Learning for Living Business School

20/05/2026

From vision to victory — YELA participants pitching bold business plans while learning from our founder Tunde Ekpekurede . 💼✨

18/05/2026

“Move. Vibe. Repeat. 💃🔥 ”
* “Where rhythm meets passion ✨”
* “Dance the YELA way 💫”
* “Good vibes & great moves 🔥”

18/05/2026

27/04/2026

Your voice could be the catalyst for change. 💡
​We believe that great conversations are the foundation of growth. Are you ready to share your expertise with the leaders of tomorrow?
​We’re expanding our faculty and looking for passionate individuals to help us create "Neural Networks" for high-impact leadership right here in Sapele, Delta state.
​👇 Drop a "YES" in the comments if you're passionate about mentorship! Check the flyer for location details or send an email to [email protected] to get started.

07/04/2026

SAPELE YELA 2026 IS COMING! ✨
Dream big. Learn fast. Lead strong.
Be part of a life-changing experience where young minds are empowered, ideas are born and futures are shaped. Last year, lives were impacted. Opportunities were unlocked. This year will be even BIGGER.
Don’t just watch, be part of the movement.
📍 Sapele YELA 2026
📩 Stay tuned. Get ready. Show up.

30/10/2024

DAY 10 OF 100DAYS SELF-REINVENTION SERIES.

‘‘Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.’’. Caesar

Dealing with Seductive Thoughts.

Caesar's wife, Calpurnia, has had dreams in which her husband was murdered. At Caesar's request, the priests have sacrificed an animal which, upon being cut open, was discovered to have no heart. And so, they sent word to Caesar that he should stay home on this fateful day, the ides of March, which the Soothsayer had already warned him about earlier in the play. Caesar muses,” “What can be avoided / whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?"
In other words, if the gods are predicting that he is going to die, then how will he get around it? He goes on to encourage his wife with the now-famous lines, finding it strange that men fear death so much when death is inevitable in every man's life. He has been a strong and brave man and has not wasted precious hours of his life anticipating tragedy.

Unwanted thoughts, unwanted dreams, horrifying images/videos, movies, past mistakes, past abuses, false prophecies, past failures, past losses, and past relationship failures are just some of the fears that haunt and torment us in our everyday lives. I have myself been a victim in several areas of my life. Several years ago, I started a taxi business with two other friends. After six months of turmoil and massive losses, the business closed shop. My subconscious Artificial Intelligence warned me never to get involved with anything related to taxi business again. Five years down the line, my in-law came to me for advice; I told him that the taxi business was a money-sucking business.

I was wrong; there are several millionaires today who run a taxi business. If you don't know, UBER is a taxi company. You see, much of the advice that the aged give to the young ones today is dead wrong. I believe with all my heart that kids and young adults should be taught to walk on the moon before they are 25. Many of us adults unaware of the role of consciousness give very limiting advice. It was my realization of this concept that led me to begin my work with indigent kids – to set their minds on fire before consciousness places limitation on them. Remember the quote by Pearl S Buck?

“The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible – and achieve it, generation after generation.”

If you are a young man/woman today reading this book, I am challenging you not to settle for anything other than the “moon.” Let no day go by without you, increasing the fire of the passion burning in you. Forget about limitations; limitations are the product of consciousness.

I remember listening to John H Johnson, publisher of Ebony Magazine and, for much of his life, the richest African American in the United States. He started his business with a $500-dollar loan secured by his mother's furniture. The $500 loan was to print the first edition of the “Negro Digest.” There was no contingency in case the magazine did not sell. He said in his autobiography that if the first “Negro Digest” did not sell, that would have been the end of the Johnson Publishing Company. Later, when he became a multimillionaire and read business plans from Harvard Business School, he came to know that the way he started business was wrong. Harvard MBA showed him that he should have had contingency plans for every eventuality.

He confessed in his autobiography that if he knew what he would later learn from MBA, he would never have attempted Johnson Publishing. He did not know it was possible for the magazine not to sell. His plan for his mother was simple: I would make the first print with the $500, and from the sales, I would make a $600 profit and print the next one, and on and on. John H Johnson went on to give the same advice that many CONSCIOUS adults give young people today. He said in his book that he would not advise anyone to go into business today the way he did, even though he went on to define success as Hard work + IGNORANCE.

