The Nation Newspaper

Tag: ways

  • Tunde Soleye changes ways

    Tunde Soleye changes ways

    In a world filled with uncertainties, one phenomenon remains constant- change. It transforms world views and reshapes a man’s approach to life. Urbane medical doctor and veritable socialite, Dr. Tunde Soleye, understands the philosophy of change better than most people of his age. Soleye used to be the darling of many on the social radar and was listed as one of the esteemed guests of many A-list events.

    In recent times, the bearded former husband of ex-beauty queen, Nike Oshinowo, has not been regular on the social space. While sources close to the affable doctor said his new ways might not be unconnected with his separation from Nike, others insist that his new attitude towards life is due to his realisation that he is not getting any younger. This best explains why he tactfully selects the events he attends. He now attends more important society functions.

  • Utaka returns to scoring ways

    Utaka returns to scoring ways

    Former Nigeria international forward,John Utaka scored for Sivasspor in the 3-1 win over Eskisehirspor in the Turkish Super Lig.

    Utaka netted in the 69th minute to temporarily give Sivasspor a 2-1 lead at the Eskisehir Atatürk Stadyumu. The Nigerian’s goal was a combination of sheer strength and ice-cool finishing.

    He received a punted ball from a teammate in midfield and proceeded to hold off Eskisehirspor’s Mustafa Yumlu with impressive upper body strength before turning the hapless defender inside out.

    The hosts’ Brazilian left back Diego Ângelo sensed the danger but as he quickly moved to snuff it out, the quick-thinking Utaka promptly pulled the trigger and hit a delightful shot with the inside of his right foot past goalkeeper Ruud Boffin.

    The 33-year-old Utaka has now scored three league goals for Sivasspor and four in all competitions this season.

  • Ways to move

    Les Brown, one of the world’s most renowned motivational speakers said, “With every technology that is created, somebody loses his job. As a speaker, however, you have an energy signature. There is an experience you can create that cannot be simulated by technology, which makes your life recession-proof.” Les is right. There is something unique about public speaking that projects your personality in a way technology cannot replicate. No two public speakers are the same. There is always something special about each one that makes it difficult for you to determine who is better.

    What stands a public speaker out from the crowd? It is the energy he/she projects while speaking. Two speakers may deliver a similar speech but they will surely display different levels of energy. As good as energy is, however, a lot of people have a big problem channeling it. When you have a lot of energy and you are excited about your topic, there is the tendency to make uncoordinated moves. Whereas when you stand before your audience, you are considered as a standard for “appropriateness”. Hence, uncoordinated steps or gesticulations may be distracting.

    A lot of people don’t know what to do with their hands while speaking. Since they have a lot of energy, they simply throw their hands in every direction, thinking that would convince the audience. Unfortunately, the audience is likely to be more distracted than convinced. According to Robert Krauss, Yihsiu Chen and Purnima Chawla, “all hand gestures are hand movements, but not all hand movements are gestures”. This they stated in their article titled, “Nonverbal Behaviour and Nonverbal Communication: What do Conversational Hand Gestures Tell Us?”. Moving our hands does not mean we are communicating.

    In the next few weeks by the grace of God, we shall be exploring the use of gestures in public speaking. Today, let’s begin with the rules of gesticulation:

    • It should complement your speech: movement of hands and body should help you to communicate better. It should help to emphasize your points. When gestures become too elaborate, they become the centre of attraction for your audience. The worst part of it is, you may be unaware of your distracting movement. Only with the exception of deliberate acts, a speaker should make the audience concentrate more on the words being spoken than hand movements.

    • It should be purposeful: it is important to define your movement. Since your movement can either aid or hinder your presentation, it is advisable to plan it. Purposeless movements are movements that don’t add to your message. Such movements may include toying with your tie or hair, spinning a bunch of keys with your finger, tapping on the podium, toying with a button on your dress, etc.   It is, no doubt, a tough task to get rid of these movements. This is where practice becomes invaluable. In this column, we have always emphasized the role of practice in the success of any speaker. During your practice, pay attention to your gestures and ensure that each one is for a purpose. This does not mean that you should stand like a robot and make mechanical moves. It only means that meaningless gesture can water down the effect of your speech.

    • It should be natural: the more natural your gestures are, the more graceful you will appear. One of the numerous ways to make your gestures natural is to enternalise your message such that it flows naturally out of you. As you deliver your speech, you will find yourself moving your hands to support your points.

    • It should not be frequent: when you move your hands too frequently, your audience may start to pay special attention to them. You don’t need to illustrate every word with your hand or you might as well keep quiet and dramatize. I believe holding the microphone helps some people to gesticulate less, though I have seen a speaker who gesticulated so much while holding the microphone that I did not hear much of what he said. Just as punctuations come at strategic points in a sentence to make it meaningful, gesticulations should also punctuate speeches.

