The Sunday Mail
Hunt for Greatness
Milton Kamwendo
Whatever happens to you do not be frozen in negativity and lose your edge and power to dream. It does not matter how long the winter lasts determine that you will not die in the winter or stop dreaming.
Keep moving, keep praying and keep marching ahead. You have power in you to change your circumstances and bring your dreams to life. You may have watched Disney’s animation movie entitled: “Frozen”.
There are opportunities everywhere. If you do not see opportunities that does not mean that they do not exist. Focus means choosing to be opportunity-minded and not problem-obsessed. You may be in the mud, do not despair because that is where vegetative growth occurs. You may be surrounded by bees but then this is where honey gets manufactured. You may be under pressure but this is how diamonds came to be as they held on for millions of years under extreme pressure. Stay in faith and in process. Keep your head and do not lose your gait.
What you do now will inspire many people beyond your wildest dreams. Do not stop dreaming and do not stop writing the story of your life. You own the narrative and you are not a victim. Inspired by a 1937 book by Hans Christian Anderson, Walt Disney Studios in 2013 produced a 3D computer-animated musical fantasy film entitled “Frozen”.
This is a magical story of two sisters who battle with the tragedy of a perpetual winter, facing fear, dealing with adversity and taking action despite the twists and turns of life. When their kingdom becomes trapped in perpetual winter, fearless Anna joins forces with mountaineer Kristoff and his reindeer sidekick to find Anna’s sister, Snow Queen Elsa. The purpose of their journey to try and reverse the perpetual winter and break Elsa’s icy spell. Their epic journey leads them to encounters with trolls, a comedic snowman, harsh conditions, and many unexpected events at every turn. Anna and Kristoff persist and bravely push onward in a race to save their kingdom from winter’s cold grip.
The story of fighting perpetual winters does not just belong to the world of fantasy, story, folklore, comic movies and myths. Living through these times that have long been themed as volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) is a daily battle to maintain focus, fight through challenge and continue to reach forth for greatness. The task at hand is never wishing for an easier life or a more clement winter. The task is praying for strength to survive and thrive under any situation. The task is to create your own weather and influence the circumstances.
The task is to be innovative and see problems as opportunities. The task is to focus and keep moving ahead in pursuit of great visions. The task is never to give up dreaming because things are tough, but amplifying and extend dreams because things are tough. It is in the deep miry clay that greatness is born and exploits are manufactured. Do not give up, give whatever you face the best of your creativity and energy.
Face forward because that is where you are going. You have to move and pull in the direction of your faith and not your fear. There are no hopeless situations. Difficulties do not mean that there is no hope and no help. Do not cast away hope and replace strategic thinking with unstructured complaints. Do not replace sense-making with nonsense actions.
You choose what you focus on: good or bad, negative or positive, past or future, faith or fear. Whatever you focus on will also focus on grows in your awareness. Wake up to the greatness within and not fear. You are responsible for what goes on in your mind, mouth and mine of possibilities. There is no situation that lacks possibilities and no heart lack the flicker of a great fire of passion and vision. It is up to you to fan your flame.
When the clouds of negativity hang low and appear everywhere this is when your faith has to be on full steam. If you are negative, do not spread it like an unwanted virus. Do not assume everyone is in a sour state, morbid attitude and victim-mode. Get up, rise up and firm up. Feeling down is normal, staying down is a choice.
If you feel discouraged and dejected never assume that the whole world has stopped hoping, believing, dreaming and doing. Your personal situation is not a global adverse trend or barometer of hope. Choose your focus and that takes mindfulness, alertness and it is really challenging work. Work on your focus daily and pick it up when you are tempted to lose it.
Strategy always has two legs: the immediate and the long term. Go back to your strategy plan, review and resize it beyond “short-termism”. It is when things are down that you have to plan to fly and see beyond the storm. It is when you are flying that you have to plan to soar and also read your co-ordinates carefully. Tough times are never the times to suspend strategic thinking and planning. It is when the immediately is challenging that you need the stabilising power of long range thinking and planning.
Strategy should look at what you need to correct and restore. Times of turbulence reveal maintenance gaps, strategic blindspots and weaknesses that have been ignored. Every mess you face has a message that is too important to ignore. Before you ride the clouds make sure you have sufficient fuel in the tank and you have looked at your engine capacity.
Strategic thinking is not an excuse for not looking at reality. Glance at the negative and face the brutal realities with a mind to find solutions. It is not enough to preach problems, the key is solution thinking. Be obsessed with solutions and not just problems. It is not the one who amplifies problems that ultimately matters the most but the one who battles to find and deliver the solutions.
Effective strategy should have a faith and forward leap element. Faith sees and shapes the future and believes it as reality undergoing manifestation. Faith says there is an exciting future that is pregnant with possibilities. Faith fishes that hope and those possibilities and embraces them as fact. Fear-filled strategies close out innovation and creativity. Fear sees the present challenges as a continuum, vicious cycle and doom loop.
Do not believe everything that fear suggests because fear’s shadow is long, threatening and debilitating. Strategic planning is anchored in action-filled hope. It is a creative process that looks at challenges, and refuses to be frozen. Rise with an inspiring map to guide action without ignoring the threats. Great strategies look at both the headwinds and the tailwinds. The tail winds are the things that are pushing you forward and giving you momentum. The headwinds are the obstacles and friction that you have to deal with.
Strategy should embrace best practices and next practices. Best practices speak to excellence. Next practices speak to disruption and radical transformation. What links the two and plots the journey is your faith leap. When you operate from a paradigm of faith you may look at the moment like a day dreaming fool. Faith is the evidence of things hoped for. It is the reality that you choose to live in not the emotions that are pricking you now. Now is cheap because it has already slipped into history. Short-term passes fast, long term is a better beacon. Faith is exciting because it sees a larger world, great possibilities and is too exciting to let go. The short term is always insane and unsettling.
It takes courage to focus on what other people do not see. Strategy is seeing the unseen and focusing on your destination. It takes courage to paint a picture of the future that other people think does not exist. It takes courage to see what other people are not seeing.
It takes courage to believe in possibilities. It take courage to stand up when you are hardest hit. It takes courage to think creatively and act with resolve. It takes courage to confront your fears. Without courage life is left to be an empty meaningless shell. People with courage and conviction make things happen.
Courage is a choice to do something regardless of the emotions of fear or self-doubt. Focus on your magnificent vision of greatness. Just do it regardless of the threats, jeers and nay-sayers. Do it afraid if it seems too fearful. Believe more in your dream than in your personal preservation.
You are a sum total of the choices that you have made. You are not marooned but you have options and there are possibilities that are too big for your imagination. Choose your options wisely. Choose to dare and take action. Do not let situations choose for you. Take back your power. When you blame and complain you give up the power to choose. Do not surrender your voting rights to fear-filled fate.
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
