SHAPE YOUR DESTINY

Perhaps the single most important discovery you can ever make in your life is to realize that you are the master of your own destiny and fate .Many people like to factor in things like divine intervention and providence ,but sooner rather than latter we all discover that A LOT really boils down to that very crucial word in human consciousness called choice .We are where we are in life because we have chosen this. I know that there are some people whose limitations were imposed upon them by unfortunate circumstances which were no fault of their own including birth.It then seems insensitive for me to use the same brush for everybody including those in such circumstances .When you discover the liberating power of choice you will understand how you can turn around your life, change it and even more important be on the driver`s seat in your life.

Human beings have the capacity to reflect at a very high level and this is what sets us apart from other animals. We can choose what we want to do and then use our ability to do it.What is the point of living an unfulfilled life and watch your life from the spectators terraces?Often times I hear people blame the world out there ,God ,the Government---everybody else except themselves for how they turned out to be in life.This lazy and lame excuse apportions blame to somebody else as if the power to change resides somewhere out there.The power to change is in you.Shift your attitude,choose what you want to be and to become in life and then go for it yourself.It is not too late ,quit making excuses and if you do not reach the pinnacle of your own dreams ,remember you were the only one who had to accomplish that dream,for yourself and not for anybody.Do not blame anybody.Go for your dreams.

If you are not satisfied with your life,you need to sit down and reflect seriously on what you want to do about it .Set your goals and targets and choose a higher life.Do not shortchange yourself , pick the best that life can offer.Remember that the best things in life are reserved for radical extra-ordinary go-getters. When you start working towards your dreams, never make failure an option and be determined in the face of adversity and frustration.Let your effort start telling a different story about your life.

So,do not let circumstances define your destiny,script it yourself.

By EDWARD NGUNDU

edwardngundu@yahoo.com

HARD WORK.

Any extra-ordinary results will inevitably involve extraordinary hard-work, an extra-ordinary mind-set and extra-ordinary circumstances .It can be considered fool-hardy and dare I say ridiculous to expect to produce excellent results from little or no effort ,doing the same things and expecting different results and with effort that can only be described as mediocre .If you want to be very successful you better understand that there will be hard-work ,roll your sleeves and be prepared to knuckle –down and do it. You need to cultivate a strong mental attitude which is prepared to endure the extra-ordinary effort required to accomplish your task. There is a price you have to pay to achieve anything substantial in life .A majority of lotto winners becoming instantly rich, will tell you stories of how much they spent buying tickets and for how long, before they stumbled on the winner finally. Besides ,they  had to put the effort ,going to purchase the ticket. They had to be in it to win it.

Stories of successful people in business ,sport and the world of innovation and discovery are hardly stories of luck. They will tell you  how hard they had to work very hard ,how they learnt how to endure the  gruesome good old graft to finally get to where they are. It is stories of how they put in insane hours ,swollen ankles ,isolation and sweat .In fact ,where a bit of luck was involved they had already positioned themselves to receive and make good use of it. The musician works hard on their talent first ,polishing his art to a point of excellence and rehearsing for a ridiculous number of hours until he can play the music in his sleep. When he chances upon meeting a promoter who is prepared to sponsor him ,you and I will probably call it luck, but no! Let us not forget his effort.

Working very hard is what makes the difference in the quality of results. Demand a lot from yourself and then go for it as if your whole life depends on it-and sometimes it may .Be ready for back –breaking  hard-work and when it gives you pain ,embrace it as the price you have to pay for your success.

So ,you want to go for it, work real hard to get it.

By EDWARD NGUNDU

edwardngundu@yahoo.com

EXPOSURE

In the quest to become a better you, you need to consider getting away from your culture ,colour, community or even country .I do not mean physically all the time but if need be ;yes!It is very important to realize that the world is such a big place you do not have to continue through life in the same environment,with the same people doing the same things and walking the same path to the same destination.Self -improvement,success and effective lifestyles come to you as a result of exposing yourself to the alternatives that life can offer.When you have been exposed to something you begin to realize that your routine is probably not the best and can be changed. You become uncomfortable in rituals that you have come to know like the back of your hand and begin to reach out to something else that challenges you.

