In November 2017, after my last examination as a student of the college of medicine, I turned in my mattress and all the school’s property in my possession and ran home. I wanted to be as far away from school as I could be. I had rationalized that I needed to milk all the love…

In November 2017, after my last examination as a student of the college of medicine, I turned in my mattress and all the school’s property in my possession and ran home. I wanted to be as far away from school as I could be. I had rationalized that I needed to milk all the love and care from my loved ones before resuming for my internship, sometime in 2018.

But life had other plans.

Not too long after I got home, I fell sick. What started as a mere, recurring stomach upset soon spiraled into something so serious, I had to be hospitalized. I ended up spending a good part of the beginning of Jan 2018 in the hospital. 

And after I got out of the hospital and recovered, I was hit with the rudest relaxation that there was nothing to return to. The Radiographers board of  Nigeria had retracted their license from my university and so the university couldn’t take in new students, neither could they graduate old ones. Life pretty much spiraled from that point.

One minute I had been sure of what next, where I was going … the next, I found myself forced to wait indefinitely, absolutely clueless as to what to do with myself … to say I didn’t handle this time of my life well is putting things mildly. I completely flopped.

Fast forward to 2023, and relocating to the UK. Life has been a series of unlearning, relearning and waiting. People talk about how very different life is living abroad, but they don’t really capture the word “different” in all its essence. It feels like one is being born again – learning to talk, learning to socialize, learning new places and their very weird names and pronunciations, learning new foods, learning the weather … the first couple of months was rough! (still is). However, as rough as the days have been, I noticed that I’ve been handling all these changes better compared to 2018.

What changed?

My perceptive. I’ve been learning something interesting: How to wait.

When you don’t know what to do with the cards life has dealt you, doing nothing is not a bad idea.

I first heard something like this in an interview I watched of Oprah Winfrey. She talked about how one of the lessons she’s learnt in her career is not to do anything until she has a clear picture of what she wants to do next.

Doing nothing is not a bad idea at all.

When I say doing nothing, I don’t mean denying reality or procrastination or sitting idle and refusing to lift a finger … I’m talking about not filling your time with mindless activities just to keep busy. It can be further explained with this simple mathematics:

80% strategic thinking and 20% working.

Doing nothing is the period where you stop and think.

What are you thinking about?

Where you have been,

Where you presently are, and

Where you want to go.

Doing nothing is having series of strategy sessions with yourself and coming up with a road map of what you want for yourself and out of life.

The issue … Is that we are so used to fast life and movement. Since everyone around us is always moving, we feel pressured to move and continue moving, even when we are unclear as to where we are going … resist it.

And here is why this important … You need clarity to chart your future. Stopping to think forces you to confront yourself and past decisions. It forces you to scrutinize and analyze what’s working and what isn’t; which helps you make an informed decision about your future. When you try to overcompensate by engaging in every and anything just to keep busy, you begin to burn-out, you start feeling dissatisfied and frustrated, soon, you find yourself depressed and angry because things aren’t working the way you planned.

Waiting is hard (I have a first-class in waiting, so I know). But you can only move forward when you stop to take stock of your life and intentionally chart it to want you want. I think this is my biggest lesson: that hazy/dark seasons isn’t because life wants to punish us. Rather, it’s some kind of feedback to stop and re-strategize.