admin
Hunt for Greatness
Milton Kamwendo
Where you live and who your neighbours are is important and could affect you in important ways and influence the way you think. Choose the conversations you are involved in and the plans you diligently pursue. Be deliberate about the fellowships that you join and nurture. Whatever you sow, you will reap and what you nurture will grow. Be deliberate and think beyond today. Do not plant any seeds whose harvest you despise or casually toss toxic seeds and invasive weeds and assume they will harm another, leaving you exempt from the natural laws of sowing and reaping.
There is an old riddle that is a favourite teaser. The riddle asks: “Six birds were sitting on a live wire. Three of them DECIDED to fly off. How many were left?” What do you think is the correct answer? The correct answer is “Six!” Why? How come, when there were three that decided to leave? This is because intentions are not actions. Decisions are not execution. Words alone are not worlds.
Inspiring and nourishing conversations are a tree of life, with fruits that water seeds of greatness, support the well of motivation and embolden the flames of faith. Your roots determine your reach. Fellowships built around bitterness, negativity and despair blur vision, crush the bones, create imprisoning walls, bend trajectories and cause the hearts to bleed.
Fellowships and friendship that inspire are a trampoline and a life source. Protect your glide towards greatness, your fidelity of spirit and flow of positive energy. You do not have the luxury of nursing a negative thought and planning with evil intent. Whatever drains your energy can never infuse you with life and vitality. You reap the seeds that you store and plant. You cannot partake of toxic fellowship and be mentally free and spiritually aflame. Flee whatever chock you, knocks you down and does not give you positive lift.
There is a land and location where some people choose to live. Others are gullibly invited to that land to take up citizenship. The land is called: “The land of good intentions”. It is so rich in possibility, pregnant with fantasy dreams, and has much that can be said about it. In the land of good intentions there is never a shortage of hopeful dreams, eventual frustration or permutations of blame games.
The slogan of the land of good intentions is: “Some day soon!” In the land of good intentions everyone is upbeat about the future, has great plans in store, but no one can dare take positive action, or enter boldly into the ring to play and engage with brutal realities of life. Intentions are a starting point, but never an end-point.
The reality is that deciding to fly and actually flying are two entirely different things. There are many people that have decided that they want to change their lives. There are many that talk of changes they will make someday. There are many people with good intentions who are hoping one day to do something big, massive and great in scale and scope. This is the hallmark of the inhabitants of the land of good intentions. Intentions alone are not an action catalogue. Intentions alone are not a realisation of greatness.
Intentions alone will never make you into anything worth counting. You have met people that talk of the great books they have read, yet they do not apply. Some tell you of the books they have, but have never read them. There are those that drop names of great people in conversations, yet they themselves are not great.
Big talk, without big action, is a big lie. They tell you of great plans they are about to pull off. All well and good, but do not just dwell in the land of good intentions. Move away towards the land of action. Take action and make things happen. You may not be able to change everything and everyone, but you can change something that is in your control.
In the land of good intentions people get to the door but never knock, because they are too fearful. They are consumed with their ego and self-preservation. In the land of good intentions the default setting is “Tomorrow! Tomorrow!”
It is never today or now, let us take action. In the land of good intentions, everyone is waiting for someone to rise up and make better, direct the right winds, brew the right climate, draw in the tide. In the land of good intentions people are always seeking for a silver bullet, the next story to talk about and the perfect moment to strike. Citizens of the land of good intentions have many threats, but they never carry out any, they decide but never do, they are worried, but do nothing. Whatever you study, you deepen and allow to grow in you. To be great study greatness. Whatever fills your mind, will fill your conversations and attract the company you keep. Whatever you allow to fill your mind will fuel your actions, fill your time and inflame your conversation. Spend more and more time with people aligned with your vision of greatness and whose fellowship nourishes your soul. You become like the company you keep and the conversations in which you are deep. You always catch the words, spirit and thought-patterns of the people you spend time with.
Stop sabotaging your greatness by subjecting your time, mind and spaces to toxic and negative social pressure of people that know everything that does not work, will never work and who will not work. Refuse to be guided by prophecies of doom, and proclamations of gloom. Manage and be deliberate about the influences that shape your narrative. Greatness is an inside job and guarding your mind and heart is a diligent and disciplined personal activity. Spend less, and less time with people that do not inspire you. Spend more and more time with people that challenge your faith, stimulate your dreams, animate your vision, open new thought streams and buoy up your courage. Do more things that enlarge your vision and help you to think bigger and better. Spend more time with people that believe that great things can be done and that see and celebrate your greatness. Work to scale your thoughts and dump stale opinions and biases that stall you.
Spend more time with people that are wiser than you, that energise the positive in you and engage you in empowering ways. Aspire for the company of those who know what you do not know and see bigger than what you see. Crave for the company of those who direct you to sources of insight, books that you had never read, and places you would have taken a long time to discover. Follow those who inspire you.
Follow those who challenge you to dream, think bigger, push barriers and fuel yourself with positive energy. Spend more time visiting places that inspire you to dream and fuel your imagination and mental models. Bring into your dwelling pictures that uplift you and make you want to do great things, with great people. Unfollow those that dispirit, demoralise and depress you.
Spend more time with people that see possibilities and dream big and bold. Spend more time with those that help you see that greatness is possible. Align yourself with great spirits and people that make your heart dance with positive passion. Flee those that dampen your spirit and obscure your vision. Spend more time with those who are not just stuck in quiet desperation, but that are designing a great life.
The company you keep determines what you catch and where you go. Spend more time in life giving and nourishing conversations. If where you are spending most of time is not inspiring you to dream, and challenging you positively, then change your neighbourhood. Greatness does not require any muted whispers that dull your spirit and weaken your faith.
Choose the drama you can manage and the drums you dance to. Stop languishing in the land of good intentions, get up and really do something that matters. Do deep work and not just shallow activities that make you feel good, but produce nothing. Stop playing games with yourself and calling that occupation, action or achievement. Do not be satisfied with keeping appearances, parading blueprints, and threatening execution. A strategy is not a strategy until you start executing. It is not where you intend to one day get to that matters. What matters is taking action, making things happen and delivering. Making plans that you do not intend to execute is self-deception.
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. His website is: www.miltonkamwendo.com
Online Reporter