EVERYONE CAN BE IN CHARGE...REALLY

Salesmen are always taught that people do not like to be sold, but people like buying! How so true! People are always in the need of buying something. I do not know of anybody who doesn't like buying. 

In other words, if I can get something that someone can buy on a daily basis...if I can solve a problem, or add value to someone or an organization, then am in business.

With Solving Problems, EVERYONE can be in charge

It is imperative that as we develop our life signatures, we never should veer from that same old focus of others.  We have said it here again and again that the highest form of existence is to provide value to others. Legacies are never selfish. Legacies are always people-centered!

The message of others is two-fold:

1. First, providing solutions to other peoples problems is a sure way of cementing a life signature and getting back value in terms of cash.
2. Secondly, the accumulation of wealth is never for selfish gain, but for the betterment of other people in society.

A visionary is always striving to be in the second bracket, and eventually it happens that they get there.

There is this small exercise that can help a visionary, if practised on a daily basis. Each day, each week or month or year, there is always a problem to solve. I am not talking about solving other people's problems. I am talking about solving personal problems.

The reason as to why many people are unhappy is because they are not solving problems. They are shelving them, waiting for something grand to happen...others are waiting for time to elapse...and with it, the problems. Worry is normally an exercise of wishing the problem was never there, yet it is.

Problem tackling on the other hand gives a visionary power to choose how to handle the issue at hand. It puts you right in the drivers seat. That driver's seat is normally hot...and that is why people get paid. We have encouraged people here on Life Signatures of the need to embrace the pain, the embarrassment, the discomfort of problem solving.

One of the biggest recipes for personal growth is daily solving personal problems

I heard someone say that the reason as to why they were more successful than their peers is because they stay with problems longer.

On a daily basis, if we can delve into answering the questions of life specifically through brain-storming, we will find that we become more creative. Inherently, we get so attracted to conflict like an adventurer normally is to new frontiers. In no time, more and more people notice how VALUEable we have become.

Do not tell me that there is nothing to solve...no unaccomplished vision or desire at the moment. There is. If not, you need to be in the cemetery...dead and buried.

If we could just spare at least two hours daily analysing a problem...documenting all the necessary solutions to it, and taking action without fear of embarrassment....nothing can stop us!

Have a problematic week, wont you?

REALITY CHECK: WE ALL ARE REPLACEABLE!!

When your wife admires the qualities of another man and wishes you had them...you are replaceable,
When your client has become accustomed to you and can almost predict you...you are replaceable,
When your audience is chatting on facebook about the game as you rant on...you are replaceable,
When your boss wishes you could be as sharp as her friend's receptionist...you are replaceable,
It is only a matter of time, well, unless you recognize this fate... and do something right away!

One of the biggest and longest debates in Uganda is about Presidential term limits. Since 1986 @KagutaMuseveni has been the President of that nation. A very curious question has been on people's lips: Who can replace the man?

Should We stick by him or replace him?

I think another important question we need to answer is this: Can he be replaced? Yet a more sober question to ask is this: Can I be replaced? Can you be replaced? The answer is a resounding YES!

I think one of the biggest recipes of turmoil in organizations is when individuals do not accept the fact that they can be replaced. Yes, they do see that they can be replaced, yet they are scared. There is an easy way out of this, if you think it is a predicament: Acknowledge it, and do something about it! Certainly not externally, but something internally to add more value to yourself.

I host the Hour of Prayer on 104.1 Power FM in Uganda every weekday at 5:00 a.m East African Time. One of my listeners called in and was thanking me for the good job. She went as far as saying that she was wondering who would fill in the gap left by my predecessors. At the reign of my predecessors, she would not think of any other person. They were the real deal....of course until I showed up!

That got me to thinking about today's question. Am I replaceable? Is there someone out there who would do a much better job than what I am doing today?

