Media personality and entrepreneur Chude Jideonwo has opened up about turning down major opportunities, protecting his peace, and confronting deep personal questions, including whether he wants children, during a reflective conversation on the Beyond with Ezinne podcast.
Jideonwo, who has long spoken about mental health after a 2016 diagnosis of clinical depression, described how that period forced him to become clearer about what he would and would not accept.
He said he has been deliberate since then about the work and people he allows into his life.
“For at least since 2016, I’ve been clear who I am. I don’t do anything I don’t enjoy doing. I don’t do any business I don’t enjoy doing. I don’t do any speaking engagement. I don’t like doing panels, for instance, unless it’s Bill Gates that’s inviting me or Joe Biden. I’m not doing it,” he said.
That clarity has included walking away from significant money. He disclosed that he has fired clients whose energy he did not like and turned down a million-dollar opportunity because he could already see the stress it would bring.
“I’ve fired clients because I didn’t like their energy. I’ve said no, literally, to a million dollars. It’s not that, oh, it was a potential million dollars, because I’m like, this person, I’m going to suffer. I’m going to have to navigate,” he explained.
Jideonwo noted that setting boundaries with the public came more easily than doing the same with people closest to him.
“From the public, I understood that the public is not my friend. What I didn’t do was I had to do it for the private as well,” he said.
He added that the work of separating himself emotionally, even from family, has been more recent.
The conversation also returned to the period around his depression diagnosis.
“When you’re diagnosed with depression, you have nowhere to go. You are locked in your mind,” he recalled.
A therapist encouraged him to journal and list the things he loved. Writing “music” made him realise how little he actually played it at home, a small discovery that showed him how disconnected he had become from ordinary sources of joy.
In the same interview, Jideonwo described an exercise in which he confronted his fear of death. Around 2015 or 2016, when he was 30 or 31, he wrote a will after thinking through what would happen if he died. He focused on provisions for his mother and support for an NGO he contributes to. The process also led him to examine larger questions about marriage and family.
He realised he did not want children, even though he is an only child.
“That’s when I realized that I didn’t want to have children, which is a big thing to realize as a human being… as an only child of a mother that I love dearly,” he said.
He was careful to add that knowing this does not mean the decision is final.
“You don’t mean you have to act on it. I might still decide to have a child. But I know what I’m about.”