The Book

So let it be written. So let it be done.

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

If you are an OG of the movies, you will know that line. Right? The Ten Commandments is basically a rite of passage for any young person who grew up in sub-Saharan Africa in the 70s, 80s, maybe 90s. I mean, no VCR collection was complete without The Ten Commandments side by side with The Sound of Music and at least two James Bond movies…the Sean Connery and/or Roger Moore editions.

So, when Yul Brynner aka Ramses, growls at Charlton Heston aka Moses, “SO LET IT BE WRITTEN, SO LET IT BE DONE”, that was an OG drop the mic play that folks .

<I know the GenZs are rolling their eyes right now like, “These old people…OMG!” Sharrapp and go and watch the movie. You’ll thank me later.>

Well, I am not dropping the mic, but stepping up to it here. I have toyed around with writing my debut book for way too long now, and a series of events has spurred me to stop effin around before I find out. First, the big man who had been waiting patiently to read it is no longer around to read it, which is still kicking me in the derriere. The second big one was when I was breaking bread with a young woman in Nairobi, whom I hadn’t seen in a long time, and she said to me, first thing after she sat down, “So, how’s your book going?”

I was stunned into silence. I had forgotten that two years ago we had made a pact to keep each other accountable on one thing, and The Book was my thing.

After getting back home, I took a couple of long walks and hikes by the Chattahoochee River in Atlanta, and just untangled the brain. And then I just locked in and started banging things out. What came out was a book proposal, the book layout, and an intro chapter for my book, Refr(action): The Action Alternative to Reflection.

Here it is.

Stuck.

The book is a framework for getting unstuck when reflection and affirmation aren't enough. You'll see what that means below. And I would love your feedback, for real. I thought it would be great to share the first four chapters with the Fashi Mindset fam over the next four weeks, and have you keep me on point, keep me accountable. Every Sunday, I’ll drop a chapter. I am not going to explain anything, justify this, or unpack that. Just take your time, however long that may be, and if you are down…just give me some thoughts.

The only thing I will say is this is probably the longest chapter in the book. My goal is for a sharp, fun, and insightful read. So, do your thing.

Oh, no grammar feedback abeg. The editors will take care of that.

So let it be written. So let it be done.

Enjoy.

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Stuck.

So, you know how it is, right? That decision, thought, impression, kicking your ass, just nagging at you with a vengeance.

This is the one that wakes you at 3 am. The one that keeps you up at 3 am. The one you’ve turned over so many times it’s practically like a mortgage on your brain that just won’t let go and keeps collecting interest. The decision whether to finally have that tough convo with your business partner re the venture direction you disagree on. Or to make the call on whether to take the dream role you’ve been looking for, but the pay is not calling your name. The decision on whether to support or pivot the big financial play that your spouse is one hundred percent angling for.

The stuff that has you twirling in the wind.

You’ve put a lot of thought into it, even written copious entries into your journal. Your GenAI bot agent is working overtime on this wahala for you. This stuff is on the brain constantly, and you have reflected on the “what matters” and on the “whys and whys nots”. You have told yourself what you need to hear, spoken encouragement over the doubt, and even tried to will yourself toward clarity.

And yet, you are still here, stuck.

The TikTok sermons didn’t crack it. Neither did the YouTube gurus or the Instagram meditation sessions or the long walks that were supposed to bring clarity. You’ve prayed on it, and somehow, the engine is still in neutral or not shifting past the first gear. Reflection showed you where you are. Affirmation reminded you of what you’re capable of. Neither one told you what to do next or how to move.

You’re not alone, my people.

A few years ago, I turned off my Zoom and sat with a barrage of tough feedback I had just received from someone whose work had shaped my career. This was the guy. The Oga himself. I was lucky to have entered his orbit, lucky to have proximity to one of the individuals who had defined my industry. After spending time with him in person, he graciously offered to work with me, and I sought his professional counsel with excitement and anticipation, expecting guidance that would help me see my path more clearly.

Instead, I received an assessment that questioned my expertise and minimized my track record to something smaller than I thought I had built. He suggested I might be overestimating, maybe even deluding myself, on what I was capable of doing. This was coming from someone I respected deeply, someone whose opinion carried weight. It hit hard. And it carried an implicit conclusion: I would probably not be getting any endorsement from him, public or private, that could open doors or expand my work.

Let me tell you, I was rocked hard, and I carried his verdict for months.

During that time, I did what the self-help gurus tell you to do. I went into reflection mode. I examined my track record honestly. I looked at my losses alongside my wins. I asked myself the hard questions. Was there truth in what he said? Was I deluding myself about my influence, my expertise, my brand? Maybe this was why certain opportunities weren’t materializing. Maybe I was the one who couldn’t see clearly.

I also did the affirmation, reminded myself of the work I had done, all the people I had helped, and the tangible results and outcomes I had generated. I told myself my worth was real. I spoke confidence over the doubt. Chidi, you got this. You did this, man. You ARE the man.