Here is the thing: If I sit in comfort on my position and remain stale in dispensing my duties, I am a great disservice to the people. It is important that on a daily basis, I keep churning out much needed wowing value to my audience.

The same applies to any visionary out there. There is no doubt that each and everyone of us have an audience one way or another. Either in our professional life, family life, spiritual life or even in our business life...we all have our audiences.

I have discovered that if an audience sniffs out a better 'service provider', they will be much inclined to abandon my ship and move. That is a given. That is a human trait. The only thing that would hold them is loyalty.

Loyalty on the other hand is never a thread that runs on autopilot. Loyalty is always relevant. In other words, people will stay loyal as long as their loyalty is rewarded. That means that the loyalty is directly proportional to the frequency of relevance.

In a more practical language, let me say this: If I were to die today (God forbid), I am more than certain that there will be another Presenter to replace me. There is no doubt about that. In fact, I was never born a presenter, and from the time of the inception of the Program I host, there have been people doing what I am doing.

For the purpose of staying on the cutting edge of productivity and value addition to my audience, it is important that I note how replaceable I am today. It is important that I ask myself this question: If I am replaced today, what would my successor do better than myself?

In answering that question frequently, I do not need to worry about being replaced...and when I do get replaced (inevitably), there will be no replacing the legacy that I would have left behind. There will be no question about my Life Signature.

Truth be told: Nobody is indispensable...and the earlier we embraced that fact, the better.

WE ARE MUCH MORE RESILIENT THAN WE THINK

"The object of your desire has probably always existed around you, but your mind and eyes weren’t open to “seeing” it". ~ Darren Hardy

What if you left your house in a huff, boarded a bus to town and only halfway through the journey you discover that you forgot your wallet? What would happen?

Here is the situation: You are totally cashless at that moment in time. Does it mean that you do not have options? Let me ask it this way: Will you at the end of the day find yourself back at home?

The bus people need their fare…

You cannot go back home, your day will be messed…

You will still have to go back home in at the close of the day…

Do not forget that you might need some cash for lunch…

What would you do?

Ok, let us then flip the scenario to a different one…albeit very common across the globe.

You are jobless. You have no income. You have a family to feed. You have rent and other bills to pay. You have to eat…and you have no income. Let us ask the same question. Does it mean that you do not have options?

I personally think that this is one of those most powerful questions that we need to answer. The answer to this question needs to be so embedded in our subconscious. I bet you that the reason many people are stuck is because they do not give themselves much credit.

To be fair, I think being stuck is being stuck regardless of the magnitude. An individual who is stuck at home because of lack of bus fare is just as stuck in his situation as a visionary who is stuck on publishing his book because of lack of finances. 

It is the same ‘stuck’, if you will, just multiplied several times. My point in saying that is to say this: we always have options…and at times if we are pushed hard enough, we will get unstuck somehow.

Another scenario is this: In the midnight hour, your 7-month old baby falls scaringly sick. You have no cash to take him to hospital. What are you going to do? I bet that the pressure exerted upon you by virtue of your love for your child will compel you to do just about anything, including waking up your neighbor whom you are not in talking terms with. You know I am right.

So what is the difference between those ‘extreme’ situations and the one situation that you are stuck with right now? The difference is care. The difference is also created by the pressure. The care and pressure are forces too great that overwhelm anything that stands against you: fear of rejection, shame and embarrassment, procrastination and outright laziness.

In short, what we are saying today is that for the most part we are not stuck. For the most part, we just have awkward ‘illusionary roadblocks’ ahead of us. If we can bring ourselves to generate enough internal power to overcome these roadblocks, nothing really can cause us to remain stuck.

The next time you find yourself stuck, get to analyze the situation by asking yourself this questions:

What Am I really afraid of?

What is the inevitable?

Is there anything I can do immediately?

What do I have to lose for doing it?

What do I have to gain for venturing out?

