Wash Your Face: No matter how dark the night is, the sun will rise tomorrow

By Tonny Rutakirwa and Molly Besigye

Everyone always has a reason to rejoice, unless you are gone. There will still be reasons to rejoice regardless of what's on Wall Street or on the local stock exchange. Some people rejoice because it is a chance once in a lifetime to get a slice of Citicorp or Merrill Lynch and others to be alive! You will see good days come back if you are alive.

The Americans saw the Great Depression in the 1930s and look at the prosperity of the Americans long after that. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese people died during the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, and Tangshan today is full of life and events. Many years ago, when Singapore constructed its first flyover, and it collapsed, it was told that the contractor arranged a big dinner to persuade everyone involved in the project to pick up and move on. We need such a mindset, mental capacity and strength to solve problems and difficulties.

Only if we assume it's the end, is it really the end. On the contrary, if we can gather the power to govern one's life, negate the deadly effects of pessimism, the decision we take at the time, will forever live with us and will grow into a giant tree of great strength like a small mustard seed.

Returns are not mistaking but difficulties and experiences. Closed doors are not sackcloth’s but road signs that point somewhere else to an open door. At the rainbow end, there will always be a pot of gold and a silver match for any dark cloud.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781716407338

Tonny Rutakirwa

Tonny Rutakirwa is an author of 22 books on entrepreneurship, talent growth and children stories, and a conscientious entrepreneur growing a multi - sectoral multinational out of London, United Kingdom. He is the Chairman of Tonniez Group Holdings, which he founded in East Africa on 28th December 2008. He is also Corporate Affairs Director, Europe for Kizito Group of Companies where he oversees all public engagements for the company there. He has traveled widely in Africa, Asia, and Europe. A mentor, he has spoken at large public fora intended to spring young people into their various destinies. His private group of companies is growing a chain of 28 businesses and 588 co-brands in Europe, United States, Africa and Asia with plans to grow a Fortune 500 company to all parts of the world in 10 years. He strongly believes that science is the work of knowledge but art is the work of wisdom.

Book preview

FOREWORD

In life, each one of us goes through a journey of ups and downs. When we are in the hills, we feel good and want to keep up there. But when we descend the valleys, we tend to feel and look sad. However, we should know that the God in the valley is the same God on the hill. Therefore, we need to exercise some level of resilience at those low moments and face the world’s realities with a positive mind.

‘WASH YOUR FACE’ depicts a true situation when you need to forget the pains/ hurts/ challenges/ mistakes of yesterday, wake up and face a new day with fortitude. This characteristic will enable you to go many miles in life towards achieving success and emerging triumphantly.

There is no one who can best write about this topic other than the author himself. Throughout his life, he has been very creative, ambitious, wants to stand out from the crowd and make a huge difference. From a tender age, he embarked on a journey of authorship and entrepreneurship. Given the fact that he was still in school and young, he had limited experience and no definite mentorship. As a result, he made several mistakes. Many voices, including mine, discouraged him, but he never gave up his passion and dreams. Now I realize you cannot suppress someone’s dream or talent for long. He has been able to overcome many hurdles, and I have complete faith that he is on track.

Personally, I have had challenges in my life’s journey. However, light comes at every dawn, and hope prevails. Whenever I hit the valley, it increases faith in my creator, and prayer becomes my portion as I put my whole effort into making things better. In such moments my family and close friends are my support and guide. What looked like the darkest moment turns out to be a protracted light.

To all of you esteemed readers, I encourage you to read every page and every chapter of this book. You will definitely be a better person emotionally, economically, spiritually, and physically than you were yesterday.

Molly Nyemera Besigye,

Kampala, Uganda.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1

What is a Challenge?

Understanding Challenging Behaviour in Schools

Overcome These Challenges and Manifest Wealth & Inner Peace.

How to Conquer the Challenges of Life

Chapter 2

Challenges and Obstacles Are All a Necessary Part of Any Success Journey

Life Perspective - 7 Master Steps to Overcoming Challenges and Choosing Perspective

Overcome Procrastination and Get Motivated

It’s Time to Get Up and Move On

Success: A Challenge

Chapter 3

The Mindset of Defeat?

What is Defeating Your Business?

Embrace Your Defeats, For They Are Your Greatest Opportunities

What to Do After You’ve Lost the Big One.