In my own little life, I decided in 2003 to go pursue an MBA in the Republic of Ireland. All the preparation was a savings of one thousand euros for the admission acceptance fees and a small article I read that described how you can bungle your way through graduate studies by working part time. Immediately after I got the admission, I sold the few properties I owned in my rented flat in Lagos: my car, my wife's car, and everything to bathroom sandals. I took a one-way flight with less than a thousand euros to take care of a wife and 4 kids. The story is a long one for another day, but like John H Johnson, I completed my MBA in 2004, got a job, and worked in Europe for several years as General Manager of a medium-sized manufacturing company in the UK. Years later, a friend in Port Harcourt, with a wife and 3 kids, wanted to do the same thing and came to me for advice. I told him not to try it. Why would I give that kind of advice when, on every count, my adventure was a huge success? Like John H Johnson, I have become conscious of the challenges of what I did AFTER I did it. My advice to my friend was wrong. I know better now, and I should be able to give better counsel next time. I was seduced by the wrong consciousness.

Caesar's wife had a dream of Caesar being murdered. What should she do? This is an interesting experience that traumatizes many.
About a year ago, after I started learning how life is internally self-created, a lady who was having severe work challenges approached me for advice. I quietly listened to her for over an hour and asked a few questions. During the conversation, I tried to show her the role that our thoughts play in “suspecting or imagining the worst to happen” to her. She told me she understood perfectly what I was trying to say, but then she asked me, “What if there is really a plan to sack her like they did to another colleague?” She was suspecting that she was being set up by her superiors for termination. Here was my answer; “if you believe that they are planning against you, you will start acting to counter the plan, or at least with the knowledge that you are dealing with enemies, not friends; but if you train yourself to believe that you are the one making up the thoughts, you will have a more harmonious relationship with them. I went on to say that if they were planning to sack you 30 days from now if you believe it was you making this meaning, you would taste the sack once, but if you believe that they are planning to sack you for real, you will experience the sack every day. I asked her, “Which of them do you want?” She said she preferred to experience the sack once. It has been over one year since this conversation took place; she is not only working in the same organization but has also been promoted. You see, "Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste death but once.”

The Bible says Love Believes the best of everyone, not the worst. The book of Hebrews says men's hearts are failing them for “Fear of the things……” NOT the things, but the Fear of. What is that image or thought that is trying to stifle life out of you? You can regain your life by CHOOSING what to believe and by believing the BEST.

29/10/2024

DAY 9 OF 100DAYS SELF-REINVENTION SERIES.

Seduced by Consciousness -3

Your thoughts are like the artist's brush. They create a personal
picture of the reality you live in.” — Sydney Banks.
In one of several stories in his book “Seduced by Consciousness,” Jack Pransky tells an experience in Japan about a time a Tsunami was to happen. As people suspected that electricity would be cut off for a season, many flocked to the supermarket to buy foods like “granola” that did not require electric cooking or preservation. When he got to the Supermarket, the checkout queue was spilling out into the streets. He entered the supermarket expecting that he would spend so long there as he was preparing to pick up his “granolas” and join the queue. Somehow, instead of coming out to join the queue of people queuing onto the streets, he decided to just wander deep into a different section of the supermarket. To his amazement, he saw a check-out till with no customer at the end of the supermarket. He just went to the till operator, paid, and came out through the entrance with people queuing unto the streets.
Many things in our lives are like this experience. Once we read a story, we are frightened by the thought that this, too, will happen to us. We are blind to other possibilities that could exist in the circumstance. We do not even try anymore. Our consciousness has placed a limitation on our ability to explore other options. Guess what? The tsunami did not occur as forecasted. There was no destruction.

