Train your eyes to see possibility

Hunt for Greatness

Milton Kamwendo

Stop staring at problems, challenges and opportunities and admiring them. Look at whatever you face now and will face, with a view to providing solutions and being an answer. 

Hold the questions long enough for the answer to arrive. Eyes that merely look can be found everywhere. It is eyes that see, then make sense out of what they see that are precious. What you call problems in some bold eyes is opportunity, room and overture. What you call impossible in eyes that see is the chance for innovation. This moment in history is no exception, it is a mine of possibilities and opportunity.

What you call backward, is someone’s opportunity for authenticity and positioning. Look around you and see how and what you are thinking. Cut out those victim and misery tunes, they never take anyone anywhere except down. Likely the biggest challenge is in the metaphors, meanings and frames that you have been using. 

Break the mould and train your eyes to see possibility, visualise and dream. Make sense of what looks like threats with a creative angle. Challenge you challenges, doubt your doubts and expand your visual limitations.

Look around you and you will be inspired to march towards greatness with an indomitable spirit and a crusader zeal. There is so much opportunity around you and why are you not seeing it? What you are moaning about, someone is banking about. What you complain about, is making some rich, and rollick. 

Do not just see what is not working, see what you can get to work and get to work. Do not just see what is impossible, see what you can make possible. Do not just see what is broken, see what you can fix. Do not just see what is discouraging, summon your courage to take uncommon steps forward.

See with the eye of your mind and stop crying for your mother every time you see a problem coming. Do not allow anything to stop you from dreaming or moving forward. 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. Listen with your ears and see with your ears. Engage in creative thinking and this will bring 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

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 think-ing and focus your passion and energy. 

Stop wasting energy on endless worries and baseless debates. In the world of potential there are no 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.

One great practice — to look at both your visible and invisible balance sheet. The visible balance sheet is simple to understand. This is where you see the asset you have and the things that you owe. This is where tangible things are. The harder but more important balance sheet is the invisible balance sheet. 

Great assets like a rich history, may not be visible but are powerful. Having a great vision and ideas may not be easy to compute but life is driven by powerful ideas. Courage, faith and hope may never be seen on paper but it is what gives you the power to keep going and to take giant leaps. Look at and give value to your invisible balance sheet.

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. Look ahead with courage. Do not try to think the future will 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 mind spin.

Looking ahead entails thinking seriously about your strategy. Maintaining the same strategy because your ritual is to have five-year strategy-plans does not work when there is massive change. Mere meet, powerpoint, discuss, eat, write, report, forget and wait for next year is corporate insanity. Your strategy is an important lens for looking into the future with focus and with a mind to act. It reflects your priorities: where you will play, where you will win and how you will win. It should give you an insight of capabilities and systems that you need to put in place to win. Looking ahead is not a matter of luck, it is work and it is a great investment. The worst you can do is to stumble from the past and hope to avoid accidents in the future.

Look around

Look around you and you will see that no one can finish opportunities, unless you stop thinking and your mind is narrow. Be opportunity-minded instead of being shortage-minded. More opportunities are appearing than those that are disappearing. Look around you with excitement and not regret. Be an increase and not a decrease thinker. Be a multiplier of talent and amplifier of light. Expand your horizons and look around you with the wonder of a child in a toy shop.

As you look around you will see problem things, problem people, problem structures and problem arrangements. It is these problems that make prayers worth praying, life worth living, doors worth knocking, education worth undertaking and offices worth pursuing. If you will happen to spot problems, try to shift through and see the real problems, and preferably the big elephantine ones. Please do not convene moaning parties to parade your ignorance, blindness and lack of imagination. Do not dwell on symptoms and referral pains. Big problems signal big opportunities that are brewing.

Extend your boundaries and you will grow stronger. Expand your horizons and you will think bigger. Elongate your ability to stay in the game, and new insights will appear. Some things just do not appear at dawn. Stretch a little more and you will grow more. Be inspired by big problems to think creatively and provide big solutions, in big ways, big time. When mountains are faced by big thinking and relentless focus they grow shy, shrink in size and start shifting position.

As you look around you will see obstacles — jump through them. Obstacles are simply stepping stones that help take you higher faster. Every handicap you face, has a hid-den hand of blessing in it. Every hindrance you face is hiding the keys to your greatness. Every hurdle on your way, is opportunity hurrying to take its place on the stage of your life. Every rock on your path, is set up for you to be a rock star on your band.

As you look around change your framing of issues and stop moaning, groaning, wailing and expecting that someone is on the line to take your pity call. The world is not set up to make victims great. Think differently and change your narrative quickly. Obstacles are stepping stones. Problems are opportunities in disguise. Money is the excuse that people use for not thinking. Unblock your thinking and your imagination and start seeing great things.

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