November 9, 2025 • 28 mins
Dr. Oluwole Babatunde's story is one of extraordinary resilience and purpose. After losing both parents by age 13 in Nigeria, he could have let tragedy define him, but instead, he chose to adapt. Now a physician scientist, psychiatry resident, and author, Dr. Babatunde has turned his pain into a powerful mission to serve others and reduce mental health disparities.
In this conversation, Dr. Babatunde shares the principles that carried him through unimaginable loss, including his MAP-LAMP framework for turning trials into triumphs. From the power of making meaning in suffering to the importance of serving others in our pain, his wisdom offers practical hope for anyone facing difficulty. His new book, Adapt and Advance, provides a faith-based, step-by-step guide to navigating life's storms, not just surviving them, but using them as stepping stones to something greater.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:08):
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thank you for taking the time to listen.
You can hear hundreds more inspiring episodes now at bleedingdaylight.net.
(00:31):
Please tell others about Bleeding Daylight so that they can be inspired too.
We all experience the storms of life, but how do you navigate those storms when everything seems to be ripped away at a very early age?
Today's guest has faced incredible difficulties, but he's now sharing the power of helping and serving others.
(01:03):
I'm very pleased to have Dr. Oluwole Babatunde joining me today.
His story is one of remarkable resilience.
Losing both parents by the age of 13, he channelled his pain into purpose as a physician scientist.
He's published over 20 research papers and recently completed his psychiatry residency while being recognised as Resident Researcher of the Year.
(01:27):
His new book, Adapt and Advance, a faith-based step-by-step guide to turning trials into triumphs, captures his faith-driven philosophy of transforming setbacks into stepping stones.
He is dedicated to reducing mental health disparities and mentoring the next generation.
Wole, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
(01:48):
Thank you so much, Rodney.
I'm so happy.
I'm excited to be on your show and I hope we have a wonderful time together.
You spent your early years in Nigeria with both parents working in medical careers.
You lost your mother when you were just seven years of age and then your father when you were 13.
That's right.
How did the child that you were back then begin to deal with such a great ache of loss?
(02:14):
Oh, Rodney, it was a whole lot at that time going through that.
My whole world was shattered and it's like throwing a little child into the old wild world.
It was so difficult to move on with life.
It was challenging.
It was hard dealing with different kind of people at an early age.
(02:35):
You kind of had to like grow up very quickly.
I was the first child of my parents, so it was really hard.
It was rough for me to navigate that pain at that time.
Because I'm sure it would already be difficult for your father from the age of seven having to be that single parent and that would have been difficult enough.
(02:56):
And even by the age of 13, you wouldn't have been fully over the loss of your mother and then to suddenly lose your father.
How do you start to come back from that thinking, is loss going to just be the way of life for me?
The first thing I said after I got to know my father died was, why would both of them give birth to us when they know they will not stay to take care of us?
(03:20):
My 13-year-old mind, I didn't know where that came from.
If this was the plan, then they should have decided not to have kids or something like that.
People in the room were like, oh, it was not their plan.
Things just worked out the way it worked.
Nobody ever plans to have tragedy like that happen to them.
So it was tough.
One thing that I believe helped me the most very early, which is what I really want people to take away, is no matter the amount of tragedy, no matter the level of difficulties we might be going through, we have the capacity in us to adapt.
(03:57):
And what that means is we can accept the loss without getting destroyed ourselves in the process, without losing our values and without losing our lives no matter how difficult it is.
All through it, I was able to learn acceptance.
I was able to move forward despite the pain and kept pushing forward despite everything that was going on in my life at that time.
(04:24):
It's possible no matter how difficult and how hard it is.
I think I'm a testament looking back now to the fact that no matter how hard it is, there's always a way out.
And I'm sure that there are two ways that that sort of tragedy can send you.
One is that you just go completely off the rails or it focuses you.
(04:44):
What do you think it was for you that caused you to go that direction, that caused you to focus and say, I will not let this beat me?
I had to keep making that choice every single day, month, year as the times evolved.
Of course, there was a lot of opportunities to follow different paths, especially when I was still like a teenager and things were going wrong a lot in different things.
(05:11):
Some family members were being mean.
I had the opportunity to give up.
I had the opportunity to go in some directions, you know, I had the opportunity of getting introduced like even to drugs, alcohol and things, you know, just finding solutions from sources that perhaps might not have been so helpful at that time.
(05:33):
But I had to keep making the choice that I don't want this to define me negatively.
And I don't want my life to be all about he lost his parents and unfortunately all the dreams his parents had for him, he could not achieve it.
So I kept telling myself, I will not let this define me negatively.
(05:54):
I had that inner strength.
Of course, it was not easy.
There were days I cried.
There were days I was shattered.
There were days I wanted to give up, especially when you look at friends who have the appearance, they all seem to have it all together.
Although now that I'm a bit grown, I look back and I realize even those who don't have that kind of problem, it's not like they have it all together too.
(06:20):
Everybody deals with something.
And especially as a psychiatrist now, I see patients regularly about every day.