What does it mean to be seduced by consciousness? To take an awareness that you have about an issue and make it your own reality. The purpose of this chapter is to see how we can avoid the subtle suggestions of seductive thoughts that work against us. It is not a bad thing to be seduced, but we want to be seduced by something that we desire, not what we do not desire. One impact of hanging out with the right crowd is that you get seduced by the community energy generated by the company. If you walk with wise people, their wisdom will rub off on you; if you work with foolish people, their foolishness will rub off on you equally.
Several years ago, I went into business for myself, and things became really tough. Gradually, rather than think my way out of the mess, my friends who were equally running similar entrepreneurial ventures started converging in my small office to talk about the then-Nigerian president and how his leadership was hindering us all from succeeding. They say, “Birds of the same feather flock together,” so it did not take time for friends with struggling start-up businesses to gather at my office every morning to complain. One of the reasons they converged in my office was that I was the only person in the bunch who could afford a newspaper every morning. Prior to this association, I would spend my idle moments reading books that would keep my hope alive.

Gradually, this association of unproductive entrepreneurs grew and grew, and we were saying highfalutin words like “We will take over the government,” “We will organize a coup,” and on and on. It was so real in my thoughts that all Nigerians were going through what we were going through. I have gradually forgotten the inspiring stories of hope that I read, which kept me alive.

One day, I could not make the daily idle meetings; I stayed at home and re-read one of my inspiring motivational books again. My eyes opened. What am I doing with this bunch and all these idle talks of overthrowing a military head of state? How in the world did I come to think that everyone is going through what I am going through? People are working.

Some businesses are collapsing, while some are increasing in leaps and bounds. I have a choice to either close the business and go look for a job or put life into the business, but to sit and just chatter away my time did not do me any good. Besides, who told me that a bunch of around seven unemployed young adults could overthrow a military head of state? As I thought about the time I had lost in these unproductive meetings, I was very angry with myself.
Idle, foolish talk will just deepen my misery. I do not even have enough money to pay for my transport to Abuja (the seat of Government), let alone buy a bullet. If I were the most financially liquid of the bunch, you can imagine that none of the naysayers could afford a bus fare to Abuja either. It was just idle talk that helped us get seduced to think that everyone else was idle. If the police were to arrest us for idle, foolish talk, I bet that none of us had money to get bail. You see, in every economy, some people work. Even in economies where unemployment is 50%, it means 50% of the population is working. You can choose to associate with the consciousness of those working and become eventually employed yourself or with the 50% nay Sayers and remain there and think that everyone is there with you.

Even today, many of us remain deluded by the consciousness that “nothing is working”, but the likes of Dangote, Jim Ovia, Tony Elumelu, and several thousands of their type are working every day and increasing their market share. Several businesses are thriving, and people are getting hired every day. The other day, I met a young man in a restaurant in Akure, and he told me he had no job; when I asked him what he studied and the firms to which he had made job applications, he said there was no need as there are no jobs. I said to him, you are seduced by the wrong consciousness. People are getting hired every day; others are leaving the country and getting lucrative jobs abroad; you can't sit at home and expect that the job will drop from the sky, not with this kind of seduction.
Back to my story with my deluded friends. I made up my mind that from the next morning, my office would cease to be a meeting point for aimless talk. I got to my office the next morning and put a small piece of paper at the front of the door saying that “visitors are only welcome from 6 pm.” once I entered the office, I locked myself inside. Of course, by 6 pm the office will be closed. Were my friends angry with me? They were very angry, and some vowed never to talk to me again. Did it bother me? Not at all. I have always believed that you cannot argue with results. My results didn't take long. I was back to my reading and meditation practices; my business improved, and within a year, I made my first business trip to the United States, spent 11 days in the US, and returned to Nigeria. Those angry friends came back wanting to find out what I was doing differently. By the books I read, I had changed my consciousness – I have become seduced by a new kind of consciousness.

"Man's chief delusion is his conviction that there are causes other than his own state of consciousness." - Neville Goddard
Today, many are stuck on social media, meditating on every evil video that speaks of Armageddon getting so close. I am sorry, but your experience is a self-created reality. Armageddon isn't coming tomorrow; we are finding new solutions to many of the problems that have bedeviled mankind. Get books that inspire, associate with people who elevate your consciousness, and take deliberate steps to improve your life. Solomon said in the Bible, “The sluggard said there is a lion (unemployment) in the way and refused to go out.” But he used the word sluggard because others who lived in a different consciousness were working, and this fellow was seduced by a wrong consciousness. There was no lion anywhere. Others went to work and passed the very same route; they sent speculative CVs to companies with even no vacancies and were hired.
In the course of some of my public speaking engagements today, I have come across young, energetic graduates who are wasting the very best energy of their lives.

