Suggested Readings
Africa 101
As an African, the most basic aspect of your education must be “Africa 101.” You must ensure that it empowers you to understand, as the foundation to your training and above any (21st century) skill you might desire to acquire, how we have got to now and how a world system that has fed you, the African eagle, with chicken feed works, and then work to replace it with a better system that works for all. Without Africa 101, no Harvard, Oxford or MIT-level education can save you from the “shackles of the mind holding us back as a people,” which this author, Her Excellency Ambassador Arikana Chihombori Quao describes as “the greatest challenge facing continental and diaspora Africans.”
The Obstacle is the Way
Do you feel disadvantaged in life? In this book, Ryan Holiday offers a practical approach for turning trials into triumph. Drawing from Stoicism, he drives home the point of Marcus Aurelius: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” Could that problem you’re facing be an opportunity for your self-improvement?
Every chapter of the book is packed with nuggets of wisdom, but my key takeaway appears in the chapter “Finding the Opportunity,” where the author states that “A wise person dyes events with his own color … and turns whatever happens to his own benefit.” It is easy and often comforting to lament about your situation, but what would be better – although harder but more effective – is to do something to change it. As Ryan notes, the first step to that change is to see the situation differently — as an opportunity.
