#My2019Story – Olufolake Onasanya

Hi guys! So I’m really excited to be doing this today. Yaaay! I’m a guest writer on Ozzy’s blog💃🏼💃🏼💃🏼… I’m honestly excited to be writing this piece. (Maybe not entirely excited because I wish it was going to be all good stuff in here, but unfortunately it isn’t.) I had an entirely different draft for this story up until yesterday evening. In that draft I pretended that my year went according to plan. It wasn’t an attempt to fool anybody into thinking I have a perfect life. It was more about me lying to myself that the bad stuff didn’t happen this year. I read the draft on the bus yesterday morning and I knew I couldn’t let myself send it in. I decided to give vulnerability a chance. Here it goes:

At the beginning of 2019, I had a calendar plan for all the things I wanted to see in my year. I had content plans for my blog, I hoped I’d get a job, I hoped that certain relationships in my life would get better, I hoped for financial resources to handle a couple of projects, but most of them didn’t turn out as well as I planned. A lot of my relationships failed this year, I’m still unemployed at the moment, I cried myself to sleep almost every night in August, November and early December, I got a rejection mail from my dream company two days to Christmas, I struggled with anxiety this year. Like I said earlier, it wasn’t exactly my best year.

Looking back at the year today, I think it still would be unfair not to admit that there were great stuff that happened this year too. I have to be honest about the fact that there were amazing things I received this year that I didn’t plan for. There were many friendships and opportunities I got this year that weren’t in my original plan, and for this I’m super excited and grateful.

So In the spirit of honesty, I’d tell you about four major things I learned this year. Rest your backs, pick up your popcorn and enjoy:

Check that you’re doing things for the right reasons.

All my life I had been told repeatedly to forgive because I’m the bigger person or to just let things go because they weren’t going to count in five years. This year I learned that forgiving to ‘be the bigger person’ is actually a masked form of pride, and that ironically makes you the smaller person. I had to do a lot of forgiving this year, and doing that with the ‘bigger person’ mindset left a void in my heart somehow. I still felt wronged and angry afterwards and that hurt me more, but this year I learned something that changed everything for me.

Forgiveness should always come from the knowledge that the person in question is the person for whom Christ died.

Seeing everyone who hurt me through this lens practically changed everything for me. Applying this principle to forgiveness helps to lift the weight off my heart whenever I’m hurt. Understanding the right motive for forgiveness has kind of influenced every other area of my life. These days I ask myself why I do the things I do; why I respond to people in the manner I do or why I handle situations the way I do.

Generally, I think 2019 taught me to be more intentional about my perspective to life. Life is short, why not live it well?

Keep doing what you’re doing. Someone somewhere is watching.

I struggled a lot with validation this year. There were lots of times I felt I wasn’t doing good enough at my job or that I wasn’t as good a writer as people commended me for. For this reason I didn’t put a lot of content on my blog this year. I’m really grateful for the amazing friends who always reminded me of how good they think I am. Cheers to their consistent nagging, I put out about 5 posts this year. Earlier this month, I was randomly scrolling through the stats on my blog and I was honestly blown away! Up till the time I was checking the numbers, views and comments were still rolling in for posts I had made a couple of months back.
This incident taught me 2 major lessons this year.
– If you have the slightest conviction that you’re on the right track, believe it and stay on track.
– Continue doing your thing. Someone somewhere is watching and waiting for you to execute your next idea.

Just in case you were looking for the slightest bit of validation in any area this year, I’m your sign –

‘Darling, you are great! You can do better, Sure. But today I hope you’re reminded that you’re right on track and someone somewhere is watching out for you’.

God is intentional about you.

God leads! It doesn’t even matter that you’re not sure how you can determine when God is leading you through a path, God always finds a way to help you out. This year I experienced God’s leading in a whole new light. In friendships, in trouble, in drawing inspiration, in decisions, everything! I was led in the most unbelievable ways this year. I was led to places I ordinarily wouldn’t have been, led to introduce myself to people I ordinarily wouldn’t have walked up to, led to start conversations with my cab drivers which eventually resulted to leading them to Christ or establishing them in proper doctrine.

This year I learned about God’s love and I saw it in action. I experienced God practically lead me away from potentially toxic people and situations. I saw God lead my friends through job decisions too. This is a reminder to everyone reading this – God certainly wasn’t joking when he said he loved you and sent Jesus to die for you. If he carefully planned your salvation before the foundations of the earth were laid, you better believe that YOU my friend are the object of his affection.

Give your best wherever you find yourself.

Haha, I took my mother’s advice to my PPA.
I was the only Corper in my department and that meant extra workload and stress! Honestly, at some point I felt they were using me because practically everything was on my head. I constantly struggled with the thoughts of just waking up one day and joining the ‘I can’t come and kill myself’ bandwagon. There were days I dragged my body to the office and left my brain at home. Things were bad like that.

However, in the midst of all the drama I tried to be as productive as possible. I put my best in every task I was given to handle. I put in a lot of effort at being better at my job even when I didn’t feel like it. I honestly wasn’t doing this for anyone to notice but you know what they say about anything worth doing at all right?

Fast forward to the end of my service year, guess who got a commendation letter from management? Yes, you guessed right- Meeee! Apparently someone up there noticed my effort and decided to reward me for it. Just like I explained in the third point in this piece, this year I learned to continue doing my thing.

I hope this inspires someone out there to be the best at what they do in 2020. Be consistent with your effort, be diligent and push yourself. You never know who is watching or what great opportunities lie right ahead.

On a final note,

I’m truly sorry if 2019 wasn’t as glamorous as you expected
I’m sending warm tight hugs your way
I hope 2020 is a better year. I hope the decade starts out great for you
This time next year, I sincerely pray that when you say to yourself ‘I had a great year’,
You’d smile in your heart and mean it.
Cheers to the amazing adventures in the new year!