DEAR ARCHITECT

What life are you designing?

People have forgotten this truth," the fox said. "But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

You must be surprised that I chose to call you an architect today, because you didn't even study anything close, but hold your breath a minute and let's understand who an architect is.

Wikipedia put it simply as a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of a building. I intend for this to be a short newsletter, and so I won't belabor the definition.

You have an image in your head of the kind of life you want to lead, the kind of person you want to become. Your ideal self, yes? And you'd be lucky to find one other person who sees and understands what this image is perfectly.

Meaning, it's just you. Only you have the capacity to understand it, as only you have designed it in your head. Follow me.

Only you have the capacity to understand what you truly want to become, dear architect.

Since you are the only one seeing this life, it behoves you to communicate it, the best way you can, to your environment, by overseeing the construction of what you have around you, to birth the design in your head. Sounds so much like an architect, don't you think?

The only difference now is that the building we are talking about here is not the one you build with bricks and cement and sticks and blocks. It is not the material brick house, but the person of you.

If you are the primary person who has the capacity to see and perfectly understand who has been impressed in your head to become, then the truth is, you are the one responsible for overseeing the construction of that person. Now how have you assumed this position of an architect up until this moment?

Have you chosen the right carpet or paper to draw on? The right carpet is your environment. Where you live. Where you draw your breathe and inspiration from. Is it in sync with the building you are trying to build in your head? Do you see a house on the hill in your head, but you're presently building in a valley? A complete contrast of what you see?

Look around you, right now, in this moment, does where you are, have at least a slight bearing on the design you have in your head? Who you are right now is a pointer to who you will become on a larger scale in the near future. What you do right now is a pointer to what you will do on a larger scale later on in life.

Who you are right now is a pointer to who you will become on a larger scale in the near future. Does it look like what you see in your head? Selah.

It is very important that there's a bearing, a point of connection with where you are; who you are; what you are doing right now, and the design you have all planned out in your head.

Also, what brush are you drawing with? Who are the people you are letting influence you? Are they people who are on the same journey as you? You might have designed a skyscrapper in your head, dear architect, while the people you are allowing deposit into your soul don't even understand how to build. They don't even have a design of their own, or are building something completely different, moving in a completely different direction.

If you let these people impress themselves in you, you will become like them and completely lose sight of the design in your own head.

Remedy this by ridding yourself of the people who have no bearing on the path of your life. The mind has a way of knowing who is going in the same path as you. Switch up and change your circle. You are the architect of your destiny.

The mind has a way of knowing who’s going in the same path as you. Change your circle deliberately.

Finally, what ink are you using to draw, dear architect? What are you reading? What are you listening to? What are you seeing? These are the gateways into the mind, and more than anything else, they form the design at the end of the day.

Read books in line with what you are building. Listen to the right things. They impress on your life, your design. You can't think negative and see positive. What you let get into your mind is what your life will become, regardless of what was initially in your heart to become.

What you let get into your mind is what your life will become.

It was meant to be a short one, but here we are, because as I wrote, I realized I was also talking to myself. Hence, I'll have to read this again.

In short; dear architect, look around you. What are you drawing? Does it look like what you know you should be drawing?

Think on these things.

To your growth,

Your Coach,

Abiola Okunsanya,

Handzinspired.