    • It should become the speech: when you stand before people, you don’t want any part of you to stand out in a peculiar way. You really don’t want you hair, tie, dress or shoe to stand out. If any single thing stands out about you, it will be the focus of your audience. You must ensure that everything about you blends into a perfect package so that people can appreciate you in totality. Likewise, your gesticulation should not become conspicuous. Let your gesticulation become part of your speech and not another presentation on its own. When there is a perfect blend, people will not notice the difference between your speech and your movements.

  • Nigerian leaders must change their ways

    SIR: the ongoing face-off between the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and the House of Representatives Committee on Finance, over the budget and the state of the economy, is another repulsive scenario. The Committee had asked the Minister to furnish it with answers to a set of fifty questions which the minister obliged it (the committee). At the weekend, however, the Committee, through its Chairman, Honourable Abdulmumini Jibrin, rejected the minister’s response, insisting that “some questions were either not answered, partially answered, ignored or completely misunderstood”. Consequent upon this, the minister has been sent another set of fifty questions and mandated to appear before the committee for further questioning.

    This latest drama of the absurd is the ongoing fiasco involving the All Progressives Congress and the Federal Government in which the former justifiably directed its members in the National Assembly to filibuster on debate regarding the 2014 Appropriation Bill. These two scenarios are intimately related – half-truth is being presented to the public as the truth. Anyone who is familiar with the way members of the National Assembly, especially those of the lower house, have been conducting their affairs – particularly in regard to issues of finance – cannot fail to note that the ostensible purpose of the so-called fifty questions is for Nigeria to have a more robust economy but the real goal, one can make bold to say, is self-service. In a House where some of the members have, at various times in the past, been incriminated of ignoble financial crimes (remember Faruk Lawal?) and certificate forgery (remember Salisu Buhari?), and where there has never been probity and accountability in financial matters, what else does one expect but the present scenarios.

    There is something not quite right in the present face-off. In one’s considered opinion, rather than the honourable minister, it is actually members of the House of Representative Committee on Finance that have questions to answer. If these so-called Honourable men are people with their honours intact indeed, they need to demonstrate to Nigerians first why they have to be taken seriously, and this has to start with them telling us what they wish to achieve with these fifty questions. Yes, they have stated the purpose of these questions, but we know too that these questions raise issues that they themselves are also implicated in. He who comes to justice must come with clean hands, and he who leaves in glass house should throw no stones.

    While it is true that the minister is the coordinator of the economy, it is also true that she is not alone in ensuring that the economy does not go to the dogs. The House of Representatives, through its Committee on Finance, ought to realize that Nigerians are not fools and cannot be hoodwinked into shifting blames for the parlous state of the economy to the Finance Minister alone.

    How accountable are these men? How have they been expending the monies allocated to them for constituency projects and oversight functions? What can they say about the humongous amount being paid out to them every month in salaries and other emoluments, the bulk of which forms part of our recurrent expenditure? Can these men, in all honesty, wash themselves clean of the hushed allegation making the round that they routinely collect bribe in order to approve ministry budgets and other spending?

    More crucial than the above is the question of morality. Here is an assembly with a shameful record of infamy. We cannot forget too soon the case of Honourable Farouk Lawan. We cannot forget too soon that this is a House where members have been routinely implicated in sundry cases of bribery leading to aborted investigation into corruption charges. How, pray, can this House consider itself morally upright enough to ask the minister the so-called fifty questions. It is all too glaring that these so-called fifty questions and other matters arising therein are related to the current impasse in the House over the Appropriation Bill, and this is rather unfortunate considering the self-serving overtone of the whole affair.

    No nation can expect to be great if the leaders will always think that they can always pull the wool over the eyes of the citizenry. For sooner than later, it would be revealed that no matter for how long falsehood may have been travelling, it will take only a moment for the truth to catch up with it. A note of warning: Nigerians are watching. We are gearing up for a purge, and anyone caught in the vortex of our collective action will have only himself or herself to blame!

     

    • Issachar Odion, a Post-graduate student lives in Abuja.

  • Three ways to make him fall in love with you

    Have you ever found yourself falling for a man you were dating and wondered if he was feeling the same way? Did you find yourself trying to prove what a great catch you are by being sweeter, funnier and smarter in hopes that he would fall in love with you? Focusing on what a man wants and ingratiating yourself in this way may feel like the natural thing to do, but it’s the worst way to try to make a man feel romantic love for you.

