MOTIVATION: Whatever you go through, never forget these things

12 Jul, 2015 - 00:07 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

Difficult times come, sometimes as visitors and at times as long-stay lodgers. They usually come as unwelcome guests, bearing precious gifts. In time they leave us the gifts and we appreciate them more.

Tough spaces, like thorns, exist everywhere, but that is never enough reason to give up gardening. Tragic scenes in any movie are there but they are not the whole film. Anyone searching for honey never feels it strange to be stung by a few bees. Whatever you pass through or come to, there are things that you must never forget.

What you forget or remember will determine your level of joy or misery. Choose to have a selective memory and remember the things that serves, not those that hole you in bitterness and unending pain.

Never let what you go through dismember your confidence, scar your self-image, kill your passion or rob you of your inner-drive.

Sometimes you have to take a step back, in that time do not forget to grow and prepare for your second coming and next battle. To re-emerge from the dressing room in an old costume, with rusty ideas and playing by tired old rules is to have wasted a curtain break.

Do not forget to grow

Whatever happens, never forget to grow and develop. Let the winds of your adversity push you higher like a kite. Tough times are times when you must invest in your learning, growth and development.

Growth is not just about certificate accumulation without praxis. Do not be in too much of a rush to embellish your curriculum vitae without results to show. Be in a rush to get knowledge, consolidate understanding, increase domain expertise and gather ideas and skills that you diligently apply to your situations. Qualified incompetent people that are too scared to face reality are a burden to society and a waste of resources.

If you forget to grow in a storm, you will be irrelevant after the storm and might just waste your suffering. To be experienced at managing insanity and fail to grow and develop other skills, makes you insane when you are faced with sanity.

Everything we know about jobs and professions will change. The future does not look like the past. See yourself not as boxed by your job title or certificates but a manager of your own portfolio of assets and competencies.

Ensure your employability by growing new competencies and creating value wherever you are. If you do not keep growing and developing, you quickly atrophy into irrelevance. Refuse to expire while sitting on an organisational position.

Refuse to let the world pass you by while you resist change. Your security is in your ability to keep growing and developing. If you only develop yourself because you would like to keep yourself registered with a certain qualifications board, you are operating on the boarders of irresponsibility. Grow daily and refuse to go to bed with the same ignorance that you woke up with.

People that knew you yesterday must find you knowing something new, better and different tomorrow. Refuse to be so engaged with the past that you become a pain in the present and a liability in the future.

Whatever happens, never be so stressed that you cannot read or so perplexed that you stop learning. Growth comes when you confront your fears and you are bold enough to unlearn what no longer serves you.

Do not forget to track

Any crisis that you pass through is too precious to waste. Do not forget to journal, take notes and process your experiences. Never forget to take a photograph or salvage a souvenir. To pass through a crisis and take nothing out of it is to have wasted the crisis. Refuse to be a crusader with no cause. Persistence without purpose is needless suffering. On your lowest day, take a picture and remind yourself that one day you will have a story to tell. You will always live long when you have some bold things and exciting things that you are yet to do.

The mind forgets quickly. Do not live mindlessly and forget to record. In a village the death of an elder is like the burning of a precious library. To live through experiences and an era of adversity and not share or document your experiences and struggles for future generations is to be selfish.

To live long and not write your memoirs is to leave the future to be scripted by foreigners who did not see what you saw, feel what you felt and understand what you understood.

Your life journey and its stories are the special fruit that should be harvested and kept for generations to nibble. Irresponsible people die with their stories and perspectives unwritten. Selfish people do not share their knowledge, wisdom and experiences with others.

The literary and cultural world is always poorer when great people die with unwritten stories and unrecorded wisdom. Refuse to die with a loaded gun unfired.

I have been inspired by Joseph Mutizwa who was the chief executive officer of Delta Corporation from 2002 to 2012. Joe is a former political prisoner who spent three years at Wha Wha detention centre between 1975 and 1978.

After retiring from Delta Corporation in May 2012, he has set himself on a path to develop and mentor leaders through coaching, teaching and writing.

In the space of two years, he has written five books and is still writing. He intends to die empty, having distilled and shared all his experiences and wisdom gained from the corporate jungle.

In his writing, Joe chronicles his journey and experiences in a clear and interesting lucid manner.

He shares his growth and development journey with practical examples that are easy to relate with. In his first book, he chronicles his personal crucibles and shares the transformative experiences that have shaped him. His books leave you feeling that you too can be a leader of worth and a corporate warrior.

He shares the struggles and corporate combat that he went through at various stages of his career.

In his latest 2015 book “No Ordinary Path” Joe chronicles his 19-year career journey from being a personnel officer at United Bottlers to being a Group CEO.

After reading his book, you are left crying and asking why so many elderly voices are mute and not sharing their wisdom and experiences.

Until you are able to boldly and confidently tell your story, you will always be a shadow of other people’s thoughts and ideas.

Greatness starts when you respect your own stories enough to be able to share them.

Writing your story is bold and enduring generosity. There will never be a reading culture without a writing culture.

Do not forget people

We are all in the people business. Without people, there is no economy, no politics, no service and no business. Business is all about people serving and giving value to other people. Whatever you go through, never forget people or lose heart and despair at the human spirit.

Everyone you meet is hungry for attention and respect. Respect people and give them dignity by the way you serve them.

Respect people regardless of their station in life. Never let people’s current coating make you lose sense and stop respecting people. Great people make other people feel great in their presence. Affirm people and make them feel worthy.

Never be too busy to ignore people around you. Whatever you may be going through, never forget to recognize, show respect and value the people around you. Whatever happens, there is always time for courtesy.

To be a CEO and not know the name of the person who opens your gate everyday is to be thoughtless. To lead and not know something special about the person who cleans your office is to be careless. Most people are dying for the attention of their leaders.

Engage people meaningfully. Ask them questions about themselves and their work that show that you care for what they do and you value them.

Whenever anyone serves you, recognise them and express gratitude. A tip shows that you value the person that serves you. You do not need to wait for a crisis to start looking for people. The key to your greatness is the people around you. Serve them like royalty and they will promote you.

Do not forget the future

Whatever you go through, never forget that there is a future. What is happening, like what happened before it, shall soon pass. Nothing looks and feels more plastic and permanent like the present. Never forget the future is coming at a fast and furious pace. The future in not some strange place that you will never live in. The future is the grandchild of today. If you want to enjoy the fruit tomorrow, plant the tree today. If you want to drink water tomorrow, start digging the well today. The worst time to dig a well is when you are thirsty.

Everyday be pregnant with the future because that is where you will live. Yesterday is just a memory, today is melting ice-cream, tomorrow is true reality.

The future comes fast and catches the unprepared by surprise. Position yourself for opportunities that do not as yet exist.

Put your legs into the present, but never sink your head into it. Celebrate the present but live in the future. Denominate your present in the currency of the future rather than denominating the future in the currency of the present.

Whatever you do, do not forget to play to your strengths, preserve empowering history, plan diligently and pray earnestly.

 

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.

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