The Sunday Mail
Tough times come and go, but tough people live to tell their stories and share their survival lessons.
Referee Zack Clayton sends Ali to the corner as Foreman lies on the canvas — File picture
Fight to hold on to your hope and maintain your faith in the future. It is enough to die once, but do not die before you are really dead.
It is better to die hoping than to die having stopped hoping many years prior. When hope dies, you are left as a lamp with no oil, body without a soul, brain without oxygen.
There are no hopeless situations, there are only people who are disillusioned, ill-advised and have lost hope in their situations.
Hope is your asset and arsenal for growth. Without it, nothing else has its true value.
Hope is your strategic fuel reserve. Do not lose it. If you were almost losing it, chase after it and clutch on its back.
If you had lost it, scour and search for it everywhere until you find it. It is when you lose hope that you lose your grip and grit.
Hope until you can hope no more. With all you have got, keep hope alive.
We live by believing in the future. When you lose faith in the future, you are left baseless and naked.
Without hope there is no despair, but more. Life just becomes meaningless, barren and bare. Hope and reality have an inverse relationship.
You cannot hope for sunshine when you are in the sun. It is when it is really dark that stars grace the sky in their numbers. Hope for day break because it will come. Every problem has a limited life span. Out-live your problems, out-believe your adversities, out-do your doubts and outfit your mind with incurable optimism.
You get what you believe and you become what you verbalise.
Your words create your realities. Do not yield to the temptation of beading your vocabulary on the string of your miseries.
Rather, string your words on the strands of faith and hope.
Hope is like a rural road or country path. Initially there was no road, then many people kept walking on the path that one person or animal started.
In time, the more people walk on that path, a road is created. In time a road is born. Some paths are not carved by civil engineers and transport planners, they are walked on until they exist. So is the nature of hope. Keep treading on hope until a new pathway is born and a roadway to your greatness emerges.
Keep hoping until you see possibilities in your life that you never saw before. Keep hoping until you come up with a plan that is far superior to suicide. Keep hoping until you convince yourself that running away is not a growth option.
Keep hoping until day-break comes. Keep hoping until you start taking action and doing what you have been putting off.
Keep hoping until your circumstances stop hounding you.
Keep hoping until hope burns in your soul and you move with a new light and energy.
Keep hoping until you take personal responsibility to change your situation. Keep hoping until you get to where you want to be. Keep hoping until you believe in the future and start taking resolute and passionate action. Keep hoping until you are left without any other option but to hope.
Those who keep hope alive sustain life. Without hope you cannot live to fight another day. Hope never leaves you in the muddy ditch.
You are the one who chooses to ditch hope. Sing songs of hope and not your compilation of lamentations.
The depravity of the past, or gravity of the present are not the expectation of the future.
What things are today is not what they will always be. Inside every struggling heart, there is greatness stirring and seeking expression.
Inside every struggle, there is a seed of greatness waiting to be cracked. Inside every problem there is a staggering opportunity that is waving for attention. Inside every struggling organisation there is a giant enterprise struggling for release.
Problems are never a signal of death but a wake up call to greatness.
If you are willing to listen, you will hear the birds of hope singing or humming the tune to the song, “Hold on!”
Being knocked down is not being knocked out.
Even champions do get punched and punched and punched, but they never stop punching too. To make mistakes is to be human.
There is always another chance and opportunity. Failure is not futility.
Failure is not falling down, but choosing to stay down. A knock-down is not a count-out. Keep hope alive. Keep punching and throwing your punches.
For every punch there is a belt of victory waiting. For every sadness, there is a hidden joy. When you think you have lost that is when hope waves its banner. Do not lose hope or mindlessly toss it away. To hope is to be spiritual and to lose hope is a closed option.
One of the best boxing fights that I have watched was the George Foreman vs Muhammad Ali fight that took place on October 30, 1974 in Kinshasa in the DRC (then called Zaire).
George Foreman was defending his World Heavyweight Championship title for the third time.
He was a fearsome fighter with heavy punches and had a 40-0 record then.
Ali was aged 32 and had been given little chance or hope to even recapture this coveted belt.
Foreman, the fearsome puncher had previously knocked out both Joe Frazier and Ken Norton in two rounds. In this legendary fight, Ali avoided directly fighting Foreman.
One strategy is never good enough for every situation and opponent. Ali stayed on the ropes against better advice from his handlers and just kept holding, ducking and blocking Foreman’s punches. For seven rounds, Foreman over-punched himself trying to knock out Ali.
In the eighth round he continued with his rain of punches but like all problems he could only punch so much. It is then that Ali, seeing an opportunity delivered a combination punch that knocked out the exhausted Gorge Foreman. Stay in the ring long enough to let your issues lose their steam and punching force.
Hope is what keeps you alive.
Sometimes the best defence is an offensive.
Without hope, faith does not have a platform for full expression and action has no runway to help land greatness.
Hope begins in the dark and that is where many great things begin. For years, you could not do any printing or photography without a dark-room process.
The seeds of life are sown and nurtured in the dark womb. Keep your stubborn hope that bids you to show up everyday with a confident hopeful smile and knows that if you stand in the right places and do the right things the dawn will come.
True hope is not just a general public opinion.
There is never need for hope in good times. True hope is hoping when everything seems hopeless. Never forget the inverse relationship of hope and reality.
The more hopeless the situation looks, the more hope you need to invest for your greatness. Just having a fund of hope animating your mind puts you at the front of the queue. When change comes, hope will ensure that it finds you prepared and ready to greet and embrace it.
In winter some trees shed off all their leaves and you may presume that they are dead. They are not. A leaf-less tree awaits its moment of spring with hope.
Do not die in your winter.
Hope is that little flame that keeps burning in you and wakes you up the next morning with a renewed will to make something happen.
Hope makes you see the stars despite the scars.
Keep hope alive and faith aflame.
Milton Kamwendo is a cutting-edge international transformational and inspirational speaker, author and coach. He is a strategy, innovation, leadership and management consultant. His life purpose is to inspire people to release the greatness trapped in them. He can be reached at: [email protected] and on WhatsApp at: 0772422634.
