THAT LITTLE WORD: "WE"

"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. Ecclesiastes 4:9" 

I love movies. I love the kind that are woven from true life stories. Such inspire me a lot. Sad is the day when we sit in a movie theatre to watch a movie...two hours later on we wonder: "What's the big deal about the movie anyway!"

You will agree with me that one of the greatest movies of the recent past is a movie titled "Blind Side" starring Sandra Bullock...you ought to go watch it if you haven't.

One thing we have to realize is that we all have blind sides. We might be living in a 3-D world, yet even in the empirical tangible realm itself, we might not be seeing everything in 3-D at any one point in time. Yet that is jut the physical world to begin with.

There is the emotional side, there is the Spiritual side...the mental side and so on. You can see how very many odds in terms of 'all roundedness' are against us humans. Yet, against all odds, we still do amazing stuff as human beings. Against all odds, we put a man on the moon to the precision of a second. 

The key there is that little word....WE. Given that we all do have blind-sides, it is imperative that we do have 'watchmen' or lookouts who would cover our blind sides.

Some of those are our spouses. Before I got married, I used to think I knew about fashion...and how to dress for occasions. You have no idea how many times Beth has told me to change and put on something else...even when I would just be going to watch football! She's covering my blind side...and for the most part about fashion, she is always right....and I normally come to find out about it months later!!! Talk of being blind-sided!

Some of the 'watchmen' are our friends and close relatives. The best watchmen of our blind sides however are professional mentors and coaches. I heard a very prominent person wax eloquent of how many coaches he has: A coach for speech; for social media; for public speaking; and so on. Is it any wonder that they are prominent?

Some of these 'watchmen' are spiritual leaders like pastors...especially those that do not necessarily want your offering. 

All I am saying is that for you and I to be successful in life, we ought to have our blind sides covered...either by a professional coach, mentor...or by close people who deeply care about our life signatures.

Can you count how many watchmen you have in your life?

Remember, it is that little word "we" that made Neil Armstrong land on the moon in 1969.
Visionaries cannot afford to be islands. In fact, the bigger the vision, the greater the need of that little two-lettered word, "we" to bring it to accomplishment.

I have come to realize that the greatest investment in any vision is people...including our audiences, our professional networks, those whom our vision is impacting, our critics and well of course, our 'watchmen'. Liverpool football club puts it this way, "You will never walk alone". What a word!

Have a covered day, wont you?

YOU AND YOUR BIG MOUTH II

No doubt that words are the most powerful weapons available to a human. Some years back while I attended a spiritual meeting with some friends, we were discussing about what we would rather have over the other: eyes, ears, a mouth, a nose, arms or legs.

We had a hilarious time hearing people defend why they would go for the nose and not the rest of the body parts…and so on.

Needless to say, we need all those body parts…they are of equal importance yet some have the functionality much higher than their ‘friends’. I single out the mouth. 

In the last post, we identified that there will always be opposition to the vision that you carry in the inside of you. I know of people who have carried visions for decades…yet at the moment, they do not even seem close to its fruition.

Yet you will never see them keep quiet about the vision. They use the big mouth syndrome. They have a thick skin that refuses to listen to any other thing contrary to the vision. They believe although they do not see. They will not be judged by seeming lack of activity on their end as far as the vision is concerned.

I will say it again, that with the weapon of our mouths, we are able to create impregnable defiance against all obstacles to our dreams and visions.

Yet I have come to realize that one of the biggest and most potent use of the big mouth is towards others! You have no idea what words can do to individuals whose own mouths are tightly shut in the wake of struggle, frustration and hardship.

I am not talking about careless words thrown around in an obligatory mode. I am not talking about soft careful words spoken to comfort and soothe, although those are needed.

I am talking about powerful words of belief and vision directly into the life of another soul. I read somewhere that if someone was told that they cannot make it, it takes about sixteen times of hearing ‘they can make it’ to neutralize that sting of failure in their lives. It is then the seventeenth time that catapults the scale to the other side of victory! How powerful the mouth is, both sides of fate!

Visionaries need to learn to use their big mouths to speak belief, positive vision to the lives of those around them. I see visionaries rising up even in families, greeting each other with big words of belief.

“Hi champion”!

“You are useful”!

“You are a world changer”!

 “You are creative”!

“You are relevant”!

“I see you going places that no other person in your lineage has ever gone to”!

