Tuesday, April 24, 2018
WHAT YOU THINK OF YOURSELF MATTERS
There are times we feel like giving up on our
dreams, and many indeed do give up. Disillusionment, disappointment, backward
thinking, regrets, all creep in as we notice that we are trying in vain to
achieve our dreams. But wait a moment, nobody should lie to you that the path
to achieving dreams is a perfect highway. Get prepared to fail more and more,
to have your ideas bruised. Waking up and carrying on against the gradient of
challenges is the surest way to success.
Every time you feel like giving up, seek inspiration
from the dung beetle. The dung beetle pushes the ball that is usually many
times its size and weight and gradients present problems. The force of gravity
at many times creates an inevitable consequence. As gravity outweighs the
strength of the beetle or even in a situation where the beetle has made a
slight error in the pushing trajectory, the nest sphere stutters and then rolls
backwards temporarily squashing the hapless beetle.
Stephen Berry explains very well how a dung beetle
never gives up. Writing in the book Strategies
of the Serengeti Berry says , ‘with energy sapped, pride tarnished but
determination undiminished, the more successful beetles rise from such a
crushing experience to scurry back to their rogue dung-ball and recommence
pushing despite the ground temporarily lost. With uncomplaining and enviable
resolve the beetle heaves and pushes its dung to retread the path thinking only
of the unknown route ahead rather than dwelling on the course already trodden
which spans so visibly in front of him as he pushes.’
In the pursuit of your dreams be prepared to fail
again and again, you will have to deal with the treacherous gradients of
disappointment, belittlement, lack of support, castigation and many vices that
may be there to pull you down. No matter how down you fall, start pushing your
dreams forward again, concentrating on what you intend to achieve than the
pains of failure recently experienced.
People will not believe you, people will call you crazy
but keep on pushing your dung-ball dreams against the gradient of any
opposition. If those that were working on the computer dream had listened to
the words of Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM in 1943, computers would not have
been there now. Watson said: ‘I think there is a world market for up to five
computers.’
If the world’s successful rock band had not risen
beyond the frustration of rejection, the Beatles could not have become the
world’s celebrated rock band it eventually became. When Decca Recording was turning
down the Beatles for a recording contract in 1962 he said: ‘groups featuring
guitars are on the way out.’
When the television was coming in, the pioneers of
the television did it right not to listen to what 20th Century-Fox
boss Darryl Zanuck said. His view was that television would never become
popular and he stressed ‘people will soon get tired of staring at a box every
night.’
It is appropriate to know that people’s minds are
skewed towards the negative. There is a ninety five percentage chance that your
ideas will not be supported until you surprise the world. The world will not
believe you until you finally make it then at that point you will become a
reference point. Les Brown was right, ‘never let the opinions of others become
your reality.’ Always remember that you are a leader of your own dreams and
destiny.
Lance Kurke is right, ‘truly great leaders change
the world around them…they treat problems as addressable opportunities. Leaders
make the world, obviously within constraints, the way they want it to be.
Always ask yourself, who you are and what you want to be and that is what
matters most.’
Lance Kurke gives us a good lesson when he writes,
‘in modern times people obsess about what car they drive. Wise people know that
the only obsession is not what others think, but what we think of ourselves;
that is, who we are.’
Never stop scaling the heights, never stop running
in the pursuit of your dreams. Keep falling and waking up. If you make mistakes
on the way, do not dwell on it let alone let the past immobilize you. Just
learn from the mistakes made and keep on going. You are the next big thing the
world has ever had.
