that game.

So I keep coming back to that, because it was one of, I think, the most recent experiences of total surrender that I have had. So surrendering really means believing, and in fact, it means knowing that everything will come together for you and taking the next step, even blind. You just take the next steps, whatever they are, because you don't know and you don't need to know. The how is not important. You trust your instincts. You trust that the universe will tell you the next steps and you have to take them, and you'll be able to take them because you believe in your intuition, and you trust your goals and you know that the next step you take is always going to get you to that place you need to go, because everything is working in your favor. Control is a major hindrance to your happiness, so you have to let it go.

Happiness is free, and it's a choice you can make right now. I'll see you in the next chapter.

Instruction:
Reflect after the video and journal your responses. The goal is to identify where control limits your peace and practice letting go.

Reflective Questions:

1. What area of your life feels most out of your control right now?

2. What are you afraid might happen if you release control?

3. How can you trust life a little more this week?

4. What has past experience taught you about surrendering and outcomes?

5. Write your affirmation for surrender: “I am safe to let go. I trust that life is unfolding in my favor.”

Welcome to the final chapter of this happiness method: the happiness mindset. This is chapter eight of the book Happiness Is Free, and we are doing the happiness mindset from a place of surrendering and trust. So surrender and trust is really the icing on the cake, and no matter what we do with mindsets, with the actions and the belief patterns and the negative beliefs that lead to happiness, flow, achievement, success—if you do not learn to surrender and trust in the universe to give you your outcomes, you are going to be greatly limited. So I am emphasizing this surrendering and trusting bit, because it is extremely important in helping us augment our happiness mindset. I remember starting this chapter realizing that I have seen so many setbacks in my life. Wanting to be a billionaire before 30, but instead of being a billionaire at 30, I was broke. I was so broke that I could barely buy food back then.

But in that setback, in that complete disaster, in that losing everything I had at that time, came the new life that started almost instantly. I met my ex husband and practically immediately started making children, having babies. And even though I had previously told myself in my early days that I was just going to adopt children, raise foster kids, and just be the best mom I could be—before I was even 18, I was already adopting kids and having foster children before my 18th birthday. So I had so many of these babies, and I did not really want to have children of my own, but that is not the life that came to me, especially from the moment where this billionaire lifestyle was behind me. But I ended up having five children, even from that place where I didn't want to have any, and it has been an amazing experience. I would not trade it for anything. I'd rather be broke with my babies than be a billionaire without these babies. That is how profound the experience has been for me so far.

Yes, I was a jetsetter. I was flying here and there trying to be the most successful businesswoman ever. And when everything ended, and it all crashed, and I lost all those monies, and it was like, clearly, zero chance of being a billionaire—but it was an opportunity. I came to a realization that truly, everything is working out for my own good. I was avoiding having biological children even in my teens, but having biological children centered me in a way that I could never have done by just adopting and fostering all the children I adopted, even when I was a teenager, and in later years. I would take children from moms who wanted to get rid of their children, or who were drug addicts and things like that, and I'd basically raise those children. But all of them went back to their moms. When their moms recovered from the issues they were having, they came back for their children. But there was something different about having these biological children and being responsible for these children. They were not going anywhere—they were going to stay forever. All these other children I raised have gone back to their biological mothers, but these ones that I gave birth to, they are going nowhere. They're here.

It was different, and it centered me in a different way. It helped me to start seeing life in a different way. It started helping me to see my purpose in life a bit differently from the way I was seeing my life. I was always interested in making money because I needed money to improve the lives of the people around me. I wanted to be able to pay whatever I needed to pay to get the presidency of Nigeria and then turn things around so that people can have—many more people can have a much better life in Nigeria. People can operate from a place of love and contentment, instead of from this selfish and greedy place that we see. But having children, even though it seems like it slowed me down and even took me away from that destination, today, I see that it is actually the path I needed to go to learn the things I needed to know in order to be the best possible leader I am going to be in every area of my life, whether I'm leading in the boardroom or in the courtroom or even in my home or even as the leader of my country. I am grounded. I am able to see things from so many perspectives. I have biological children, but I'm not a billionaire, but it is who I am. It is who I am meant to be, and it is the me that could be the happiest me that I could ever be. And I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to learn these things, because the universe could have let me continue to make the billions and be miserable and maybe even never really become anything, or maybe even never really have such impact as I was hoping to have. But I was brought back into the space where I could see my life from a different perspective, different from that design I had, yet still aligned to my purpose.

