by Oto | Mar 16, 2026 | Branding, Personal, Personal Development
I have always lived with this tension between honesty and performance. To an extent, we all do.
I don't know exactly when it started, but it has always been there subconsciously, colouring my work and my lived experience. I think it comes from my experience growing up in the church environment, as the first born son of pastors.
There was a lot that was great about that and I wouldn't change it for anything. The community, the camaraderie with friends at Youth Group. But there is an insidious side effect that I've had to wrestle for years. That tension between honesty and performance.
But it's not just church, it is everything - society, school, work, culture. There are the unspoken rules, the expectations, the structures. The systems that punish you for stepping out of line, for daring to be different, to be you.
The Nigerian cultural context I grew up in was one that emphasised a deference to authority, a respect for elders, a sometimes hyper-conservatism.
So I learned to perform. I learned to fear being seen.
I learned to act a certain way to get along, get approving smiles and nods. I shared enough to seem open, but not the dangerous truth, the one that could get me in trouble. I desperately tried to be who I thought I should be. Who they want me to be.
I wore masks hoping that one day they would become my face.
…
I started blogging about 16 years ago. Fresh out of college, burnt out from a lifetime of trying to perform and conform to expectations that were literally killing me - I was depressed and suicidal - I was finally learning to radically accept myself, to break the rules. To embrace my sincerity and truth, wherever it might lead me. I had rebelled against this perpetual pressure to perform, and I was drunk on the freedom of saying exactly what I thought.
I wrote about life, and philosophy, and ways of being. It was a raw freeform exploration of ideas, sometimes universal, sometimes personal, sometimes taboo. I wanted to discover and document.
Who I was. What the meaning of life was. How I should live.
I have always loved self-help. There is definitely a through-line from preachers to motivational speakers. So, naturally I gravitated towards writing that sort of content. And I thoroughly enjoyed writing about that. I was learning, applying and sharing.
Even though I started with a raw honest voice, the need for performance crept back in, this time wearing secular clothes.
I wanted to sound credible. I wanted to grow. I hoped to become a name in the space. So I muted my voice, I conformed. I wrote like 2017 Medium (it was 2017 and Medium was all the rage). I wrote in numbered lists, with the motivational closings, in a voice that made it seem like I had it all figured out.
I lost the spark that made me unique.
And soon, I burnt out, running out of things to say, feeling trapped by this narrow niche I had chosen for myself.
In my work, the same tension exists. There is the work I think they would like. The design they have conditioned me to make. The one they usually emphatically accept. And then there's the work I want to do, the things that call to me. The level of design I want to make, the concepts I want to explore. The ones they usually reject, the ones they don't understand.
So over and over, I am pulled between both poles. I create from a place of honesty, then retreat to the safety of conformity.
…
There is something I always say to my friends (more a reminder to myself) - 'be yourself, and your people will find you'. It is always easier said than done.
The core of my writing and thinking is about knowing yourself and being yourself. How to create a life that is true to you, how to live intentionally, how to create a life by design.
How to become fully yourself when the world - family, friends, society, culture, the church, the business world, the creative industry, the social media algorithms - keeps offering you masks that almost fit.
The core of my work is helping clients understand themselves, understand what they are really trying to do with their brands and helping them express that truth - in identity, in web environments, in content.
How to create a brand identity that resonates with themselves as founders and with their customers.
I have always kept these two things separate. Writing on life and the process of becoming, on one platform and branding and design on another. But they are all really about the same thing - discovery of a core truth and the courage to express it.
Understanding yourself, expressing yourself. Understanding your brand, and expressing it. Honestly, boldly. A person is only as authentic and magnetic as the extent to which they live their truth. A brand is only as authentic and compelling as the extent to which it embraces and delivers on its truth.
Whenever we get stuck in performance over creative honesty, we deny our lives and our work the richness of the fullness of our being. This tension, this cycle of creative honesty and retreat, has made me brilliant sometimes and meh other times. It has helped me create many remarkable things that never saw the light of day.
I'm kind of over it.
…
I have a fear of being seen. I think it's because it feels a bit cringe. Also, it does not feel nice to be seen and then misunderstood, or seen and rejected. It is safer to create from truth in private if lucky, but most likely, just in our minds. Our dreams buried in a sea of 'what-ifs'. It is harder to create honestly in public, in the stream of the algorithm.
But I want to create, and I want to succeed doing it, from a place of truth.
To create and share the way I see it, instead of performing towards some external idea of success.
I will allow myself to be seen for better or worse.
I am not hiding anymore.
