A little girl in Boston went home one day and asked her Nigerian mother if she could change her name to Zoe.
Nobody at school could say Uzoamaka.
Her mother was cooking. She didn't even turn around.
"If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky, Michelangelo, and Dostoyevsky, they can learn to say Uzoamaka."
That girl kept her name.
Then she went to Hollywood and won three Emmy Awards.
And now the whole world knows exactly how to say Uzoamaka Aduba.
Your name is not a burden. It's a prophecy.
As part of our buildup to the 2026 World Cup, we are publishing excerpted chapters from The Soccer 100, @TheAthleticFC's definitive book on the 100 greatest players of all time, courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.
The 10 players we are featuring are the highest-ranked World Cup winners of our 100.
Today, in our final extract, we look at a player who lifted football’s most coveted trophy late in his career — but it was worth the wait.
@OliverKay on Lionel Messi: https://t.co/oZ2n4StQhn
A framework is just a way of seeing.
It is a lens you put on a situation, so you are not starting from scratch every single time something happens to you. Instead of asking “what do I do now?” you are asking “which of my frameworks applies here?”
Think about how a doctor walks into a room. A patient describes symptoms, and the doctor is not panicking or guessing. They already have a framework. They run through it and land on an answer in a calm, competent, confident, and speedy way that is only possible with a structure.
Now imagine having that for your career, for difficult conversations, for self-doubt, for setbacks, etc.
That is what this means.
When you frame everything, you stop being at the mercy of your emotions in the moment. You have already thought about this. You already know what the move is.
Most people are improvising their entire lives. Every hard moment catches them off guard, every decision feels like a huge burden because there is no structure underneath it.
The person who frames everything is never fully surprised. They have philosophies, principles, and mental shortcuts built through deep reflection on life before it overwhelms them.
Your life changes when you start operating from a system.
We got a particular breed of cockroach back then, they don’t grow big. Very tiny but very resilient to insecticides. They even entered our fridge. So we started bagging all our food including vegetables. Always clean up immediately we are done cooking. They died out
Chamo isso de Dilema do Cadeado: se Deus me protege e me ama, por que trancar o portão? Por que vidro blindado no papamóvel? Eu não estaria desconfiando de Deus ao me proteger? Há uma resposta simples e outra complexa sobre isso.
A simples está na Escritura: Não tentarás o Senhor teu Deus. Quando você percebe a possibilidade de perigo e mesmo assim a ignora sem motivo apenas para provocar a proteção divina, você cai na tentação que o diabo apresentou a Cristo, de se jogar do templo para que os anjos o segurassem. E Cristo responde: "Não tentarás o teu Deus".
A complexa está no final do comentário aos analíticos posteriores de Aristóteles feito por São Tomás de Aquino: quem abdica da razão perde o direito à boa providência. Se Deus te dá uma faculdade, é para que você a exerça. Se sua razão consegue conceber a possibilidade real de perigo, então está nas suas mãos te proteger quanto a isso. Se você abdica da razão, abdica do dom de Deus, e portanto de sua proteção. Mas que proteção, já que me protejo?
A proteção quanto às coisas que você não pode lidar. Por isso Paulo diz que Deus não permite tentações que não podemos vencer, ou seja, permitindo as que podemos vencer, pois estamos aqui para agir; mas quanto àquelas coisas que não podemos controlar ou até mesmo perceber, é aí que a providência de Deus sempre nos custodia conforme seus desígnios, e isto se usarmos nossa razão para nos protegermos daquilo que conseguimos conceber.
Resumindo: tranque seu portão.
Layi reminds me of the HR Director in ExxonMobil that year. He finished with 2.2 but omo, the man brain dey spark fire. He is super intelligent.
The day UNIUYO invited him to speak at their event, na so so clap and standing ovation dem give am.
ExxonMobil takes 2.2 just so you know.
Go to https://t.co/XqZ2Ofz9Sc , check for available vacancies and apply for a job in Exxonmobil anywhere in the world.
Worked for 7years in ExxonMobil Nigeria and my life changed forever!
Watching a video of an African founder talking about his humble beginnings without electricity and water and I remembered the book, The Unfair Advantage talking about Evan Spiegel the founder of SNAP (Net worth $2.6B) who didn’t come from poverty and was very comfortable.
"Millionaires don't use astrology; billionaires do" - JP Morgan.
"There is no Atheist at 50x leverage."
That last famous quote above also applies to billionaires and the massive bets they make.
Someone just asked me if billionaires also pray after seeing the latest picture of Otedola and Rabiu. I told him that I know Adenuga is always praying with his catholic rosary. Some of the most superstitious people I know are very wealthy.
What do men want?
When I was in my 20s, I was a different type of young man. Others were drinking beer and chasing girls, but I was building a business and not drinking, but still chasing girls.
As I grew older and became more stable in my career, I wanted a family. However, I went through many failed relationships before finally realizing that it wasn't about them, but about me. I looked inward and changed myself to a more patient, more generous, and less impulsive person.
I also found religion again, and it made all the difference. I got the best life partner I could have ever imagined. A blessing. It was given to me by the grace of God. I didn't create it. I learned a great deal from that process about what is truly important in life and how to achieve it.
We believe too much that everything we do is why we get what we want and that we deserve it. The best things you have today are likely things you didn't deserve but got anyway. We should not become conceited or arrogant as it could have been much worse.
Grace isn't about NOT hustling and waiting for miracles, but knowing that even while hustling, you could be a tool for blessing others while you are being blessed. I discovered that doing good to others in relationships and avoiding a transactional approach compounds blessings.
I was having a conversation with my cousin in his mid-30s this morning about career and settling down to build a family and realized that it wasn't going to be about anything he did right but about what God determined was right.
A good friend who had ticked all the right boxes in her life, got a first class degree and a PhD before 24, called me three days to her wedding and wanted me to tell her something to make her know if she was right about going forward. I sent her Psalm 127 v 1.
“Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain”
This post wasn't meant to be all religious and “preachy” but it is International Men’s Day and I believe that what makes you a man is Grace and not bravado or hype. Real men pray and do good things. They are also blessed abundantly when they are blessings to others. Help a fellow human today.
Seriously, get married and have a dual income household on time. The longer you postpone this, the harder it is to compound the benefits. It is the greatest middle-class hack to wealth. Forget all the stupid gender extremism here. Fall in love, get married, build together.