This is a more pragmatic way of looking at a stuck situation than just to generalize the ‘stuck’. In fact, in doing this, you avail yourself with several options that you can take. Most people in a stuck situation would want someone else to help them out…the way I think life is designed is that if we can just zero in on ourselves, we might have more options than we think we do.

Have a problem solving week, wont you?

DANGEROUS WEAPONS IN THE SAND DUNES OF OUR LIVES

"A life not reviewed is not worth living at all" ~ Jim Rohn.

"Often times, while we are looking at other pastures, other people are busy looking at ours" ~ Think and Grow Rich, A Black Choice

Some time back, Nelson Mandela said that George W Bush was a dumb fool who wanted to drag the world into a holocaust.

I remember those days. Everyone was debating whether it was justified for America to attack Iraq. The main reason as to why George W. Bush championed to attack the Arab nation was that their president had weapons of mass destruction hidden somewhere in the sand dunes of their dessert!

Several years later, the world still waits on the WMDs. Barrack Obama himself termed the war on Iraq as a “dumb war”.

Yet I have come to realize that there is nothing dumber than for us to have the necessary weapons (read tools) to affect our generations and not even realize it.

It is dumber yet again to totally ignore the above statement and still go “out there” seeking for these tools. Let me  explain by telling you what happened to me last night.

As I retired back home after a fruitful day, I decided to relax my mind by watching this BBC Film called ‘The First Grader’. Now being a Kenyan, I have always known that the movie existed. For the record, this is a must watch film to anybody out there who is a visionary. I guarantee you serious inspiration!

There is something called prejudice. There is also something called familiarity which breeds contempt. When the true story depicted in the film was taking place, I was in Kenya following it closely on the news. That is why I registered minimal interest to watching the film. I thought that there was ‘nothing new’ it has to offer. I thought I knew the whole story inside out.

Naturally, I wanted something exotic…something surprising…something unique.

Last night as I watched, I could not help but sob heavily at this inspirational classic that now finds its way into my library as a treasure.

And herein is the thing: For the most part, we are so prejudiced against ourselves that we take ourselves for granted. We take what we know for granted. We think that it cannot make a difference. We hold our own arsenals in contempt since we are so familiar with them.

We kind of think that what will do the trick would be something foreign…something unique that the whole world has never seen before. What a dumb trick we play on ourselves! Listen, just like George Bush found no WMDs in Iraq, I guarantee you that there is nothing new out there if we keep ignoring our own potentials, our own strengths, our very own opportunities!

Sadly this truth mostly resounds louder in our lives when all our strength is gone, when all our days are spent and when we are crossing over to the other side. We finally realize how dumb we have been, like it is depicted in the book ‘Acres of Diamond’.

Before serious companies worth their salts can strategically plan for their year, they do an analysis of their assets and look at their balance sheets. They seek to know where they are at as they strategize to go to where they desire.

The truth is, as Darren Hardy, Publisher of Success Magazine says, we are multi-billion dollar organizations ourselves in our own right. By the close of the age, Billions of money would have passed through our hands.

That is why it is important to sit down and make a thorough review of our lives.

·         What are our strengths? These are the things we are so prejudiced about…things like our academics, our passions and talents, our skills, the compliments and recommendations we receive, and so on.

·         What are our weaknesses? These are basically our blind sides. Each of us has a blind side. Knowing your blindside will help you to structure your life in such a way that your life signatures do not have to depend on you using your blind side. This is absolutely major!

·         What are our opportunities? This, ladies and gentlemen, is where the weapons are hidden in the sand, I can tell you that. For the most part, we think that we are stuck…No we are not…if we would take some time and consider some options we have here:

o   Do we have role models who can mentor us?

o   In our careers/industries, do we know the existing problems that we can solve?

o   What complains do people make of our services/lack of it?

o   What compliments do people give of our services/products and how can we make it even better?

o   What new technology can we use to make work easier?

