Change how you think

Hunt for Greatness
Milton Kamwendo

As a man thinks so is he! What you think, and how you think shapes your life.

Nothing changes much until you change how and what you think. Think big and you will have elephantine results. Think speed and you will move faster.

We usually take it for granted that people think, but it is true? Taking time to think is a rare trait. Instead of thinking, other people spend more time reacting to the stimuli around. How you think is revealed by your responses, especially in moments of extreme pressure. Pressure and adversity come to test your thinking capacity, thinking style and thinking depth.

While the primary organ of thought is the mind, it is also true that sometimes certain organs of the body direct the thinking mode and style. Choose to think with the right organ. Refuse to just be a ball of emotions responding to every stimuli or merely reflecting the negativity around you. The stomach, feet or mouth are not efficient or appropriate thinking tools.

Stomach

I entered a Kenyan Bookshop some years ago and was captivated by a book entitled: “It’s Our Turn to Eat”, by Michela Wrong. The book probes the cultural and historical factors at the heart of the crises in many communities. It is an incisive exploration of the corruption epidemic and points to the challenge of thinking through the stomach. It is not how much you can eat, who you can eat with that matters, but how much you can build and empower.

Some people like the Biblical Esau think with their stomachs and sacrifice the greater good. They are so focused on consumption that they think small in a sea of abundance. Proverbial Esaus are concerns about eating not planting, today’s hunger instead of tomorrow’s harvest. Every facet of their lives in denominated in the currency of their selfish consumption and outsized appetites.

Thinking with your stomach makes you into a slave, a pervert and leads you into bondage, corruption and abuse. People who think with their stomachs are easy to hire for anything regardless of the morality of the engagement. Their concern is what will satisfy me or tickle my appetite?

There is an Africa proverb that says: “What is in the stomach carries what is in the head.” A hungry stomach should not tempt you to over-ride clear and strategic thinking.

Feet

There are two powerful forces that shape behaviour — pain and pleasure. Running towards pleasure or from pain or pressure is a preoccupation of many. It is easy to think with your feet. There is no perfect place on earth and running without thinking and a clear plan is never the best option for greatness, unless you are in the Olympic track events.

Right where you stand there are opportunities beyond your wildest dreams if you can dare start thinking. Every place in the world has problems and opportunities. The challenge is not to just think with your feet, but to think creatively and reach for opportunity.

Nothing in life cannot be tamed. There is no place that is without opportunity. People have turned uninhabitable desserts into highly productive spaces. When you do not see value in what you have you will run to look for what you left.

Talking about creation, one speaker said God placed Adam in a jungle and expected him to turn it into a park. It is not what you have that matters, but what you do with it. Some people have turned jungles into parks, sands into microchips, small spaces into value sites. Some people have turned rural areas into economic hubs. The value of a place is not in what it is naturally, but in the thinking of the people that inhabit the place.

Stop running away from greatness and challenges. Start thinking and challenging your challenges. Are you thinking with your feet? Take a stand, keep hoping for great things and be inspired by these words of W. Clement Stone who said: “Remember: hope is a duty, not a luxury. To hope is not to dream, but to turn dreams into reality. Blessed are those who dream dreams and are willing to pay the price to make them come true.”

Mouth

Some people think with their mouths. They are always complaining, running cynical commentary and speculating. In life there is no shortage of loud-talkers in life, and there is also no shortage of praise singers and phsychophants. There is a shortage of people who would rather work than talk, who would rather change things than complain. Stop thinking with your mouth or in these days of social media with your fingers. It is not the person who complains loudest that matters most but the one in the arena.

Mr Theodore Roosevelt inspired the people in Paris on April 23, 1910 when he said: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Choose to start thinking big and challenge yourself to do uncommon things. Start a new page and start thinking like you can and stretching yourself. Think positively. It is your lot in life to stand strong, unafraid to think and act for yourself. Face the world boldly and choose to think. There is always something that you can do if you are willing to be creative and to think. There are no locked doors in life but lazy and closed minds.

Choose to start a new chapter and start thinking like you should. Think big. Size is only a perspective. You can do more and be more, only if you are willing to go for it. Change the size of your thinking by changing the size of the challenges that you choose to exercise your mind on. If you camp on survival issues you will forever be a victim of donors.

Choose to open a new chapter and start thinking greatness. Think differently and stretch your limits. If you continue doing the same things that you have always done you easily lose relevance.

Choose to change your thinking, actions, field and level of play. Do something that you have never done, go somewhere you have never gone. It takes a change in thinking and new choices for you to grow. Refuse to be stuck in a rut. Your mind is oven-ready and equipped to be fully employed. You can never blame the brain supplier.

What are you thinking about? How big are your thoughts? Do you have a thinking schedule? How do you think and where are your thoughts recorded? Who do you think with?

Committed to your greatness

Milton Kamwendo is a leading international transformational and motivational speaker, au-thor, 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] and his website is: www.miltonkamwendo.com