The Sunday Mail
Motivation for Success
Milton Kamwendo
Your life is shaped by the decisions that you make and the words that you use and tell yourself often. Simple decisions, like small keys open big doors, and can have huge consequences. Seemingly simple words have a profound effect on your emotions, health, mind, body and wealth. What you tell yourself foretells what your life will be. As you speak so will you peak.
Your words set the bar on how smart you think, how high you can reach or how low you will likely sink. To change your life’s path and way, change the words you use consistently. What you tell yourself is a telling prophecy. Speaking to yourself is not an idle or automatic activity if you desire greatness. It has to be deliberate and focused, always alert to banish any stray or toxic words. Accept the challenge to live at a higher plane by telling yourself that you will and you can do great things.
It is not what happens to you that is most important, but what that means to you, and what you choose to think and say about it. All events in life are neutral, save for your words and thoughts that give the events a negative or positive charge. What you tell yourself shapes how you perceive what happens to you. Be a smart personal self-talker.
The voice in your head could be a friend or vice to you depending on how you control that voice. Whatever you tell yourself has the loudest effect in your life. To change your life, change what you tell yourself. Turn that voice within from automatic to manual mode. Hold the switch and deliberately speak to yourself. Keep speaking intentionally regardless of how you feel and the leanings of your emotions. Keep speaking the right words until you believe them and you face where you want to go and plant your feet firmly on the greatness trajectory. Make daily space for a personal speaking programme moment, just like you would do with an antibiotic course.
Wake up every day and have a few minutes of speaking to yourself. That will do you a lot of good in the period to come. If you find concentrating difficult write out the words that reflect where you are going and the person you desire to be. Write these out like you have already become that which you desire. Then tell yourself that narrative daily. During the day whisper these words to yourself. It is noble work that requires effort and you are programming yourself for ultimate success. Do not just fast food, fast negative and toxic words and thoughts.
Words are powerful tools. Used right they will charge you forward. Used wrongly, words are a toxic pollutants that spoil many good things. Do not allow someone; anyone to pollute you with their toxic words, poisonous analysis, bitter emotions, lethal thoughts, noxious negativity and harsh tonality. Exit all conversations and fellowships that leave you disoriented, disconnected, distraught, disheartened and distressed. Feed what fuels your energy towards greatness. Refuse to let other people dump their toxic waste-words into your mental and word-stream; spoiling your thinking and breaking your focus. As Mahatma Gandhi heartily counselled, do not allow anyone to walk through your mind with their dirty feet.
Words are things that rent space in your brain. Toxic whispered words, negative wounding words, and unhealthy stinking thinking introduce toxicity into your brain and confuse the wiring in there. You do not have the luxury of accommodating toxicity in your brain and in your mouth. Be careful of both the speech patterns and content of the words you pick, adopt and use. Be smart with your thinking and with your talking.
What others tell you is not as important as what you tell yourself. That small still voice within you does a lot more than all the noise around you. Let the whole world shout out as loud as it dares. The most important thing is what you tell yourself. Let the whole world believe what it cares, the most important thing is what you believe and fuel into being. When everyone is doubting tell yourself that you can. Use the eye of your mind to see your greatness, use the throb of your heart to believe in greatness, and use the sound bites of your lips and clicks to shape your narrative and life’s course. As you think so you are and as you speak so you become.
Tell yourself: “I can”
Say it often enough and in time you will feel it. Nothing pulls and tags you down more than feeling that you are unable and doubting you capability. Feeling a sense of doubt happens natural. It is when you feel this sense of inadequacy that you should shout out loud: “I can! I can, I can and I will”
When you feel a tinge of doubt; When the day is rough and looks tough; When the challenges are mounting higher with no way forward; When the night feels longer and the winds are blowing stronger; When success is delaying and you feel drained it is time to shout out aloud and say: “I can! I can! I can! I will”
All decisions have a cost. You unnecessarily tax yourself too much when you decide to live as a victim, talk as a victim and speak as a victim. Speak differently to deliver different results. Do not speak according to how you feel, speak according to how you want to feel. Your will is important and should direct your speech. When you pass your words remember the rule of the game of soccer: you do not pass the ball to where your colleague is but where he is running to. Do not speak according to where you are emotionally at, but where you want to be. By your words create the experiences that you desire.
Words are powerful. Do not use them carelessly because they are living things charged with creative potential. They have a mental, spiritual, emotional, and physically lasting effect. Mark Twain once remarked: “A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual and electrically prompt.” Words are powerful and you do not afford the luxury of a negative word and the toxicity of repeating negative and bitter words. Until your words change you life will not change. Until you change what you are telling yourself, the story of your life will also not change. The words that you habitually use affect how you communicate with yourself and therefore what you experience.
Tell yourself “I will”
Challenges come and are presented daily on your path to greatness. When you see the challenges tell yourself: “I will! I can!” Even if you feel a sense of doubt, rise above the challenge by accepting the challenge. Greatness will always challenge you to grow. You will never grow when you do what you have always done and stay in the same place that you have always been at. Challenge your limits and limitations.
When an unfamiliar assignment comes your way do not run for cover and towards the familiar hiding spot. Tell yourself that you will accept the challenge and face it. Volunteer for a challenge. Stand ups when you are hardest hit. Do what you thought you could not do and have never done. Accept the challenge because it is challenges that grow you and prompt you to learn. Go beyond your comfort zone and stretch a little more and a little further.
You may have never been there before, but tell yourself that you will face this mountain and accept the challenge it brings. You may have never done it before but tell yourself you will face it and learn whatever you need to learn in order to be equal to the task.
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 Twitter: @MiltonKamwendo or WhatsApp at: 0772422634. His website is: www.miltonkamwendo.com.
