The Worst Habits To Detest And Strive To Avoid -By Isa Eneye Mubarak

a. I think the worst habit anyone can develop is making promises they know they will not fulfill because it works both against the people given the promise and the person making it. The former make promises to others based on the promise they get; the latter lose the trust of others and everything else that goes with it.

b. Living above one’s means. It will only get you in more trouble, debt and sleepless nights. Adorning oneself in expensive clothes and trinkets, and amassing collections of material possessions that would be the envy of any 19th-century monarch has become a substitute for genuine prosperity. As more people come to perceive material goods as the form of self-identification in this culture, we slip farther and farther away from the experience of true prosperity. True prosperity is a vibrant environment and an abundance of health, happiness, love, and relationships.

c. Debt. Avoid debt if you can, for it is sleeplessness at night and a disgrace during the day. You must NEVER get to a point where you’re being reckless with money to avoid being called “stingy”. Being called stingy is better than having sleepless nights over unmanageable debt.

d. Comparison. It’s sad to see people not even appreciating their lives because they are busy looking at someone else’s life. Such a person visits a person who has a 75 inch TV in their sitting room and immediately hates the 55 inch he has at home. As I often say to folks close to me, most of the time our agony is fueled by comparison. Comparison lessens greatness. A ship that looms large in the river seems tiny when on the ocean.

e. Ingratitude. You cannot be happy if you are not grateful. You cannot be a good person if you are not grateful. Why would a person be grateful for something they feel they are entitled to? Our current society is just breeding lots and lots of entitled people. “my parents/uncle/aunt/brother/sister must do this and that for me.”, “my boyfriend/girlfriend must buy me this and that and give me lots of money.”

f. Above correction and always right. Any disagreement is seen as an affront, an abomination. We are in a time where people thought that you exist purely to echo their value systems, ideologies, worldview, and paradigms, people who only think you are brilliant in so far as you utter their thoughts. People who think you are there to reassure them that they are right about everything. People who think they should be the arbiters of what is right or wrong. People who thought you are their intellectual and emotional bodyguard or cheerleader. It is either their way or no way else.

Isa Eneye Mubarak
isamubarak66@yahoo.com