And yet…I was still stuck. His words burned as hot as when I first heard them. After all of that mental work, and yet nothing had shifted.

As a product coach and advisor, one of the key principles I work on with the leaders and teams that ask for my help is testing their riskiest assumptions. As in the assumptions, if wrong and without evidence would be fatal or devastating. I push them to put those assumptions in contact and in combat with reality, and to validate them either way. The assumption is true, which makes it a fact. Or it is not, which requires a pivot. So I put his counsel to the test. I wasn’t just going to accept the big dog’s pronouncement; I was going to pass it through a different set of lenses that would reveal what was actually there. That would let me know if I had been operating on a fatal assumption.

I ran his feedback through different contexts and perspectives. It was critical to have deep conversations with people in my world who knew my work. I gathered honest feedback from current and former clients. I paid attention to the end-of-session remarks after my workshops and masterclasses, not the praise directed at me verbally, but the transformation people described in themselves and their teams. I browsed through the unsolicited messages I received from people who had worked with me, people who learned and jostled with me, people who kept me abreast of frameworks and skill sets they had acquired during their time with me. I actively sought out and took on engagements directly in line with the work he said I wasn’t ready for or did not have the requisite experience for. I examined the full picture of my impact across different environments. I even checked out the profiles of the people he spoke highly of, the ones whom he publicly called out for their expertise, to test his exact hypothesis.

What emerged was clarity.

The feedback had come from one perspective, one set of criteria, one way of measuring what mattered. When I passed it through multiple contexts and perspectives and tested it against reality, I found hard proof that I was a lot more than his data set provided him, and that I was just where I was supposed to be. I was helping define what excellence looked like in my space. My authority, which is constantly growing and being groomed, as an expert was evident and respected. The impact was real, even when there were challenges or losses. And, the people who were getting his endorsements, many were less experienced or impactful as I was. The gaps were in his lens, not in my capability.

I could move forward. Continue and expand the work that I was doing.

But here’s the most important part of this exercise: this process would have worked the same way if his feedback had been accurate. For real. If passing it through the different contexts and testing its validity had revealed consistent patterns aligned with his assessment, if my clients and partners had echoed the same concerns, if the evidence had pointed to real gaps rather than incomplete information, I would have arrived at that conclusion too. The process doesn’t protect you from hard truths. It reveals what’s actually there. Sometimes you confirm what you suspected. Sometimes you discover something completely different.

Either way, you move forward with clarity instead of circling in doubt.

Sibongile Sambo grew up in Bushbuckridge, South Africa, watching planes fly overhead. She would run outside whenever she heard one, waving as if the pilots could see her from thousands of feet up, dreaming of the day she would fly to different countries and meet new people. When she finished her education, she applied to South African Airways to become a flight attendant. They rejected her. She didn’t meet the minimum height requirement. That rejection could have been the end of the story.

Instead, Sibongile worked at some of South Africa’s biggest brands: Telkom, City Power, and De Beers. She gained business experience. She kept her aviation dream alive but shifted what the dream looked like.

When South Africa passed the Black Economic Empowerment Act in 2003, Sibongile saw an opening. She had no experience in aviation or the capital to buy aircraft. She pushed forward anyway. She sold her valuable assets, used her mother’s pension money, and in 2004 founded SRS Aviation. Her first contract came from the South African government for cargo transport. In 2006, the South African Civil Aviation Authority issued her an Air Operating Certificate.

SRS Aviation became the first Black woman-owned aviation company in South Africa.

The girl who was too short to meet the flight attendant requirements now owns the planes. SRS Aviation provides VIP charters, helicopters, cargo flights, medical evacuations, and tourist transfers. Heads of state pay $200,000 to fly with her company. And those women she helped earn their pilot licenses? Many of them work for her now.

Sibongile couldn’t get on the plane. So she went ahead and bought her own planes.

Come on, now.

The first impression was that she didn’t measure up. The transformation came when she passed that impression through a different context. What if the limitation wasn’t about her? What if there was another way into the sky?

Many times, reflection and affirmation aren’t enough; something else is needed. Building on reflection and affirmation. Something that takes what you see and transforms it into something you act on.

The ancient Stoics understood this. Epictetus taught his students:

“Be not swept off your feet by the vividness of the impression, but say, ‘Wait for me a little, impression; allow me to see who you are, and what you are an impression of; allow me to put you to the test.’”

An impression, to the Stoics, was any thought or perception that appears in your mind with force and immediacy. It could be your own assessment of a situation. It could be someone else coming at you with their judgment. The danger, Epictetus warned, was accepting these impressions at face value simply because they arrived with conviction. Just because something feels true, or someone says it is true, doesn’t make it true. Just because someone speaks with authority doesn’t mean their view is complete.

The Ethiopians have a saying that, ”No one tests the depth of a river with both feet.”

I would like to add that you don’t want to have your Nike Air Force Ones Special Editions on when testing the depth of the river lest you lose the sneakers, and your mind. The main thing is to pause, and examine. Test and validate the impression against reality before allowing it to drive your actions.

