The Sunday Mail
The greatest deception you can allow is for you to think that you have got no power or influence.
You have influence and you are powerful beyond measure. You can do great things if you dare and decide. In a gentle way, you can shake your world and create miracles.
Your influence is greater than you think and bigger than you imagine.
Those seeing you and your work are more than the ones you notice. You give up your power by thinking you do not have any.
If you lose the battle in the mind, you become a victim. Once you are defeated in the mind and you give up in dismay, you are out of the game.
You do not need a title to lead from where you are. You do not need a seat to make a difference. You do not need praise-singers to do praise-worthy deeds.
You do not need a big ego in order to be truly great. Choose to be a leader and a difference in your corner of the world.
You are like a candle and whatever station you occupy is a candlestick. Shine where you are and keep increasing your brightness. You are alive at this special moment for a reason. Bloom there.
Show leadership by blooming where you are planted and shining where you are.
Let your mind be where you are and have influence. Be effective and engaged where you are. Play the game that you are in, not the one you wish you were in. Dance to the music that is playing, not the one you wish could be playing.
Seek to be relevant in your situation.
There are begging opportunities everywhere and there are needs all around looking for answers.
You are able to make a difference because in you lies most answers. You can bloom where you are planted. You have the ability to manifest leadership and make a difference.
You can bloom wherever you are planted if you zoom your life towards solutions.
You are the salt of your circumstances and the difference maker. Stop looking for another play-maker.
Shine where you are because you are the light there. Being the best that you can be is really all that you can be. Everything else is embellishment. Be effective in your mission and diligent in your work.
Live out your purpose in life daily. Give respect to your work, and it will be respected by others. There is no big or small work. All there is, is work and attitude. No one can despise your work, unless you do it poorly. Greatness is attracted by excellence. Every job is important and every occupation is needed.
Attitude 101
Leadership is an attitude.
Instead of being a spectator and letting life pass you by, elect to be a difference maker. Sign up to be a mover and shaker.
Choose to build magnificently with the stones that others throw at you, or away. Leadership does not require exceptional resources, it is a quality of spirit. It is not a matter of geography, but attitude.
Your mental geography matters more than any other space you may occupy. The spirit of leadership is creative, inspirational and tenacious. It is a choice to be a difference maker and to add value to the things in your span of attention and influence geography.
There is no shortage of those with an opinion to express.
There is never an under-supply of commentators. There is just a shortage with those who are willing to do something meaningful regardless of the challenges they face. The leadership spirit engages and challenges the process.
It asks questions and demands answers or creates them. So much around you is crying for change, influence and improvement. So much has been waiting for you to show up. The leadership spirit is to be aware of this daily call and to answer it boldly and courageously.
Race to lead and not just to be led.
Uncomfortable
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. Turbulence is not death but a change agent. Every crisis contains exceptional opportunity.
Look at your challenges with the eye of opportunity. Leadership sees through the lens of vision, not fear. Encourage the hearts around you not to be dismayed, but to be firm and resolute.
Keep moving forward because your tiny step inspires a generation.
Zero is one of the most important numbers. Reality and change starts at one.
One is never too small a number to achieve greatness. Zero is the worst thing you can do in any situation. It is better to be criticized for doing something than to be loved for doing zero.
Zero action results in zero results.
Turbulence builds great leadership and trains the best captains. Persist and persist. Let the daily leadership steps you take compound into a tidal wave of success.
The best lessons are learnt during the storm. The most memorable stories are told by those who survive adversity.
Tame fear
Tame your fear and tune into a different channel. Stop terrorising yourself, change your daytime and bedtime stories.
Create new leadership narratives. Dump fear and act. Leadership without action is mere dreaming. Leadership starts with a vision, a dream and becomes credible when the dream is acted upon. You have the ability to show leadership.
Do not wait for a title in order to run the race of leadership. Wake up daily to run by leading yourself. Improve daily and act diligently. Get better daily, or you will get bitter yearly.
Every challenge is pregnant with possibility.
Raise your bar beyond your fears. Problems are only considered a problem when you make them problems.
Fear only becomes real when you accept it and believe it. Encourage and strengthen your own weak heart.
Then encourage the hearts of others. Shine the spotlight onto those around you and let them feel that they too can lead.
Let them know and feel that they also can become great. Great leaders, in every day life, unleash the greatness in other people that have not seen it in themselves. They see greatness in others before they are aware of it.
Go around encouraging acts of initiative and promoting the gifts around you.
Lead where you are positioned and shine where you are planted. Do not be led by situations, choose to wrestle leadership.
Lead yourself daily in order to lead others. It is better to lead without a title than to have a title and not lead.
Get some pride, do seriously exceptional work every day and in every place where you are.
You do not need to get to the end of your life to realise that you could have lived, made a difference and impacted many.
Rise and lead.
Remember the words of Martin Luther King Jnr who said: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say: ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well’.”
Rise and sweep your doorstep.
If everyone sweeps their doorstep, this country will be clean and different.
Take action and lead.
Milton Kamwendo is an international transformational and inspirational speaker, author and coach. He is a strategy, innovation, team-building and leadership facilitator. His life purpose is to inspire people to be great. Feedback: [email protected], Twitter @MiltonKamwendo and WhatsApp +263772422634
