The Sunday Mail
Life is an untamed beast that you have to wrestle with and tame.
At every turn, life seems to suggest that you should change or die.
The Prince
A problem free life is a myth, a changeless life is not a life at all. Where there are no problems, there are no opportunities. Where there is no change there is no growth. If there are no problems, someone is in a false comfort zone and has stopped seeing reality.
The differences among people come from the type, scale and nature of problems and trials that they face and the changes they then make.
Decide to survive whatever comes your way. It may be tough but always remember that tough people outlast tough times. Change what you must but do not lose your focus.
Do not avoid a path because it is difficult, avoid a path that runs away from problems that are sent to grow and develop you.
Survive your valleys and confront your mountains. The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it and not to be dissolved by it.
Do not just blame everyone for your misery and take a protest posture to life.
Take personal responsibility for change.
It’s happening all the time
Niccolo Machiavelli, in his legendary book The Prince (1532) said: “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.”
No change will ever come without someone initiating it.
The price of remaining the same is far higher than the cost of change. Change is happening all the time. Whenever you stop changing, stop and think seriously.
You may have since died. Refuse to be numbered among the living dead who change nothing, worry no one, move nothing and are neither praised or criticised for anything.
Do not tolerate or live with death at your door step. When challenges come sometimes they are a clanking bell that is announcing the coming of a new season or the dawn of a new era.
What worked in the past will not work forever. What got you where you are is not sufficient to take you from where to you are.
In times of change and turbulence, the most dangerous risk is not what you are going through but the logic you are using.
Approaching a changed environment using old logic is illogical and suicidal.
It is up to you
Change is a choice and an ever present challenge. It is an untamed beast that is galloping away in ticking time. Adapting to emerging and current change will always be your challenge. There is always comfort in familiar surroundings — the old and well known.
Not all change is improvement or growth, but without change there can never be any improvement. Drive the change that you want. If you want change you have to desire it with all you have got and make it happen.
Wishing alone is not enough, you have to act. Talking alone is never sufficient for change to happen. You have to drive your own progress. You cannot afford the luxury of waiting to be pushed like a wheel-barrow or being tempted like a rat to get out of your hiding place of comfort to the arena of action. Change is inevitable but growth is optional.
Change does not grow you, you are the one that chooses the path of growth and development. Whatever experiences you go through will never change you unless you are willing to learn and grow.
Lessons do not learn themselves, they need a host.
Fighting to remain
Whatever change you choose will always have its enemies. The people who are benefiting from your misery would never want you to change.
Challenge the beast of the status quo. Life is too rocky for you to be content in your straits as a mindless and idle passenger. Make change your pillow and you will not sleep for too long. Make change your song, and you will not be content to complain and sing outmoded complaining choruses.
Make change your agenda, and you will always be looking for ways to improve and grow. Never be content with what no longer works.
The pace of change is not going to slow down.
You might as well gear up to change and start changing. Otherwise you risk being buried alive or run over by the train of the future.
There is nothing called normal unless you are abnormal. This that you are going through is the new normal, welcome it and thrive in it.
Tame your beast of the present turbulence into a friend.
No normal lasts forever, keep changing and charging forward. Everything is fluid and dynamic. Change is happening all the time. Do not wither in the past, decay in the present and be irrelevant in the future. Resisting change, when it has already taken place, is insane.
Remaining in denial or in the past delays many and destroys much.
Marshall Goldsmith, a leading leadership expert and coach once said: “After living with their disfunctional behaviour for so many years (a sunk cost if ever there was one), people become invested in defending their disfunctions rather than changing them.”
Never let others suffer because you are unwilling to change and you are married to the status quo. Create your own normal.
The season is here
Just like seasons, things and people do change. No season or storm lasts forever. When you face a storm, you do not emerge on the other end as the same person who walked into the storm. To emerge from a storm unchanged is to have wasted a storm. To emerge from a season unchanged is to have wasted that season.
Learn all you can from whatever season you go through. Grow all you can, can all you have got, then carry the can. Your greatness is in your willingness to change and grow faster than the changes that want to tame you into a coward.
Outgrow your small dreams, out-change your environment and outlearn your past. It is change that brings excitement to life, flavour to time and essence to seasons.
If you do not change, you remain static, dull, boring and irrelevant.
What you do daily is a sign of what is changing in you. What you do is the result of what is changing in your vision, thinking, beliefs and faith.
The secret to greatness is in your daily routine.
What you do daily reveals who you really are. To change anything in your life, change what you do daily. Do not worry too much about the big, shocking and unnerving changes. Start with the small daily details of your life. Small changes pivot big ones, small hinges swing big doors.
Changing a city starts by changing the daily habits of its citizens. When people start picking litter and not littering everywhere, big changes in a city start to manifest. Every day is an opportunity to initiate a personal revolution of change. Small changes birth giants in time and compound over time.
Change is a bold decision and life is what you decide. Refuse to let situations and circumstances decide for you.
The first step to getting anywhere is to decide that you will not stay where you are. Refuse to freeze in action. Take action and start moving. Cross the river, write the letter, sign up and say your goodbyes to yesterday.
Make the decision, cut off all possibilities of backsliding and charge forward.
Take action, move and you start building momentum. Someone will suggest to you that all opportunities have been taken and there is no space for you.
Do not believe those mad and silly suggestions.
The world is changing daily and opportunities are emerging by the second. Right now you are sitting on a sea of possibilities.
You have the opportunity to change, grow and thrive. Until you take your last breath, keep growing and changing as you must.
Hold on to the old as long as it is good and working.
As soon as change comes and something better appears, adapt, change and move ahead.
Greatness is beckoning for you to change.
Change is the norm and not the exception. Refusing to change is the oddity.
Never forget these words of David Livingtone: “I’ll go anywhere as long as it’s forward.”
Milton Kamwendo in an inspirational speaker, author and coach. He can be reached at [email protected] and on WhatsApp at: 0772422634