You have no idea what music this is to a soul’s ears. Words create! People tend to navigate towards what picture a word has painted in their lives. I challenge people in authority over others, mostly parents to exercise that big mouth of yours well.

You have absolutely nothing to lose when you do this. Instead, you have creative power right at the tip of your big mouth. All I know is that this ‘power’ being released from you has a way of going round and coming back in a double dose hitting you and turning your life right-side up!

Come to think of it…do you know how much damage gossip and rumors do on a daily basis? See, that is the negative side of the big mouth. If that can be flipped to the right side and we start speaking big, positive life-filled words to each other: mother to daughter, husband to wife, teacher to child, child to child, president to nation, and here is the big one- media house to nation, we stand in a pole position in creating positive environments where life signatures can be nurtured.

That is why I will endeavor as much as possible to be involved in the ‘vision of words’, through writing and speaking. I realized some years back that my purpose on earth is ‘to speak words in season to those who are weary’. What a noble cause!

Many people give up because first off, they kept quiet, and second of all, those around them are tight lipped too!

Unbeknown to you, Your Words Could Save a Life!

Someone is a breathe away…literally, from committing suicide; from giving up on that marriage; project; or endeavor or even on themselves! Let us learn to exercise that power seated right under our noses.

You and your big mouth are revolutionary to say the least!

Have a creative week, wont you?

YOU AND YOUR BIG MOUTH!!

They say that as long as you have vision for where you want to go, nothing can stop you. Well, it could be true, but that does not mean that some things will try to stop you. Some of those things lie deep within my own self. 

Some of them are from the environment around me...yet I guess the biggest 'stoppers' of them all are those within me: fear, pride, lack of fire and ambition, laziness, ordinariness, fitting in, comfort, jealousy, inferiority, lack of preparation, lose of momentum...you name it. If we can beat all these enemies within, the nothing can stop us message becomes more tangible than theoretical.

"No matter what you think, I say this is an Apple Machine!"

Yet, I think second to having vision, the biggest asset one possesses is the words of our mouths! What is the content of your conversation right now? In the midst of our relentless stoppers whether inside of us or outside of us...What are we saying?

It is absolutely critical that you and I possess the biggest positive mouth in the entire universe. It is absolutely critical that we also develop a thick and impenetrable skin that couldn't care less what someone else thinks about our big mouths. You see, people will always have something to say. 

I dare say that you and I must cultivate a character where concerning our vision, we are the first and the final word! That means that even before you speak out with your big mouth, someone might want to beat you to the punch and tell you how much inferior you are...and how impossible it is...and how your entire previous generations did not make it and you are no different.

It is not only people who will speak...but I guess the biggest communicators of negativity in our lives are those negative situations you find yourself in. Picture this...a man is destined to be a Prime Minister in a foreign land, yet he is a prisoner somewhere.

What does that situation tell him about his vision? Forget what it says...but remember what is in your mouth. Do not forget to tenaciously declare the vision with the biggest mouth you got...you have absolutely nothing to lose, I assure you.

A man has a vision that in 2012, he and his family will be lifted up from obscurity to relevance and prominence, yet he finds himself in August being a guest of the state...obscurity indeed! What does that situation tell him? Forget what it says, but open your biggest mouth ever and declare still the vision. Believe me, you have absolutely nothing to lose.

The greatest tragedy we have in the world today is silent visionaries! When hardship speaks, they keep quiet. When frustration grows they are silent still. When impossibilities loom they silently nod in agreement with it. Listen, opening your big mouth to declare the exact opposite of the seeming impossibility is the key to keep you on track. Refuse to die. Refuse to die with your vision. 

You and your big mouth are a perfect combination for the moment. Do not keep quiet however impossible it seems...for then you will be agreeing with the death of your vision. I already indicated here how critical an audience of one is...

You and your big mouth are the most powerful combination against the inside as well as the outside stoppers. It is not only important to keep walking...it is absolutely necessary to keep that big mouth of yours wagging and waxing eloquent about your life signatures!

Have a 'speechy' week, wont you?

LYING PROFESSIONALS

"It is so absurd that the man who engineered the 3 storey Ark would spend the rest of his life living in a tent" ~ Robert Kayanja

We all know about the compartmentalized life. There is the family life...and then there is work-life. Sadly, there is the church life and then there is the home-life. 

