The Sunday Mail
Some time ago I was struggling with my computer. I tried all I could with the limited knowledge and ability that I have and things were just not working. I was frustrated.
When I reached out for help I was told it was time to upgrade and get a new operating system.
For sure, when I upgraded the operating system, my problems became history. Your mindset is an important operating system that determines what you do and your experience of life. Instead of operating with a scarcity mentality, change your operating terms towards an abundance mindset. Just this one change will change your life forever. Unless you change your operating system, your computing of life will be limited.
Abundance mindset
You become what you focus on. If you allow your mind to dwell on shortage, scarcity, lack or deprivation, you will just create more of it. Take a small test and ask yourself what you notice more — shortage or abundance? Take an audit of your words — are you always complaining or expressing gratitude? The mindset you carry will determine what you see and give attention to.
You go where your dominant attention goes. Challenging times do not call for negative focus. They call for a different mindset for different results. You focus on where you want to go not where you do not want to go. Change your operating system and mindset. It all starts in the mind, with the way you think. When you are obsessed with scarcity you stop seeing even the opportunities that are near your nose. Negativity and scarcity thinking are dangerous mental drugs that warp your thinking and kill your energy.
Focus is power. Whatever you focus on will determine what inspires and moves you. Inspired by abundant thinking, you will think bigger and see opportunities for scaling. While right focus will not solve every problem that you can enumerate, it will move you progressively towards the solutions you need.
You may be familiar to the old story of a donkey tied to a stump for a long time. Even when the rope is removed from the stump, the donkey continues to think that it is tied. So it is with your mindset, you may think you are tied when you are not. Your limitations are just an opinion, it is the freedom within you that matters most. So long as you have a scarcity and shortage mindset you are bound to remain where you are until you change. No amount of complaining will change your mental conditioning.
You may think I am being so unkind and insensitive by saying all these things as though I live in Mars or another planet of perfection. The biggest kindness I can share is to make you realise that the way you think determines what you do and become. Unless you change the software, the way you think, very little happening outside you will ever change. Your complaints of today will just mutate into other complaints of a similar kind and growing cynicism. You do not afford the luxury of negative and limited thinking. What you think is the problem caused by other people, could just be a problem that you are causing by the way you think. If you want to have abundance, start letting your mind dwell on abundance thoughts.
Abundant opportunity
There is abundant opportunity and more opportunity that you can use up in seven lifetimes. You may not see it that way or feel that it is so but do yourself a favour by starting to deliberately think so. Spot opportunity as you read newspapers and travel. You are not a prisoner of your past or your conditions.
Let your mind dwell on opportunity and not shortage. The good thing about opportunity is that it is there! This moment is your moment of abundant opportunity. There are opportunities that you are stepping on now that will never come again. Embrace them. Start seeing them and your life will never be the same again.
Opportunities multiply as you start noticing them. Start journalling them and see how things start changing. If you are not looking for opportunity you may never find it. If you have concluded in your mind that the opportunities are finished, you risk being mentally finished.
Your loss and current situation contains your best opportunities if you are willing to embrace the opportunity. Your worst nightmare could be your best opportunity. What other people are calling your loss is a blessing in disguise. Do not be frightened by disguises and shadows. If you do not know the value of the opportunities you have you will always operate at a discount and below your potential.
Look around, and you will gradually start to see a pattern — there is greatness everywhere and your own place is there too and has been waiting for you for a long time. Never let the current situations discourage you from seeing your wide opportunity canvas.
Abundant potential
You have abundant potential that is wrapped up in your being and the way you are fashioned. The motivational guru, Zig Ziglar who started his career selling pots and pans was right when he said: “You were designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness.” That is worth repeating until it is blazoned in your soul. You were designed for great accomplishments. You can make a difference and bring your own difference. There is no one like you and there will never be anyone like you.
You are not a wasted night but potential crying for radical expression. You were engineered for success beyond your wildest dreams. Stop living below your potential and your calling in life. You are called to amazing greatness. Start thinking in terms of your potential not your shortage, limitations, conditions and scarcity. You are only limited if you accept limitation as your mindset.
In you are seeds of greatness. When you look at a seed it looks so small and tiny. It may even look dead but never be deceived. Seeds are living things with potential. In every seed there is a promise of a forest. You can count the number of seeds in a fruit, but you cannot count the number of fruits in a seed. So it is with your potential. You have unlimited potential and this reality should scare you out of your slumber. You are worth more than you care to know. You have potential that would scare you if you knew. Your current circumstances are not a sentence to oblivion. You have great potential. Start thinking this way and your life and behaviour will start changing.
Abundant action
Take resolute and abundant action and you will stir the giant that is in you. You are not defeated until you accept defeat. Your spirit is unconquerable, unless you give up and lose hope. How can you lose hope when an abundant future awaits you with arms open and loaded with blessings beyond your dreams? Before you are unleashed into your abundant future, fill your life now with abundant action. Take small and big action, but take action and persist knowing that abundance is your birthright. Never forget the spirit of “Invictus”. Invictus is the Latin rendered “unconquered.” You may be down but you are not defeated.
“Invictus” is a short Victorian poem that was written by the English poet William Ernest Henley (1849–1903). It was written in 1875 and published in 1888. The poem is a display of fortitude in the face of adversity. It is this poem that I am sure you can embrace as your anthem as you chart your course toward greatness. The past is a small matter, the present is a little matter and its the future that is exciting and so rich with possibilities.
“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
Who would write such words? Was everything in their world plain and easy? In 1875 one of W.E. Henley’s legs required amputation due to complications arising from tuberculosis. Immediately after the amputation, he was told that sadly his other leg would require a similar procedure. He stood to lose both legs. He took a wise and radical choice. He dug deep into the abundant resources within him. Henley chose instead to enlist the services of the distinguished English surgeon Joseph Lister, who was able to save Henley’s remaining leg after multiple surgeries.
While he was recovering in hospital, he was moved to write the verses above that became “Invictus” at first written without a title. This period of Henley’s life, coupled with recollections of an impoverished childhood, were the primary inspirations for the poem. In your adversity there is abundance of inspiration for greatness.
Your current circumstances hide great blessings within them. Your road has not ended, you can now blaze a new trail. You have not hit the ceiling, you only saw the sky with its unlimited blue space. There is abundant greatness all around you.
Change your thinking and you change your life. What is happening in your mind is more important than what is happening anywhere else. Start expressing gratitude and noticing greatness everywhere around you and you will be drawn towards its abundant fare. You are not a victim but the captain of your soul. The decisions you take today will lead to the greatness you will enjoy. Think abundance.
Committed to your greatness.
Milton Kamwendo is a leading international transformational and motivational speaker, author and coach. His life purpose is to inspire greatness. He can be reached at: [email protected] and Twitter: @MiltonKamwendo or WhatsApp at: 0772422634.