How to Accept Defeat Gracefully?

How to Overcome Defeat and Rely on Yourself to Make a Comeback

Chapter 4

What is Failure?

Failure as a Welcome Friend

When You Try and Fail in Your Career, What’s Next?

10 Lessons Successful People Learned from Failure

The Importance of Learning from Failure

Self-Defeating Species

Chapter 5

What to Do When You Fail in Life

The Importance of Failure in Life and How to Learn from Your Mistakes

5 Reasons Why Failure Is Important in Life

Is Fear of Failure Limiting You?

3 Powerful Beliefs That Will Get You Past Failure

Coping with Failure

Chapter 6

What is Success and How to Achieve It?

The downside to Success and Intelligence - You Can Outsmart Yourself

The Five Steps to Effective and Successful Outsourcing

The Downside of Success and How to Keep Improving

The Downside of Success

Is the Success Fear Holding You Back?

Chapter 7

Embrace Everything Endurable

5 Smart Tips for Building Endurance With Less Pain

Do You Endure Life or You Possess It?

Persecution and Faith in Everyday Life

Chapter 8

How to Overcome Self Doubt?

5 Ways Overcome Fear and Improve Confidence

How to Overcome Your Psychological Complex?

Overcome Anxiety Tips Without Medication

Chapter 9

Do You Really Have Persistence?

Persistence - The Key to Failure?

Persistence Always Wins

How to Reach Your Goals and Stay Persistent?

CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

Everyone always has a reason to rejoice unless you are gone. There will still be reasons to rejoice regardless of what’s on Wall Street or on the local stock exchange. Some people rejoice because it is a chance once in a lifetime to get a slice of Citicorp or Merrill Lynch and others to be alive! You will see good days come back if you are alive.

The Americans saw the Great Depression in the 1930s and look at the prosperity of the Americans long after that. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese people died during the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, and Tangshan today is full of life and events. Many years ago, when Singapore constructed its first flyover, and it collapsed, it was told that the contractor arranged a big dinner to persuade everyone involved in the project to pick up and move on. We need such a mindset, mental capacity, and strength to solve problems and difficulties.

Only if we assume it’s the end is it really the end. On the contrary, if we can gather the power to govern one’s life, negate the deadly effects of pessimism, the decision we take at the time will forever live with us and will grow into a giant tree of great strength like a small mustard seed.

Returns are not mistakes, but difficulties and experiences. Closed doors are not sack cloths but road signs that point somewhere else to an open door. At the rainbow end, there will always be a pot of gold and a silver match for any dark cloud.

CHAPTER

1

What is a Challenge?

Challenge. After hearing the word, one imagines scenes of battles that are won after a powerful war, of a team that overcomes all others on their way to the championship, the hero that overcomes all odds to save the day. Although many challenges exist, the common conception is that a ‘challenge’ is a black-and-white match, a win-or-lose match. To conquer the challenge brings victory and achievement.

Consider a classic example of a challenge for most cultures and civilizations to enjoy sports. Throughout history, people have fought with each other to decide who is the fastest, most assertive, or most talented. At the end of the contest, a person or team is recognized as the strongest. They conquered all obstacles, and now at least until the next time, they’re better than anyone else. All the others failed in this definition: they lost the game, they let down, and they’re waiting until next time to try again.

The challenge is seen in a totally different way in the field of team building. It’s not black and white, win or lose, success or failure. The challenge is instead seen as an ongoing process of development, learning, and understanding.

According to this principle, a challenge faced by a group of participants has not been seen as a cut-off barrier that must be achieved successfully to achieve victory. Instead, the challenge is actually an instrument for collaboration, cooperation, and problem-solving processes for participants.

Group dynamics theory is a crucial factor in assessing a group’s real performance in achieving its goals. In this theory, groups undergo a series of five stages – development, storming, normalization, execution, and transformation. When a group faces a problem or obstacle, the facilitator may help decide the issues faced by the group and which challenges can help the group to understand, resolve and solve them. At the same time, these groups ideally have progressed to a higher community dynamic.

Where conventional tasks illustrate the win-win mentality towards the goal(s), team building facilitators consider this attitude to be superficial and without learning. To use a typical example, at least at one point, some of the biggest teams in sports did not fit together and were operating in a low group dynamic. From the new viewpoint of challenge, what makes these teams so great is that they succeeded not because they solved their problems. Rather the greatness lies in their ability to overcome and correct their adversities. Through this method, they have been able to learn how to work well together. The critical lesson is not that they succeeded but that they have been through a better process and experience.

Understanding Challenging Behaviour in Schools

The challenge of behaviour affects educators at all levels of education more and more. In the world today, children come to school with increased tension and confusion in their lives. Going to school with anxieties, a history of bad early years, and family issues, they carry a wide range of behaviours, which can disturb the learning atmosphere for themselves and others. There are attempts being made to develop and maintain classroom, school, and system strategies to minimize the prevalence and intensity of behavioural problems in schools. The first step towards effective school policies and associated classroom interventions that minimize behavioural disturbances in schools is a recognition of psychological, social, family, and brain-related factors that lead to challenges. 

It is challenging to describe demanding behaviour. It is not a diagnosis or an exceptional condition of education (although it does require some special requirements for training). Education does not provide a single and consensual description, but the one in the Through handbook is a good point of reference. 

A comportment of this severity, frequency, and length is likely to seriously endanger the physical protection of the individual or others. It may seriously limit access to, and ordinary facilities use cited in the INTO’ Managing Demanding Behaviour.’ 

A range of forms takes challenging behaviour, some of them of low intensity and high intensity. Again, the INTO publicity gives a clear summary of the variety of challenging behaviour found in schools. 

The day-to-day running of the school problems. 

Challenges the right to a safe and orderly workplace for workers and pupils has a length, frequency, severity, or persistence beyond what schools allow is not likely to respond to the normal number of misconduct measures used by the School (INTO). 

From an education point of view, the most important thing to remember is that whatever behaving is called a challenging it is a form of behaviour that is most unlikely to react to the customary techniques used in the classroom and school when our actions as educators do not reduce their frequency or severity if they are sufficient in the first case. 

What triggers action that is challenging?

Challenging behaviour may emerge from a variety of causal factors that include, but are not limited to, infants, adolescents, or adults:

Abuse, chaos, trauma

Senile Dementia

Severe Autism

Huntington’s Disease

Conduct Disorder

Severe/Profound General Learning Disability

Special education conditions

Bi-Polar Disorder, Schizophrenia

ADHD

Traumatic Brain Injury

Socioeconomic Disadvantage

Communication difficulties

Attention-seeking

Dysfunctional family systems

Developmentally inappropriate methodology 

Defiant Opposition Disorder 

Alzheimer’s Disease 

Dysfunctional teachers

Dysfunctional schools

Educational neglect 

Child temperament

Given that the issue of behaviour, it is essential for educators to bear in mind that any action, be it at the level of classroom or school policy, must be adapted to the cause. Interventions for ADHD challenging behaviour, if administered to children with autism, are likely to be detrimental to the infant and contribute to increased issues. For this purpose, a one-size-fits-all method cannot be produced, or a fast fix manual found. Until something is done to establish interventions, it is important to analyze the causal factors, evaluate causal conditions, examine the classroom and the school climate closely, and ensure that the cause and the solution match correctly. 

Issues in recognition of obstacles 

Because the concept of what is challenging does not necessarily exist, a great deal of variance may result in what is perceived to be challenging, by whom it is defined, and by whom it is demonstrated. Any action is linked to a social, environmental, cultural, or historical context. In one sense, what is daunting can be viewed as very natural in another. The contextual essence of human conduct makes it hard to know what is adequate or unacceptable. 

Another problem in deciding whether conduct is challenging or not is that we can’t make it clear whether what we call challenge is a continuum of conduct or a separate activity category. At what point is an action no longer annoying and challenging? Who and how does this judgment? What criterion is this decision based on? In schools, it is well known that a child identified by one teacher as a challenge is viewed by another as the typical young person. All teachers, like all parents and adults, have varying degrees of behavioural resistance. We have to be careful before we assume that a child has challenging behaviour. As challenging as it may be, often the problem is inside us, not the kid. 