Why is it that there are compartments in people's lives. Why is it that there is a heavy leaning on one compartment and virtually total neglect of another? Why should there be compartments to begin with? And if there are compartments anyway, why should there be a dichotomy between my professional life and my home life?

A life Coach teaching people about goal-setting does not have goals himself/herself. A marriage counsellor is unmarried...or she has serious issues in her marriage. A pastor's wife envies his congregation and wishes she could get the attention they get.

Many people are so committed to the 'outside life' let's call it 'professional life', than their inside life...the core of their very being. Their motivation is that there are fruits found from their professional life that would help feed the inside life. They always say that they will sort out their core life...after. After they are married, after the kids are born, after the kids go to college, after they get a better job, after they change cars. 

This is wrong thinking. This is death in installments. I have been a victim of such a way of thinking...and to be honest with you, I almost always get back to the realization that I should have focused on the inside life in the beginning.

People go in circles for decades and half of lifetimes with this kind of thinking- chasing after fruits. Most of them are an emotional wreck after the curtain closes in on them. Their greatest regret is 'If only I had done what matters!' 

You see, what matters now, that small silent nudge about the focus on our core will at the close of the curtain condemn us. Then we will be helpless. Yet what matters right now is the scrawniest of lives across the globe, the most starved, the most procrastinated on. 

Ironically, what matters is what was intended to feed the professional life. What matters creates principles, values and frameworks upon which the fruit we chase daily can be replicated again and again.

Why should a talented writer neglect that talent and pursue other things? Why should a gifted orator neglect that gift in pursuit of daily fruit?

These are the lying professionals of today...and they are in droves across the globe.

It is time to stop lying on ourselves!

Have a reflective week, wont you?

QUESTIONING THE DEFINITION OF MADNESS

Why is it that someone said that doing the same thing over and over again and each time expecting different results is madness? Really? Is it madness? Take a look around you. Take a look at some of the repetitive things that you do on a daily basis. 

Would you be doing them over and over expecting the same results? Well obviously, there is a big lesson in that statement. However I have to contend that at times, I must do the same thing repeatedly each time expecting a different result.

The secret here is that at each attempt, there is normally subtle progress in two ways: One, either I change internally by strengthening my resolve or I get to learn one thing or two, like tenacity. I could also find that my tenacity is increasing. I have personally learnt that the more I am in action over something, the more I learn the best way to accomplish it. In fact that way, I become an authority over that subject. 

So as you can see, doing the same thing over and over again at some length is thoroughly beneficial, and I will recommend it today…as long as you know exactly what you are aiming at, and that the thing you are doing right now is the only action available to you to reach your end. SELAH.

Another subtle way that you make progress is on the end of the problem. You have no idea what shifts are happening in your target output. If water trickles on a rock today, there is nothing to write home about it. Nothing to take note of. However, give that water-rock relationship some time, you have no clue how critical each drop is to breaking that rock over time.

So as you can see, doing the same thing over and over again and each time expecting a different result might not be madness in this case here.

The main point of this post however is this. There normally is a threshold that we are supposed to breakthrough. When they launch a rocket into space, there is serious opposition until it breaks through to space where it coasts with absolutely no opposition.

The other decade, we broke the sound barrier. David Rudisha, a Kenyan athlete broke a record in 800 Meters track event at the recent London Olympics. This simply means that the floodgates have been opened to equal it and break it in the days to come.

As we continue doing the same thing over and over again, we need to be tenacious enough to break through the barrier that hinders us. Some of us have given up at the point of breakthrough….like the guy who sold a mine after digging in for precious metals for years without success, only for the new owner to drill six inches and hit a jackpot!

Like I said, you have absolutely no idea what impact your seemingly subtle effort of the day has to do with your vision today.

For us to break through the barrier, sometimes we gotta do what we have never done before. That is when Albert Einstein’s theory of madness comes into operation. It has to do with barriers. It has to do with defeating strong holds. It has to do with dealing with those things that we are afraid of. 

It could be for a Christian, taking a 40-day fast. It could be for a visionary taking the courage to knock on people’s doors until you receive funding. It could be increasing time for education over entertainment. It all is going all out and doing something outside of the norm…something that is going to cost you something…something that puts your reputation on the line.

Breaking the barrier is the only sure way of making the madness of doing something over and over again irrelevant…yet the madness is indispensable! SELAH