Ignite your own fire

Hunt for Greatness
Milton Kamwendo

Why wait to be moved, or shaken? You cannot allow laziness to reign, mindlessness to fester or despair to push you down. Choose to be a mover, a firebrand, a protagonist, and set your greatness agenda. If you are not on fire you will not inspire anyone.

Push yourself, move yourself and do whatever you need to do to get into action mode. Nothing changes by merely being watched and inspected. Ignite the fire. Jump the hurdles. Navigate around the obstacles. Let us see the flicker. Start moving. Keep the fire burning. Even if it is a little fire. That is all that you need.

Wishing for perfect circumstances in an imperfect world is perfect nonsense. Ignite everything around you. Bloom where you are planted. Dance to the music that is playing and not the one you wish was playing. Ignite your own fire. Be present, be engaged and be effective. Stop wishful thinking and recreational complaining and start doing something useful and being like the fire-fly. It only lights up when it is on the wing. Start flying!

Set yourself on fire and stop waiting and waiting and thinking that waiting will do something miraculous. You cannot outsource your life to someone, something or mere luck. Get yourself moving, burning and shining. Push away the mountain of blame and put away the pointing finger and the blinding blame. You are not a wheelbarrow that is waiting to be pushed. Ignite the engine within. You are not a stone, waiting to be picked up or kicked. You are greatness. Show yourself and manifest who you really are.

Take the Church of England cleric who got disappointed with lazy and fruitless pursuits. He was on fire and others did not see any need for change. For others there was no sense of urgency. Not for him. When you are on fire things are never the same. The founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley (1703-1791)was no lazy fireless bone. He was a firebrand.

He was not a mere armchair critic or observer in life who was content to be going through the motions of life and then calling that living. He was a man on fire. He was a man on a mission. When you have a deep sense of why you do what you do, you are transformed and fired up to make a difference.

John Wesley was not just waiting for change and hoping that revival would come without his own agency. He knew he had to do something with passion and urgency. Fire would not come down without a fiery preacher. He became a rain maker.

Sometimes he had to preach in four or six places in one day. He would preach and then gallop to the next place. A person on fire cannot be stopped easily or deterred by circumstances. Be on fire and be unstoppable. Stop narrating the stories of those who discouraged you, narrate the stories of fiery zeal, persistent action and visionary pursuits.

So take action, move mountains and get into action in pursuit of the dreams that are burning within you. Nothing happens by chance while you are asleep. Nothing is gained through purposeless waiting. Get moving and taking massive action. Do not just let time pass as you watch and wonder what is happening.

Do not just let time pass while you gossip about people who do not care about your commentary. Wake up, set yourself on fire, take action and get moving. Take action that shows that you are alive, awake and ready to meet life with purpose and passion. You cannot keep threatening to wake up while you hit the snooze button.

Mr Wesley did something massive and brought down the fire down. It is said that people came from far and wide to hear Mr Wesley.

In many times he would not wait for people to come, but would go out and find them. He was in a hurry to fulfil his mission. He could not wait for the seminary process to develop the pastors that he needed to care for his ever-growing flock of believers. When asked why people were enthralled by his messages, Wesley said: “I set myself on fire and people come and see me burn!”

He sure did. He preached his heart out and because he was on fire he ignited fire in people’s hearts. Once there is fire shut up in your bones, you cannot sit still and join the choir of complainers. Where there was no structure or method, Mr Wesley inspired by the fire within, put structures and methods. Some of his methods were novel.

His approach to ministry was different and empowering. He injected method into his work and that is why the Methodist Church has a 300-year history of empowering lay preachers to do ministry work.

Pack all the enthusiasm you can into your life and ignite daily and passionate action. Rise up and be fully awake and alert. Be fully engaged and refuse to be part of the living dead. Wake up the greatness and fire within you. You are not among the walking dead. You do not have no luxury of behaving like and looking like a dead person. There will be plenty of time in death to do that. Be alive and take enthusiastic action. Show life, be lively and demonstrate agility. Whatever is happening around you, please do not advertise despondency, dismay and defeat. No one wants to work with a hopeless loser without any direction or passion to make a difference and add value.

Set yourself on fire and then feed the fire. If you do not feed the fire, the fire starts to die. Keep the fire burning and keep feeding the fire. Seventy years ago, in 1951, Mr Hebert Macllwaine started his fire — this was a real fire at Troutbeck, in Nyanga.

This was at his farm that he later developed into a holiday and world-renowned golf course that is now known as Troutbeck Resort. This fire has never been allowed to die. Everyday they keep feeding it and it does not matter what time of the year or the day you visit Troutbeck, right near the reception you are captivated by the seemingly ordinary fire. Because it’s fed daily it does not die.

So it is with your life, feed your fire, feed your motivation and keep on the move. Do not let your fire die because you are too tired to feed the fire. Do not let the fire die because you have lost hope and you now want to give up. Set yourself on fire and keep feeding the fire. Feed the fire with inspiring conversations. Stock the fire with new books and insights. Feed the fire in every way that you can, but just do not let the fire die.

Your enthusiasm will positively affect you and get you on the move. Your enthusiasm will affect others and supercharge them. Better still, your enthusiasm will affect everyone you come across. You become a powerful force of positive influence. Your energy feeds other people’s energy. Energy is attractive and people love to see energy in motion. Choose to be fully alive and fully awake.

Until you take personal responsibility, everything will wait for you to get to that point before your train of greatness moves on. Until you wake up, there can be no movement. Wake yourself up and put some fire into your life and work. There is a lot to be excited and thrilled about. It all starts inside you and not out there.

Greatness has been waiting for you to show up. It is waiting for you to be on fire, rise up, dress up and show up ready to play to win. It is up to you to get your life into motion.

You may have to stretch yourself a little, but that is where it all starts. You might have to start slowly, but that is what starting is all about. You cannot just burn standing still. If you stand still it is easy to think that everything has stopped functioning. Make your move, it puts a train of things into motion. That little flame within you, is a massive inferno waiting to breakout. Keep it burning, even if no one in the world knows about it.

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 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