Iyoaye's Public Notes

On my way to church this morning, I started thinking about worth, value, ego and pride. These are all commonly used words that are all related.  For most people, their sense of value and pride is in their work, children, career and wealth. This is very apparent in the things we optimize for and how we go about them. Whilst this is great, I’ve recently realised that we seem to be focused on the wrong things.  Work, wealth, children, career and other things life can offer are benefits but they cannot define our sense of worth because of how ephemeral they are. Just yesterday, a friend was telling about a company that went down to zero from $4B valuation. That’s just one example, there a other cases we’ve seen.  So what’s my prescription here? The simple answer is God. God is simply the answer.  The scriptures records different stories, instructions and sermons that communicate the love of God. In my interpretation, I see that the love of God exemplifies his value and w...

 I am starting this post with a question I want you to answer – What do you do when your back is against the wall? I have always summarized my actions into nuggets that guide my actions and decisions. My plan with this post is to share my top 50 answers, and hopefully, I will be able to write/talk about the details of these answers and their circumstances. Before I get to that point, I will take this post as a gauge of appetite – If everything goes well, this might become a self-help book in the future.  I have titled this post "Answers" because that is what it is about, and they have helped me get to where I am right now.  So here goes the answers:  God is one, he's right and means the best God loves you- he really does Don't despise wealth; Don't obsessively desire riches; Be grateful for every benefit Think about one good thing that you're grateful for in this situation Do what your boss wants; It's in your place to make your boss trust you (Titus 2:9-1...

I wrote this note to myself the morning I turned 30 and it was born out of my reflection of my journey so far and a peek into the future – how I planned to spend the rest of my life. I wrote this in a journal and pretty much left it there until a few days ago when it popped on my mind again and I wanted to share it.  Here it goes:  There are many things to be grateful for! It's been a year of lessons, struggles, wins, and clarity. I am now focused on the next phase—technically, the  action  phase of my life. For context, I believe life has three stages: Preparation, Action, and Rest. While we don't have control over if and how soon we experience a phase, neither can we control how we get out of a phase — time and chance happen to us all, it is quite safe and easier to think about these phases as equal amounts of time such that you spend 1/3 of your life in each phase or about 50-70% of your life in preparation and action phase combined. (I might write more about this...

Oh! Happy New Year! I can't promise to write more often this year but I will be kind enough to share my thoughts in their rawest form and I hope I can get your thoughts on them. Today is not the day to talk about the year but I have been on a retreat and it's been refreshing how God has been dealing with me - ( not in the Nigerian parent sense haha).  It's been a perfect time and I'm loving the experience. The last time I felt this way was in 2019-2020; those months were the best part of my life.  Today, I saw a video of Richard Garnett talking about Eternal treasures . A few minutes into the video God was saying "Yes! That is for you" considering he had schooled me a few days from Isaiah 44 with specific instructions on how to use my resources given a metaphor of the cedar wood -- burning for heat (Protection/Health) , burn to bake bread (Sustenance) , and burning to roast meat (Enjoyment) .  After watching the video, I started praying and Paul's sermon ...

Last night, I was watching a video of Pastor Driscoll reacting to the trailer of the new Netflix movie “Will and Harper”. While watching his reaction, a thought popped into my mind and it’s something I have heard/read different variations of it  — this idea that we all have our truths and we need to be true to ourselves.  I find this very conflicting every time I hear it… and I question how much should we care about people’s self-serving “truths” even when they are not in any way helping us to become better as a society.  I don’t have answers here but I am very worried we driving our society toward a place where people will do things because they feel like their defense will be “their truths”. As with every society, if the “good” side is unlucky enough to not be popular, we will have a situation where evil will reign and we will not be able to do anything about it.  What are your thoughts on people’s truth? Have you had situations where someone’s truth conflicted wit...

I didn't have any idea of what to write because it is one of those days when I am in my feels and also not feeling up to it. I feel a little bit sad because it's an estranged friend's birthday and as much as I would want to wish them a happy birthday (probably send a gift), I am not quite sure of the reaction. It's also quite interesting because we have two different ideas/views of what the cause of the issue is and at this point 🤷🤷🤷. (Happy birthday to you) But while contemplating on whether to write or not, I thought about the need for my resolve for this blog - making sure that no 2 days go by without my writing something. This is considering different things happen during the course of my day, and it's worth reflecting and sharing in a place that's much saner than Twitter (now X) - here. At that moment, the word consistency popped in my head, and I was wondering what I'd consider to be the most consistent thing from my everyday life, and my answer wa...

I was 18 when I learned about 42 — the ultimate answer life, the universe and everything . But I really wish finding answers to life’s question could be a simple as an integer. These days, I don’t think/worry too much about it because I found rest and peace — I hope you do too.  But you’re not alone in the quest to find answers to these numerous life questions.  Since the days of the Tower of Babel till now and this has translated into science in its various subject areas: biology, astronomy, geology, palaeontology, engineering, chemistry and physics.  Life is complex and nothing is as straightforward as you would imagine or want it to be.  The uncertainties, the dynamics, and variables don’t make it any easy to predict events in the continuous time-space where we exist as beings. In all of these, we rely on law, religion and culture as a way to find guidance, calibration and moderation for ourselves and others.  Religion, culture and law creates the value syste...

  It’s so soothing how God constantly reassures us of his love. If we are able to submit and trust him through life… then we are not a casualty of the game called life.  I am in this place I call "the real God abeg" moment but I’m glad that through it, I’m in a safe place — where I’m reassured of God’s love for me. Today, I’m choosing to trust God and have him lead the way through. He loves me and he’ll guide me as I submit to help.    He’s helping me through this.