Edwin's Corner

  We were a little late to start. If you've ever organized an event, you'll know that before a room fills with people, it first fills with you. You arrange the chairs, check your notes, and then, for a brief moment, you're alone with your thoughts. Almost every time, one question quietly walks into the room before anyone else. "Who gives you the audacity to think people will come to this meeting?" I've been answering that question for the past year and a half, and it never gets old. Some days I answer it confidently. On other days, I ignore it and keep setting up the room anyway. This particular afternoon, that familiar question followed me into our Men's Mtaani session. The venue was a gym in the middle of a market, best described as ramshackle and clad almost entirely in iron sheets. And when I say iron-sheet-clad, I mean a room literally made of iron sheets. Dust had settled comfortably over every surface. The floor had seen better days. T...

"The greatest change in life rarely begins with what we do. It begins with how we see ourselves." --- Every January, millions of people quietly make promises to themselves. This year, they will finally get healthy. This year, they will save money. This year, they will become better leaders, better spouses, and better parents. They buy a new journal. Download another productivity app. Print new habit trackers. Join a gym. Create vision boards. Write ambitious goals in beautiful handwriting. For a brief moment, everything feels possible. Then life resumes. The first week is encouraging. The second week is inconsistent. By the third, unexpected demands compete for attention. Work becomes busy. Children get sick. Travel disrupts routines. Energy drops. Motivation fades. By February, many of those carefully written goals have quietly faded. By March, life feels remarkably similar to the previous year. Every January, I watch this cycle unfold — not only in others bu...

  Why two people can experience the same event and walk away with completely different lives. "Events shape our lives far less than the stories we tell ourselves about those events." --- The email arrived at 8:17 on a Tuesday morning. It contained five words. Can we talk this afternoon? No greeting. No explanation. No context. By 8:18, David had stopped working. By 8:20, he had replayed every meeting he had attended in the previous month. By 8:30, he had convinced himself that management had discovered a mistake in one of his reports. By 9:00, he was calculating how long his savings would last if he lost his job. Before lunch, he had rewritten his CV. By mid-afternoon, he had practiced how to tell his wife he was dismissed. He hardly registered what colleagues said. His stomach clenched, and his breath grew shallow. The afternoon seemed to drag on endlessly. Finally, three o'clock arrived. His manager invited him into her office. David sat down, bracing hi...

  The hidden reason intelligent people stay stuck — and what truly creates lasting transformation. "We spend much of our lives trying to change our behavior, when the real work is learning to understand the operating system that produces it." --- The notebook landed on the table with a heavy thud. Its leather cover had lost its shine years earlier. The corners were worn, the pages curled with use, and colored sticky notes protruded from almost every section. Before its owner said a word, I knew I was looking at someone who cared deeply about his own growth. He opened it. Handwritten notes from leadership conferences. Book summaries. Annual goals. Morning routines. Habit trackers. Journal entries. Mission statements. Mind maps. Underlined quotations. Years of quiet effort, captured in ink. He had read Atomic Habits. He loved Carol Dweck’s  Mindset . He could recite The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People  from memory. He had attended the workshops, followed ...