Be Audacious.

I watched a speech two years ago, it was the graduation speech of a Pan-Atlantic University (PAU) student, I loved the speech so much that I even saved it on my phone and put it in my “favourites” folder. The mass communication graduate did not only highlight his goals and the obvious pleasantries that were expected, he did not only speak of how much they may or may not miss the school; He spoke of how he achieved his goals; not going into detail as to tell of his morning and night routines but rather describing the kind of mindset you need to have to be successful.

At the beginning of this year, the only thing on my mind was my first YouTube video, when people were driving to church at 8pm on the 31st of December 2025, I was editing and rewatching my 1st YouTube video repeatedly, I trimmed the video from 25minutes to 10minutes 45 seconds, now this might mean nothing to you but as an editor, every second means more than just a second. I was scared that if the video was longer than 10 or even 11 minutes, people would get bored and not watch the video, then came the posting issues which I ranted about on this platform as I had spent over three days glued to my iPad screen only to be met with delays while trying to upload my video to YouTube, I was devastated when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to post it on the 1st of January as I had planned. So, I went to sleep because there was nothing, I could do about it. I ended up posting my first YouTube video on the 2nd day of the year.

Back to Mr Adeniran’s speech, when I watched that video, I had just begun to rethink my life and my choices so you could say perfect timing. A big hairy audacious goal, these were the words I wrote down in my journal because I needed them to stick with me. I’ve had countless opportunities to rise to the occasion and be who I wanted to be, but I haven’t really seized the opportunity, and it wasn’t because I couldn’t, but rather because I didn’t think I was capable of harnessing the opportunity to its full potential.

from pinterest

I was scared.

Scared to be seen trying,

Scared to fail.

I was so scared that I do it.

I was more scared of regret than I was scared of failure. So, I did it. Regret—that is what you should be scared of, not the probability that you might fail and be laughed at but rather that you might look back at this moment with regret.

Failure is not always negative, we’ve been taught to run away from failure and while the intention behind this may not be wrong, the narrative is. We run from failure as if success is not made up of little failures. We are so scared to fail that we never try, so we fail before we even begin.

Not trying is failing before you even begin,

Trying is giving yourself the chance to fail or even succeed.

Everybody deserves the chance to succeed.

Take that chance!!

Fear is normal, if your aspirations do not trigger a bit of fear, are they really goals? Be unapologetically audacious, don’t reach for the stars with a rope, sit down, plan, be smart, don’t be too excited about speed that you forget direction.

And remember you are allowed to fail; failure is not an abomination. Know your goals and chase them.

Be Audacious.