…
I started this Substack to start afresh on a new platform. To share my writing with an audience, and hopefully as a funnel to my branding studio.
But all I've posted is what I thought I should be posting - things I am learning and working through, but in a voice that is not quite my own. And it has held it back.
So now, I am just going to write… like my life depends on it.
Not how I think I should sound, like a 'professional' studio, or a guru, or an expert. I will write as I think. I'm just a person, living, grinding, creating, trying to figure this thing out.
This is my space to think aloud, about the intersections between life, authenticity, identity, creativity, communication, business, systems, design. It will be a bit messy and chaotic sometimes, highly structured and precise other times. It will be profoundly deep sometimes and profoundly dumb (in the dad joke kinda way). It will be about anything and everything. It will be me.
I'll write about my experiences in business, about my clients and what I am learning from them, about philosophy and concepts I am pondering. I'll write about Jujutsu Kaisen if it's the burning thing on my mind when I sit to write.
Maybe that will make me seem less professional, or all over the place. I doubt that though. We'll see.
It's been 16 years of thinking and creating, designing my life, helping others design theirs. I am not where I want to be yet. I am not an expert, not an authority. I am a very keen student, a practitioner, an operator, a seeker, and I have some things to say.
So, if you are out there, like me - cooking, striving, somewhere between the life you are in and the one you want. If you are on the journey to being and creating something that feels authentic to you, this is a space for you.
Let's walk, think and create together.
by Oto | Jul 2, 2025 | Inspiration, Musings, Personal, Personal Development, Spirituality, Uncategorized
The magic you’re looking for is in the work you are avoiding - Joseph Campbell.
I have been thinking quite a bit about caves in narratives.
I recently rewatched ‘Dracula Untold’, a movie where the protagonist, Vladmir has to venture into a dark mountain and confront the Master Vampire to obtain power to protect his kingdom and family. I also think of the cave Luke Skywalker had to enter in ‘Empire Strikes Back’ to confront his dark self and emerge with new understanding. The caves of the video game, Elden Ring come to mind as well, the dark gauntlets that you as the player must enter into and fight through, until you defeat the boss and return stronger, with a new item, talisman, or weapon to boot.
Many times in life, we have to plunge into the depths, go into the scary places, to wrestle with our demons and fears, so that we can learn, grow, and return stronger.
These unknown depths are the caves we fear to tread, the work we refuse to do.
The doors to our breakthroughs, the paths to the fulfilment of our deepest desires lie in those areas, those tasks, in the work we don’t do, in the caves we refuse to enter.
We have to learn to embrace the difficulty of going into these dark places.
What are these caves?
They are the tasks that linger on our todo lists for years, the things we want to learn but never get around to, the areas of our lives that we know we should get fixed. They are the difficult conversations that need to be had, but which somehow always end up pushed to the side to preserve the peace. They are the important and crucial things we need to do that we avoid, choosing instead to do the more urgent or expedient things.
Why do we do this, how do we end up in this trap time and time again?
We fear what we will find
We do not enter the caves because we are scared of facing the truth. That maybe we are not good enough, that maybe we have messed up, that things are not working. Sometimes its easier to stick our heads in the sand and live in delusion, than really take a hard look at things and truly observe reality.
Sometimes we have let things fester so long, we fear to see what this thing has turned into, how far the cancer of our neglect has metastasised.
We fear our shame
One of the big reasons we do not enter the caves is because of our shame and embarrassment. We know we should have been practicing healthier habits, so we are embarrassed to go for a checkup. We know we should manage our finances better, so we avoid looking at our bank accounts or tracking our expenses. We know we should have been investing in our education, so we avoid looking up schools or applying for courses. We also fear looking bad in front of others, so we avoid our caves, bluster with our strengths and comfort zones, and act like everything is okay.
We fear the work it will take
Conquering our caves requires us to face our issues squarely and do the work to resolve them.
And that work can be intimidating. Facing the emotional struggle and friction in the first place, and then doing the actual work, to learn, to fix, to resolve. It is all hard work. But the good news is that as we tackle our caves, we get better, stronger and more capable and eventually, it becomes a cake walk.
We fear the time it will take
This ties into our fear of shame as well. We are embarrassed that we have waited so long and let things get so bad. We become afraid that fixing things will take even longer. But the time is going to pass anyway. Won’t we rather tackle the caves now and in time conquer them?
Now if these are some reasons why we do not do the things we know we ought to. How then can we counter these issues, face our fears and tackle our caves?
