The Sunday Mail
Milton Kamwendo Hunt for Greatness
MANY people are comfortable with a pace that is lazily slow and lethargic. Not you! purposelessness is a curable disease of the mind.
Let those who want to walk, walk on in barren leisure. In your case, where others walk, you must run with daring determination.
Where others trot, you must sprint towards your goals. Where they jump, you must aim to leapfrog and dart towards your moonshot. Where others scamper, pole vault to your greatness.
The world is not waiting for your acne-scratching and inward-looking petty fights.
Purposeless fights at a time when there is so much to do, too much to develop are a waste of resources and an interruption. There is greatness waiting to be achieved.
Great work awaits the willing and able. There are possibilities beyond your wildest dreams that are waiting for you to move, take action and focus.
If you want to wait for the right time, you can wait alone. If you want to play by outmoded rules, you are in the minority.
If you want to wait for the sun, the moon will escape. Just know that time is not waiting for you. Today is the youngest that you will ever be.
Your personal concerns may be self-absorbing and important but they will not persuade the whole world to wait for you. It is time to spread your wings, think big and start taking action.
Run, baby run
There is an old tale from the African savannas that is worth repeating often. What you repeat you master. Powerful stories must be retold often until you act with power. The lion and the impala each wake up every day from their resting places with a determination to run.
There can be no holiday, or sick leave because the animal world is dangerous for those who are at ease and in mindless repose.
You have the luxury of sleeping if you know there is no danger in sight. The impala knows that it must outrun the fastest lion. However, the lion also knows that it must outrun the fastest impala or starve. The lion does not have the luxury of feeling sorry for itself. It cannot blame the forest features or the impalas for running too fast and jumping too high.
You cannot blame circumstances for poor hunting techniques
Whether you are a lion or an impala, it does not matter much. What matters is that you have to wake up determined to run, and preoccupied with survival. Run with a clear goal or you waste energy on that which does not matter much.
Every day you have to wake up to run and pursue worthy goals. Pursue your goals until they beg for mercy. Half-hearted pursuits are not worth a life. Aim for the mark and run. Do not feel sorry for yourself and think that someone has to bring food to your mouth or run on your behalf.
Run for your greatness because your security is in your ability to keep running and sustaining the momentum.
History shows no mercy for those who are not willing to run. The impala that got too lazy to run, too tired to run or too comfortable to run has no further running stories to tell because it was eaten.
You too can run in your lane and carve your own greatness. Someone once said that there was a time in the past when the race used to be won by the biggest.
Then, size and economies of scale mattered most.
However in this age, the race is won by the fastest. You do not have the luxury to snail-pace through life. Things are changing fast and it is important that you also pick up pace and move with the times.
Wake up to run. If you cannot wake up to run, at least run in your dreams.
If you do not pick yourself up and start running, you risk being left behind and becoming irrelevant. Living in yesterday, today, is being lost. Living in history alone, without an exciting story of the future, is futile living.
Challenge Boundaries
You do not have the luxury to live a limited life that is well within the margins of safe mediocrity. Challenge your limits and claim you stake. Living is for the bold and the daring. Dare to set goals that are bigger than where you are.
Dare to go for greatness and move forward with resolve. If you are going to be dreaming anyway, you might as well dream big.
If you are going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. If you are going to be eating the proverbial dog, you might as well eat the bull-dog.
Do not arrive at easy destinations and claim to have seen the whole world. Keep reaching for more and exploring greater possibilities.
While others dream of the next village, dream of the next planet. You can become anything that you wish to be. You are not limited by anyone or anything except yourself.
The problems you face today are not an evidence of anything special about your situation, they are normal birth pains.
He wants to change the world
He was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. That was two months before I was born. He thinks big, goes for big things and life has rewarded his faith, vision and hard work. He was the oldest of three children. He spent his childhood in South Africa and at age 9, he got his first computer, the Commodore VIC-20.
He immediately got interested in coding and started to learn it by himself. At the age of 12, he earned $500 by selling a computer game, Blastar, which he had created.
The early years of his life were bumpy. He left South Africa for Canada, intending to finally find his way to the United States. He worked on menial jobs until he was able to get to University.
He studied at Ontario University, Canada for two years before getting a scholarship to study at the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated with B.S. in physics and subsequently a B.S. in Economics from The Wharton School.
Always determined to make things better and make a difference for a lot of people, he has dedicated himself to space and alternative energy technologies.
He challenges reality and soberly makes bold claims that sound insane. He is working to conquer the planet Mars and make it habitable. He is working to make travel in space cheap and affordable.
He thinks that his electric car will take over the world and already it is getting noticed and being bought by many. Such is life when you choose to go beyond the limits that other people set for you. Refuse to let other people determine how high you can go and how far you can shoot.
He plays by very different rules and does that quite successfully. This is the story of Elon Musk. You, too, have a story to tell and a most exciting one to start living.
Elon Musk has created three companies with a market capitalisation of more than $1 billion, and that is a feat. These are PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors.
His distinctive personality traits are perseverance, critical thinking, accurate self-analysis and hard work. He works hands on and thinks big.
He personally participates in the designs of his Tesla cars and Space Crafts, working between 80-100 hours per week.
Elevate what you are working hard on. In addition to these companies that he helped create, he is also chairman of SolarCity and is also involved in developing a high-speed transportation system known as Hyperloop.
Elon Musk invests in the projects that he believes can change our world.
He is not out to just survive, he wants to change the world and make it a better place. You can be more than you are showing and do more than you have done before.
Demand more of yourself and give more to others. Elon Musk is an entrepreneur, inventor, innovator, and engineer.
Musk personally participates in designing of electric cars and spaceships. Challenge yourself to go beyond yesterday’s hurdle.
While others are still in conversations about the moon and its possibilities, for Musk, Mars offers some possibilities that humans can tap and make habitable.
He is searching for new geographies and new possibilities. Get tired of the ordinary and remaining in mundane conversations and uninteresting dreams.
Try big
You cannot have a strategy to merely catch up; that will be too slow and tailing other people’s shadows.
Aim to leapfrog.
Milton Kamwendo is a leading international transformational and motivational speaker, author and coach. He is a cutting strategy, innovation, team-building and leadership facilitator. His life purpose is to inspire greatness. He can be reached at: [email protected] and Twitter: @MiltonKamwendo or WhatsApp at: 0772422634