I hear stories every day and I realize there's this popular saying that even the rich also cry.
So I realized that no human is really saved from challenges.
We all go through things.
(06:41):
It's our ability to adapt to it and to keep moving forward despite those challenges that really keeps us grounded.
I suppose there would have been a number of people that would have been quite surprised that this young boy who had lost his parents went on to achieve quite well at school and university and to achieve the things that you did.
(07:05):
What was the sense of the people around you at that time seeing you do so well in your studies and moving on to the sorts of career that you moved into?
I would broadly say there were two groups of people.
There were people that were cheering me on and they really wanted me to succeed.
So I wouldn't say like everything was all negative after the loss of both parents.
(07:29):
My dad had some friends that were really interested in seeing me succeed.
I shared my vision to be a medical doctor with one of them who was a medical doctor and I talked about him a little bit in my book.
He would write letters to me to my 14 year old boy in school.
He would write letters to me like he was writing to his friends.
(07:50):
I would reply him, he would write letters to me.
I would say people like that were cheering me on, wanted the best for me.
Just keep putting in your best, just keep doing what you're doing.
You can be a doctor, you can do it, things might be hard.
Whatever little you could do and all you could do to assist all through my journey, he tried his best to do it.
(08:12):
So there were people like that, that's just one example.
But at the same time, there were people who felt there's no hope for him.
They weren't really expecting anything good.
If anything, they removed whatever little support that they could have provided at that time.
So there were both groups.
The other group of people would really don't want you or they don't really expect much from you.
(08:36):
It could be very, very painful, especially if they are family members or people who had access to resources like your parents left behind and you were denied of those things.
It could really, really be very painful at that time.
But I'm glad at least I got through picking the best from those who were cheering me on at the same time, not letting those who were trying to pull me down succeed.
(09:00):
Is that part of the secret that you unveil in your book, Adapt and Advance, that we need to be listening to the right voices?
Because there will always be voices that try to discourage us in whatever situation.
Do we need to concentrate on listening to those right voices?
That's the word, that's the word.
Listening to the right voices, it's very important.
(09:23):
Yes, in Adapt and Advance, I tried hard to summarize.
I looked into my life for years.
I've always used my story to inspire others and I've done it in little ways, in talking to people one-on-one, in talking to people I coach, students, those that look up to me.
I have the story in little bits and pieces even before I wrote the book.
(09:47):
But at the point when I was writing the book and putting things together, I was inspired to use an acronym called MAP-LAMP, which helped me to look into my entire life, beginning from seven when I lost my mom, 13 when I lost my dad, and what worked the best for me.
And I was able to come up with MAP-LAMP principle.
(10:08):
M is meaning making, which means we try our best to make the best meaning from whatever difficulties that we are going through.
I use the book written by Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, where he gave three main ways people can make meaning, despite he was in the concentration camp, saw so many people die.
(10:28):
He was able to observe that those who eventually made it out, most of them had the attribute of making meaning from the difficulty in a different way, which seemed to be one of the things that really was very helpful for him as a person.
So it's important for us when we go through so much of hardships to be able to hear that voice, like you said, in us that helps us to make meaning from the difficult situations we are going through.
(10:56):
He said we could make meaning by our attitude towards the problem.
We could make meaning by trying to help people, even in our pain and in our sufferings.
You could still find a way to be of help to other people.
And we could also make meaning by experiencing something.
It could be the experience in love.
It could be experiencing nature.
So all of that helps to serve as a foundation upon which we are able to move forward and we don't get stuck in the things we are going through.
(11:25):
I talk to patients a lot regularly and I realize when people get stuck in a difficulty they are going through, one of the ways they can break out of getting stuck is to be able to make meaning that this situation is not here to stop me.
It's not here to destroy me.
I can get over this.
That's the attitude.
(11:46):
That's the spirit to have.
I could move forward irrespective of everything I'm going through.
So those are the kind of things I wrote in the book that would be very encouraging to people.
And of course, in every chapter I shared a little bit of my story.
So that's just HEM.
Then A, I talked about action.
P, I talked about planning.
L, I talked about reading, learning, which is reading books, learning from other people who have succeeded.
(12:10):
I love this so much because personally one of the things that helped me the most is the stories of successful people.
Very early I started reading books and I realized I had the full assurance that people have gone through similar things, maybe not exactly similar but difficult situations, and they've been able to navigate it, get out of it, and succeed in life.
(12:33):
So I read biographies.
I read people's stories.
All of that was very inspiring.
That's L, map lamp.
And then we have A, which is alliance for mission, working with people together to help you.
Then M is having a mission statement for your life.
Where am I?
Where am I going?
And how do I get there?
And then the final one is prayers, which is believing in a higher power than you and using, leveraging that as an opportunity to continue to move forward in life.
(13:01):
So where did faith enter your story?
When did you decide that you wanted to follow the path of faith?
My parents were Christians and that was very helpful for me, very, very helpful.
Very early I remember, even before my mom died at seven, I remember I was going to a Baptist church in Nigeria.
