Sundaymail Editor
Hunt for Greatness
Milton Kamwendo
It is not the fight that matters the most, but the state of your heart: The heart to stand the heat, to believe and to dare to keep moving.
The heart to pursue a noble vision over time, despite the setbacks. It takes a quality of spirit that you can summon. Wake up and channel your thoughts to faith and greatness. Do not outsource your life to anyone or anything, big or small.
Nothing is impossible to a made-up mind. It takes believing in your dream. It takes work.
It reveals your true motives and stand. It is what makes the great, truly great. Stand up to the fight when you are hardest hit. Make this your mantra and song and keep telling yourself that you will not quit, you will not quit, you stand the pressure. You will keep moving regardless of how slow the pace or how rough and tough the course.
Mr Edgar Guest (1881 — 1959) was born in England, and when he was ten years old he moved with his family to Detroit, Michigan in USA.
He worked for 60 years at the Detroit Free Press, as a reporter and columnist. Throughout his life he wrote poetry that resonated with people’s daily life and became known as a “the people’s poet”. On March 4, 1921 he wrote what I would consider his best poem entitled: “Keep Going”. This poem, like all great works is still fresh and madden with inspirational power for today.
In his power, “Keep Going”, Mr Guest wrote:
“When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
And the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns.
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out.
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow,
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than it seems
To a faint and faltering man.
Often the struggler has given up when he
Might have captured the victor’s cup,
And he learned too late when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out,
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are.
It may be near when it seems afar.
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit.
It’s when things seem worst that
You mustn’t quit.”
Yes! It is when things seem worse, that you must not quit, but keep moving, shaking and working. Do not throw in the towel; just yet.
Do not stop believing in greatness and seeing possibilities. Behind the curtain of difficulty there is a way. Behind the iron-wall in your face there is a life. Beyond the challenges of this hour there are possibilities. Hold on and keep working and following your dream. You may be delayed, but keep at it.
You may be tired, rest a little and rise up to fight once more. It is your image of the future that feeds your faith, empowers and gives you an energy-boost. There is no obstacle, challenge or adversity that is stubborn-enough or strong-enough to overwhelm a burning dream and a resolute spirit. Stand up to the fight even when you are hardest hit. You may win with another blow. Greatness demands your best thinking and strength.
Dialogue
Watch your thoughts like a motion-picture in your face. Audit your personal dialogue and the words you speak and how you speak. Change your dialogue from narratives of disaster and doom. As you think so you speak and as you speak so you create.
Talk about creating a great future and doing great things.
Change your vocabulary to one of ultimate success and not Armageddon. Do not sweat on small stuff and park on petty hurts.
The future is already present. It is just waiting for you to be awake, conceive and realise it. Be obsessed with pictures of your preferred future not the abuses and mistakes of past.
Greatness is for creators. Those willing to believe in possibilities that others choose to ignore. There is space; there is opportunity and there are possibilities in this hour beyond your wildest dreams.
The future belongs to the people who prepare for it today. Creating a different future is not just a mere protest-action. It calls for strategic action and deliberate thought. Quit engaging in recreational complaining and engage in creative and design thinking. Quit sitting comfortably in the chair of a victim, an unsettled historian and purveyor of bitterness.
If you have a choice — inspire courage and catalyse action. Toxicity of spirit will never inspire anyone or attract anyone. That is never a creative space for greatness. Dialogue differently with yourself and others.
The future is created by conversations around inspiring images of the future. Hold new conversations of the future and reach for new possibilities.
There is so much waiting to be born, done and improved. There is so much that could be created. There are so many possibilities everywhere.
To change your life, or anything for that matter, change the pictures that you hold in your mind. If the picture is a horror scene, you will be plagued by fear, doubt, bitterness, blame and unbelief.
However, if you plant different pictures in your mind you will have a different harvest. It is impossible to hold a bold, positive, inspiring picture in your mind and then fail to be motivated.
Most motivational and cultural problems can be directly traced to mental state.
Limited thinking results in a limited life. What you see is what shows in your conversation and manifests in your action. Doom pictures result in doom fellowships and dialogue.
Until the pictures that you hold and share change, very little may change whatever happens. Change the video in your mind and you transform your life.
The image of the future that you carry within your strategic, influences the playbook you use.
Bring the future into sharp definition. The Dutch Futurist, Mr Fred Polak in his 1961 work said: “The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures. As long as the society’s image is positive and nourishing, the flower of culture is in full bloom.
“Once the image begins to decay and lose its vitality, however, the culture does not long survive.”
Get your organisational and personal flower in full bloom. You do not have the luxury to allow negativity to canker your soul and whittle the life in you.
Do not let delay blind you. Do not let defeat dampen you. Do not let denial keep you in chains. Do not allow doomsday-thinking cloud your judgement and reasoning. Decide to make today a turning point. Do not allow the future to switch from being a promise to being a fearful threat. You will always be threatened by the future when you do not have a strategy and blue prints of greatness.
When you treat the future as a black hole you will approach it without a strategy and no script that you are following. The day is always ripe for change-makers. 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. Arise, shine because your light has come.
Never let the past dominate your mental space and live large in you. Stop renting space to toxicity of mind. Always leave space for the dreams and the possibilities of the future.
Let the images of the future that you embrace be full of light, life and vision. Dark images of the future rob you of energy and light. Never be satisfied to try and squash the future into a squalid past. Dream new dreams and make new preferences and references.
Note the past, 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.
Do not consign yourself to a life of listless and unimaginative repetition of the all too familiar. Be daring, bold and dreaming. Do not just gobble the poisoned images full of horror, but dream and start to work for a new and exciting future. Every day is an opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
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 midday. 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.
Vision without action is merely a dream. Dreams that are not acted upon become living nightmares. Action without vision just passes time and aimless activity. Action without vision makes you a senseless hyperactive hero.
Action with vision has the potential to create greatness. Heroism without purpose is wasted passion. Bring your heart into the theatre of greatness. Wake up and take control of your life.
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
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter