The Sunday Mail
Hunt For Greatness
Milton Kamwendo
It is when the present does not make sense that you need to strategise. It’s when things appear turbulent that you must not wait a moment further to develop a strategy and vision for the future.
The future is not an accident and the present chaos is no random activity. There is order everywhere and strategies are always at play. Joining the game without a strategy except fear and surprise is the worst method of play.
Vision without action is merely a dream. Actions that are not strategy-led are mere moves with baseless ambition. Strategy without execution is just corporate fantasy. Dreams that are not acted upon become nightmares.
Greatness is a quest battle for securing the future. The past is gone, never camp on its hurts and pains. The present is fleeting fast, do not waste it by failing to plan and play.
If you do not see the future, you will abuse the present and trouble those who see it. Without a vision, a definite dream, a clear model and game-plan, you are positioned for accidents.
Your image of the future that empowers and energizes you to take bold action. It is better to be wrong with a strategy than to prove your fears right because you were too scared to dream. There is no obstacle, challenge or adversity that is strong enough to overwhelm a burning dream, clear priorities and a resolute dreamer working to bring a strategy to life.
Set the vision
Vision is more than just an impressive statement hung at your office and paraded to all visitors of your website. Vision is the picture that you see clearly in your mind and shared mind. Whatever that picture is, it is a strong influence that directs your path and energy.
You are wasting time, energy and resources when you lead without having an image of the future.
Leaders with no vision have no business leading. If you are going nowhere, do not recruit others to go with you.
To change your life, change the pictures that you hold in your mind. It is impossible to hold a positive, inspiring picture in your mind and then fail to be motivated. Most motivational problems can be directly traced to your mental state. What you see is what shows in your conversation and manifests in your action.
Doom pictures results in doom dialogue. Until the picture that you hold and share changes very little else may change.
The image of the future that you carry within you influences the future that you create.
Learn, then dump the past
Change your dialogue from narratives of the past, reincarnations of pain, and allegations of abuse and start talking about creating a great future.
The future is already present, it is just waiting for someone to conceive it and work for it. Be obsessed with pictures of your preferred future not abused past.
Yesterday is gone, with its glories and exploits. The exploits of the past belong to museums and archives.
May these be built large and beautiful. The future does not live in a museum, the future is created by what you do today.
Today is critical. You do not have the luxury of approaching this day with half-hearted commitment and a lottery mindset.
Today is no gambling table, but the shaping place of destiny. Yesterday is past, the future is what you make it. Choose to create the future not just to let other people create it for you.
Your choices of today determine your future. Today is what you have, it is the start of a new day. Seeing today as a special resource you can do something about this day and your image of the future. Do not criticise those who have a dream for the future when you have none. Unless you have a dream and you are working on it diligently it is useless being a critic. A critic with no alternative is a mere pest. Create the new future by taking responsibility today. If you have a choice between being a door and a critic choose the former.
Stop fighting existing reality. Too much energy is wasted and spent on fighting the existing reality. Current reality is the grandchild of the past. Stop fighting existing reality and start creating new images and models. The future does not belong to those who are wedded to past glory, legacy problems and traditional complaints. There is no glory in dressing up only complaints in new clothes. Unless you are willing to take responsibility you will forever be blaming others for your circumstances. The future belongs to those who have a dream and a plan today.
Pathways to the future
The future belongs to those who create pathways to it. Preparing for the future is not protest about it. Dialogue differently with yourself and others.
The future is created by the conversations that you hold around the images of the future. Hold new conversations of the future and not over-rehearsed complaints.
Create pathways to greatness that make the present look so quaint, pale and drab.
When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat? You will always be threatened by the future when you do not have plans to live there. When you treat the future as threat you try to re-script the past, preserve the present and insulate the future.
The future is not dead, gone or irrelevant; we will always meet there. The future is there and it is looking back at us in awe, wondering how much we have the propensity to choose fiction over fact, squandering time in unworthy pursuits. The future cannot understand how we can think so crazily as to push it away and pretend it is not coming.
Your life is voice-activated and visually-directed. A picture tells the story of a thou-sand words, and affects ten thousand lives. Distil your strategy into a powerful model that is so powerfully planted firmly in your mind and heart.
To change your destiny create pathways to that image of the future that you are holding. Images of despair, defeat and despondency only help to create that reality. What things are like outside you does not need to be the picture that you carry yourself.
Create with your imagination
Everyone of us is under the influence of two forces. The push of the achievements of the past and the pull of the future. With a strong foundation and pride in the achievements of the past and no strong forward visionary pull, there is regression. The future is birthed in the gap between the force of the past and the pull of the future. Appreciate the past and the sacrifices made then, but do not park there. When you park in the past you stagnate and development shrivels up.
Movement is only enabled by positive visions. Have a dream, a big, bold dream that magnetises you to the future. The essence of transformational leadership is holding up a great and inspiring vision of the future that is so magnetic that everyone wants to be in it. Imagination is more important that mere facts. Those who create are more important than those who complain.
Those who do are more important than those who just watch what is happening. Your lived reality was born out of the images and dreams of the past. If you cannot dream and imagine a new future, you just poison the present. The future is created by the dreams that we hold in the present.
Change the images that you hold in your mind from negative to positive. Deliberately dump the negative and pick a new dream. You have power to chose the images that dominate your thoughts. Use your personal power wisely and well.
Do not consign yourself to a life of listless and unimaginative repetition of the all too familiar. Be daring, bold and visionary.
Do not just gobble the poisoned images full of horror, but dream and start to work for a new and exciting future.
It is when it is darkest that projected images are sharpest. This is the time to dream big and see possibilities. You do not need to be a visionary to see light in at mid-day. It is when things are toughest that your resolve to create an exciting future should be keenest. Park not in the past – it is a vacant lot. Drive towards the preferred future that you define.
Why wait, start crafting your strategy and developing your game-plan. It can change, at least you will be shaping it further. It will develop, yes, because every plan is like a plant.
Great strategies are living things. They grow, they mature and they change. Without a magnificent vision, leadership loses meaning and only works to preserve the past.
The past cannot be preserved by fearing the future. It is the great visions of the future that make the past a trampoline not a quick sand.
The role of any leadership is to find, define and secure the future. Leadership is not just about curating and preserving the past. It is about creating an exciting future.
Leaders are at their best when as artists they paint bold and exciting pictures of the future. They are most respected when they act with integrity towards those pictures.
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 cut-ting-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.