I was in what they call the Royal Ambassadors, where we go every Saturday, we wear blue uniform, you know, we go to help people, kind of creating in us the spirit of service to humanity.
(13:32):
That's what the Royal Ambassador is all about.
So even at that time, I already had the mind of serving and community, serving the community wherever you are and helping people.
So by the time mom died, by the time dad died, that foundation was very, very helpful.
When things got rough, when things get bad, I was able to turn to faith and in prayers.
(13:57):
And my reading actually started from initially the Bible alone.
Then I started reading books by people that were pastors.
Then I started reading books by people that were not necessarily even Christians.
I read a lot of books now.
And I realized that in every success story, whether you are a person of faith or not even a person of faith, there's a recurring theme.
(14:20):
And that's why I say my book is written to a general audience, although I talk a little bit about faith in it.
But every successful people who is able to make it, they have some core principles which I believe some of them are core principles you see in the Bible, but they are principles of humanity generally that can be very, very helpful for us.
So faith for me was helpful.
(14:42):
It helped me to make meaning.
So apart from the three things I talked about from Viktor Frankl's book, I put my own number four as I make meaning from the Bible too.
I have some Bible verses that were very helpful.
I have some top seven Bible verses that has helped me a lot.
For example, there's this one that says, everything worked together for good to them that love God.
(15:04):
So I believe no matter how hard it is, whatever I'm going through in my life, it's all going to turn out for good.
And there was this story of Joseph in the Bible, whose brother sold into slavery and eventually became the prime minister of Egypt and things turned around for him.
And he said, though you meant it for evil, but God means it for good to be able to help other people.
(15:28):
That's making meaning at his height.
Although everything he went through was hardship, he went through prison, went through slavery, went through so many situations, was lied upon, ended up in the prison because of that.
Although he went through all of that, at the end of the day, he looked back and said, although all of these things was meant to hurt me, but I believe everything happened together for me to be where I am today so that I can be a blessing to many other people around me.
(15:59):
That's number three point by Vito Branco, that our attitude towards the suffering matters a lot.
And if you look at Joseph's story, his story is very fascinating to me.
Even in the prison, he was a happy person.
He was solving problems for people, you know, was interpreting dreams and stuff like that.
(16:19):
When he was a slave in Potiphar's house, he was a very joyful slave, so much more that Potiphar's wife wanted to have an affair with him.
All of that were happening in his life, despite all the pain and the suffering, he was still being his best, even in the middle of the pain.
And that's one thing I tell my patients every time when I discharge them, I'm like, if you don't remember anything from me, remember to be the best you can be, no matter the situation.
(16:49):
Whether you are in the pits,
whether you are in the palace, whether you are okay or things are difficult, whether you have
what to eat or you are struggling to even have what to eat, whether you can pay your bills or
you are struggling with homelessness, whether you are sick on a hospital bed or you are healthy,
wherever you are, whatever life throws at you, make up your mind to be the best version of yourself
(17:15):
and go to bed empty.
Empty, I mean, that's a principle from Miles Monroe's books, he said the graveyard is the richest place on earth because most people die and they go to their graves without having fulfilled their full potential.
His own saying is go to your grave empty, meaning you should have poured out yourself to do the best you can do while alive.
(17:40):
But I say go to bed empty every night.
I say that to myself every day because I don't want to even wait until grave time.
Every single day I want to make the best of it and I encourage everybody to do the same.
Every single day pour out the best you can be and it doesn't have to be with how rich you are.
(18:00):
It doesn't have to do with how comfortable you are.
No matter the situation, you can find something to help somebody who is just one person around you.
The interesting thing that I hear in what you're saying is certainly the Christian faith speaks a lot about serving others, about putting yourself out for others and this is what's coming through, this whole idea of whatever situation we're in, we have the opportunity to serve others just as the scriptures tell us and yet so often the world is telling us you need to look after number one.
(18:35):
You need to look after yourself and we hear people complaining that they don't have enough and they complain about their situation.
What you're saying is we need to turn that on its head and look out for ways that we can serve others.
How important is that?
Serving others, like I said, is one of the best ways to make meaning.
One of the best ways to make meaning from what you're going through is to serve others with your life and to be a blessing to other people with it.
(19:04):
So I believe, you know, same way we are all called to serve, no matter where we are, it's an attitude that irrespective of how much we have, where we have and whatever it is that we are going through, if we choose to serve, we will definitely find an opportunity in the circumstance where we are right now.
(19:29):
If you have a hundred dollars, the way you spend is likely the way you spend a million dollars.
So most times it's an attitude and that's why I emphasize learning a lot in everything I do so that we can correct the assumptions that we have that are wrong and then we could be empowered mentally to know the truth and let the truth set us free.
(19:54):
I don't think it will be easy to really achieve so much of serving the way God has called us to serve if we really are not knowledgeable.
Me reading stories of so many people and seeing how they were able to get through difficult situations and within those difficult situations still were able to serve and be a blessing, tells me I can serve and be a blessing no matter how difficult it is in my life.
(20:22):
You mentioned earlier about the different people when you were going through your real struggles, that there were some people that were helpful, there were some people that weren't.
And I'm sure that there were some people who wanted to do the right thing, but didn't have the right words to say.
They didn't know the best way to help you.
We know we all go through different times, but when we see someone else who's going through a struggle, what is the best way for us to respond to that?
(20:48):
How can we really help that person and serve that person?
Now we are coming to the real service now.
How do we do it?
Because there's a how to go about it.
I think the first thing is, one, we need to be whole to be able to help some, mentally at least, to be able to carry other people's burden.
(21:09):
When we are not mentally whole, it's difficult for us to carry somebody else's burden.
And what I mean by that is, we need to know we can do it.
If we don't know we can do it, then it's going to be like a burden.
It's going to be like, I can't do this.
How can I go through this?
But definitely, yes, like you said, there are people who wish they could help, but they just didn't have what it takes to help.
(21:35):
So when we say, be of service, have the right attitude, it's good for us to also know that it's a process and we might not be 100% yet.
I don't think anybody's 100%, but definitely we can all continue to learn and be a blessing to other people.
So I think the first step is, we need to first of all be in a good position in our mind that we can do it.
(22:01):
God will not tell us to do anything that he has not given us the capacity to do.
So if he tells us we could help or we could be a blessing to somebody, then we can do it.
That's number one.
So when we know we can do it, then we could plan how to do it.
And that's why in my book, I have the section on planning and I also have the section on action.
(22:21):
And there's a Bible verse that says, show me your faith without action, I'll show you my own by my action.
We have to be able to plan and back our plans up with action.
Number three principle in my book is planning.
Number two is action.
So we need to be able to plan and act at the same time.
Planning, meaning what do I have and how do I want to do it?
(22:43):
Even just a smile could make somebody else's day on some days.
And even complimenting people, there are just so many things we could do that doesn't even need money.
Being genuinely listening, that's one thing that is lacking in our world today.
Most of us are in a hurry to talk.
When somebody is saying something, we're already formulating in our mind what we want to say next, which is okay in some situation.
(23:07):
But there are situations where all we just need to do is sit down, listen, and be genuinely interested in the people we are listening to.
So those are things that we could do.
Of course, it will take time.
So if you don't have money to give, you might be able to give time.
If you don't have money, you don't have time, you might be able to give a smile.
So there's something you can do every day to be a blessing to the people around you.
(23:32):
It could be your family members.
It could be your colleagues at work.
It could be co-students.
It could be your patients or your clients, people you see every single day.
There's definitely something you can give to genuinely serve them and have the genuine heart to go out to be a blessing to them.
So I would say those little things matter.
(23:55):
But if you have money, of course, all of us have something.
You know, somebody might have a million, somebody might have ten dollars, but definitely we all have something.
You could also use a little bit.
God is not expecting you to give what you don't have.
It's out of what you have that you can give.
Decide what you can give out of what you have and give it to be a blessing to others.
(24:17):
We can do something.
We just need to be extremely creative and come up with creative solutions to help people that are around us.
As I've mentioned, your book is titled Adapt and Advance, a faith-based step-by-step guide to turning trials into triumph.
Have there been people that have had the opportunity to read it that have come back to you and said, this is something that has changed the way I look at life and this is going to change my direction?
(24:44):
Definitely, definitely.
Yeah, currently we have over 200 reviews on Amazon and Goodreads right now.
And, you know, whenever I have some time, you know, I just go through some of those reviews and at times they move me to tears hearing what people are saying on how much the book has been a blessing to them.
You know, people who said they began to do some part of the book, people said the book really resonated with them and it tells them there's a hope for them despite whatever they are going through right now.
(25:15):
So there are very many examples there.
So check it out, go on Amazon, just play around the reviews there and, you know, that gives you an idea of what the book has to offer and how much the book can be a blessing to other people.
And I imagine we need to recognise that while we may not be going through a trial at the moment, there will always be trials that will come up in our lives.
(25:40):
And if we haven't experienced a serious trial so far, we are going to at some stage.
So I imagine the book is not just for those who are going through their own suffering, their own struggles, but it is for all of us to know what to do when those trials come.
So this would be a book that would be helpful for whoever we are.
(26:01):
Definitely.
In fact, I wrote in the book that it's not like everybody has to experience something as difficult as I did, like losing both parents, most people would not, but it's just a general book about life that gives us the principles that help us to deal with day-to-day challenges.
Personally, I use the principles in the book every single day.
(26:22):
I use my plan to negotiate everything that comes my way.
On a scale of let's say one to a hundred, some challenges might be heavy.
Let's say a hundred is the worst thing that can happen to anybody.
Some things might be 10, some things might be five.
All of us go through things.
I tell people, I wish I could say it was just the loss of my parenting that I experienced, but there are many other challenges not even related to that, that day-to-day things that we all have to deal with.
(26:48):
The book just gives us how to negotiate life, how to see life, both for us and for people around us, to be able to know.
Planning is something we all need generally to go through life.
Reading books, learning from people is all things we all need for life.
