The Sunday Mail
Hunt for Greatness-Milton Kamwendo
Everyone has a story to tell. Without effort, achievement is empty and things that should be valued become toys of vanity and vainglory. Sweat is precious and teaches us to value things that matter. Sweat for your greatness and never despair because the results seem to be coming slowly.
Do not be disappointed because you seem to be putting in so much thankless work, so much unrewarded effort and so much time. It is the best way to climb and build. It is not what people see that matters most, but the sweat that they do not see that is the real essence of greatness.
Stretch story
If your life-story was turned into a book, would anyone want to buy it and gift it as a worthy gift to anyone special? If your story was turned into a movie, would this be a worthwhile investment? Mr Hunter S. Thompson in his book “The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967” says this about the journey of life: “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!’”
Whatever you do, try not to die lifeless in bed. Try not to die in your sleep. Die in action and on the move. Die in mid-story and not when you totally have nothing more to do or say, except to die expire.
You have a special story and you are the protagonist in that story among stories. Do not look down on your story, tell it with pride and life it with courage. Choose to sweat, stretch, do something big and worth narrating. Find another title for your life’s story better than “The Lamentations”. Dry stories don’t sell to anyone. Do not let your story be dry, uninteresting and purposeless. Make your story worth following. Get out of the shell and live life fully. Note, fully does not mean reckless, mindless and careless. You are not practicing to live and today is the youngest that you will ever be. Do not waste this moment.
Attempt great things and be willing to stretch, because this is how strategies are implemented and potential is tapped. Every story has its chapters, so keep opening new chapters. Every paragraph is capsule of meaning, keep stretching and adding more meaning to your significant life. Every punctuation mark add new turn, meaning and tone to your story. Be willing then to go through what you have to go through in order to be great. Make your story worth reading and more than just a purposeless whip of days, heap of letters or a hoard of poorly punctuated experiences. Sweat to your greatness, but scale your efforts.
Failure flavour
Never let past failure stop you from trying again. Come back to the ring and stand up when you are hardest hit. Do not die in the winter of your life. If need be, postpone death until your life has a message and is worth remembering. Do not just wilt in your wilderness moments. Life is a bold experience and failure is the seasoning of the sweat. True greatness takes sweating-time, sweating-effort and sustained sweating-focus.
Do not let the current chapter of your life be the last chapter of your life. Put a book marker on failure chapter, but open new chapters. Do not grow roots on the adversity chapter. Do not denominate your life in the currency of your mindless past.
Do not let discouragement be your life’s narrator. Stop playing despair songs as your background music. Your wilderness moments are too precious to be wasted telling scary stories to would-be great dreamers. Your story is not ended yet, open new chapters and verses. Do not die until you are really dead. Open new scenes in the movie of your life.
Who are you really at the core? Silence that voice that is saying – loser, failure, or weakling. Fail yes, but do not stop. What does it really take to stop you?
Pause yes, but do not stop. You are not a coward, deserter or escapee from the sweat-path and heat of greatness. Wipe off the sweat but do not throw that towel in the ring in mindless and early surrender. No series of setbacks is a serious enough reason for you living a life of regret.
The defeats of the past should never be the defeats of the future.
Carry the best parts of the past and not the most painful part. Past failure should not be fatalist prophecies. The pains of the past should never be allowed to be the lived in perpetuity in the future. Close the chapters that no longer serve you. Stop sweating without reward of effort. Let the fires that you passed through be the tonic of your motivation today. What keeps you passion for greatness when nothing else will do?
No adversity is strong enough to stop you. No personal tragedy is big enough to write you off.
Do not take yourself off the shelf before your sell-by date. Life is too big to be wasted in empty living, negativity discussions, and discourses of disaffections and defeat. Disheartening jeremiads are not an investment business case.
There is more to a wilderness than what meets the eye. Do not spend your wilderness moments in freeze, flight, fight or funny modes.
Even if what you are doing does not look like or feel like the ultimate, keep moving, loving this moment and learning all you can. In a storm you either get better or bitter. It all depends on you and not on the wilderness, the experience or the source of pain.
Forgive the past and its pains and close that chapter and its sweat-shop. Learn from the past, but do not build castles and rot there. Never let the pain of the past occupy all of your present and maim your future. Your moulding experiences are important. They cannot be ignored. However, never use them as an excuse or crutch.
Reframe your moulding experiences into a motivating runway to launch your greatness. Squeeze the juice from your moulding experiences and let others benefit from your pains of the past. You experienced it, that was painful enough.
Do not hold everyone as a point of abuse and revenge. Do not play hostage games and keep reliving the pains and experiences of the past. Instead of replaying the past, replay the future. Vision is more powerful than history.
Forward fire
Every failure that you face is a set up for your come-back. Do not despair or give up too soon. Failure is not fatal so long as you are willing to learn from it. Dust off the ego-pains, and pride-points, then stand up and face the music again. You may have to sweat in your mind, just avoid swearing. When you fall on the dance-floor, wise off the sweat, stand up and keep dancing. The party is far from over. Stand up and dance with life. It is too early to go home. It is too early to quit.
Sweat the equity in your failure and make it a stepping stone to something bigger, bolder and better. Make failure’s sweat an access point to the triumph that could not have been experienced without a momentary failure and set back.
Anyone who has never risked failure never sweated to achieve anything worthwhile. Dream big, live humbly, knowing that to fail is not to forfeit your dream, and to sweat is not to die.
Build memories of the future and then leverage your sweat to make that vision real. All vision was once a future-memory that was bathed in the sweat of action.
I am sure that you will not want to be remembered for giving up, being too lazy to work, too afraid to start again, too afraid to sweat because you wanted to smell sweet. If you cannot perspire, you will not be able to inspire.
You cannot be too timid to try lifting something weighty and worthy. Patient action will always lead to greatness worth noting. Life is too big to be lived in a sedentary manner — uninteresting, uninvolved and unchallenging. You are destined for greatness. This isyour birthright. There is no shame in sweating while pursuing greatness. It is always worth every drop.
Committed to your greatness.
Milton Kamwendo is a leading international transformational and motivational speaker, author, and a virtual, hybrid and in-person workshop facilitator. 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