Researchers continue to tease biological and environmental factors in challenging behaviour. The old question of nature or diet has now indeed been resolved. It is not one nor the other, but both; our essence is nurtured and influences our conduction repertoire to a large extent. However, biological influences make an individual more vulnerable to developmental behaviour. These involve a long family history of mental health issues or crime and disposition. More to be said later on. 

There are also sex-related difficulties in demanding behaviour. In the West, girls are socialized differently from boys, as in the majority of countries. Right from the beginning, men are more aggressively played than females, encouraged to be more active, and have behavioural habits that are tolerated differently when they happen than when they occur in women. The research appears to suggest that only one factor is responsible for the disparity between fathers and mothers in the extent to which parent children invest in their children. Fathers prefer to play with children more vigorously than moms and play with their male children more vigorously than the female. The research appears to suggest that the male sex hormone plays a part in boys’ violent behaviour. There is not a definitive solution to some of these gender problems. 

Ethical concerns will often lift their heads when seeking to implement interventions, services, and policies for vulnerable children. What kind of action is appropriate? What is the function of the penalty? Are punishments adequate? What habits can we try to alter, and how much the child will pay if we change them effectively. Children living in their neighbourhoods in a violent and hostile atmosphere will pay the price if their aggressive responses are completely removed at school. There are some survival factors that need to be taken into consideration as we start to alter children’s behaviour. I am not advocating for the tolerance of violence in schools but instead trying to raise questions of ethics that include focusing on individual actions rather than on behaviour and school systems. 

Challenging action prospects 

The response to challenging behaviour is informed by the behavioural perspective. The behavioural viewpoint suggests that all action is learned and improved. Positive enhancement increases the frequency of the conduct, retribution, or negative enhancement. From a behavioural point of view, a human being is a collection of external responses. A cognitive-behavioural perspective focuses on perception. We behave according to our way of thought, visualizing, or imagining. From the point of view, the human being is more than a number of responses to stimuli, but an aware being who makes decisions sees the world in certain ways and acts in accordance with the rational rules defined in the brain of thought. The psychodynamic viewpoint explains the actions of unconscious conflicts and primal drives the individual is aware of and deep-seated fears or anxieties. From this viewpoint, we are a pledge of our unconscious minds, powered beyond our consciousness by powerful powers. 

From those described above, a new paradigm emerges from an alternate viewpoint. It can be named under several names but is better understood as a bio psychosis. This model is holistic since it conceives man of biological, psychological, and social influences with equal impact on behaviour. The human brain is affected by genetic and environmental events and influences this perception of behaviour, and the resulting organization of the brain causes behaviour. 

Whether we know it or not, each teacher has one of these views on the actions of children. Our experiences become our interpretation, and our comprehension forms our replies. The more we become aware of our knowledge, the more we can change it, the greater the potential to build new understandings and solutions.

The biopsychosocial outlook 

Bio-psycho-social behaviour stems from brain development and environmental, genetic, family health, social, parenthood and hundreds, if not thousands, of various causes. The human brain is at the centre of this viewpoint. In the last ten years alone, many things have been discovered about brain function, but it is too early to generalize this knowledge and build educational solutions. A look at some of the important stuff will help us to understand what’s happening under the bonnet. 

Every child is born with a wonderful disposition. This is the biological basis of personality, mainly inherited. Temperament is given and remains relatively constant throughout the entire life cycle. The habits we display over time change, and some can be eliminated to live a more functional life, but a person’s disposition does not change much. Several temperamental factors were defined by psychologists: 

Activity level the child is usually involved. 

Degree of distractibility/concentration if not involved 

Intensity-how strong is the child. 

Regularity-predictability of appetite and sleep functions 

Sensory response threshold to physical stimuli 

Characteristic approach/withdrawal response to the new situation/person 

How the child adapts quickly to transitions/new activities? 

persistence, incapacity to give up 

The tendency to respond positively/negatively to work 

Each of these characteristics appears in a continuum. A child can be born in the middle of one or all these babies or be born at the far end of the spectrum. All these features of temperament have meaning and can all be neutral, positive, or negative. Any parent with over one child increasingly understands their children’s different temperaments and eventually understands how different characters translate into various parenting styles. Simply put, some kids are quicker to get back than others, and this is a cause of disposition. Much as children’s temperamental qualities can be easy or hard to train, so they are more or less easy to teach. This is nature, and this is the natural disposition of the children that allows us to develop environments that