Alliance formation, recognizing people that can help you and working with them to help you get to where you're going.
(27:12):
I have the link to the book, Adapt and Advance, in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find it easily.
Well, I want to say thank you so much for sharing some of your story, but also for putting that down into the book and not just talking about what has happened, but what we can do with it.
I'm sure that it's going to continue to help many people.
(27:34):
Thank you so much for your time today on Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thank you for taking the time to listen.
You can hear hundreds more inspiring episodes now at bleedingdaylight.net.
(00:31):
Please tell others about Bleeding Daylight so that they can be inspired too.
We all experience the storms of life, but how do you navigate those storms when everything seems to be ripped away at a very early age?
Today's guest has faced incredible difficulties, but he's now sharing the power of helping and serving others.
(01:03):
I'm very pleased to have Dr. Oluwole Babatunde joining me today.
His story is one of remarkable resilience.
Losing both parents by the age of 13, he channelled his pain into purpose as a physician scientist.
He's published over 20 research papers and recently completed his psychiatry residency while being recognised as Resident Researcher of the Year.
(01:27):
His new book, Adapt and Advance, a faith-based step-by-step guide to turning trials into triumphs, captures his faith-driven philosophy of transforming setbacks into stepping stones.
He is dedicated to reducing mental health disparities and mentoring the next generation.
Wole, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
(01:48):
Thank you so much, Rodney.
I'm so happy.
I'm excited to be on your show and I hope we have a wonderful time together.
You spent your early years in Nigeria with both parents working in medical careers.
You lost your mother when you were just seven years of age and then your father when you were 13.
That's right.
How did the child that you were back then begin to deal with such a great ache of loss?
(02:14):
Oh, Rodney, it was a whole lot at that time going through that.
My whole world was shattered and it's like throwing a little child into the old wild world.
It was so difficult to move on with life.
It was challenging.
It was hard dealing with different kind of people at an early age.
(02:35):
You kind of had to like grow up very quickly.
I was the first child of my parents, so it was really hard.
It was rough for me to navigate that pain at that time.
Because I'm sure it would already be difficult for your father from the age of seven having to be that single parent and that would have been difficult enough.
(02:56):
And even by the age of 13, you wouldn't have been fully over the loss of your mother and then to suddenly lose your father.
How do you start to come back from that thinking, is loss going to just be the way of life for me?
The first thing I said after I got to know my father died was, why would both of them give birth to us when they know they will not stay to take care of us?
(03:20):
My 13-year-old mind, I didn't know where that came from.
If this was the plan, then they should have decided not to have kids or something like that.
People in the room were like, oh, it was not their plan.
Things just worked out the way it worked.
Nobody ever plans to have tragedy like that happen to them.
So it was tough.
One thing that I believe helped me the most very early, which is what I really want people to take away, is no matter the amount of tragedy, no matter the level of difficulties we might be going through, we have the capacity in us to adapt.
(03:57):
And what that means is we can accept the loss without getting destroyed ourselves in the process, without losing our values and without losing our lives no matter how difficult it is.
All through it, I was able to learn acceptance.
I was able to move forward despite the pain and kept pushing forward despite everything that was going on in my life at that time.
(04:24):
It's possible no matter how difficult and how hard it is.
I think I'm a testament looking back now to the fact that no matter how hard it is, there's always a way out.
And I'm sure that there are two ways that that sort of tragedy can send you.
One is that you just go completely off the rails or it focuses you.
(04:44):
What do you think it was for you that caused you to go that direction, that caused you to focus and say, I will not let this beat me?
I had to keep making that choice every single day, month, year as the times evolved.
Of course, there was a lot of opportunities to follow different paths, especially when I was still like a teenager and things were going wrong a lot in different things.
(05:11):
Some family members were being mean.
I had the opportunity to give up.
I had the opportunity to go in some directions, you know, I had the opportunity of getting introduced like even to drugs, alcohol and things, you know, just finding solutions from sources that perhaps might not have been so helpful at that time.
(05:33):
But I had to keep making the choice that I don't want this to define me negatively.
And I don't want my life to be all about he lost his parents and unfortunately all the dreams his parents had for him, he could not achieve it.
So I kept telling myself, I will not let this define me negatively.
(05:54):
I had that inner strength.
Of course, it was not easy.
There were days I cried.
There were days I was shattered.
There were days I wanted to give up, especially when you look at friends who have the appearance, they all seem to have it all together.
Although now that I'm a bit grown, I look back and I realize even those who don't have that kind of problem, it's not like they have it all together too.
(06:20):
Everybody deals with something.
And especially as a psychiatrist now, I see patients regularly about every day.
I hear stories every day and I realize there's this popular saying that even the rich also cry.
So I realized that no human is really saved from challenges.
We all go through things.
(06:41):
It's our ability to adapt to it and to keep moving forward despite those challenges that really keeps us grounded.
I suppose there would have been a number of people that would have been quite surprised that this young boy who had lost his parents went on to achieve quite well at school and university and to achieve the things that you did.
