Do not stop moving

Hunting for Greatness

Milton Kamwendo

Do not fear mountains; they can be climbed and crossed. Do not fear greatness; it can be attained and delivered in a lifetime.

Do not fear people; they sometimes are cold and threatening, blind and dismissive. Do not fear challenges; they open the doors of greatness and they help you mine your potential.

Do not fear big things; they change your world and help us re-imagine. Every journey has its details and detours. Every winter has its bad days and better moments. Every fruit has its signature and scars. Whatever happens, do not stop moving. Do not stop growing.

Do not stop dreaming despite the setbacks, and disruptions. Whatever comes your way, should not tempt you to abandon your journey. Journeys always have surprises. Expect great adventures and be willing to frame the experiences in your journey in the right way. Failure is not fatal but a learning opportunity. Accidents are spectacles of risk. At times the journey is slow and its tempting to stop. Slow journeying does not mean you will not arrive. Take account of your context and your terrain. Do not stop moving because the terrain is rough, stop only because you are taking a shop break, but continuing. Do not stop because you are tired, but stop because you have arrived. Keep moving and keep challenging your limitations, limiting beliefs and popular narratives. Stop telling yourself horror stories. The sky is not falling and will not fall anytime soon.

Express life as you move forward. Remember that all living things share some important qualities. All living organisms exist to fulfil their potential, survive and become as great as they can be. Living things grow, develop and keep vital processes happening.

Do not be obsessed with death, be obsessed with the business of living and doing great things. Your business is growing, developing, adapting and changing. Living things have to survive seasons and cope with their environmental challenges. Whatever comes you way you can survive it.

Whatever hits you can survive it. Whatever scares you now you can face it. Whatever is not working can be fixed. Do not stop and be disheartened by the conditions you face. Focus on your mission and not your limitations.

Think bigger than your challenges, think further than your limitations and think deeper than your critics. Keep thinking and moving.

Greatness is a ladder. Keep climbing that ladder with patience, vision and grit. Take one step, then another and another. One step at a time is not too difficult.

Do not worry too much about the whole staircase or the long ladder ahead. Do not stop moving even if the top of the ladder looks too far. Make it your business to climb just one step up every day.

The ladder of greatness is climbed daily but not in a day. Others are used to taking elevators, working clever shortcuts and getting marks they did not earn. Do not follow that train because that is bronze not gold. Keep this is mind: the elevator to greatness does not work; you just have to climb the ladder.

Nature and life cannot be cheated. You cannot hurry the gestation period. You need to do what you have to do. Do not stop climbing even if you are sweating heavily. Stop feeling pity for yourself and thinking that you now deserve a rest. Keep climbing. Climbing up is work and it takes effort and commitment. Sometimes the ladder will feel weak, just hold on, trust providence and do not waiver. Find others that help hold your ladder steady and keep climbing.

Look around you

Mind your context and your situation, but never use it as an excuse. Things change and shift; but that does not mean that you should bend towards the wind. Mind your context bit do not give up.

Keep moving, keep looking around you and per the message of the little but powerful book, “Who Moved My Cheese,” keep smelling the cheese often to see that it is not getting mouldy or finishing. Do not just sit around in a cheese-less situation. Do not stop moving because you have grown cynical and have lost hope. Keep searching in the maze and do not stop.

Open your eyes and see the opportunities of this moment. Your mindset matters because it determines your steps and moves. Keep looking around corners and reading the signals. Change comes, but it is usually the change that you did not see coming that could threaten your journey. Be ready to change, shift, grow but do not stop moving.

You have a choice to act with foresight or hindsight. Acting with foresight requires you to sense the signals, and not wait for the pain of experience. Most people do not change until the pain of experience is too great to bear. Do not wait to be motivated by pain, rather be motivated by great vision. Keep looking, thinking and running through your scenarios and options. You learn better when you are moving. Act, look at the feedback and keep moving and shifting course as you go along.

Be grounded

Keep moving, but in your mind stand on a rock. Be grounded in a strong value system. Be grounded in reality. Glance at the negatives but look ahead. Be grounded in fact, but do not lose sight of faith. Be grounded in your context and navigate through your realities. In a dynamic and changing environment it is that which does not change that keeps you grounded and moving. Clarify your values, fix your vision, know your stand and do not be run by fear. You do not have the luxury of being swayed by every wind, trend and rumour. Everything around you could be sinking sand but stand upon the eternal rock and keep moving.

Be willing to let things go

To keep moving you have to learn to be tolerant. Be tolerant of those that laugh at you, knowing that they do not see where you are going and what you are become. Be tolerant of those that oppose you because they think you are an enemy and a threat. Be tolerant of those who do not support you, they have other loyalties and priorities. Be tolerant with those who think small and think shortage, because they think that supply is limited. Do not become bitter with people because they do not see what you see and know what you know. Keep focused on where you are going and do not give up. Do not stop and do not tire. Do not let people’s weaknesses and antics stop your journey. Keep moving ahead, despite people’s disappointments.

Keep learning

As you journey through towards greatness do not erase everything in the past. Take the best parts of the past and build on them. Foundations should never be destroyed or despised. Do not remain in the past, take its best parts and use them well to accelerate your motion. Just keep moving.  Learning is the ability to manage change by changing yourself. Prioritise learning and growing. Learn how to adapt and increase your understanding of your craft, environment and context. The best way to learn is to take decisions and take massive action. Big moves are big textbooks for learning greatness. You learn best when you do something. Unless you do something you will never learn and your volume as a critic will be louder. Learn from others and learn from everywhere as you keep moving. Keep a learning spirit, a humble heart and moving feet. Do not wait to have learnt everything to start moving. Move in the knowledge you have and what you can see. Keep assimilating new insights and growing. Just keep moving.

When you can no longer learn you have died because only living things learn and grow; the rest just decay.

Set your sights on greatness. Put a dream and plan in place and keep focusing on it. A great dream, a plan and a blue-print — these are your memories of the future. Build your memory of the future make it so strong that it draws you to action. Do not let the memories of the past stop you. Keep moving.      

Committed to your greatness.

Milton Kamwendo is a leading international transformational and motivational speaker, author, and growth mentor. He is a cutting-edge strategy, team-building and organisation development facilitator and consultant. His life purpose is to inspire and promote greatness. He can be reached at: [email protected] and His website is: www.miltonkamwendo.com.