·         What are our Threats? We all do have potentially things weapons (this is now for real) that can obliterate us in our life signatures in a New York second. Some are from our childhood. Some are in our diet and exercise and routine medical checkups. Some are in our financial prudence or lack of it thereof…

If a visionary would take time and identify these things…it might take you more than an hour or so…viola! You have your war chest.

Never again would you want to dispense your life signatures naked. You wanna go in there loaded. Before the goals, prepare and clean the arsenals.

Over to the sand dunes you go!

Have and Arsenal week, wont you?

Shorten the learning curve but by all means please learn. Do not circumvent the process!

ANYBODY FOR AN ARSENAL T-SHIRT?

Why is there only one ball for 22 players?  If you gave a ball to each of them, they'd stop fighting for it.  

~Author Unknown

Something in human nature causes us to start slacking off at our moment of greatest accomplishment.  As you become successful, you will need a great deal of self-discipline not to lose your sense of balance, humility, and commitment.  

~Ross Perot

Theo may show his loyalty to Arsene by Commiting to a new contract

Few weeks back, I bade farewell to my colleagues at Intelligent Performance for the weekend with this parting shot: “You guys have a lovely weekend, and for the rest of us Arsenal fans, let us keep suffering the Arsenal way”

That little statement sparked off a one hour long discussion...debate...I mean argument focused on Loyalty and Commitment. In my estimation, I am an ardent and LOYAL Arsenal fan. Why? Because I support no other team…not that I cannot support another. I could.

Believe me, I have tried and tried to abandon the Arsenal ship and hop onto another. It just hasn’t worked. It’s kind of like shifting your left shoe to your right leg and vice versa. It just is nothing but awkward.

My colleagues on the other hand reasoned that my loyalty was nothing but BLIND LOYALTY. That did not go well with me. What do they mean by saying am blinded in my loyalty to being an Arsenal fan? In their submission, loyalty is two way traffic, in that Arsenal benefits from me, and I from them.

They argued that a true fan is subscribed and pays membership fees. They even went ahead and asked me if I had and Arsenal T-Shirt. I thought that was going way too far! 

In my opinion, I thought that loyalty is emotional…not financial. I thought that the level they were talking about is more of commitment than loyalty. In my estimation, commitment bodes more on contracts, membership payments, and things that go beyond the emotional attachment…kind of like marriage.

I thought I was not married to Arsenal, but every week they play, I am there supporting them!

Well, needless to say, those guys at Intelligent Performance were absolutely right. My purported ‘support’ for Arsenal is blind loyalty (ouch). 

In 2013, we would rather be committed and resolute than just resolve emotionally. Someone said that the New Year resolutions we make are not enough. Emotions and motivation are not enough resources to see us through. This is where commitment comes in. In fact, one of Zig Ziglar’s biggest quotes is “Many people say that motivation does not last, well so does bathing, and that is why we recommend it daily”

It is one thing to be totally inspired at the dawn of the New Year and hurriedly set massive goals…it is yet another thing to stick with those resolutions till the end of the month to say the least.

As an individual, I know that my success in 2013 will be a result of the sum total of every small effort I expend towards my goals on a consistent and daily basis. That is why as I write, I have two things that I have put in place that will help me stay committed.

·         First, I have a timetable of daily activities that I will be engaged in. These activities support the implementation of the major goals that I have for the New Year. Such a simple tool to use…and most people I know have used a timetable before. And sometimes that is why our education systems are blamed, because we left the discipline of timetabling at school.

For the most part the closest thing to a time table that most people look at is the Premiership Standings, to find out where Arsenal lies. For Liverpool fans its an easy exercise, just start by looking at the middle of the table going downwards…and Arsenal have been showing the same signs…but I digress.

This timetable is well thought out. The activities in it call for nothing but discipline and commitment. I have learnt that if I do not ‘timetable’ my ‘facebooking’ and social media activities, it becomes so easy to waste a whole day in there.