(07:05):
What was the sense of the people around you at that time seeing you do so well in your studies and moving on to the sorts of career that you moved into?
I would broadly say there were two groups of people.
There were people that were cheering me on and they really wanted me to succeed.
So I wouldn't say like everything was all negative after the loss of both parents.
(07:29):
My dad had some friends that were really interested in seeing me succeed.
I shared my vision to be a medical doctor with one of them who was a medical doctor and I talked about him a little bit in my book.
He would write letters to me to my 14 year old boy in school.
He would write letters to me like he was writing to his friends.
(07:50):
I would reply him, he would write letters to me.
I would say people like that were cheering me on, wanted the best for me.
Just keep putting in your best, just keep doing what you're doing.
You can be a doctor, you can do it, things might be hard.
Whatever little you could do and all you could do to assist all through my journey, he tried his best to do it.
(08:12):
So there were people like that, that's just one example.
But at the same time, there were people who felt there's no hope for him.
They weren't really expecting anything good.
If anything, they removed whatever little support that they could have provided at that time.
So there were both groups.
The other group of people would really don't want you or they don't really expect much from you.
(08:36):
It could be very, very painful, especially if they are family members or people who had access to resources like your parents left behind and you were denied of those things.
It could really, really be very painful at that time.
But I'm glad at least I got through picking the best from those who were cheering me on at the same time, not letting those who were trying to pull me down succeed.
(09:00):
Is that part of the secret that you unveil in your book, Adapt and Advance, that we need to be listening to the right voices?
Because there will always be voices that try to discourage us in whatever situation.
Do we need to concentrate on listening to those right voices?
That's the word, that's the word.
Listening to the right voices, it's very important.
(09:23):
Yes, in Adapt and Advance, I tried hard to summarize.
I looked into my life for years.
I've always used my story to inspire others and I've done it in little ways, in talking to people one-on-one, in talking to people I coach, students, those that look up to me.
I have the story in little bits and pieces even before I wrote the book.
(09:47):
But at the point when I was writing the book and putting things together, I was inspired to use an acronym called MAP-LAMP, which helped me to look into my entire life, beginning from seven when I lost my mom, 13 when I lost my dad, and what worked the best for me.
And I was able to come up with MAP-LAMP principle.
(10:08):
M is meaning making, which means we try our best to make the best meaning from whatever difficulties that we are going through.
I use the book written by Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, where he gave three main ways people can make meaning, despite he was in the concentration camp, saw so many people die.
(10:28):
He was able to observe that those who eventually made it out, most of them had the attribute of making meaning from the difficulty in a different way, which seemed to be one of the things that really was very helpful for him as a person.
So it's important for us when we go through so much of hardships to be able to hear that voice, like you said, in us that helps us to make meaning from the difficult situations we are going through.
(10:56):
He said we could make meaning by our attitude towards the problem.
We could make meaning by trying to help people, even in our pain and in our sufferings.
You could still find a way to be of help to other people.
And we could also make meaning by experiencing something.
It could be the experience in love.
It could be experiencing nature.
So all of that helps to serve as a foundation upon which we are able to move forward and we don't get stuck in the things we are going through.
(11:25):
I talk to patients a lot regularly and I realize when people get stuck in a difficulty they are going through, one of the ways they can break out of getting stuck is to be able to make meaning that this situation is not here to stop me.
It's not here to destroy me.
I can get over this.
That's the attitude.
(11:46):
That's the spirit to have.
I could move forward irrespective of everything I'm going through.
So those are the kind of things I wrote in the book that would be very encouraging to people.
And of course, in every chapter I shared a little bit of my story.
So that's just HEM.
Then A, I talked about action.
P, I talked about planning.
L, I talked about reading, learning, which is reading books, learning from other people who have succeeded.
(12:10):
I love this so much because personally one of the things that helped me the most is the stories of successful people.
Very early I started reading books and I realized I had the full assurance that people have gone through similar things, maybe not exactly similar but difficult situations, and they've been able to navigate it, get out of it, and succeed in life.
(12:33):
So I read biographies.
I read people's stories.
All of that was very inspiring.
That's L, map lamp.
And then we have A, which is alliance for mission, working with people together to help you.
Then M is having a mission statement for your life.
Where am I?
Where am I going?
And how do I get there?
And then the final one is prayers, which is believing in a higher power than you and using, leveraging that as an opportunity to continue to move forward in life.
(13:01):
So where did faith enter your story?
When did you decide that you wanted to follow the path of faith?
My parents were Christians and that was very helpful for me, very, very helpful.
Very early I remember, even before my mom died at seven, I remember I was going to a Baptist church in Nigeria.
I was in what they call the Royal Ambassadors, where we go every Saturday, we wear blue uniform, you know, we go to help people, kind of creating in us the spirit of service to humanity.
(13:32):
That's what the Royal Ambassador is all about.
So even at that time, I already had the mind of serving and community, serving the community wherever you are and helping people.
So by the time mom died, by the time dad died, that foundation was very, very helpful.
When things got rough, when things get bad, I was able to turn to faith and in prayers.
