By Dr.Kinyanjui Nganga,Phd
You are your mind. He who changes your mind, changes you. Your thoughts control your life – your mind is your greatest asset in this life. It’s the key to peace and life (happiness). Unmanaged mind leads to tension, pressure, stress and chaos. A managed mind leads to strength, security, serenity and peace.
You perfect whatever you work on – you weaken the gift that you don’t use. Every good thing is work in progress. A student of life can make use of the same degree you have…same woman you divorced…same piece of land that you keep idle…same business location that you quit…and make a fortune out of the same situation. It all depends on one’s mental picture.
To what extent are you cultivating what you have? Did you know that the most renowned musician may not necessarily be the most gifted in the land, rather, the one who has cultivated his gift? He has analyzed the business side of the music industry. He has paid the price. Life is 90% perspiration and 10% gifts and talents. As John Maxwell puts it, experience is not the best teacher, evaluated experience is.
Everything that God created has in it the seed to reproduce, regenerate and multiply. There will always be sowing time and reaping time. Many people want to circumvent this law. They want the harvest. Rather than fighting for ideas, they fight for stuff. People who fight for inheritance are ‘dividers’. We were designed to be ‘multipliers’.
Dividers get involved in graft. They don’t want to go through the entire entrepreneurial process. They want short cuts to the top. Consequently, economies collapse and gap between the poor and rich widen. Because of poverty of ideas. If we were fighting for ideas, we wouldn’t be stealing from government coffers. We would be expanding the national cake, not dividing it among our tribesmen.
You are a thought away from your business, performing in world stage, designing the most magnificent structure the world has ever known…if only you let go peanut mentality. Shift your thinking from peanuts mentality to the infinite source – we cannot exhaust ideas. Each one of us came packed with a unique gift to the world.
God therefore, gives us raw materials (seed) – many people expect to be given finished products (harvest). It’s our job to multiply. Multiply your gift. Don’t wish there was a business ready for you to manage…don’t wish there was a meeting set for you to prove your speaking prowess. Nobody will ever lay down the red carpet for you. Life doesn’t give you what you (just) ask; life gives you what you demand.
Shift your focus. Unfortunately, we don’t change when we see the light, we change when we feel the heat. Nature has no vacuum, replace undesired habits with desired ones. You are part of the universal mind – you tune in to existing signals. Whatever fills your mind, fills your life. Your life is the overflow of your thoughts. Control your thoughts by shifting your focus.
From a metaphysical point of view, every thought is patterned after the mental image that predominates at the time the thought is created. The effect is always similar to the cause. If you allow your mind to pick every thought without filtering, you lose your freedom as a free person. If you don’t filter what gets into your mind, you will become a puppet ripe for manipulation.
What catches your attention gets hold of you. Affairs don’t take place on the bed. Winning or losing doesn’t start in the market place. It all starts in the mind. Eyes are the windows of the soul. Shift your focus. If you patron strip clubs, you will certainly degenerate. If you attend inspirational programs, you will certainly progress.
Shift your values. What do you read? What do you watch? What toys do you buy your children? Change your mental picture. Re-wire your CPU. You eventually attract what you allow your mind to process: positive or negative. Learn to become the boss of your mind. Refuse to look at the old pictures and scenes that fill your mind. Paint new pictures in the projection room of your mind. Start painting the pictures of how you want your life to unfold.
Your external world (outputs) is a reflection of your internal world (inputs). Your public life is a manifestation of your private life-privacy of your thoughts. If you want a healthy mind, you must feed your mind with truth. Don’t take a less option than you were originally designed. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to be a loser. Do you sell yourself cheap? Have you packaged yourself below your Maker’s Master Plan? The best investment you can ever make is in yourself. Self masterly.
Develop yourself. If you don’t, you will make a settlement. Taking something less than you had originally set. If you are broke, check your inputs. If you struggling in your career, check your mental inputs. If you are struggling in your relations, check your relational inputs. Refuse to blame extrinsic factors.
Shift your self-talk. Speak your desired outcomes. Our words are often self fulfilling. Author Paul Harvey observed that 92.7% of all news in the free world each day is negative in substance. Maybe that’s why most of our words are too often impulsive, inordinate, thoughtless & meaningless. Train your tongue to speak like a prince. Negative words have the power to run you down.
