Short, expressive, and pointedly. If this year, you do not make some necessary changes and adjustments to the book of rules that you live by, it is just your birthday candles that are going to increase next year, thereby out-numbering and robbing you of elite performance and huge achievements. I feel duty-bound, as a leadership coach, to give cues on how one’s future turns out if one keeps on doing what one did last year and the year before last year.
I have a small piece of advice. Do not seek security. Why? Because people who are in maximum security are in prison. What is the alternative, then? You ask. Seek uncomfortable situations not for the sake of discomfort but for the purpose of growth. Step out of your comfort zone and take unimaginable risks. “. . . the future is not something we enter. The future is something we create,” Leonard Sweet’s words may have been spoken and written a long time ago but remain relevant today. It is important [rather imperative] to look for supportive environments to re-invent ourselves and re-create our future. Your personal growth is important. Do not attend training sessions, read books, or listen to personal mastery podcasts to continue doing what you have been doing without implementing your newly acquired knowledge. Learn good lessons. Apply the lessons in your personal, professional, and social life. Collecting knowledge without application is a futile exercise.
Here is what I have come to learn and witness about elite performers and serial achievers - they look at what the majority of people are doing and do the exact opposite. And they get astonishing results. Sounds familiar? I know, some people question their sanity. But who cares? Live life on your own terms. Create and live by your own book of rules. Run your own race. Reframe your thinking. It is important that I repeat and put this point succinctly - all history makers, record breakers, and titan business builders were initially questioned. They were laughed at. They were mocked. Now, they are revered. Think Steve Jobs. Think Wright brothers - Wilbur and Orville. Consider Nigerian business mogul, Aliko Dangote. Think Tanzanian multimillionaire, late Reginald Mengi - founder of IPP Group. Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com comes to mind. Think Mohammed Dewji - commonly referred to as Tsar of Dar es Salaam. Consider Ugandan billionaire Sudhir Rupelia. Remember Wendy Appelbaum (daughter of South African, Donald Gordon). Think multimillionaire Herman Mashaba. Remember Mozambican long-distance athlete Maria de Lurdes Mutola - nicknamed Maputo Express. Think Mo Farah. The list is long.
Pleasure seekers and those without their own book of rules. Growth comes through discomfort. Discomforts experienced in private life and business endeavors are sure signposts that one is breaking the painful comfort zone or that you are out of it and pointedly that you are headed for positive results. Do not sabotage your potential. Understand that every piece of great fortune that you see, hear, or read about in your country or outside your country, is a result of many hours of planning and hard work done by someone in isolation. If they did it, you and I can also do it. We are cut from the same cloth.
Take an examined look at the things that you do daily. How are you doing them? Are you doing the same things over and over again and getting the same results? If you answered ‘yes’ to this question, do yourself a favor - it is time to change. No one else - but you - has the power of the book of rules. The famed German philosopher and philologist, Fredrich Nietzsche put this point beautifully, “. . . nobody can build the bridge for you to walk across the river of life, no one but you - yourself alone. There are, to be sure, countless paths and bridges and demigods that would carry you across this river, but only at the cost of yourself; you would pawn yourself and lose. There is in the world only one way, on which nobody can go, except you: where does it lead? Do not ask, go along with it.” What a powerful statement!
One more piece of advice before I sign off. You and I know the results that we will get next year and years to come if we continue doing the same things that we have been doing over the years. Let us give ourselves a moment. Let us avoid dramatizing our potential. Let us tilt the scales in our favor. Think about what you can do differently to get better outcomes and positive results that you have always desired in your heart. And remember - you are a victim of the rules you live by.
Lester Chinyang’anya | General Manager – Operations | Minet Malawi
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