- With courage: There’s no two ways about it. Sometimes we just have to buck up, grit our teeth and get right into it. Into the muck and mess, and work our way through until we solve the issues. We have to trust in our capacity to rise up to the challenge of our situation.
- Embrace failure: Failure is part of the process. We are already in the red, things are already messed up. We have to embrace that things suck, that we have failed presently. But understanding that failure is part of the process, then we can learn what we don’t know and make adjustments until we start to win.
- Tackle one big cave at a time: If you have multiple caves to conquer, multiple issues to resolve, then don’t overwhelm yourself and try tackle all of them at once. Pick one major one issue and stick with it until it is resolved, and then move on to the next one.
- Commit and persist: In all of this, keep this mantra in mind - commit and persist. You have to commit to the task, to the process. You have to commit to doing the work, engaging with the cave, facing the truth, pushing past the fear and taking concrete action. It will be tough, it will be hard but if you persist, if you keep going, eventually you will succeed, you will emerge from the cave stronger and better for it.
by Oto | Oct 14, 2024 | Inspiration, Musings, Personal
Some weeks ago, I was listening to some YouTuber wax on some esoteric concept or the other, and he made an off handed comment on his way to making another more salient point…about how sometimes, we don’t get the things we seek because we want them too much.
That is the paradox of desire. The more desperate you are for a thing, the more you push it away. It is almost like the universe conspires to keep you in a state of desire, so you can never really have the thing you want.
But desire is important, wanting is important. It gives us something to energetically attract. So, it is almost like you have to want it, but not too much. Because wanting it too much, can keep you stuck in the beginning stages of the process, and keep you from taking the necessary steps to get what you want.
You start worrying about getting it perfect, about what others would think, hoping for the glory of already achieving it, instead of doing the work you need to do to get it.
Other times, we build up the thing we want in our minds. We make it a big deal, we put it on a pedestal, and imagine that there is a lot that we have to do, to get ourselves there. That this is some big mountain to climb. And sometimes, it might really be.
But this way of thinking, puts a lot of space between where we are now and the thing that we want. And this (imagined) chasm can be so wide, that we never take the proper steps to get what we want.
But if we collapse the space between, if we hold the things we want as important enough to take concrete steps towards or to seize opportunities as they arise, but not so big and scary that they freeze us in inaction, forever in a state of getting ready, then we will stand a chance of getting what we want, especially the things that have evaded us for so long.
If there is a long standing goal that you have been unable to accomplish, it is perhaps worth it to ask yourself, if you have put too much space between you and this thing. It is possible, that you have imagined this thing as being bigger than it really is. It is possible, that in your desire to get it perfect - because it is so big, you remain stuck doing nothing. It is possible, that in putting this thing on a pedestal, you have imagined this long and arduous journey to get there, whereas, there is a more direct and easier path just waiting to be discovered.
In collapsing the space between us and what we want, we are able to view things in a more objective light, and take the appropriate action, moving resolutely, but holding things loosely and adapting to the results as they come.
by Oto | Nov 14, 2022 | Musings, Personal, Personal Development, Productivity
I stopped trying. Life has never been better.
And that is so fucking weird. I mean, on one level, it feels strange not doing anything, or not having to do anything. Not feeling like I have to run on the treadmill. And it’s not like it is forever. It is at most (at the moment) a month or two. I am blessed to be able to feel like this on so little. But essentially, I’m in that zone.
I’ve stopped trying. As an experiment. As a way of life? As a response to all I’ve been processing lately. And then the universe just provides. Seems unfair. But at the same time, isnt this a welcome breather. It’s been litty for a decade plus. It’s been a lot of pushing, a lot of trying, a lot of striving. For okay results. And now, without trying, things are great.
Maybe it’s not trying per se. Maybe it is giving in to the flow of the universe. Or maybe it is just a great season. Those do happen.
Whatever it is. At this point, I also face the way I feel about work. About the aversion to clients. When you work in this way, you have many bosses. All with their own idiosyncrasies, and traits. It is a creative prostitution, whoring yourself out to whatever is asking.
I think what is needed is a shift to creativity with vision, with a point, or as art. Then what you are doing is inviting the audience into your world, into your philosophy, your vision.
The whole thesis behind not trying, is to say that when you let go, when you learn to surf the flow of the universe, that you can get superior results with less effort. You can be at the right place at the right time. You can exploit the right opportunity.
The art of not trying is not a call to lie by the banks of the river, it is a call to relax into the flow of the currents. Giving in, relaxing into what is happening now and flowing with it, using the energy as appropriate.
And that is the unique distinction. Because you still gotta work. You still gotta create. To not do so will leave you dark and depressed. Stale and frustrated.