Under-exposed people are some of the most bigoted ,narrow minded and judgmental people because the only reality they know is their immediate environment. They are comfortable with it and they mistake it for the world.It is very important to get out of your comfort zone and experience situations different from your home, people who think differently from you,countries and cultures which are not the same as yours.One of the reasons why some people continue to have the same problems and inspite of their effort continue to produce the same disappointing results is because they have not bothered to broaden their perspectives,experiences and exposures.

You can surely never get better in an area that you have not been exposed to .If you want to be a better politician ,teacher ,businessman ,parent ,leader or professional; you need to open yourself to new experiences which challenge you and or are different from your own.Unless you are willing to stretch your mind to new possibilities you will continue to think that your way is the only way and that it is the best ,until the dynamic world passes you by.

So,seek new experiences and learn from them.

By EDWARD NGUNDU

edwardngundu@yahoo.com

ACTION,ACT!

ACTION, ACT!

It is not enough for you to sit down and think about your future ,dream of success or even plan for it and then do nothing .It will be like planning a journey, map ready ,luggage ,fuel in the car and then park it ,sit in the car and have some more day –dreams. Goals just do not achieve themselves and plans have to be acted upon instead of them gathering dust on shelves. Besides, most good and proper plans have a life-span which expires if they are not acted upon .Some become costlier if actioned later and for others the plans are overtaken by events and lose their relevance.

Excellent, perfect planning which passes most tests should be timeously acted upon. Vacillation ,procrastination ,fear and lethargy should not stand in the way of you performing what you have planned to do.Action is what makes the difference between what was there before and what is there now.History records the actions of geniuses who came up with shocking inventions some of them ahead of their time.It also records the actions of mobs who decided at the spur of the moment that they had had enough of the status -quo,went into the streets with placards, shouting and challenging monarchies for equality and human rights.Their wishes were finally granted and their actions resulted in social,political and economic transformations of their societies.Academics came later and called these revolutions ,but the folks who did these things had clear priorities-to act on their grievances and they did.

Action changes things.Like the revolutionaries,sometimes it is more important to leave elaborate planning and evaluation to somebody else and go ahead and act. They can have the privilege of calling themselves strategists and historians ,but they will all agree that without action and events they would all be out of their jobs.The best managers in busness always evaluate their performance on results and not on how many meetings they have held in a week.I have watched ,with sympathy, the unfolding of season by season fortunes of club-managers in the very competitive English Premium League soccer.Some managers are hired because of their long and impressive CVs but if they  lose a few games they are disposed of so quickly they have no time to say goodbye to their own teams.They may have had good plans ,but if they could not execute them or act on them ,their fate is sealed!

So,do not sit on your plans ,ACT!

By EDWARD NGUNDU

edwardngundu@yahoo.com

WHAT DO YOU HAVE ?

We are all born with the potential to do and achieve things beyond what we limit ourselves to. Everything in us speaks ability and  the capacity to excel .At birth , a baby has a whole lifetime ahead of them and their 100% is sealed then .What then happens between their birth and their death are a series of compromises ,bad decisions ,settling for mediocrity and the pursuit of bad indulgences leading to most people having lives of disappointments .Most people sell their birth-right like the biblical character Esau who gave it away to his brother Jacob for a bowl of soup because he was hungry. This metaphor is a commentary on how we sometimes elevate momentary comfort and pleasure above sacrifice for more worth-while and lasting pursuits.

Often-times you hear people giving excuses that they can not do anything because they have nothing in the first place .I have seen a lot of people abandon their dreams because they cannot afford to even start and others keep saying they would pursue their dreams if only they had this or that .It is true that for whatever you want to do ,one of the first questions you should answer is what resources  you have to use for the accomplishment of your task. However, armed with a positive attitude, indomitable determination ,a never say die spirit and  such tenacity which considers the realization of those goals as a matter of survival-life or death, the question of resources ,although important really becomes answerable.