The same applies with watching TV…and reading papers. I am deciding that any TV worth watching must first be preceded by something motivational, instructional or inspirational.

You can never under-estimate the power of time-tabling.

·         Secondly, I have in place already a system that will help me track my daily activities. It is one thing to have the activities on paper, it is another to actually do them…and yet another to sit down and review how well I did these activities.

Nothing is more inspirational than to see on a daily basis my own personal graph of improvement. I can see the patterns. I can know at what level or percentage I actually ‘lived’ throughout the week. What a powerful tool!

These two tools are able to help my commitment to the goals that I have crafted out for the New Year. One more thing people: get your heads off that New Year euphoria and start working…Before you figure it out, January is gone! Before you know it, Kenya is having Elections in March. Before you know it, we are celebrating Labor Day.

Get to work NOW. Do not lose a day or a minute…and while you are at it, stay totally committed to the cause.

Anybody for an Arsenal Shirt?

MY PROPHECY/PREDICTION FOR 2013

“A sterling reputation is better than striking it rich; a gracious spirit is better than money in the bank.” –King Solomon

You have probably heard and maybe you know that no man is an island. I can literally track all my major and minor achievements to guess what…a relationship! I can also bet you a thousand bucks that all that is glittering around you right now can be successfully traced to nothing but a relationship!

Your current employment…

Your current business…

Your marriage…

Some of your possessions…

On the same token, I can boldly say that your next breakthrough is most probably directly linked to a relationship more than any other thing you consider of resource to you right now.

Your next job…

Your next contract…

Your next property…

Your next opening…

In essence, the value found in relationships is nearly infinite. It is next to impossible to quantify the worth in terms of money, property, openings, contracts, and general favor that stems out of relationships.

You have probably heard of organizations that would never employ an individual without a degree…well until the relationship factor shows up!

I became an expatriate in Mobile Money Trade Development because of nothing else but…a relationship! There are many other benefits that have accrued from that position of an expatriate, including marriage.

I have been the host of Hour of Prayer on 104.1 Power FM the whole of 2012 because of nothing else but a relationship. I got into that relationship that led me to this powerful position that fulfilled one of my life long goals because of another relationship.

Truth is that there is a great percentage of people across the globe who are seeking to strike it rich, to have money in the bank and to own property. Most of these go directly after these things with reckless abandonment.

Many apply for jobs; many start new businesses; many seek to invest in diverse kinds of ventures; many seek to be married to the rich and affluent; a vast majority dream of winning the lottery.

In 2013, I prophecy that the biggest asset that will cause people to advance in their lives is…a name. Their names!

Yet a name can be inherited and degraded. A name can be spoilt in split seconds yet it takes years upon years of consistency to build that same name. Here is the thing…if I was to put money and affluence in one basket and a good reputation in another for choice, a vast majority of people will pick the money basket.

In 2013, I encourage you to build your reputation more than you would seek to earn money. Reason? It is a good reputation that will almost guarantee continuity in success.

It is important for all visionaries to ask themselves this: What really is my personal brand? It has been said that the whole market is not a market at all. There must be a specific niche that a visionary serves. In 2013, it is important that we select our market and build ourselves to impact that very market with relentless value.

Let 2013 serve as an opportunity to plant seeds of greatness through focusing on our own potentials. Let this be done despite or in spite of all the massive challenges that we will face. Let me say that as much as the New Year offers us a new psychological start, it is no guarantee that all in 2013 will be all new, bright, good and rosy.

2013 is an opportunity for us all to embrace processes…and what a beautiful way to do so than to meticulously focus on building our own names.

I am not talking about names that are empty. I am talking about names that serve, names that solve, names that add value.

In essence, I am saying that in 2013, more than any other year, let us do two things:

• ·         Build our reputations in terms of creating value for specific people

• ·         Build and maintain relationships with laser-like focus.

Have a reputable year, won’t you?