If you want to do new things, then do it. If there are parts of you that want to figure out what it would be like to spend a whole day immersed in art, painting and making, then so be it. Give it the space for that to happen. Give the things you feel, space to happen. Sometimes that will happen easily and spontaneously. At other times you might need to actively create the space. However it goes, give it the space for it to happen.
Do nothing, but leave nothing undone.
The Tao does nothing, but leaves nothing undone.
Lao Tzu
Go with the flow.
by Oto | Mar 1, 2022 | Inspiration, Musings, Personal, Personal Development
The world is going to hell in a hand basket.
At least that is what it seems like.
Everyday there is something else going wrong. In the last week, war broke out in Ukraine, and South African artist and icon Riky Rick committed suicide. It is not like war isn’t going on everyday somewhere in the world. And it’s not like people don’t commit suicide every day. But at this time, as a result of media obsession and celebrity, these events stand out and weigh heavy on our collective consciousness.
It was a dark week. In the past few weeks, I’ve had people close to me admit suicidal ideation or attempt. I know what that feels like, I've been there before. And as I write all of this now, I’m realising just how heavy the dark cloud has been the past few days.
And I don’t know what to say or how to help.
I generally try not to feel...too much.
I’m not a robot I know, and I think I am actually a sensitive and emotional person at the core. But I’ve never felt comfortable with it, with feeling. Emotions are powerful, the true definition of compelling. But they are often inaccurate, or counter productive. They are an inescapable part of the human experience. Between the ego, our history, our trauma, our fears and desires, they are always there, pushing and pulling us.
We live through the entire gamut of emotion - joy, pain, sadness, elation, desire, fear, jealousy, love, anger, impatience, anxiety. And if we do not learn to live with and master them, they can rule us. They are strong drives and urges. And with a world and society that seems to exist to prey on and manipulate those drives, we are stuck in a web, a matrix of impulses and results.
Which is why I’ve always like stoicism as a philosophy, as a practice. To help train ourselves and our minds. To be able to embrace emotion and yet see it clearly. To see the world as much as possible, as it truly is, and to remain even keel through it all. Never giving in completely, unconsciously to extreme happiness or extreme pain.
The master does not block himself from feeling, nor does he allow himself to be swept up in the passion incessantly. He lets it in, delves in it fully, and teases out the useful information from the noise, and then takes the right action. Emotions are not his master, but another tool in the work belt of life.
Too often we are the opposite, unable to truly judge our emotions, understand what the root issues are and deal with them. More often that not, we just feel and react. And so we stay stuck in loops. We are triggered and we react. Over and over again, to the same stuff without change.
And it remains a wild world out there. The pandemic rages on, climate anxiety is at peak levels, late capitalism is groaning and straining against its limits, and people are realising that they can’t keep on sacrificing themselves to the system. Our problems are real, but not insurmountable.
To deal with things appropriately, we would need to be our own eyes of the storm in the chaos that is the world. Which means to cultivate an inner citadel. To build an oasis of peace. To come to terms with ourselves and still the storms within. Only then do we have a hope of acting correctly.
We have to do the work.
We have to learn heal our traumas.
We have to learn to escape from the spaces that hurt us, and cultivate the ones that nurture us.
We have to stay focused.
We have to get clear and get to know and accept who we are, and what we want.
We have to take care of ourselves.
And if we need help, we have to speak up and ask for it.
And if we can help, then we have to reach out and give it.
We have to build what we want and create anew.
We have to remember that it can’t always be night. Even though it may be dark today, the sun will shine again.
That is how we stay sane. That is how we prevail.
by Oto | Nov 2, 2021 | Musings, Personal, Personal Development, Productivity
So, it's been a while.
I inadvertently took a bit of a hiatus over the past month. It was certainly unexpected, but as the persistent fatigue onset out of nowhere, I knew I needed to take some time off, and luckily, I'm generally able to scale things back on a dime.
So what's been going on while I've been off in the metaphorical wilderness? What's been on my mind? What have I felt? What have I discovered?
Maybe, let's start with what happened.
So the month started, and the last post I wrote was about work and the negative returns curve. And the general thesis of that piece was not letting work take over life so much that nothing is left over.
Ironic that as I wrote that, I was almost immediately hit with a deep sense of fatigue. I think for about a week, I wasn't physically really able to work. I'd work one day, and be completely wiped out the next. So, I pulled back from most projects to focus on finishing open projects and keeping the workload on to a fair minimum.