    Love isn’t a reasonable emotion – and being “nice” and “understanding” and “a good sport” won’t get you where you want to go. Here are some ways that will:

     

    Tip 1: Don’t give a man more than he gives you. Love, and inspiring a man to fall in love with you forever, is all about you being able to receive love.

    Most of us only know how to give. We give for lots of reasons – because we’re taught that’s the way to get to a man’s heart (it isn’t) because we see other women do it, and because deep down, it feels uncomfortable and scary to be vulnerable enough to really get love.

    “A man is actually turned off when he gets more from you than he gives.”

    A man is actually turned off when he gets more from you than he gives.

    When you shower him with affection, attention, dinners, gifts, and always go out of your way to drive to his place, it makes him think of you as a mother or a friend instead of inspiring his emotional desire for you.

     

    Tip 2: Don’t give away exclusivity if he hasn’t yet committed. We become totally, emotionally invested in a man when we’re exclusive with him because he has all our time and attention. There’s no way we can stop wondering about where the relationship is going. But the more we think about it and talk about it, the more we push a man away.

     

    Tip 3: Don’t give him gifts, make him dinner or pay for dates Yes, this sounds unfair, and yet, who pays is often the difference in his mind between friends hanging out together and a “date.”

    If a man complains about paying for everything, let him know you don’t care what you do, you feel great being with him, and you don’t want to pay. Walking, hanging out in bookstores, having a picnic in a park can all be fun, romantic ways to get close to a man.

    (And forget about cooking dinner, or trying to make dating “reciprocal.” A bowl of popcorn and something to drink is fine.)

    When you give a man gifts, give him all your attention and energy, and give MORE than you receive, you’re OVERFUNCTIONING.

    Overfunctioning is doing more than your fair share and stepping up to rescue a man because you know you can do a better job. It’s arriving from your masculine energy. It feels aggressive and forward to a man.

    And it’s totally unattractive to him.

  • Six ways to drink more water

    THERE are a variety of reasons to drink plenty of water each day. Adequate water intake prevents dehydration, cleans out the body, and promotes healing processes. Follow the steps below to make sure you’re getting enough of this most basic necessity.

    For the meal, it will help you to prevent overeating and obesity. Eat slowly, drink water and you will get satisfied with less food. But as with everything, be careful and don’t overdo it. Drinking too much water can be toxic, so exercise moderation. Water is not a substitute for food, and you can indeed cause severe health issues if you drink too much water daily, including severe heart and endocrine system problems.

     

    1. Measure your daily intake of water. Do this for a few days. If you find that you’re drinking less than the recommended quantity, keep a glass or cup of water next to you whenever you’ll be sitting down for a long time, such as when you’re at your desk at work. Drink from it regularly as you’re working

     

    2. Add lemons or limes to your water. This makes it taste better and makes you want to drink more of it. Be careful not to make it too sour; just a splash of sourness should do the trick. Cucumber slices can also be added to a glass of water. Some mint leaves can be added to a pitcher of water which should be allowed to sit overnight. These are cheap alternatives to the bottled flavored water. If you do choose bottled flavored water, check the ingredients, as these are likely closer in form to lemon- or limeade than they are to water.

     

    3. Eat water rich foods, such as fruits like watermelon, which is 92% water by weight. Blend up some seedless fresh watermelon flesh with some ice and place a few sprigs of mint (optional) – one of the most refreshing drinks, especially for the summertime. Cranberry juice is also another option, and has a bitter taste. Patients suffering from urinary infection caused by insufficient intake of water should drink cranberry juice and eat watermelon if not plain water every day. A tomato is 95% water. An egg is about 74% water.

     

    4. Keep water cool if it tastes better for you. Keep a pitcher of water in the refrigerator at home. Add ice or freeze water in a sports bottle before taking it with you, it will eventually melt and stay cold. Bear in mind that cold water takes energy for your body to regulate the temperature, and does burn some calories. Room temperature water is better if you’re dehydrated. Your body can absorb the room temperature water immediately, instead of the body having to raise the temperature of the water first in order to process it.

     

    5. Climate can drastically change how much water you need. On hot days that require you to be outside, you should drink more water to counteract the fluids you lose when you sweat. This not only keeps your body hydrated, it can prevent heat-related illness. Just as important is consuming enough fluids in cold & wet conditions. Inadequate water intake affects the brain’s function first, which can become very dangerous.

     

    6. Purchase a bottle the size of your water goal. Purchase a water bottle that holds the amount of water you wish to drink each day, or use a combination of 1-liter and half-liter bottles. Try to drink the water slowly throughout the day. This will allow you to easily see how much water you are consuming. However, cheating is not a helpful idea – if you don’t drink all the water you intended to, don’t try to chug it at the end of the day.