10 Tips For Healthy Personal Relationships

1. First and foremost, love yourself. Not selfish but true, natural and overflowing love.

2. Understand the puzzle called you. When you understand yourself, understanding others would not be difficult.

3. Express verbally your love for your spouse, children and ward.

4. When your spouse or child apologises, forgive completely. Be magnanimous. Even if they do not, be generous enough to forgive and let go, and never bring past issue(s) to current issue(s).

5. Be faithful to your spouse and trust him or her and do not discuss your domestic affairs with a third party: so many homes have been sent to the hangman's noose by the fatal tongues of gossips. As an appendage, never forget that to be trusted you need to be trustworthy.

Adventures of a Miss!! Episode 4

“Hey Toke, surprised?” she extends her hand to shake mine.

Is this girl normal, does she think I am her friend or what? “Zainab, what are you doing here, I thought I had a meeting with your husband?” I say trying to sound calm.

“No Toke, I used his phone to text you so I would be able to get you to come” she sets her purse on the chair and takes the other empty sit. “I know everything” she started. My palms were sweating like this girl was a giant. I think I can take her if it ever comes to a point where we need to get physical.

“OK Zainab, so what do you want from me, it…” she cut me off before I could finish.

“No, I’m not here to fight, trust me, I am here to make peace and I do have a business proposition for you”
This lady is crazy I swear, like what the hell kind of woman goes out of her way to make peace with someone who has slept with her husband. “Zainab, I’m sorry I don’t think I’ll be interested in your business proposition after all, it is just weird for me because I don’t know how you really feel about me. I wouldn’t like me if I was you so I wonder what you’ll gain from this deal.” I say as a matter of fact.

Olivia Pope's Scandal and Taking Your Own Advice

One program Myne and I enjoy watching is ABC's Scandal. Kerry Washington is Olivia Pope, the owner of a crisis management firm which is regularly called in by the high and mighty to help diffuse the eponymous scandals which would otherwise blow up in their faces.

A recurring theme in the series is Olivia Pope' love affair with the President of the USA. And before you start wondering, no, she is not the First Lady - and yes, there IS a First Lady. Not surprisingly, not being able to have the man she loves makes for a very miserable Ms. Pope.

In some recent episodes, Ms. Pope has taken to dishing out advice to some of her scandal-plagued clients. Nothing surprising about that, you might say - except that in some cases, the advice centres on the dangers of making wrong decisions or getting entangled with someone who is already taken. In other words, it is exactly the kind of advice that she needs to take herself.

Now before you start thinking "hypocrisy in a black dress", I should point out that Olivia Pope is very well aware of the fact that the advice she's giving could benefit her. In fact, she goes to such great lengths to spell it out to her clients that it's possible they know she's speaking from personal experience.

POLL - Can Women Have it All?

The debate about women having it all seems to always crop up at least once a year, or each time a working women has a child and then returns to work. When the working woman is a media personality like actress, Drew Barrymore, it makes news headlines which it is currently doing. But we discussed this topic over on Bukky Apampa's site last year, and these were my comments.

ALL is relative, don’t compare, be content, and relearn your attitude so you can be happy with what and where you find yourself. Michelle Obama had a top paying job before, now she is a SAHM as the FLOTUS for about 8 years. Same with Hilary Clinton who took time off when she was first lady and later ran for president, now a SOS.

It is different for everybody, some women have it all (happy and content) as SAHM, no career and they don’t want one. Some make partner at a big time lawfirm or CEO at a fortune500 either at 35 or at 65, it is all for them at different times. I could go on, but you get the idea. We are all different, and so are our decisions and options in life.

Mateo Victory - Wise Words

This is like a love letter from Mateo Victory to his African sisters, preaching self confidence, abstinence, , rejection of DV and all forms of abuse, etc. I enjoyed the lyrics and the cultural vibe to the video.

Living Life to the Full - Toolz on Vacation

Toolz, is a presenter for Beat FM Lagos, as well as the Juice on Ndani TV. She shared these photos of her vacation on Zanzibar, a small Island off the coast of East Africa, via her Instagram page, and it's got me looking forward to summer and vacation time. Sometimes, we get so bogged down with work and forget that all work and no play, more like rest, is not good for us, physically or mentally. This is a reminder to relax, take time off work, and live life to the full.

