In your Flaws

In your Flaws

I think what is interesting in life is all the cracks and all the flaws and all the moments that are not perfect.

---Clemence Poesy

I discovered that my insecurities and my flaws were things that I actually need to embrace, and I let them become my superpowers.

---Skylar Grey

Excellence is about fighting and pursuing something diligently, with a strict and determined approach to doing it right. It's okay if there are flaws in the process - it makes it more interesting.

---Charlie Trotter

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.

--- Augusten Burroughs

No one is perfect, perfection is beyond human but you can always be better than you were, and this is the essence of your life to see beyond your flaws and reach for a newer, better, stronger, wiser, richer and greater you. This is evident in your need to bath, brush and clean your whole body every day, you don’t clean once and stay neat throughout your lifetime but you do this every day without worries because you want to stay fresh for yourself and not make people feel irritated by your mess. The obvious truth is that everyone sees taking care of their body everyday to be important without any special need to ponder on why they should do so, this same understanding can be applied to every area of your life, if you have the energy to take care of your body (simple as bathing every day), you have the power to overcome whatever thing that want to mess with your thought and your future. You and I have our flaws, disabilities and mistakes that stare us in the face but we can see beyond it, build strength from it and soar above the forces that could pin us down because in our flaws lies our uniqueness.

I have learnt great lessons from people who ordinarily may amount to nothing if they dwell on their flaws and disabilities, but they have emerged winners in life having flawless victory over the things that could crush them and make them useless. I will tell of two people whom I believe have been a blessing to the world and the things I learnt from them. These two guys are Cobhams Asuquo (a Nigerian musician, producer, and songwriter who was born blind) and Nick Vijucic (an Australian Christian evangelist and motivational speaker born with tetra-amelia syndrome, a rare disorder characterized by the absence of all four limbs. These guys have achieved incredible things even though from the beginning of their life anyone could easily say they would amount to nothing, their life expresses ‘anything is possible’.

There are three lessons from Cobhams Asuquo which he said he learnt as a result of being blind. The first lesson is ‘Do not Excuse Failure, for any reason on any account’, he said failures will come but you should see to it that it goes. He stated that whenever there’s a larger than life seemingly insurmountable flaw, in a system, in our cities, in our leaders, even in our character, we tend to excuse the failure. We overlook it, we pardon it, and we indulge in it. We become comfortable with it and sometimes, we even find different terms for the failure. When a thing isn’t working the way it should, we shake our heads, and we automatically blame it on something (our flaws and our disabilities) and refuse to be accountable for situation of our lives. He added that when you excuse failure and blames it on your flaw or disability; you miss the opportunity to scale through those seemingly insurmountable obstacles. To elevate yourself and others, you must see beyond your flaw and disability, and be ready to the impossible.

The second lesson is ‘To trust even when you have no reason to’. He learnt this from blindness, he told of how he learnt how to jump over open street gutters, so anytime he is with friends and they inform him of them approaching a gutter, he just jump and ask no question. He discovered after a while that his friends at times play pranks on him and ask him to jump even when there were no gutters, just so they could laugh, but even when he found out, he still continued to jump. Like he said ‘I chose to trust them because quite honestly, staying out of smelly sewage gutters was very important to me’. The morale of this second lesson is ‘learn to trust the wave of life never minding where it will land you, keep taking risk and when it earns you a pot of gold you will be happy you didn’t approach life faint-hearted’.

And one more lesson from this man who didn’t lose hope on life because of no eyesight but courageously moved on in life with the eye of his heart to see beyond obstacles and hindrances, is ‘Be blind to be focused, focus is blindness in a sense’, he said ‘on your way to your destination, what you see, can also be a big distraction from your goals’. I like to remind you that often you and I often leave what is most important to our lives to attend to things that will add little or no value(s) to our lives. Carefully weigh anything that comes to you on your way to the top, will they be strength to you and quicken your pursuit, or will they weaken you and keep you at a spot or make you fall? If it’s the latter then ignore it. Don’t be swept off the floor by the praises of people or get broken by the condemnation of anyone; carry your cross heartily until you have your crown.

Nick Vijucic has inspired and motivated a lot of people all over the world, he is popularly known as the ‘preacher with no arms and legs’ he is known to spread the message of faith and hope around the world. He is the founder of the company ‘attitude is altitude’. One message from him I like to pass across to you today is to ‘Dream big and never give up. We all make mistakes, but none of us are mistakes. Take one day at a time. Embrace positive attitudes, perspectives, principles and truths and you too will overcome’. This guy’s life proves to you and I that God loves everybody equally and he has deposited in every one of us the ability, gifts and talent to be a blessing to ourselves and the world. You are just beautiful the way you are.

Life is far more interesting than we can imagine because of its imperfections, we the imperfect ones are also positioned here to mature and reach our fullness. We are designed to tap superpowers from our flaws and disabilities, embrace your flaws; it helps you to realize your uniqueness in the world.

If you suffer anger, you can learn to enjoy the peace of being patient; If you suffer low self-esteem, you can explore the happiness of being self-confident; if you wallow in fear, you can choose to rise up and experience the joy of being courageous; if you find it hard to love yourself or other people, be prepared to launch yourself into the world of unconditional love where godliness exist. You are created with your flaws for good reasons, to experience and explore the other side; a place where your obstacles have no play over your life and your flaws can’t limit you no more.

I like to say it again and again ‘in your flaws, is your uniqueness’, see beyond your flaws and limitations from now and reach for the fullness of God in you, love yourself more and be a blessing to the world. You can achieve incredible things by believing your flaws are meant to position you a unique person among the people of the world, there is just one ‘peculiar you’ and you carry the DNA of God that makes you invincible and present you a magnificent life on earth.

God Loves ♥ You

Ogundipe Clement Shola
shollyclem@gmail.com
www.facebook.com/ogundipe.c.shola