(13:57):
And my reading actually started from initially the Bible alone.
Then I started reading books by people that were pastors.
Then I started reading books by people that were not necessarily even Christians.
I read a lot of books now.
And I realized that in every success story, whether you are a person of faith or not even a person of faith, there's a recurring theme.
(14:20):
And that's why I say my book is written to a general audience, although I talk a little bit about faith in it.
But every successful people who is able to make it, they have some core principles which I believe some of them are core principles you see in the Bible, but they are principles of humanity generally that can be very, very helpful for us.
So faith for me was helpful.
(14:42):
It helped me to make meaning.
So apart from the three things I talked about from Viktor Frankl's book, I put my own number four as I make meaning from the Bible too.
I have some Bible verses that were very helpful.
I have some top seven Bible verses that has helped me a lot.
For example, there's this one that says, everything worked together for good to them that love God.
(15:04):
So I believe no matter how hard it is, whatever I'm going through in my life, it's all going to turn out for good.
And there was this story of Joseph in the Bible, whose brother sold into slavery and eventually became the prime minister of Egypt and things turned around for him.
And he said, though you meant it for evil, but God means it for good to be able to help other people.
(15:28):
That's making meaning at his height.
Although everything he went through was hardship, he went through prison, went through slavery, went through so many situations, was lied upon, ended up in the prison because of that.
Although he went through all of that, at the end of the day, he looked back and said, although all of these things was meant to hurt me, but I believe everything happened together for me to be where I am today so that I can be a blessing to many other people around me.
(15:59):
That's number three point by Vito Branco, that our attitude towards the suffering matters a lot.
And if you look at Joseph's story, his story is very fascinating to me.
Even in the prison, he was a happy person.
He was solving problems for people, you know, was interpreting dreams and stuff like that.
(16:19):
When he was a slave in Potiphar's house, he was a very joyful slave, so much more that Potiphar's wife wanted to have an affair with him.
All of that were happening in his life, despite all the pain and the suffering, he was still being his best, even in the middle of the pain.
And that's one thing I tell my patients every time when I discharge them, I'm like, if you don't remember anything from me, remember to be the best you can be, no matter the situation.
(16:49):
Whether you are in the pits,
whether you are in the palace, whether you are okay or things are difficult, whether you have
what to eat or you are struggling to even have what to eat, whether you can pay your bills or
you are struggling with homelessness, whether you are sick on a hospital bed or you are healthy,
wherever you are, whatever life throws at you, make up your mind to be the best version of yourself
(17:15):
and go to bed empty.
Empty, I mean, that's a principle from Miles Monroe's books, he said the graveyard is the richest place on earth because most people die and they go to their graves without having fulfilled their full potential.
His own saying is go to your grave empty, meaning you should have poured out yourself to do the best you can do while alive.
(17:40):
But I say go to bed empty every night.
I say that to myself every day because I don't want to even wait until grave time.
Every single day I want to make the best of it and I encourage everybody to do the same.
Every single day pour out the best you can be and it doesn't have to be with how rich you are.
(18:00):
It doesn't have to do with how comfortable you are.
No matter the situation, you can find something to help somebody who is just one person around you.
The interesting thing that I hear in what you're saying is certainly the Christian faith speaks a lot about serving others, about putting yourself out for others and this is what's coming through, this whole idea of whatever situation we're in, we have the opportunity to serve others just as the scriptures tell us and yet so often the world is telling us you need to look after number one.
(18:35):
You need to look after yourself and we hear people complaining that they don't have enough and they complain about their situation.
What you're saying is we need to turn that on its head and look out for ways that we can serve others.
How important is that?
Serving others, like I said, is one of the best ways to make meaning.
One of the best ways to make meaning from what you're going through is to serve others with your life and to be a blessing to other people with it.
(19:04):
So I believe, you know, same way we are all called to serve, no matter where we are, it's an attitude that irrespective of how much we have, where we have and whatever it is that we are going through, if we choose to serve, we will definitely find an opportunity in the circumstance where we are right now.
(19:29):
If you have a hundred dollars, the way you spend is likely the way you spend a million dollars.
So most times it's an attitude and that's why I emphasize learning a lot in everything I do so that we can correct the assumptions that we have that are wrong and then we could be empowered mentally to know the truth and let the truth set us free.
(19:54):
I don't think it will be easy to really achieve so much of serving the way God has called us to serve if we really are not knowledgeable.
Me reading stories of so many people and seeing how they were able to get through difficult situations and within those difficult situations still were able to serve and be a blessing, tells me I can serve and be a blessing no matter how difficult it is in my life.
(20:22):
You mentioned earlier about the different people when you were going through your real struggles, that there were some people that were helpful, there were some people that weren't.
And I'm sure that there were some people who wanted to do the right thing, but didn't have the right words to say.
They didn't know the best way to help you.
We know we all go through different times, but when we see someone else who's going through a struggle, what is the best way for us to respond to that?
(20:48):
How can we really help that person and serve that person?
Now we are coming to the real service now.