Fela Durotoye Worries about Hypertension Killing Young Nigerians

World Health Day is celebrated every year on April 7, to mark the anniversary of the founding of World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1948. Each year a theme is selected for World Health Day that highlights a priority area of public health concern in the world. The theme for this year is High Blood Pressure or Hypertension. Fela Durotoye, Nigerian motivational speaker, decided to mark this day with a hard hitting article on how this issue affects Nigerians.

Almost everyone knows someone who has experienced a mild heart attack or a severe stroke.

A few years ago, stroke used to be leading cause of 'brief illness' among old people 65 years and above. (Remember the obituary adverts?.. "With gratitude to God for a life well spent...he died after a brief illness"?).

Sadly, today we are hearing shocking but growing cases of young professionals and students suffering from stroke at the age of 35. There are now so many obituaries starting with "Gone too soon". Even now, the WHO puts the life expectancy of the typical Nigerian male at 47years.

This is disastrous as it means that more Nigerians are dying in their prime and most productive years. But even more is that since most Nigerian men marry in their early-thirty's (many of them 35+ years), it means that by 47 years, most of the deceased have children just under teenage years when those children need the departed parent for guidance and mentorship on their most critical life decisions.

And one of the leading killers of our nation's young aspiring and emerging leaders is high blood pressure or hypertension.

Dear Myne - I'm Finding it Hard to Forgive my Boyfriend

I met my boyfriend last year and we have been dating for several months ago. He's very kind-hearted, supportive, reliable, considerate and is a good christian.

Before we started dating, he told me about a girl he was close friends with for a year before we met. He had liked her very much and throughout that period wooed her, but she refused to date him. However they remained really close and did many things together. Most people that saw them together thought they were dating, but his friends knew otherwise and advised him to stop wasting time with her because her 'shakara' was too much. He then decided to stop trying to woo her and then moved on.

It was after that, that we met through a mutual friend who match-made us. I really liked him (still do very much) and he is everything I want in a man. I agreed to date him, despite the fact that we live far away from each other. He lives in another state, some hours away from my state, so we have a long-distance relationship. Even with that our relationship is really strong. He's my confidant. We talk everyday, tell each other everything, laugh, cry together and we visit each other some weekends or other times when we are not busy. We are both very committed to the relationship.

The last weekend I went to see him, we had lunch in his house, and while he was cleaning up, I took his phone and just looked through it playfully (we don't check each other's phones, so there was nothing I was looking for). I went to his text messages and then noticed something. I saw the name of someone that looked familiar. I had seen him once receive a text from the same person before and also speak to her on the phone. When he spoke with her on the phone then, he told her he was at a 'friend's' place (then he had come to visit me). I wasn't happy and told him then. He said it was just a girl that liked to disturb him and he didn't want to have to tell her he was with his girlfriend so she won't continue her wahala.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Dies at 87

Margaret Thatcher was UK's first and only female Prime Minister, and she served three consercutive terms from 1979 to 1990, the longest run by any prime minister in recent years.  Margaret retired from public life in 2002 after suffering from stroke, and her death is also following a stroke.

While in office, she was called the Iron Lady because she was usually inflexible whenever she took a stand. I modeled myself after her for a while as a teenager, and was happy when people nicknamed me Margaret Thatcher or Iron Lady. It helped me mold my own principles in those impressionable years. She was also a role model to how far a woman can get if she pursues her goals with diligence.

May her soul rest in peace.

The State of Marriage in Nigeria

Recently there have been a lot of distress in some quarters about the state of marriage in Nigeria, both for those who are already married, and for those yet to marry. Some older people believe marriage is losing its value, divorce rates are on the increase, and young men and women are showing a reluctance to get married. This post addresses some of my thoughts on the issue.

First, let us remember to separate sexual needs and child bearing from marriage. As human beings we are indeed biologically tuned to be in our prime to do certain things like have children, have great sex, et al. That does not however automatically equate that we are then biologically primed to get married when we are in our child bearing or sexual prime. It is ideal, but not necessary.

Two: We all live in a revolving and evolving society. Once upon a time in Nigeria, (at least we know for a historical fact within the Yoruba and Igbo cultures) a man was not only allowed, but encouraged to marry several wives. By the way, the Bible has several examples of polygamy, even though in the old testament, like those of Kings David and Solomon and of course Jacob. I have not had the time to do a new testament research on this.