Listen, most times we just roll with the impression, and don’t test the impressions that matter most. Like the verdict someone hands down about your capability. Or the assessment a colleague makes about the feasibility of an idea. The consensus view amongst your family that something can’t be done. These impressions arrive with vividness and authority, and they feel true because they come from people who seem to know, people who are paid to know. People who tell you they know.

I spent years in product discovery learning to test assumptions before committing resources. You don’t build based on what you assume customers want. You talk to users, run experiments, and gather evidence. Skip this discipline, and nine times out of ten, you build the wrong thing. It took me a while to realize the same discipline applies to the impressions we carry and how we work through our situations.

So. An impression is not the same as truth. An impression is basically like light hitting a surface at a single angle. Truth emerges when you pass that light through something that reveals what else is there.

Like a prism.

Let’s talk some physics.

When light hits a mirror, it reflects. Bounces back at an equal angle, reversed but unchanged. The wavelengths stay the same, the composition stays the same. A mirror shows you what you brought to it, nothing more. This is reflection.

Now, when light hits a prism, something different happens. White light enters the prism as a single beam, traveling straight through air, simple and no drama. The moment it hits the glass, it crosses from one medium (air) into another (glass), and glass is denser than air. The light slows down inside the prism and bends.

Like Beckham.

Now, different wavelengths of light slow down at different rates. For instance, red light barely bends, while violet light bends sharply. The beam that looked unified splits apart into a spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. All of them were there from the beginning, packed into that single beam, invisible until the prism revealed it.

This is Physics 101. The prism reveals what was always present but hidden. Just like the light that creates rainbows when it passes through water droplets, or the light that makes a straw look bent in a glass of water. That one used to bug me when I was a kid.

Now, when that dispersed spectrum passes through a lens, those scattered colors converge and focus. They concentrate. What comes out on the other is no longer a diffused rainbow but a focused beam, all the energy of the full spectrum now directed into a single point. Remember the experiments we used to run as kids? Spread that light across a wide area, and it is sunlight that warms your skin. Focus it to a point, and that same sunlight burns through paper.

The light that exits is not the same as the light that entered. It has been transformed.

This entire process, light entering a prism, bending, dispersing, and then reconverging, is called refraction. The word comes from the Latin refringere, meaning “to break up.” Light breaks up into what it actually contains, then comes back together with focus.

This book is all about refraction. As in refracting your thinking, making it a practice, a habit, a way of moving.

This book is here to encourage you to refract the way you make decisions, and act on them. When you pass a decision, a belief, or a problem through new contexts and unfamiliar perspectives, it breaks up. What looked like a single solid truth reveals the spectrum of possibilities it actually contains. When you bring those possibilities together after testing and with clear intention, you emerge with focused direction that the original view neglects to give you.

refr(action) presents a framework built on four movements: See, Bend, Open, Lock.

See is recognizing your current view clearly before you try to change it. Light approaches the prism as a single beam. Before transformation can happen, you have to know what you’re bringing into the process. What do you actually believe right now? What impression are you carrying? Whose impression is it? This is where reflection lives, and it has value.

Bend is where the impression encounters something that changes its direction or trajectory. Reflection showed you what you’re carrying. Now it moves into the prism. Light crosses into the glass and shifts course. Ideas and thinking transform when they meet a different medium: a challenging context, an unfamiliar perspective, a voice that sees what you can’t. You deliberately expose your thinking to something outside your default frame and let it change shape.

Open is letting your thinking spread into possibilities. Light disperses into the full spectrum. What looked like a single path forward fans out into many. You resist collapsing back to a single answer too quickly. You hold space for options you would have dismissed before. The spectrum was always inside the light, and now the prism made it visible.

Lock is bringing the possibilities together into focused action. Dispersed light passes through a lens and reconverges into a concentrated beam. You weigh what emerged, synthesize the best of it, decide, and move. Without Lock, all that seeing and bending and opening is just interesting thinking. Lock is what creates action.

Instead of re(act)ing, you refr(act).

React: instant, unexamined, same angle in, same angle out. You stay stuck. Refract: deliberate, transformed, you move forward. That’s what happened with Sibongile and me.

The feedback I got from a respected mentor. Sibongile’s rejection letter from South African Airways. Both were impressions that arrived with authority and felt like final verdicts. Nope. Both transformed when passed through new contexts and tested against reality. The original verdict wasn’t the full picture. That’s refraction at work.

We didn’t react. We passed the impression through something that changed it. And we moved.

Notice the word. RefrACTION. RefrACTIVE thinking. The action is built into the name because this framework demands it. You think refractively, you act on what the refraction revealed.

Refr(action) draws on physics, African and Stoic philosophy, and product thinking. Simple enough to remember. Structured enough to practice. The kind of thing you reach for when you’re stuck.

That decision you’ve been carrying? It’s still there. But now you have a way through.

See it clearly. Bend it through something new. Open to what emerges. Lock into action.

Let’s get it.