The Sunday Mail
YOU get what you create or allow.
Whatever you guard, grows and whatever you allow, enters. You cannot afford to have an open mind, you must guard it. Soon after I finished writing my Advanced Level examinations, I set myself a goal to find some work to do while I waited for my results.
Living in Bulawayo then, I put on my best suit, borrowed my father’s tie and decided that I would walk from Lobengula Street, where there was a bus terminus, to Barrow Street (Now Samuel Parirenyatwa Road) until I found a job.
I was confident I would find a job, there had to be one for me and I was determined to search. Some of the shop owners snubbed me. It felt cold. In some of the shops I was met with a sign, “No Work, No Hawkers,” and the attendants just motioned me to read this sign.
It was disappointing and painful. Anyone desperate for a job knows this feeling too well.
I knew that if I was going to get a job, I had to turn this quest into a job itself. Job hunting is not for the lazy. I did not have the luxury of succumbing to hunger or aching legs. I wanted a job and I was going to get it.
I was determined to do whatever it took. I learnt that day that desire is not enough. Action is not enough. I needed staying power and resilience.
Moving from snub to snub, failure to failure without losing enthusiasm is the raw material of success.
I walked the lengths of Lobengula, Hebert Chitepo, Fort, Main and Jason Moyo streets. I entered every shop that would allow me in.
It was late afternoon, when I was now in despair and was thinking that my search was in vain, that I crossed Fife Street attracted by the big “Cut Price Centre” sign adjacent to Bulawayo Central Police.
I was tired, hungry but desperate to find a job.
At Cut Price Centre, I was directed into the Indian owner’s spartan office. His name was Mr Sakhrani; a short man with a sharp gaze.
He motioned that I should sit down and after a brief interview, he offered me a security job. I was elated. I had my first job.
He gave me a small black badge inscribed “Security”.
I was then ushered into the bookkeeper’s cubicle and asked to sign some forms and told to report early the next day. I wanted to run. I had a job, not the best or the easiest, but a job nonetheless.
My job description was simple: look, watch and catch any shoplifter or raise alarm. My lunch was just 30 minutes, and at the end of each day my feet hurt.
In my new role, I learnt some important lessons that have stayed with me and shaped my life. Although I never caught anyone, my role was to guard. I stayed true to the call.
To achieve greatness it is important to be vigilant, set boundaries and guard what is important.
An unguarded life will never progress. A life without important boundaries will always suffer from uncontrollable accidents.
Leaders without boundaries self-destruct.
Guard your mind, secure
your faith
Guard your mind, internal dialogue and the way you think and process information. All failure and demotivation can be traced to the way you think. When you change your thinking, you transform your life and energy levels.
Thinking like a loser is the shortest way to lose. Refuse to let your mind be a dumping ground for other people’s negativity and cynicism.
Guard your mind diligently because it is your life’s control tower and information processing centre.
Tough patches do not mean that everything is now broken. Broken plumbing does not necessarily mean bad real estate. Do not confuse the movie with the scene.
In any movie, there will be tragic scenes, but those do not mean that the whole movie is a tragedy. Guard your mind diligently.
Once you are defeated in your mind you stop doing even the simple things that are in your control. Do not run mad and wild because you think that the whole sky is falling.
A patch of bad weather does not mean you should emigrate. A bad trading season does not mean you should abandon the business.
Guard your mind and quit thinking like a victim. Choose the images that you will allow into your mind and keep out images scary effigies that dispirit, demoralise and depress you.
You do not have the luxury to open your mind to negativity. Weed out killer weeds from the garden of your mind.
Guard your fears, secure
your resolve
Do not allow fear to overrun you and unhinge your resolve to win and take bold and determined action. Big goals require bold actions.
Being fearful when decisive action is required is costly. Refuse to be run by fear and to run away from taking the actions that you must.
Refuse to be tormented by fear and imprisoned by it. What would you do if you were not afraid? What are you fearing anyway? Would this fear make sense ten years from now?
You are not a child of despair. You are not a coward. You are not a wimp, loser or crybaby. It is not that visions die or dreams lie, it is just that people despair when they give heed to fear.
Be on guard against unreasonable and debilitating fear. Fearing so much that you do nothing is not a clever option.
Evaluate your options and refuse to let your fears do the thinking for you. Let fear give you the adrenalin shot and infuse the emotional fire to act. Period. But never let fear imprison you into a listless victim.
Take the action that you must but do not stop moving and resign to fate.
Greatness favours the bold soul that can take relentless action.
Keep punching. One or two failures are not statistically significant or reason enough for you to fear trying again.
Guard your resolve to act, and then act. Take massive and determined action.
Guard your energy, secure
your time
Your energy is the key to your ability to take action and execute with focus. Guard your energy and deploy it intelligently.
Build your energy, prime your motivation, focus your effort and demand a return on that energy. Review your work and schedule the tasks that demand your best energy at the moments when your energy is sharpest.
Things that matter most demand the best of your attention, focus and energy. Refuse the use a thousand dollars worth of energy on a task that is worth a dollar.
Guard your time. Flee time wasters who do not value your time and energy. Never forget that you are not getting any younger and neither is time waiting for your whims. Time is a highly perishable resource that you must use or lose.
Today is the youngest that you will ever be. It is the tomorrow that you kept talking about yesterday. Never curse senior citizens or laugh at their problems and gait because you will soon be joining them.
Guard your goals, secure
your future
The future is created by the goals that you set and pursue. There is an ever-present temptation to abandon your goals, scale them down or look for new and easier ones. Guard your goals.
They may not fit into other people’s thoughts and plans but you are not living other people’s lives, are you?
Guard and pursue your goals with all your energy and determination. In tough times, you have to run twice as fast to remain at the same place.
Keep running and pursuing your goals until they are begging for mercy. You may have to look for help, but there is no shame in that. You cannot become great without help or helping others.
Guard your leadership, secure your vision
As a leader, you lead through people and need to inspire those you lead and give them the flame and passion to give their best.
If you do not guard your leadership behaviour, you can also disempower and demotivate your team. You can block their energy and their creativity.
A stifling leader is an obstacle.
Develop your leadership, sharpen and guard it. Be the touch that lights other fires not the water that puts out people’s fire. Be a leader that identifies and multiplies people’s potential and capacity. No leader has the right to kill people’s spirits, creativity and passion.
Inspire hope, paint exciting visions and lead your troops to great exploits. Fearful leaders imprison potential. It is when things are tough, that leaders need to lead, take action and take bold fearless actions.
Leaders who think like victims and talk like losers infect their institutions with debilitating fear.
Complaining is not a leadership or entrepreneurial narrative.
Leaders are miners of greatness in people. Guard your leadership behaviour. Refuse to be the leader who is the stumbling block or the bottleneck to greatness.
Remember the old saying that the bottleneck always occurs at the top of the bottle. Most failure can be traced to a leadership failure.
Most leadership failure can be traced to leaders that have given up and are now irrelevant to their cause.
Refuse to be an undertaker, but be a breath taker that inspires people to greatness. It is not enough to be competent, you have to be compelling.
Leaders determine what will live and what dies in their institutions. Blind leaders kill visions of greatness. You get what you create and allow.
Greatness requires you to wear the “security” badge daily. Keep out the negative, allow in the positive.
Watch, observe and do. Catch the things that steal your faith, confidence and energy.
Opportunity is everywhere, particularly where problems abound.
Milton Kamwendo is an international transformational and inspirational speaker, author, strategy and innovation consultant and leadership coach. He can be reached at [email protected] and on WhatsApp number 0772422634.
