For me, I have a structure to how I do things. A structure to how I dress, a structure to how I think, and very recently, a structure to how I dream.

The structure of how I dream and form an imagination of greatness in my mind has always been constant throughout my life, but only recently have I been able to combine the right words to communicate what that supposedly “subconscious” behaviour truly was. That behaviour is called structure: a systematic way of doing things; in my case, dreaming and forming images in my head of what is achievable even before I start working on achieving it.

The first time I truly had an imagination of something bigger than myself was when I was 18. I had just finished watching the presidential debate of the United States of America, and at that moment, I told myself that I was going to become the President of the United States of America (POTUS). At the time, I didn’t know it was a structure, but I subconsciously followed these steps:

1. Conduct very detailed research on the stories of the presidents of the U.S. and pay special attention to anyone with the same background as me. My search term at this stage was an American president who was Black because I am a Black man, and I can picture myself in the same position as that Black man who had become president earlier.

2. Read in detail and become deeply obsessed with the story of the selected person from Step 1.

3. Verbalise the dream to others to get their reaction. The more unbelievable it is, the better it is to me, because when people easily understand and believe your dream, then that dream is really small.

For me, Step 1 is the most important, as it directly impacts the existence of the remaining steps and, by extension, whether that dream will be achieved or not. Whether you like it or not, you become more inspired when you see someone who has achieved what you also want to achieve.

In my case, after carrying out Step 1, I came to learn about Barack Obama, and that day was exceptional for me. The fact that he was a Black man made me realise that it was also possible for me to do the same. For three weeks, I was extremely convinced that I would one day become the POTUS. And the reason I thought this way was because one man like me had won, and now I thought I could win too.

More importantly, there is a general truth in this: the moment you truly believe something is possible for you, you have already won the first battle, because every victory begins in the mind.[When one of us wins, we all win.]

Three weeks after the realisation and research surrounding my newly founded dream, I carried out Step 3, and the first person I verbalised my dream to was my mentor at the time. His reply was, “Kehinde, this is such a great dream; however, it’s impossible. According to the laws of the United States, which are very unlikely to change, to be the POTUS, you have to have been born in the U.S.”

Since it’s unwise to place a dream on the possibility of a law changing, especially a law as peculiar as that, I decided to drop that dream and chase something else.

But isn’t it interesting how big I could dream simply because one man who looks like me had achieved that dream before? If no Black man had ever been president, then I might have killed the dream the moment I thought of it.

The rare gift proximity to greatness gives us is the opportunity to feel extremely inspired. You get to think, “If Wole Soyinka can win the Nobel Prize, then I, as an undergraduate in OAU, can do the same.” Perhaps that is the true power of achievement: it expands the imagination of those who identify with the achiever.

There is a psychological extension to this; it’s a concept called the “Man in the Car Paradox.” Finance experts and psychologists use this concept to teach people why they need to save as opposed to spending to impress others.

The concept is simple: when you see a man driving an absolutely beautiful car, you don’t truly see the man himself; you imagine yourself in that car, driving it. To put it differently, you care less about the man and more about the imagination of yourself in it.

In the same way, nobody truly cares about you driving that car you bought, so in a real sense, you aren’t impressing anybody; you are simply giving people the sacred opportunity to imagine themselves in the car.

The positive side of this is the title of this essay: “When one of us wins, we all win,” and it’s only positive because we truly care about the individuals who have achieved what we want, as opposed to the original paradox, and that’s why we study them and learn from them to inspire ourselves.

There are two goals in writing this essay and, by extension, two tasks I want to engage you with.

The first goal is to help you understand that reading this automatically makes you a custodian of winning because you now know that, by virtue of your winning, the children in your entire community may now think they can win too. Your success does not end with you; it expands into the imagination of those around you who now believe they can also win.

This is why in Portugal, there are streets filled with images and statues of Cristiano Ronaldo, so that a young boy passing by is reminded, without words, that greatness is possible.

The task that accompanies this goal is clear: you need to WIN!

The second goal comes from a conversation I had with a friend. Before I started writing, I asked her what came to her mind when she heard the phrase, “When one of us wins, we all win.” Her answer was a totally different and equally brilliant perspective from the one I am taking now. It brought back a secret I learnt earlier in writing. The secret is allowing the reader to interpret the information provided by the writer in their own way.

This means that rather than dogmatically following my thoughts in this essay, you should and you must engage with it by asking yourself what the topic means to you.

Take a moment and truly think about this:

“When one of us wins, we all win.”

God is helping us.