The Sunday Mail
Milton Kamwendo
Hunt for
Greatness
Greatness is not so much what you do for yourself.
One does not need any new revelation to know that people are interested in themselves.
It is what you do for others that ultimately matters and distinguishes you.
There are many things you may not be gifted in. That should not make you despair because there are so many ways to encourage and serve others. Choose to be an encourager and doors will open for you in unexpected places and unexplainable ways.
When you help other people to rise, you facilitate your elevation.
Stand ready to encourage while others are pulling down.
Give applause while others jeer.
Give an honest prayer while others celebrate someone’s misfortune.
Regardless of how busy you may be, create spaces to make someone else feel important, affirmed and encouraged.
As you become great, you have an awesome responsibility to encourage greatness wherever you go.
One word could change someone’s destiny.
One pat on the back could be what someone was hungry for.
Your shadow could just be the shade that someone needed to feel heartened.
You are hard-wired to encourage and inspire others.
Choose to rise above silly squabbles, irrational rivalries, dim-wit disputes and dry discomforts.
Realise that each person you meet is a special gift to the world.
See greatness in ordinary people and daily efforts.
Look beyond people’s faults and mistakes.
Be genuinely interested in people, not just lust for power.
Your encouragement is a door opener. It is a runway that many use to take off and find their wings.
Be purposeful about encouraging others and deploy it with focus.
When you see greatness in those who are trying, you will start to see it everywhere.
People at their very core are the same throughout the world.
People will always be people regardless of what they may seem to wear or hang on themselves.
People’s biggest hunger is to be encouraged and enhanced in some way.
You can choose to be one of three avatars, namely: well-poisoner, lawn-mower or life-enhancer.
Walt Disney once said: “There are three kinds of people in the world today. There are “well poisoners,” who discourage you and stomp on your creativity and tell you what you can’t do.
“There are “lawn mowers, “people who are well-intentioned but self absorbed; they tend to their own needs, mow their own lawns, and never leave their yards to help another person.
“Finally, there are “life enhancers,” people who reach out to enrich the lives of others, to lift them up and inspire them. We need to be life-enhancers, and we need to surround ourselves with life-enhancers.”
A life enhancer is typically an encourager.
Inspire someone wherever you are, make a difference and help someone to smile better and walk a little taller.
Helping someone to feel capable and great is the least you can do.
Engage in encouraging others all the time.
Help people to feel that they matter and their contribution makes a difference. Help them to think big and to attempt something bigger.
Be on a crusade to encourage everyone you can.
Life is tough already and there is no need for you to become added grief.
Hold others up to a vision of great possibilities.
A little time, a small word, a tiny dose of goodwill is the flame that some need to start off.
Encouragement is oxygen to the heart and seasoning to the soul.
When you encourage someone, you are doing the highest good and being a blessing.
The greatest gift you can give to someone is not your precious riches, but to reveal to someone his own riches.
There are many great people who do not see the greatness in themselves until someone encourages them.
I do not write what I write and do what I do because I am great.
I am just a fellow pilgrim who is also trying to reach for greatness.
I do what I do because you, my special reader, are great and it is a special honour and privilege to encourage you in your own quest.
I am where I am because of the encouragement, affirmations and prayers of other people; people that gave me opportunity when I did not believe in myself.
They believed in me.
People that opened platforms when I was not on the programme.
They gave me opportunity.
People that gave me resources that I could not afford.
They empowered me.
People on whose strength I relied when I was weak. They strengthened me. People that saw my calling when I thought it was a hobby.
They inspired greatness. People that sowed the seed in me and considered me worthy ground.
They farmed possibilities.
People that said profound things on which I hung my hope. They were catalysts and gave me the power of lift.
They are many and too numerous to mention. They believed in my dreams when I was still asleep.
They reminded me that I could become anything I dreamt of. They were too engaged to wake me up to reality.
For they believed that reality can be created.
My heart is filled with gratitude but I am ashamed to say I have not thanked them enough.
However, I know the best way to show gratitude is for me to spread the revolution of encouragement wherever I go.
You, too, can join the encouragement revolution because there is no one who is self-made.
People are built by other people’s encouragement.
Help other people to believe that they too can become great.
Show love and compassion, give space and opportunity. Your small seed of encouragement will become a forest of achievement in the future.
Your humility is revealed by the way you treat other people. Help others to feel that they too can become great.
They too have a place under the sun.
They too have amazing potential in them.
Instil courage in little hearts and they will amaze you.
Make people feel that they can do great things and they will not disappoint you.
When you encourage the present, you are celebrating the future.
I am not asking you to flatter anyone – that is unkind, uncalled for and cheap. The fact that there are counterfeits does not mean originals do not exist.
In being an encourager, help others feel great, accepted and welcome.
People will forget the many things that you did for them, but they never forget the encouragement that you gave them when they needed it most.
Life is tough without any encouragement, so why make it worse?
A little smile could easily brighten someone’s day.
A handshake could fuel mission. A few words could mean the world for someone.
Be intentional in your encouragement.
Stop taxing people for the past, prime them for the future through encouragement.
I am human. I have challenges and needs.
I have problems and my share of difficulties.
My little world of personal pains pale in significance when compared with the calling to be an encourager.
Courageously fight your own battles with discouragement.
The battles may look private and personal. Be encouraged to know that every private battle that you fight has extended benefits for many other people that you may never meet.
Your battles of today are fomenting new stories of hope.
Life is a great obstacle course that has bends and turns.
It has wins and losses.
It is an unfolding drama with valleys and mountains.
Sometimes you have to sprint to the finish line.
At times you come to a high bar and you are challenged to high jump.
At those times when you have to jump over the bar, just remember to throw your body over the bar and the rest will follow. Encourage someone every day, everywhere you go.
Even on your death bed, do not breathe your last without having encouraged someone to dare great things and pursue something great.
Bless people because a blessing is an intentional encouragement that you invoke on someone.
Words live for a very long time in people’s hearts and minds.
There are few things in the world that are more potent than a positive push.
Milton Kamwendo is an international transformational and inspirational speaker, author and coach. He can be reached at: [email protected] and Twitter: @MiltonKamwendo or WhatsApp at: 0772422634.