It may be very tough for you today, I know; I have been there, I have been in “the valley of death” a few times; it could be HOPELESS, but don't make yourself more hopeless. A change in consciousness is the first thing that will take you out of that valley of hopelessness. Sometimes, it doesn't cost any money to make a change. For some, it may just be reducing time spent on social media from eight hours to 2hours per day and spending the rest of this wasted time reading books that build hope and courage. For others, it just may mean changing your current abode, and for the rest, changing the crowd that you hang out with. I wish you a positive seduction of consciousness.

28/10/2024

DAY 8 OF 100-DAY SELF-REINVENTION SERIES.

Seduced by Consciousness – 2

We have been to the moon, we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom, but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together.” Terence McKenna

Why do we go into new relationships, change jobs, change locations, etc? The reasons I know could be many and varied: promotions, changes in family situations, etc. I want to dwell on one of the reasons we also sometimes change jobs/relationships – CONSCIOUSNESS.
Several years ago, I think this was 1998; I was having serious problems with my marriage. One morning, my wife left the house with our two children. My elder brother came to visit afterward with two friends of his. As they tried to cheer me up, one of my brother's friends, Dolapo, said humorously, “I hope you are not thinking of divorce and remarriage. You know I am now in my second marriage, and I can tell you from personal experience that all women are the same. I look back and wonder why I divorced my first wife; she is a lot better than the present one, but I cannot take back the hand of the clock. I sometimes miss my first wife, and in comparison, this one is just like a devil”.
I do not believe that all women (or all men) are the same. I do, however, know that many people have changed jobs or marriages only to regret the change. The most common reason for this kind of regret is something akin to the saying that the grass is always greener on the other side. It is greener only because we know nothing about it. We know nothing about the new company. For all the complaints we have about our present place of work and the meanings we have made from our thousands of interactions, we know nothing about the future one. If what we are learning in this series is anything to go by, OUR THOUGHTS ARE NOT REALITY! Even learning how life is created barely scratches the surface of the reality that we are convinced of.
So, what do we opt for? We want a new spouse with whom we have no negative internal memory. We see this new dude, and everything just looks like love on the Caribbean Island. We feel like a “Mills and Boom” new romance novel is about to be written about this seeming new acquaintance. The new person is so perfect and full of everything we desire. If we continue in the delusion, we will go with the bliss, divorce this one, and marry the new love.
Why do we fall for this seduction? Personal Development is HARD. It is very hard I must confess. I have been teaching Personal Development classes for over ten years in companies, and I can tell you that it is HARD WORK. To turn our thoughts inward is not the easiest thing to do. The easy thing to do is to place the blame on another. Someone with a grounded understanding of living life from the inside out will say wait a minute, the experience I am having is the product of my thinking, not my spouse's behavior. He or she will begin to explore ways of not letting his/her thoughts hold sway. According to Neville Goddard, "Man's chief delusion is his conviction that there are causes other than his own state of consciousness." The only way you can fix a problem is to first find the cause inside yourself. Until this is done, the next job or marriage is almost certainly bound to come out with the same outcome.
My brother's friend's experience is quite instructive. The “other flame” may just not be different from the one at home. Soon, differences in realities will creep up, and arguments will start. As it is, all arguments stem from a failure to recognize the principle of separate realities. As the arguments come up, new meanings are created every day. As the brain creates these meanings, it automatically compares them to meanings made about the previous relationships. If you have taken any course on computer programming, you will remember the “IF” command. If this is greater than that, “assign zero”; if less, “assign null.” So, your AI algorithm quickly starts creating new rules of engagement as meanings emerge in the relationship.
Take a glass of heavily disturbed mud water and just leave it to settle. After a while, you will see clear sparkling water with all sediments buried at the bottom of the glass. When we are in a difficult quarrel or disagreement of any kind, we are like that glass of mud water, severely disturbed in our thoughts. We lose CLARITY, and currently, many of the decisions we make are based on this wrong judgment. What this understanding helps us to do is that if we just do nothing and wait for the disturbing thoughts to clear, we will return to our natural state of wisdom and see things differently.
I will tell you the truth: the bitter lesson is that this is the time when 90% of people want to make the most important decision of their lives. We are so convinced that this muddled mud water is the permanent reality of our lives and that the mud will never settle. Is it any wonder the pain we all go through in our lives?
Imagine the challenge of the trick your brain is playing on you in a new relationship. Now you are in a new relationship, the mud in the old relationship has settled, and you do not feel the same way you felt again when the arguments were at their peak. Meanwhile, in the new relationship, turbulence is at its peak. The new job comes, and I run to give testimony in church. I have barely enjoyed my new testimony before the principle of separate realities kicks in. I can now barely agree with the man who was interviewing me yesterday, who looked like an angel. My AI starts telling me the old boss is better than this new one.
Before long, I started calling my old boss, that I swore NEVER to contact again. I call him because I want to keep the door open for a return from exile. I remember one painful exit that happened me. This job was one of the best jobs I have ever had; the pecks of the job were just amazing. Without any new job and 4 kids in private schools, I resigned. Boy, did I go hungry? I threw the entire family into a big mess. I lived in a company accommodation and had a company car and driver; even though I was living in Nigeria, I was paid in US dollars. I had to give up every company entitlement. If I had the understanding I have now, I might not have quit the way I did. My thoughts got me screwed.
In counseling people who want to leave their employment today, I show them the power of thought and their responsibility to understand how life works. I help them see their roles as meaning makers and tell them if they FULLY understand what I am saying, they can make their choice. If you think that the meanings in your computer's hard drive cannot be erased, then it might be safe to try a new job, but first take some time off work; if you have outstanding leave, take the leave and let your natural wisdom or calmness return to you. If possible, take an unpaid job during your leave to see what other organizational cultures teach you. If, in your calmness, you still feel persuaded that the right thing to do is to resign, then resign. My advice in any form of relationship will not differ much except that in a marriage relationship where the stakes are much higher, you may want to triple the exercise above, seek out counsel, and really make a decision that is from your God-given wisdom.
I love a phrase I come across often in the bible. “Adam KNEW his wife…” It connotes CONSCIOUSNESS! The word KNEW carries a lot of meaning. Once I “KNEW” you, the mystery about you is gone. Until I “KNEW” you, you were just a beautiful garden. When I came near, the grasses weren't as beautiful as I thought a mile away. In 2 Sam 13, David's son desperately lusted after his sister Tamar. After he “KNEW” her, he hated her terribly. He was screwed by consciousness.
Understanding how life works won't stop you from changing jobs or relationships etc. This time, you will make any decision from a deeper place within you, not just your emotions or transient feelings.

