Welcome to this episode of my personal development update for the month of December 2019. In my last update, I explained that I will be sharing with you guys the things I do for my personal development each month. Hope you follow up and share your own experiences with me in the comment section.

Episode #2 : Personal Growth Update December 2019

December was a month of growth to maturity for me. I had to face some of my fears and open up to things which I didn't want to deal with at the moment. But it felt so good afterwards. I had some family issues which have been affecting me intensively for the past four years. It was very hard to talk about them. I cried so deeply when I opened up about it every time. But it doesn't make me cry that much right now and I look forward to the day I will talk about it without any tears in my eyes. But I'm super proud of myself for finding the courage to open up.

I planned to read a book this month of December but I couldn't. I would say lack of time is the reason though I think I can find some time to read. Reading is such an important part of self-development and I really want to get back to reading more books. I read mostly self-development blogs and so I want to read more books that can also contribute to my growth. I wanted to read FU MONEY by Dan Lok. I hope to read that this month. I downloaded it for free on his website some time ago. That's one of my goals this month.

One major thing I worked on this December was to write down positive affirmations and mantras that I want to manifest in my life this new year. It was an interesting process and it helped me to really define certain aspects of my life. I had problems with remembering to recite my mantras. New habits take time to stick. My aim was to repeat them every morning and every evening before I go to bed. But some mornings I forgot and in the evenings I was too tired to remember to say them. I hope that this month I will do better.

As for new year's resolutions, I don't have any. I just want to keep being the best version of myself and the only new thing is that I really want to step out of my comfort zone - try new things even if it makes me very uncomfortable.

I'm looking forward to a better month this January. It's the first month of the year so I'm optimistic and want to set a good pace for the year.

Let's do this!

Hope you are sticking to your self-development plans and if you want to share with me how you are doing, please do so in the comment section.

Puff-puff is a very important food in Cameroon. It is eaten mostly as breakfast or as supper. You can buy any quantity you want around most junctions and roundabouts in the country. It is often referred to as 'le Sauveur' meaning 'the saviour' in English. This is because it is cheap and also a complete meal when accompanied by beans and pap. It' s the most common take out and everyone relies on it when they need to eat well but don't have enough money or when they are just not in the mood to cook anything.

I made some puff-puff while at my mom's and I thought I should share the recipe with you guys. Here we go.

Like most of my recipe posts, we are not used to measurements in Cameroon and Africa in general. We estimate. Your ability to estimate is your power as a cook. Don't be surprised or wonder why I don't or hardly mention measurements in my recipes.

How To Fry Puff-Puff At Home

good looking puff-puff, golden brown puff-puff

Ingredients

- Flour

- Yeast

- Sugar

- Water

- Oil for frying

Preparation

- Sieve the flour into a bowl. Make sure you use a bowl with a lid because you will have to cover it.

- Add some sugar, yeast and lukewarm water and mix. Let the mixture be quite thick and heavy. If you make it watery, it will soak up oil while frying. The best way is to add water in small quantities as you mix so that when you reach the desired texture you can stop adding water.

Yeast.

- Leave the mixture to rise. To be honest, I don't check the time when I allow it to rise. I just check my mixture from time to time to see if it has risen enough. If it is taking a long time to rise then the yeast might not be enough. That was the case when I was making this one. I had to add some more yeast by dissolving it in a little water, added it to the dough and mixed it again.

- When the mixture rises, put a good quantity of oil into a pot for deep frying. When the oil is quite hot, start putting the mixture into the oil in lumps. I can't describe how to make the lumps but the photos I made below can help you understand how to do it. You may not get it right on the first try but with some practice, you will learn how to do it.

- Fry both side of the puff-puff till brown. I love mine quite brown because I'm sure that it's quite ready and it is a little bit crunchy on the outside.

- Remove when ready and put in a strainer for the oil to drip and serve hot.

crunchy puff-puff, how does puff-puff look like inside

puff-puff, pap, akamu, eat pap, drink pap

We had our puff-puff with pap and it was really delicious.

The only thing which is constant in life is change. And for change to be positive you need personal development. But personal development may not produce results sometimes no matter how hard we try. This means there are some things missing in our personal development efforts. These things may look simple but may be quite hard to implement because we are often anxious to see the results of our personal development efforts.

Here are 3 Reasons Why Personal Development Is Not Working For You

If Personal Development Is Not Working For You, This Is What You Are Doing Wrong

1. You are not patient enough

Patience, patience, patience. You are not giving it enough time to work. Change takes time and if you are not giving yourself enough time to adopt new habits, you won't notice any development.

Taking a few steps and expecting to see a huge difference is sometimes not the case in personal development. Take note that the things you are trying to change have been present for a while now and stopping them also requires time to get your mind and body into your new self.

Give yourself time to accept, heal and start a new life when you are going on a journey of self-development.

2. You are not practising what you learn

If you don't implement what you read, watch or listen to, you will not develop yourself. You have to put into practice all the steps and tips that you acquire. It is important to select the best tips and do a few at a time or one at a time to know exactly which one is working for you.

3. You are trying the wrong methods or taking the wrong advice

The wrong methods or advice could get you turning in circles and so you may have no results. It's not easy to know which method is best until you try it. Keep trying various ways of self-development to see which one really works for you. I won't say that some personal development methods are wrong in general, but they could be wrong for you in particular. So some methods work for others and may not work for you.

Don't relent on finding the right method for you.

If you feel like your personal development isn't working then you should evaluate yourself using the above points to see if you are doing it right? Are you patient enough? Are you practising the tips you receive? And are you taking the right advice?

Merry Christmas to you. Hope you are having a very wonderful holiday.

When I shared about us spending Christmas At My Mom's, I had no idea that plans were going to change. And even if they did, I would expect to be back in Yaounde instead.

I'm writing this post at my grandparents' home. The home I grew up in. I feel good about coming back, especially for Christmas. If you read my post about spending Christmas at my mom's you will understand our Christmas tradition when it comes to what we cook and generally how we spend Christmas.

This Christmas, the traditions were maintained and it brought a very good feeling of being with family.
We arrived on Christmas eve (yesterday). It was a long journey but thank God for giving us journey mercies. Christmas eve was cosy with good food and watching TV to see how others were celebrating Christmas. We also had a family Whatsapp video call where we all saw each other and wished each other merry Christmas at the same time. It was so much fun and full of smiles. It's the first time we tried this and it was nice to see everyone at the same time.

The evening ended well with us having some drinks. I had a Malta Guinness and ate some chin-chin made by my grandmother.

On Christmas Day (today) we woke up to the morning harmattan cold and cooked our Christmas rice, chicken and egusi soup. It was delicious as usual. What is Christmas without Christmas-rice? lol. We had our Christmas rice for breakfast.

rice, food, christmas rice, cameroonian food, egusi soup, melon seeds, chicken

There was a prayer with a man of God who visited us and then later we ate some Achu and drinks. I still had a Malta with my Achu. It was so good. We ate some more chin-chin and everyone just chilled either in front of the TV or in their room.

Achu, food, eating, cameroonian, yellow soup

It's my daughter's first Christmas so after dressing her up, she wore something nice and took a few pictures with the family. The rest of us were just dressed as we would on any other day. No Christmas dresses or clothes. In this part of the world, special clothes are bought for Christmas and we call them Christmas clothes. I had Christmas clothes as a child (it's bought mostly for kids as Christmas is referred to as a celebration for children. They also bought toys as Christmas gifts). It wasn't a must-have but it was highly appreciated when I was gifted.

That is Christmas for us at this end of the world. Hope you are having a happy holiday. Wishing you all the best and God's richest Blessings this season.