The Sunday Mail
TO be great, understand the numbers that matter most.
Hunt for Greatness
Milton Kamwendo
Do not join the ranks of those who complain, wait and do nothing. Join the ranks of those who hustle while they wait. Do something regardless of how small it may look and feel.
Be willing to start where you are and work with what you have. What you are today is not what you will always be. The struggles you are facing today do not, in any way, mean you will never be significant. Your current station has little to say about your potential elevation.
Believe in the beauty and dignity of your dreams. Do not write yourself off. Never let the current challenges blind your vision and block your imagination. Bring extraordinary imagination to ordinary dreams and you will be shocked.
Not everything you do matters. What matters most must never be sacrificed for what matters least. Here are two numbers that have changed the way I look at life.
The leverage number: 10-90 rule
Life is 10 percent what happens and 90 percent what you choose to do about it. It is true that bad things happen. It is true that difficult times come. It is true that some winters are bitter. It is also true that adversity strikes. All that is just 10 percent. It is what you do with whatever happens that makes the real difference.
Whatever happens to you, you have a choice. Use that choice wisely, otherwise you imprison yourself and kill your potential and initiative. Regardless of what happens, never lose hope and do not let the fight in you die.
Whatever you focus on grows in your eyes to become significant. Wherever your focus goes, there your life will go. Focus on the negative and you will enlarge your darkness. Focus on possibilities and you will start seeing them everywhere.
There are numerous opportunities but few takers. Your focus feeds either your faith or fears. Most situations that we face in life are neutral. It is our focus that gives them meaning and significance. Never give your problems and challenges special trophy status. You are not a victim, just a warrior posited to win.
Whatever happens to you regardless of how bad or ugly it is, it is only the 10 percent. You are the one that supplies the rest of the story — the vital 90 percent. If you choose you can talk, think, preach, act and fellowship like a victim. Misery always has friends and disgruntled partners. If you are looking for someone to feel pity for you, you will always have ears that surround you.
Greatness does not come from pity, but a fight that starts as an attitude within you. There is something very strong inside you. It is up to you to unleash it or lie on it. Have ferocious focus and refuse to be deterred or distracted.
Whenever you blame anything or anyone, you give up the power to change. Whoever you blame for your miseries, you empower that individual to control your life and determine your fate.
You have amazing power within you. Count and use your blessings, and stop computing your miseries. You are able to do far much more than you can think or imagine. Take personal responsibility and change begins.
Take up the instruments of a victim and you will see walls all around you and excuses everywhere. Unless you swallow this big and bitter pill of personal responsibility, you will always think and behave like a victim.
Stop using your mind as a terror training camp. At whatever age, unless you are willing to take personal responsibility, you will always behave like an irresponsible adolescent. Ten percent is what happens and 90 percent is what you choose to do about it. Your leverage in any situation is in how you use the 90 percent.
Effort number: 1-99 rule
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 — October 18, 1931) was an inventor and businessman out of whom came many useful inventions and the words “genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration”.
Edison argued that none of his inventions came by accident or mere good fortune. He said: “I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”
To think that life is 99 percent good fortune and 1 percent work is weird and totally absurd. Work is not a curse, and laziness is no badge of honour. A man of Edison’s stature knew that nothing happens by sheer luck or merely waiting for things to happen. The lottery mindset is a flawed mindset.
You have to do something in order to be something or get somewhere. Edison once said opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. He was right.
Many would rather don a suit and tie than put on an overall and work. Work is not what you are given but what you do. Clever excuses made by lazy hands will always have an air of sophistication, but no value will be created.
Edison challenges us further when he says: “If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” This is worth repeating. If you did all that you are capable of doing, you would shock yourself and everyone who knows you now. There is more that you can do and become.
Stop focusing on your casket and start thinking about your basket of possibilities. There are more opportunities to create wealth now than in any generation in the past. You cannot use the Industrial Age expectation to solve New World challenges.
The problems that you see around you are not arrows of fate but the ore of opportunity ready for mining. On why he invented a lot, Edison had a simple answer. He said he found out what the world needs and went out into his laboratories to invent it. When you see problems, what do you do and where do you go?
Never be satisfied with what you have achieved. Edison challenged us all when he said: “Discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I’ll show you a failure.” Refuse to park at the alley of irresponsibility. No one owes you a living and no one will do your thinking for you. There is always something to do. The bigger the problems, the more the opportunities. Most answers that we look for “out there” are really “in here”.
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]