Ask yourself what do I have and no matter how small ,the journey of a thousand miles will always starts with the first step. A friend of mine born in rural Zimbabwe-in an environment of very narrow opportunities once approached me and asked if anything could work out for him in the city of Harare. Then ,he could hardly afford his rent, food, clothing and was basically poor and broke even by the low standards of a third world country .After our discussion we agreed that the only resources he had to start with was $10 and his determination. I saw his small business grow from one basket of tomatoes to a nation –wide enterprise of fruit and vegetable shops. Of all the big success stories I have come across ,this one is more awe-inspiring for demonstrating that the beginning of your dreams does not have to be very  elaborate ,the issue is what do you have and are you willing to start with just that?

So, start with what you have and go all the way.

By EDWARD NGUNDU

edwardngundu@yahoo.com

MEDITATE,THINK YOUR WAY TO VICTORY

MEDITATE, THINK YOUR WAY TO VICTORY

One of the most awesome truths of all time is that we are what we think and that what we eventually become ,we have thought about it first.The most distinct difference between humans and other creatures is that we have superior thought processes and that we are highly conscious beings quite capable of sophisitaced mental processes. The power of meditation and thought in achievement and in contemplating success cannot be over-emphasized.

Everything is created twice,first in the mind of the inventor and when it is done or produced by action for all to see.If you want to be successful or achieve victory in any sphere of human endeavor, you must be prepared to devote yourself to a lifetime of closely monitoring your mental processes. Your must learn how to discipline your mind to focus ,concentrate and meditate on whatever you want to achieve. Disciplined thought creates a clarity of vision by using experience and the almost endless capacity of your brain to think through things and yield the best options.

On the other hand ,the brain can be a very spoilt, irritable and rebellious child jumping from one thought to the next without the slightest interest in what you want it to dwell on.Develop the habit of forcing it to concentrate on one thing until you feel you have exhausted and explored every possibility in your mind.Set aside time to think about important things in your life well before they happen,think about your desirable out-comes and how you want to achieve them,visualize yourself achieving them and when you can write all this down somewhere and keep it for reference later.When the occasion comes for you to put into practice what you were thinking about ,it will be like walking along a very familiar path.When you do this habitually, you will discover how important it is to spend more time with yourself before going out there to face the world,how important it is to think wholesome thoughts and to ventilate your thinking room and removing the cob-webs of unfruitful ideas.

The world we live in is a noisy market-place where people,the media,our families,the Government---are all screaming for your attention.There is so much information and a lot to do,but if you do not give yourself time to meditate you will find yourself making decisions you are not proud of.

So,meditate,think your way to victory

By EDWARD NGUNDU

edwardngundu@yahoo.com

BE A PACE-SETTER

Evolution clearly states that this is a world in which survival is of the fittest while elimination is the fate of the weak.The race belongs to the swift and strength and power determine whether you survive or you end up being served as someone`s dinner.Mankind has been at the front of this game by being at the cutting edge of innovation and making sure that as a species we should get better at everything that threatens our  success in the multifarious challenges survival poses.

In our daily lives ,the most inspirational achievements have been accomplished by people who  aim for excellence,who stretch themselves to the limit and who reach out into the unknown,drag the impossible into the possible.Because of these daring individuals we enjoy their achievements or we get to share their success.Ask yourself what it takes to achieve so much.

I think the biggest tragedy in life is that of under-utilised potential which later goes to waste and the end of the story is that of nothing getting done .The opposite of this is that I believe people have the capacity to do great things and scale new heights which eye has not seen nor ear heard.Numerous volumes could be written about disabled people who challenged their conditions ,defied hitherto perceived logic and embarked on challenges and tasks they accomplished.They were willing to chat new territories and explore a world of new possibilities.Whenever I think about these things, I understand very clearly the reason why I resent the word IMPOSSIBLE.

This word has been responsible for a lot of dreams getting shelved and forgotten.It is responsible for sapping the energy and life out of otherwise vibrant ambitions.The notion of the word impossible has killed inspiration,innovation and the good old creativity.The broken Olympic athletic records,the spectacular scientific discoveries  and the spell –binding achievements in history all came to pass because of men and women who decided to barnish this word first before they decided to take on the world and thus became pace-setters.

So, shun mediocrity ,be a pace-setter and the sky is the limit.

By EDWARD NGUNDU

edwardngundu@yahoo.com