The Values String: A book on Transitional Life, Compelling Fulfillment, and Profound Peace.

By Ukpeme Akpan Okon

Award-winning The Values String is a unique, creative, motivational book on Transitional Life, Compelling Fulfillment, and Profound Peace.

This book establishes the nexus among transformation, resilience, fulfillment, and peace. It also highlights mental health issues, refraining from stigmatization of persons, and encouraging persons to seek help.

The author's creativity is showcased through self—composed songs, which align with some sections in the book. This book introduces a self—mastery and betterment method created by the author, known as The Values String.

Readers of The Values String are certain to understand how mindfulness can foster transformation, fulfillment, and peace.

Through the author’s composed songs, one can experience the ability to sing to, through, and out of any circumstance.

One value is a gemstone. Envisage owning several values and stringing them...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ukpeme Akpan Okon
• Release date: Dec 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463400494

Ukpeme Akpan Okon

Ukpeme Akpan Okon is a lawyer, arbitrator, adjudicator, mediator, speaker, trainer, mentor, and Ambassador for Peace. Ukpeme is the Founder, a Trustee, and the President of Guild of Adjudicators in Nigeria (GAIN). She believes that the complexities of the world, and challenges encountered by individuals can be surmounted. Ukpeme is the Author of award-winning The Values String: A book on Transitional Life, Compelling Fulfillment, and Profound Peace. A Lawyer, Arbitrator, Adjudicator, Mediator, Speaker, Trainer, Peace Life Coach and Ambassador for Peace, she believes that the complexities of the world, and challenges encountered by individuals can be surmounted. Her areas of core competence are in Peacebuilding, Adjudication, Mediation, Arbitration, Corporate Legal Practice, Intellectual Property, Women and Children's Rights Advocacy, Public Speaking /Motivational Speeches, Global Partnership for Development, and Capacity Building. She is the Founder of Guild of Adjudicators in Nigeria (GAIN), and the Pioneer Coordinator of Justice, Development and Peace Commission of the Catholic Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles, Abuja. She has held other leadership positions. Ukpeme is a member of Women, Peace and Security Network. She is a former Assistant General Secretary of International Federation of Women Lawyers, Abuja Branch. She has served on the Zero Draft sub-committee of Non—Governmental Organization / United Nations Convention on the Status of Women. Ukpeme is a past Secretary of the Abuja Chapter — Nigeria Branch of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and was one of the 5 signatories to an application to establish the Abuja Chapter. She is a member of other organizations. Ukpeme was awarded the title "Ambassador for Peace" by the Universal Peace Federation. A resource person, with papers and presentations to her credit, she has served as Rapporteur on various assignments, and was a panelist at a High Level event of the United Nations General Assembly. Ukpeme is an awardee and desirous of leaving a legacy of peace, time consciousness, organizational excellence, team work and meritorious leadership. These are qualities she exhibited from ten years of age. After successfully acting as a mediator in a protracted difficult situation, she was referred to as "Peace Maker." This, and other related circumstances led to her determination to help people lead peaceful, transformational, fulfilled lives. Ukpeme has been writing since her childhood. She recalls writing instructional notes as a child, and still has those writings. She has held leadership positions since her teenage years, until now. A Rotarian, Ukpeme takes pleasure in peacebuilding, good music, mental wellness, culinary art, life coaching, nature, dancing, traveling, and volunteering.

Book preview

Immense thanksgiving to The Almighty, the Giver of Life, Good Health, and Peace.

Thanks to Aniekan, my husband and great inspirer; Eno Grace Nta, outstanding professor; Uwem David Akpan; Honorable Justice Peter Oyin Affen; Amina Suzanah Agbaje; Margaret-Mary Ben Okoko; Ozioma Izuora; Isaiah Bozimo; Glory Uzoamaka Ohagwu; Jitau Mshelia Atiwurcha; and Mirabel Edozie.

Copious gratitude to my marvelous parents—Nsuhoridem Akpan and Sylvia Akpan, and my supportive siblings—Anietie, Iquo, Ini-Odu, Odiong, for instilling good values in me.

Great lessons I learned from my children, Angela and Idara: you can achieve what you desire, if you create time for your goals. No need for excuses. I am thankful for you. I thank you.

To my ingenious brother, Odiong Akpan, whose photographs were used in this book, I write thank you.

Thank you to Ndidi Onyezili and Tina Ochelle, for assisting with conducting the surveys reflected in this work.

Writing of encouragement, I am grateful to my in-laws. I appreciate my entire family, my teachers, my preachers, my physicians, my reliable friends, and well-wishers. I acknowledge the survey respondents for their participation.

FOREWORD

The possibility of my writing this foreword was suggested sometime in April. I felt obliged to accept even though I had not seen the book. I was intrigued and excited. You see, I had read Ukpeme’s scribblings from childhood when she was a Brownie and watched her expand the ability to use words and develop an amazing vocabulary to make her a champion at Scrabble and a formidable public speaker within the Toastmasters International. By June, when the book got to me, I was grieving over the loss of my mother and therefore was tempted to jettison the whole idea. But I am glad that I did not. Why? I needed to touch base with myself and The Values String: A Book on Transitional Life, Compelling Fulfillment, and Profound Peace helped me to achieve that.

How do you handle crisis? What is your usual reaction to failure — in school, a marriage, a nonconformist child, or inability to keep a job? For many, it is a blame game — the society, a friend, or family. What do we do? We keep malice, refuse to trust anyone, and as an extreme reaction, withdraw from society. But Ukpeme Akpan Okon says, No. She invites us to look into self and dredge out the strength within as we work through The Values String: A Book on Transitional Life, Compelling Fulfillment, and Profound Peace, a didactic book that adopts a self-discovery model.

The book is a slim volume in ten sections. The author’s unique flair for humor comes in the section headings, the unusual collocates she sets up, the memorable songs that close sections one, two, three, four, and nine; and the picture splash that led us to identify our values. In section nine, we find the answers to the puzzles embedded in sections one to four as we are given the practical application to the frames we had encountered in those sections.

The Values String: A Book on Transitional Life, Compelling Fulfillment, and Profound Peace opens with a series of questions in the preamble to