All my failed companies, failed marriages, failures everywhere—yet within me, from the bottom of my heart, I am a very happy woman. I know that I am living the life I chose, and there's nothing more fulfilling than that. Nothing is more fulfilling than the ability to live the life I envisage for myself. I wake up every morning, I write out my intentions for the day and see all of them come through one by one. That's beautiful. And I want you to be able to do this for yourself. I want you to begin to see yourself as the mega manifesto that you are. I want you to be able to see yourself as the ready-made woman, man, person, adventurer, whatever it is that you are, the ready-made you, the you you were born to be and to own it and to be it, and to love it and to be all of it, because that is where true happiness is. It's in you. You are you exactly as you are, the original you, the authentic you, and it is a perfect you. And when you reconnect with that you, you will be extremely happy. Ignore all the society projections, being somebody that has been programmed to conform, to do what the rest of the world is doing. Ignore all that. Listen to you. Find you, because when you find you, you will find your happiness. You will find your joy.

This is what I talk about when I talk about the freedom mindset. You must understand that surrendering to the present moment, instead of obsessing over the future, is your key. It's the key to your absolute freedom. It's the key to be able to make decisions from a place of alignment, take action from a place of alignment and see the results you envisage, and sometimes even better results than you expected. And even when the outcomes you see seem totally different from the ones you expected, you know this is you. This is where you want to be. This is where you're supposed to be, because your instincts are always right. Your divine guidance will not take you to the wrong place. It will take you to where you're supposed to be. It will take you to that you who is worthy. The happiest people are not those who have everything. In fact, I doubt anybody has everything. It is those who trust and adapt and allow life to unfold naturally for them that truly, truly feel this bliss.

It's not about how much money or how many houses, or how many material possessions you have. It's about knowing who you are and being okay with who you are. That is the beginning of your bliss. That's the beginning of your lasting happiness. And that is where I am taking you to. And I hope that by now you are close, because we're almost at the end of this program. So I hope you have already started to connect your original you, your authentic you, with your aligned you, so that you can get this happiness for good. And part of my freedom mindset is the idea to let go of resistance and embrace uncertainty, because no matter how much you plan and control, there will always be uncertainties. There will always be challenges. There will always be life unfolding in ways you have to learn to flow with and stop resisting the things you can't control, 64 | Page because it creates stress and anxiety and unnecessary suffering. What we need for true bliss and success and happiness is to just embrace all of life, the fullness of life, the uncertainties, the challenges, the struggles. Stop the resistance, welcome the struggles, learn from them, and always bear in mind that it comes at a price.

You'll be judged, you'll be maltreated, you'll be ridiculed for choosing to be you, but you must stand your ground, because you are perfect exactly as you are. You are worthy exactly as you are. You are complete exactly as you are. So whatever the rest of the world is doing to shift you should not work, because you know you and you know you are perfect as you are. You have to trust that the universe has got you and all those external influences and bumps are just bumps. This freedom mindset involves living in effortless abundance as well. Abundance is not just about your money and material success. It's about living in a state of ease and flow and deep inner peace. It's about trusting that you're always supported, and knowing that everything you need is already available to you, and knowing that life is always unfolding in your favor. You have to understand that abundance isn't necessarily something you acquire, it's something that you tune into. Scarcity is a mental program that you can rewrite, and you can replace all your scarcity thoughts with your abundance thoughts. So you must let go of the belief that you must struggle to succeed and recognize that the universe is always expanding and so can you. You must go from a place of complete abundance to build a life of freedom, joy and purpose. You have to create your big picture vision. Every time you think about your life, you have to know what the destination is. Where would you like to go? What impact do you want to have? What legacy do you want to leave behind when you're gone? What do you want to be remembered for? These are all the things that you have to think about to draft your ultimate vision in life, and to stay true to your destination, and to stay aligned to your calling, and to keep doing that which you have to do to achieve the things you desire in your life and the lives of those you really want to influence and better.

