Education

 

The importance of education can not be overstated. Educating yourself helps to sharpen your mind and academic qualification showcase your intelligence. This doesn't mean that people who don't have qualifications are unintelligent, on the contrary, there are many highly intelligent people who haven't graduated from high school.  However, without qualifications, it is difficult for these people to prove how intelligent they are. Qualifications serve as evidence and proof of what our minds are capable of. Unfortunately, people from less affluent backgrounds are less likely to go to university than their counterparts who grew up in more affluent areas. At Street Diamondz, we are dedicated to helping people from deprived areas to receive a formal education.

Anger

According to the NHS website, 'Anger is a normal, healthy emotion'. It's normal to get angry if someone treats you or someone that you love badly. Problems arise when we don't have the ability to control our anger and when we get angry over trivial things. People have anger issues for a variety of reasons. A lot of times it stems from things that happened in their childhood such as physical abuse, emotional abuse, abandonment and neglect. Some parents beat their children as a form of discipline not realising that the beatings may cause long term emotional issues for their child. Pit bull terrier dogs have been banned in the United Kingdom under the Dangerous Dogs Act after a number of violent incidents involving these dogs. Pit bulls are not inherently violent, most of the dogs involved in violent incidents were trained to be aggressive through beatings and abuse. Likewise, if a child is constantly beaten, there is a strong chance that the child will resort to violence when he or she is older. 

People who experience abuse as children won't all necessarily grow up to be violent adults, but there is a good possibility that they will have emotional issues if they do not deal with the trauma that they experienced as children. If a person is struggling with any anger issues they can refer themselves to a therapist through the NHS website. Alternatively, they can speak to their GP who can make the referral on their behalf. It's important for them to get help because if their condition goes untreated they may find themselves doing something that they later regret. 

Positive Thinking

We need to control our thoughts because negative thoughts have the power to make us feel depressed and miserable. Once we realise that there isn't anything that we can do to change a situation, we should actively try to stop thinking about the issue by filling our minds with thoughts of other things. In an interview that he did whilst in prison, Tupac Shakur said that he listened to different types of music to calm his soul and that music helped him to get through his time in prison. I agree that music is a great way to clear the mind of negative thoughts because when we recite the words to an uplifting song we are pushing negative words out of ours minds and replacing them with positive words. Any time the negative thoughts try to creep back in, we need to push them out by saying something positive. 

Our thoughts control our emotions, so in order to keep our emotions in check, we need to think about positive things. If you are feeling negative, I encourage you to think about the great plans that you have for their life and how you are going to implement them. Think about your talents and abilities and how they can use them to help other people. If possible, I suggest that you surround yourself with positive people who encourage and motivate you. I recommend that you spend time reading and learning new things. All of these things help you to feel more optimistic, and instead of looking at the glass as half empty, you will see it as half full. 

The Love of Money

When I was around 14 years old, my younger sister and I were heading with my friend and her father to her high-rise flat in Kilburn. When we got to the main entrance we saw a pool of blood on the floor. "I wonder what happened there?" Her father said in his strong Scottish accent. We started to get more concerned after seeing more blood in the lift. My heart was pounding as we got out of the lift and saw the trail of blood leading right to the door of my friend's apartment. As I had my younger sister with me, my friend and her father asked us to wait outside their door while they went inside to see what had happened. My friend came out a few minutes later, white as a ghost and told us that her mum had been attacked. Apparently some boys had mugged her mother, brutally injuring her in the process. There was only a small amount of money in her bag and she hadn't resisted so nobody could understand why they had harmed her. 

Prior to that incident I had met boys in the area who had been arrested for mugging ladies. Concerned that they might do something like that again I tried to dissuade them from that kind of activity. "How would you feel if someone did something like that to your mother?" I had asked. They went on to tell me people who rob ladies normally target rich people so it's unlikely that anything like that would happen to their mothers. My friend's mother is from Columbia and is of mixed heritage so I suspect her attackers assumed that she had a lot of money because of her appearance. She is a sweet, harmless lady who is less than 5 feet tall so I am baffled as to why they injured her so badly. 

Timothy 6:10

Money in itself isn't evil but the love of money definitely is. The barbaric way in which my friend's mother was attacked makes me believe that her attackers were driven by an evil desire for wealth. Their lust for money hardened their hearts making them cold-blooded and merciless. When mentoring people from impoverished backgrounds we need to stop them from idolizing money by helping them to focus on spiritual values instead. We need to help them to understand that who they are inside is more important than what they possess.  There are numerous wealthy individuals who have committed suicide making it clear that money doesn't guarantee happiness.