Make an appointment with the future

Hunt for Greatness Milton Kamwendo

When winds race and rise, and there is turbulence in the air it is easy to give up, grow bitter, breathe complaints and forget the future.

How you hold up under pressure reflects not so much how bad the situation is but how big your strength and capacity is.

When you see the future you have staying power. When you do not see the future you abuse the present and give up easily.

Make an appointment with the future and the future will not disappoint you.

It is when it is still night that you need to make a day-break appointment with the future.

It is not what you are going through that matters most but where you are going. Change your thinking and your questions from the immediate to the ultimate.

Do not be scared about the present dangers of execution, else you will disengage and be delayed.

Make a definite appointment with the future and partner with those who see the future.

Face the future with a flinty focus. There is no time to waste and this moment is a golden opportunity.

Focus on the journey and not the little sand grains that get into your shoes. Focus on your hunt for greatness and not the thorns pricking you.

Focus on the honey and not the bee stings. Focus on the refreshing and cleansing lemonade and not the bitter lemons.

Create your future history and geography.

Think big about the future because there is nothing small about it.

Do not let little things and little complaints reduce you into a little snot.

There is a future and it is larger than the past, bigger than the present and it is waiting for you.

Back-foot or front-foot

In the game of strategy and shaping the future you could either operate with back-foot or front-foot strategy.

Back-foot strategy is where you are trying to keep your head above the water and you are in a corner.

In back-foot strategy you are fighting to just survive and other things do not matter much.

At this level many things are ignored except staying alive to see another day. There are time when back-foot strategy is necessary. There are times when you are knocked to the ground. Whatever happens never let failure become your portion. Glance at failure but do not personalise it.

Let failure be an adjective but never a noun. Let failure be an event but never a person. Shift from back-foot to front-foot. Back-foot strategy leaves you vulnerable to the future winds.

A different strategy helps you build resilience and anti-fragility.

Front-foot strategy is a posture of moving forward, shaping the future and taking new territory.

Refuse to let anything stop you and do not waste a moment in self-pity waiting for the whole world to come to your door step to beg you to play along.

No one is interested in your misery because everyone is pushing forward to the future.

Rise up and take aggressive and determined action.

Being a liability and not upvote you and increase your status likes. Life is not for the lazy, backward looking. Get busy and engage the front-foot, full-forward movement.

This is not the time to think regression, think positive aggression towards greatness. You have an appointment with the future start moving and pushing towards it.

The future comes

The future in not an event and it does not come suddenly. The future comes in dots and spurts. As the dots emerge you start joining the dots to form the shape of things now come.

Each dot matters and each step matters if you are mindful and forward looking. The future comes in waves, and waves goodbye to the mindless. It starts with weak signals that gains strength and momentum, becoming bigger waves.

This is what they call: “inflection points.” Sometimes the future comes from behind and overtakes you if you decide to fall asleep and lose attention. Keep running, keep waking, do not retire so soon.

Keep vigilant and exercise hyper-awareness of the future.

The future is already here and it is just not evenly distributed and does not have uniform awareness. There are times when the future comes too early and is rejected by others.

The fact that the future knocks once and is rejected does not mean that it has run away.

The future is stubborn.

Make an appointment with the future and keep looking at the window and listening for its steps.

What seems to be at the fringes today, will be the future mainstream. Stay alert and always learning.

The future comes one day at a time. The future comes in many flavours.

It comes in little chunks that are ingested daily. Move towards the future daily.

Plot big and small steps to keep moving towards your appointment with the future. Keep your goals programme close by and keep moving.

Journal your progress, plot your path, measure your strides.

Being disrupted

When the future comes, it is not always kind to the lethargic past. Sometimes it tears the past to creates a new order. Look closely at the challenges that you are facing, they may be the future’s whispers and thunder.

Before the future comes, make an appointment with it by building your capacity.

Capacity gives you the power to do and sustain.

Build and grow your capacity because it will be needed. The future always comes with a ready examination to test your capacity.

Strengthen your capabilities and skills. The future should not find you equipped to deal with a world and context that no longer exists.

The future does not respect outmoded arguments and empty grandstanding.

The future does not feed on promises, it does not vanish lies and it punishes ruthlessly those who are in denial. Connect with the future and with its tools and technologies.

Take a front-foot view towards the future by unlearning, learning and relearning.

Question marks

The future comes with question marks. The questions of the future can be ignored but they cannot be avoided. The future comes pregnant with not-so-easy-to-answer-questions.

Face the brutal questions of the future even if it is embarrassing to be in a position of not knowing.

Not knowing is not a weakness but a strength of spirit.

It is the beginning of a search into the future and preparing for it. Keep asking questions even if you do not have answers.

What are we seeing? Not seeing? Looking is not seeing.

It is important to look at the future with all the windows and mirrors at your disposal.

Look at the rear-view mirror and pick worthy lessons of the past.

Carry the best parts of the past with you into the future.

It is a worthless burden to carry the bitterness, carelessness and pains of the past into the future. Some things about the past should just be closed.

Using the past as a tool to punish the future just delays progress.

Use your side mirrors to see the blurring boundaries across generations, industries and technologies.

What are we hearing and what are we not listening to? Hearing is not the same as listening.

The future does not deal kindly with those who refuse to listen or love to hear themselves.

Not paying attention to the voice of the future is a dangerous stunt. What are we missing?

What are we denying?

The future comes regardless of emotions or lack of them.

To make an appointment with the future look at the data and what it is saying?

Data is like clay, it can be moulded into whatever shape.

Reduce the bias in your data and do not tell yourself lies about the future. Ask what data is missing to help look closer at the future and refine your strategy.

Future in focus

Bring the future into focus and watch how your life changes. Pray for the future, watch what is happening at the fringes of your space.

Look at the future with the eyes of an eager learner and explorer. Plot your lifeline up to this point and then into the future.

Do not despair or lose heart.

The future gives you time to catch up if you can wake up now and start taking massive action. Identify the important building blocks that you need for the future.

Whatever you do not have you can get. What you do not know you can learn.

Do not implement a strategy that you did not plan.

Identify the building blocks and get busy, building daily and consistently.

Take the lessons of the journey so far and apply them to the next lap making the necessary changes.

Write your future history and start living each day like it is a page and chapter of that unfolding history. Make an appointment with the future and do not let anything take away your attention.

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