How do we do it?
Because there's a how to go about it.
I think the first thing is, one, we need to be whole to be able to help some, mentally at least, to be able to carry other people's burden.
(21:09):
When we are not mentally whole, it's difficult for us to carry somebody else's burden.
And what I mean by that is, we need to know we can do it.
If we don't know we can do it, then it's going to be like a burden.
It's going to be like, I can't do this.
How can I go through this?
But definitely, yes, like you said, there are people who wish they could help, but they just didn't have what it takes to help.
(21:35):
So when we say, be of service, have the right attitude, it's good for us to also know that it's a process and we might not be 100% yet.
I don't think anybody's 100%, but definitely we can all continue to learn and be a blessing to other people.
So I think the first step is, we need to first of all be in a good position in our mind that we can do it.
(22:01):
God will not tell us to do anything that he has not given us the capacity to do.
So if he tells us we could help or we could be a blessing to somebody, then we can do it.
That's number one.
So when we know we can do it, then we could plan how to do it.
And that's why in my book, I have the section on planning and I also have the section on action.
(22:21):
And there's a Bible verse that says, show me your faith without action, I'll show you my own by my action.
We have to be able to plan and back our plans up with action.
Number three principle in my book is planning.
Number two is action.
So we need to be able to plan and act at the same time.
Planning, meaning what do I have and how do I want to do it?
(22:43):
Even just a smile could make somebody else's day on some days.
And even complimenting people, there are just so many things we could do that doesn't even need money.
Being genuinely listening, that's one thing that is lacking in our world today.
Most of us are in a hurry to talk.
When somebody is saying something, we're already formulating in our mind what we want to say next, which is okay in some situation.
(23:07):
But there are situations where all we just need to do is sit down, listen, and be genuinely interested in the people we are listening to.
So those are things that we could do.
Of course, it will take time.
So if you don't have money to give, you might be able to give time.
If you don't have money, you don't have time, you might be able to give a smile.
So there's something you can do every day to be a blessing to the people around you.
(23:32):
It could be your family members.
It could be your colleagues at work.
It could be co-students.
It could be your patients or your clients, people you see every single day.
There's definitely something you can give to genuinely serve them and have the genuine heart to go out to be a blessing to them.
So I would say those little things matter.
(23:55):
But if you have money, of course, all of us have something.
You know, somebody might have a million, somebody might have ten dollars, but definitely we all have something.
You could also use a little bit.
God is not expecting you to give what you don't have.
It's out of what you have that you can give.
Decide what you can give out of what you have and give it to be a blessing to others.
(24:17):
We can do something.
We just need to be extremely creative and come up with creative solutions to help people that are around us.
As I've mentioned, your book is titled Adapt and Advance, a faith-based step-by-step guide to turning trials into triumph.
Have there been people that have had the opportunity to read it that have come back to you and said, this is something that has changed the way I look at life and this is going to change my direction?
(24:44):
Definitely, definitely.
Yeah, currently we have over 200 reviews on Amazon and Goodreads right now.
And, you know, whenever I have some time, you know, I just go through some of those reviews and at times they move me to tears hearing what people are saying on how much the book has been a blessing to them.
You know, people who said they began to do some part of the book, people said the book really resonated with them and it tells them there's a hope for them despite whatever they are going through right now.
(25:15):
So there are very many examples there.
So check it out, go on Amazon, just play around the reviews there and, you know, that gives you an idea of what the book has to offer and how much the book can be a blessing to other people.
And I imagine we need to recognise that while we may not be going through a trial at the moment, there will always be trials that will come up in our lives.
(25:40):
And if we haven't experienced a serious trial so far, we are going to at some stage.
So I imagine the book is not just for those who are going through their own suffering, their own struggles, but it is for all of us to know what to do when those trials come.
So this would be a book that would be helpful for whoever we are.
(26:01):
Definitely.
In fact, I wrote in the book that it's not like everybody has to experience something as difficult as I did, like losing both parents, most people would not, but it's just a general book about life that gives us the principles that help us to deal with day-to-day challenges.
Personally, I use the principles in the book every single day.
(26:22):
I use my plan to negotiate everything that comes my way.
On a scale of let's say one to a hundred, some challenges might be heavy.
Let's say a hundred is the worst thing that can happen to anybody.
Some things might be 10, some things might be five.
All of us go through things.
I tell people, I wish I could say it was just the loss of my parenting that I experienced, but there are many other challenges not even related to that, that day-to-day things that we all have to deal with.
(26:48):
The book just gives us how to negotiate life, how to see life, both for us and for people around us, to be able to know.
Planning is something we all need generally to go through life.
Reading books, learning from people is all things we all need for life.
Alliance formation, recognizing people that can help you and working with them to help you get to where you're going.
(27:12):
I have the link to the book, Adapt and Advance, in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find it easily.
Well, I want to say thank you so much for sharing some of your story, but also for putting that down into the book and not just talking about what has happened, but what we can do with it.
I'm sure that it's going to continue to help many people.
(27:34):
Thank you so much for your time today on Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.
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