Mouth Diarrhoea

 

Thank God that Toke made her meet with the girls; it produced so many ideas, so many that she is at a lose which one to go with. This is one of those time she wishes she could see the future or perhaps that God would just audibly give her direction or speak to her in a clear dream. But that has not happened. What she needs is someone to help her go through her ideas, but who?

She is afraid to table her ideas before people. At the back of her mind is her pastor’s sermon a few years ago. He had spoken about the diarrhoea of the mouth and illustrated it with a story of a woman who constantly missed her opportunities in life because she discussed her ideas with others. Those people either used her ideas for their benefits or sabotaged her. His solution is to keep your ideas to yourself.  And she had lived by this teaching so far, but she is not sure if she should this time.

As she ruminated over this, she fiddled with the remote control, then switched on the TV and browsed through the stations. One caught her attention. A lady whose talk show she loves was on a station. She decided to listen to her to take her mind off her issues.

“Welcome to the show. If you are just joining us, my guest today is a women empowerment speaker and she is talking to us about developing our entrepreneurial ideas.  Ma, before the commercial break, you were talking about mouth diarrhoea, can you please expatiate on this”

She sat up in her chair. Wow! What are the chances! God is surely ordering her steps. She quickly picked her notebook and pen. She was going to trap ideas.

“Thank you, moderator. Mouth diarrhoea is talking without strategy”

“Strategy?” You mean we should plan our conversations?

“Exactly. We must plan our conversations about our ideas. We need to ask ourselves some questions about the purpose and expected outcome of such discussions.  We also need to be sure we are speaking to the right person.  If we take care of all these, then we will not be guilty of mouth diarrhoea. “

“So, what should be the purpose?”

“Getting someone to look at your ideas from different angles. Sometimes we are so much in our ideas that we don’t see the pitfalls or the merits. A neutral person will see better and may be able to offer good advice or even offer ideas that will improve yours or take you in a different direction. Your purpose must be to listen well and think about what the person says.”

“And expected outcome?”

“It must be to take away something positive. Your conversation is not to get  your idea rubberstamped but to have it critiqued so that the merits and demerits are highlighted” At the end of your discussion, you must be ready to either go back to the thinking chair or begin to implement your ideas.”

“I think the last point is the most important, isn’t?”

“You are very correct. Correct purpose and expected outcome are of no use if you are speaking to the wrong person. You are not going to speak to just anyone but one that will have a positive effect on you.  Seek someone that is knowledgeable in your area of business; ask them to mentor you. I guess your next question will be where do you find these people? There are so many platforms that can teach you about finding mentors. Because, we don’t have time here, I will leave you with two links to get information about about getting a mentor.”

https://goinswriter.com/find-mentor/

 https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6248-how-to-find-mentor.html

“Time, like you said, is not on our side tonight but I hope that you will oblige us whenever we ask you to come on our show again.” The links from our guest are on your screen right now. I hope you will use them.”

She hurriedly copied the link and dashed to her laptop. She had tuned off the noise from the TV as the moderator bade her guest bye.

I Bi Dem