I don't like being fatigued and unable to work, but it was nice to be able to switch off and not be too stressed about work or productivity. I did just what I was able to do, and didn't overthink things, or put too much pressure on myself. I just did stuff and chilled.
Funny enough I was still productive. Things got done. I worked on the websites, I designed logos. I designed documents. But I also spent a lot of time watching movies, or chilling, or seeing friends.
That felt great.
I would like to work more like that.
How did I feel?
Well, at first, there was fatigue. Just pure tiredness. Then the feeling of burnout. Then a slight bout of depression. Waking up everyday and just not feeling up to the task of being on the ball. Not feeling like working or creating or doing anything. I didn't want to try. I just wanted to 'be' for a while. So I just existed. Without needing to prove my existence by making content, or being productive, or being seen. I just existed.
Which was good. I think I needed that. I think we all need that.
In all this time, I thought about different things, and over the next few weeks, I will be exploring them a bit deeper.
The dark side of success
I had been burning exceptionally hot for the past few months. I had been working my ass off, making content, upgrading my environment, unlocking new levels of productivity. Which I did, and got things to a nice place, got things I've been wanting for a while. Things were objectively great, better than they have ever been.
But as I got it, and as I set up things up and updated my space, I suddenly felt...empty.
It's not the first time I've had this feeling. I experienced it at the end of 2018, after a massively productive and personally transformative year, I just felt empty at the end of it. I even wanted to write a piece about how when you get what you want, it won't make you happy. I probably still will.
All this to highlight the fact that achievement and success will not always mean happiness. many successful people at the peak of their careers end it all by suicide.
So why does this happen? What does this mean? How can we find joy in our achievements or how do we optimise for happiness or at least contentment?
Even though the feeling does dissipate eventually, sometimes success comes with a deep profound sense of emptiness. Sometimes great highs must be accompanied by a low.
Hacking your success thermostat
There is a concept I first discovered about 10 years ago in a book whose title I cannot for the life of me remember right now.
This is idea of your success thermostat and how everyone has a hot trigger point and a cold trigger point. When you succeed and are doing well, you invariable get to a place where you automatically dial things back, where you work less, push less, spend more, maybe even self sabotage to get yourself back to a level of success or productivity that you are comfortable with.
And then when things get low enough or you get broke enough, then you kick back into high gear, and do all you need to do to get things done and get back up to a level of success you are comfortable with.
The common factor here is that there is a level that is your comfort zone.
How do you expand that upwards? How do you get more comfortable with greater levels of success so you can naturally achieve more?
Re-evaluating our relationship to work
This is an interesting one. My perception and attitude towards work has been evolving lately.
I am familiar with hustle culture, with the Gary Vee's, Tai Lopez's, Grant Cardone's. All the gurus and evangelists who repeatedly pontificate on the importance of a solid work ethic. To always be pushing, to always be working, to hustle and get rich or get successful. This is an attitude sold to us so much it might as well be the air we breathe.
However, is this the right approach? To be completely devoted to work, to conflate our identity and worth with our productivity?
Work is good. Work is important. Work is what helps us reach our potential. It makes demands of us and puts good stress on our bodies and our minds. With good work, we can be productive, we can be truly human, we can express and explore our talents, abilities and interests.
But bad work, work as an end to itself, as being trapped in a system, of being of service to an exploitative socio-economic system, can start to be very problematic.
Most of us have to work so we can consume more. We want to make more money so we can buy more things, fancier things, have more experiences etc. We are continually sold things to want. And once we feed the beast, we keep wanting more and more. But are we just made to consume? To work to buy and throw away and buy again?
Why does so much of our work tend to move us away from anything that is soul enriching. A man ought to be able to put in a day's work and have enough time and energy to pursue a hobby or write poetry or do whatever the heck he wants to do for the sake of it.
We have to find a better balance with work.
What brought you here, won't take you there
The other day i was chilling with a friend and catching up, and he was mentioning how principles are helping him. Like being focused, having a positive attitude, working hard, all that stuff was helping him be better. And best of all, he was seeing results.
And I thought that was all great. But I also felt jaded by it all.
But I understood we were at different parts of the journey. He's at the start of his, things are still pretty and flashy.
That part is important, it's why getting into self help can be very useful. You do need a solid foundation of discipline and work ethic to get results. But when you start getting results, continuing those things can start to backfire, and then your strategy needs to change.
You need to approach things differently to get into a new level of consciousness, of being, of doing.
So yeah that's been me and my thoughts for the past few weeks. Looking forward to unpacking all of that more. Hope you have been well. Chat soon 🙂.
