The Sunday Mail
Hunt for Greatness
Milton Kamwendo
See it and have a clear vision of it. Plan it and work the plan with all the resources you can get. Do not fear scarcity because it encourages thinking, stimulates imagination and helps shake off complacency.
Action it and keep at it. Keep focusing on it, despite the things you see behind, beside, under and above you. See through it all. Keep at it and work through it. This is the path of greatness for those who choose to see.
Eyes that look can be found everywhere and minds that see clearly are always in great and urgent demand. Seeing is a great asset and the future is your source of advantage and leverage. Those that see it clearly have better chances of preparation.
Those who see only the present and its dust sell the future at bargain prices. Those that can see the future delay the gratification of today and have better valuations of reality. You have to see it in your mind before you can go for it and get it. See beyond obstacles, handicaps, scarcity and limitations. Every handicap, hides a winner’s cap. Every hurdle on your way, will hurry to greatness. Every rock on your path, will rocket you forward. It is all in the matter of seeing.
Pockets of greatness that are hidden in the way you see, what you see and how you see. Strategy is the ability to see around corners, see through situations, joining the dots and following through. Strategy is tracing the path to the future using the information, the context and the decision power at hand. It calls for faith, fearless action and far-sightedness.
Leadership seeds the vision and creates a clear map to the future, communicates this map and mobilises the needed actions that puts all the system in motion. You have to make a call and take the necessary action depending on what you see. You will not always have all the information, but you can look behind, look ahead, look above, look beside, look beyond, look within and look through to the future you desire.
Sing to your greatness and do not feel pity for yourself. The song of all good leadership is strategy. The currency of all worthy leadership is character. The chorus of strategic leadership is implementation. The opening stanza is the ability to see using all the lenses that are available.
To move towards greatness you have to go beyond just staring at problems and challenges and joining the chorus of complainers. Stop merely looking at, start seeing potential and the handle bars to the future.
Stop staring at problems, and start steering through them to the future. Stop being frozen in challenges and clarify your vision and what you see and do. Stop admiring opportunities as they pass because they are hard to do something about. Look around you with the eyes of a leader, the mind of a strategist and the attitude of a mechanic and the heart of a responsible father.
Look behind
As you look behind you, look for the best parts of the past to take with you. Stop carrying stamps of blame to stick on everything in sight. Blame leaves you frozen and immobilised. Bitterness blares your vision and drains your energy leaving you sick and sickening.
Hold the questions about what is behind you long enough, but with responsibility while you wait for answers to arrive. Look behind you for learning and not leaning. Eyes that merely look able blame are easy to find. It is eyes that see clearly, making sense out of chaos, knowing how to play to build that are precious.
Refuse to be left behind because you are so busy feasting on the garbage of the past that you have no time to sit and take fresh insights and feed on the future. What you call pain, or problems in some bold eyes is opportunity, room and overture.
See the past so that you can draw a bold map into the future. Do not for a moment put yourself in the zone of disempowerment where you ask questions that limit you and drain off your energy.
Speak as a responsible creator. Ask as a responsible father. Frame the future with vision and hope. Look ahead and think ahead. Greatness loves those with bold thinking and clear focus on the future.
Look up
Look up and see above you. Take a bigger view. When you are in a hole and you want to get out, you do not just look down, behind you or beside you. Look up because the greater your desire for the skies and heavens, the more clearer your prayers. The best way to get out of any hole is not just to stop digging, but to stop looking only at the rubble around you as the only reality. Look above and you will start to see new colours and shades of reality.
Look beyond
Look beyond the barriers that you face today. The present is urgent and it cries for attention yet it soon pales into the past. Look beyond your obstacles and the passion of the moment. Look beyond what is urgent today. See with clear eyes and not just convenient emotions. Look at the problems but see beyond them. See beyond the loud voices.
Scarcity is a prerequisite for amazing things to happen — don’t view it as your enemy; view it as an opportunity! Stand strong and bold. Appreciate your troubles, they help expose your talent. Appreciate your predicament, it helps you look closely at your context. Appreciate your difficulties, they help define new frames of focus. Appreciate your pain, it pushes you to think — and think you must! Everything that comes into your life is a precious gift to be grateful for.
Keep looking and do not close your eyes and ears just yet. Look with your ears and see with your ears. Engage in creative thinking and this will brings new areas of your brain to life. Engage in possibility thinking, it will propel you to new levels of greatness. Engage in inspired thinking, it will help you turn your ideas into things of value.
Look within you
Inside you are inexhaustible resources that you can tap and use. You are a mobile warehouse of resources and inexhaustible talent. Elevate the platform of your thinking and focus your passion and energy. Stop wasting energy on endless worries and baseless debates.
In the world of potential there are not limits. In the world of dreams there are no limits except the ones that you set. What you can produce is unlimited, what you can become is unfathomable. Stop looking all over and ignoring the resources within.
Unless you see greatness inside, you will always think that you are somewhat not favoured and you are discriminated by life. Look within yourself and within your team and within your organisation. Greatness starts where you are and with what you have.
Look ahead
You do not have the luxury to park in the past and think that the past will always be the engine of the future. Refuse to let your life become a museum. Dream big and do great things. Look ahead with foresight and vision. Your greatest leverage is in the future.
You may not be able to change much in the past. Stop wasting your time in revisionist enterprises. Look ahead with courage. Do not try to think the future to fit into the past. Expand the possibilities and your horizons. Put your problems in perspective. Get some grit! Refuse to let little problems make your blood boil and your mind spin.
See greatness, pursue greatness and never for a moment doubt that you are able to do great things. See, see, see greatness all around. The possibilities are limited by your ability to see.
Committed to your greatness.
Milton Kamwendo is a leading international transformational and motivational speaker, author, and 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