26/10/2024

DAY6 OF 100DAYS SELF-REINVENTION SERIES.

Life is a Roller Coaster of Thoughts

‘‘Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it”. Viktor E. Frankl

The other day, in a resiliency retreat training session where my wife and I were students in London, a lady who had come to the training from Israel screamed at the facilitator, saying, “All I have learned in the last two days is that we experience life from our thoughts and not from the external environment, so what else?” I could see the obvious frustration in her eyes. This is not the first time I will witness such an expression of anger. In 2015, I was in a similar training in New Jersey, USA, where two ladies expressed similar frustration. If you have read the previous chapters and you have similar frustrations, I want to slow down the speed at which we are going a little bit. My first desire is that you really understand what we mean when we say that we experience life from the inside and not from the outside. If you do, the implications cover the length and breadth of everything about your life.
In my own life, shortly after my first understanding of what this new paradigm is all about in 2014, I expected all the psychological problems I have had with unwelcomed thoughts to just cease. When this did not happen, I traveled for more intense training. I asked one of the facilitators in the New Jersey training, Dr Keith Blevens, why I have not been able to stop unwanted thoughts. He smiled and simply replied, “When we found out about gravity, did we try to stop it?” I could not exactly get where he was going, but he went further to explain that the purpose of this understanding isn't to stop negative or unwelcome thoughts; when you understand how life works, you are less frightened by life. Once we understood gravity, we stopped asking why objects dropped to the ground.
I remember reading about Michael Neil and how after attending a positive thinking training course, he still could not steady his thoughts or eliminate negative thinking. Another effort at taking a 3-day course on NLP left him nearly depressed until he stumbled into the inside-out understanding of how we experience life. Today, Michael Neil is one of the leading teachers of the inside-out understanding of life and has written three books on the subject – A) – The Inside Out Revolution, B) Creating the Impossible, and C) The Space Within. I wholeheartedly recommend all three books to those who wish to really explore the inside-out understanding of life and how our moment-by-moment experience of life is created. I have been privileged to sit under Michael Neil in a training session hosted by the Three Principles UK, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the inside-out understanding of life.
What I and others who are students of this understanding have learned is that you cannot control your thoughts all the time. Thoughts come unannounced, whether you are rich or poor or black or white. Scientists say we think over 60000 thoughts per day. If I were to ask you to write down the last 12 thoughts you had before or while reading this book, I bet that you cannot remember them. Your mind is like the clear blue sky above, with birds hovering in it and having fun. What distinguishes those with this understanding from those who do not have this understanding is that those who do not have this understanding are terrified when they think negative thoughts.
99% of people who are in psychiatric hospitals will be out of the hospital once they understand this paradigm. Just as the thoughts come, they will go. Just let the birds fly, don't try to catch them. Once you try to catch them, you will get screwed. A very insightful book on this subject is the book DO NOTHING by Damian Mark Smyth. I first read this book in 2014. It is an amazing book. There is nothing to do when negative thoughts bump into your mind. Just recognize them and go on to do what you planned to do for the day. I did not say resist them; when you resist them, you legitimize them. Just go do what you need to do.
Talking about negative thoughts that just come into your thinking, the late Dr. Kenneth E Hagin says he cannot do anything about it, but he will not give them power, or, in his words, “he will not let the birds build a nest over his head.” No teaching will stop you from having occasional, unplanned negative thoughts come into your mind, but once you know that these thoughts are not you and have no life of themselves to harm you (unless you permit them), you will go on to live your life. Unless you are dead, you will have a roller coaster experience of thoughts but don't give them life. Recognize thought for what it is and go do what you set out to do – you will find the thoughts disappear just as they came. The error that most people make is that they sit down and begin to ponder these negative thoughts, and as they do, they begin to experience their thinking.
Matthew 6: 31. Therefore, take no thought, saying, what shall we eat? or what shall we drink? or, wherewithal shall we be clothed? What was Jesus saying here? The thought “What shall we eat or drink or be clothed?” will come, but do not take it. How do you take it? You take it by saying it. In saying it, you give it life. But if you recognize the thought as not yours and go about your day, the thought will disappear just as it came.
Let me say here that Thoughts and Thinking are two separate experiences. They are not the same. When people fall into the error of dwelling on the thoughts that flow into their minds, they fall into an error that many people are suffering from today – they go see a psychiatrist. If the psychiatrist is one who does not know how the experience of life is formed, he/she will give them a LABEL. Once the psychiatrist gives you a LABEL, you are hooked!
Let's say the psychiatrist tells you that you are clinically depressed; you go home and start thinking about depression, doing all the Google searches on what depression means, and beginning to do a mental construct of a depressed person. You swim in it. You go about telling everyone you see that you are depressed. Once you start thinking about the depressive thoughts and the label put on you, you will immediately start feeling the thought. Remember that 100% of our feelings come from our thinking, not any event on the outside. The Psychiatrist, Dr Bill Pettit, talks about a controlled experiment where the sample children were asked to think three negative thoughts they have had in the past that frightened them. As soon as they started thinking the thoughts, they disrupted the biochemical regulation in their brains within three minutes of the thinking.
Today there are so many people doing training on Mental Health who are consigning people to mental illness – people who are perfectly sane but end up insane after wearing a label from a psychiatrist or counselor. To quote Dr Bill Pettit, “I am ashamed to say that many mental health practitioners today are actually mental illness practitioners”
Dr Bill Pettit goes on to recommend Stanford University Professor Robert Sapolsky's book “Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers” to show the role that thoughts play in medical depression.