I want you to rise above resistance. I want you to rise above fear. I want you to rise above resistance, fear and limitations. I tell you about levitation. I read once about levitation pods, where you go into this pod with salt water and you literally just float. And I just experienced it. And then it reminded me of one time where I was so madly in love with some guy, and just the way he used to treat me, the way he used to look at me, the way he used to talk to me—it literally made me float. Like I would feel this out-of-body experience where I would literally lift from the bed and be above the bed and be floating above the air, like being in the air, out of my body and floating just because of the way he made me feel. It was such an amazing feeling. And I used to look at it like, wow, this whole happiness thing is linked to the feeling of levitation. In fact, I rebranded my business and added "levitate" to my logo, because it just reminds me of that state of being, where you are weightless. The state of being I envisage for this world, where everybody is living above the flow, where we are floating, when we are free, when we are light, when we are doing life from a place of abundance, a place of flow, a place of love, a very happy place. Ignoring the accolades—I, for example, have all those educational qualifications, conquests and whatever.

But I love the weightlessness I experience when people do things that make me happy, when people say things that touch my soul, when people do things where I feel truly, truly, deeply appreciated and loved for who I am. I love that flow. I love that weightlessness. And I just think about the word "levitate," and I want to experience more of that weightlessness, and I want to feel those deep levels of connection and freedom. And I want more of the world to feel these things, because it's something that you can choose. You can rise above all the limiting beliefs, all the physical and spiritual and mental and emotional blocks, all the state of doubt, all the state of fear, and come into this state of lightness, this state of freedom, this state of pure alignment with your higher self. Levitation is not about escaping your reality.

Rather, it's transcending fear, doubt, self-sabotage, resistance and coming into this floating state. In this floating state—I love this. I wish there was a way I could gift it to the entire world, because feeling happiness on this level is a gift I want to give to the whole world. I have applied these things in my life to help me live true to myself and free of society's constraints. I don't know how to gift it, but I hope all the books I'm writing—I have written the book I've written, and the more books I'm going to write, the lessons I'm teaching, the speeches I'm giving—will help us to release this attachment to outcomes, to vibrate on a much higher frequency and to choose love, gratitude, compassion, alignment, forgiveness. Forgiveness of self and forgiveness of others for all the painful things they've done to you in your life. Forgive your mistakes, forgive the mistakes of others, and look to the future knowing that all that really matters is how you're living right now.

Live now as if it is all you have, because, in reality, now is really all you have.

Instruction:
These final reflections help you integrate surrender, trust, and flow into your everyday reality. Write freely and without judgment.

Reflective Questions:

1. What does “flow” feel like in your body and emotions?

2. What’s one thing you’re currently resisting—and why?

3. Describe a recent situation where trusting life surprised you.

4. What would your day look like if you stopped forcing outcomes?

5. Write a personal mantra for living in flow, e.g., “I surrender. I trust. I flow.”

Thank you for taking this journey with me.

I’m truly grateful you chose this course and allowed me to share these lessons with you.

My hope is simple: that something you learned here reminds you that happiness is yours to choose, no matter your past, your pain, or your circumstances. You deserve joy. You deserve peace. You deserve a life that feels full and aligned.

As you go on, keep choosing yourself.

Keep choosing wholeness.

Keep choosing happiness — one moment at a time.

I’m rooting for you.

Thank you for being here.