Your word is your world. Your word is your life. Many people don’t understand the value of deliberate and careful speech because we are ignorant of the source of this precious faculty and totally unaware of the power of the spoken word. The more one curses, the less sensitive they become with their own behaviour. You cannot behave in a manner that is inconsistent with the manner of your speech. The choice of words can be learned and unlearned.
Speaking positively doesn’t imply denying the reality on the ground, rather, it’s painting mental pictures of your desired outcome – your body obeys the mental commands conveyed. The best indicator of your thought system is your working vocabulary – the words you use on a day-to-day basis.
Many people expect little from life and they end up not disappointed. Your next level is intrinsically hidden in your associations. Simple as it sounds, it is the mysterious secret of the ages. Periodically shift your associations. Are you living together or dying together? – do you need to shift your level of association? Surround yourself with people whose definition of you is not based on your history, but your destiny. Could be you have outgrown your level of association?
There is an African mindset; a Kenyan mindset; a tribe mindset; a neighbourhood mindset; a family mindset; an individual mindset. As a people, Africans need a paradigm shift from being receivers to givers. As a family, what mind shifts do you need to make? Could be you were meant to be the generational tread setter in your family?
Many people prefer to complain about a stressful job rather than step out and explore infinite possibilities out there. At times to undergo a paradigm shift in your life, you may need to physically relocate from where you live. Regrettably, many people prefer the hell they know than the heaven they don’t know. But at times it’s not where you are or come from. It is the power of your imagination. It is the world’s greatest game changer.
Just because something has always been done in a certain way is never a sufficient reason for continuing to do it that way. The fact that it has been done for generations doesn’t make it right – just suppose there was an alternative route? Do you have the courage to exercise your thinking beyond your current locus? The first person who can make a difference is ‘me’. It’s Mahatma Gadhi who said, ‘be the change that you want to see in the world.’
To move to your next level, shift from your excuses. Excuses make you take an exit door from where you were going. Excuses give you a reason for not being exceptional. It’s easier to go from failure to success than from excuses to success. Take responsibility of your destiny. If it is up-to be it is up-to you. The moment you apportion blames, you fail the test of maturity.
Nobody is responsible for your success. For that matter, nobody is responsible for your failure. God never wants anything between you and Him. Not a husband. Not a big brother. Not a parent. He wants you to depend on Him directly as your source. People who begin their day with “if only” or “were it not for” have already failed even before they start.
Did you know all tangibles start with intangibles? Being broke is not your problem. Your partner is not your problem. Your boss is not your problem. Your problem are your excuses. You’ve lived believing that someone, someday will sort you out. You are bitter with your background, family, X, boss etc. Your liberation will occur when you accept to take responsibility for your destiny – only then will you have appreciated the fact that God equipped you for your life whose overflow should feed others.
It is Albert Einstein who argued, we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. If you don’t implement that idea, someone else will – no one has a monopoly in tapping the universal mind. Don’t use your past as an excuse, excuse your excuses and take action. It is not the most gifted in life who succeed but those who refuse excuses.
Bad things are always going to happen in life. People will hurt you. But you can’t use that as an excuse to fail or to hurt someone back. You’ll only hurt yourself. Don’t empower anyone to determine what you can or cannot do; be or never become. ‘Never make excuses’, John Wooden observed, ‘Your friends don’t need them and your foes won’t believe them.’
Usually there’s a lie in between a promise and many excuses. He who is good in making excuses is rarely good in anything else. He who excuses himself, accuses himself. Winning excuses everything. We don’t have enough crutches for all the lame excuses in the world. If you really want to do it, excuses will cease.
Universal opinions are often mistaken for universal principles. Most people fail in life NOT because they aimed too high and failed to achieve but because they aimed too low and achieved. A great idea is not the one you possess but the one that possesses you. You sing about it every moment. It will eventually become your reality. It works if you work on it with faith and concentration.
What if you reached the end of your life only to discover it was all wrong? You barely survived. What a tragedy to realize on your death bed that you never lived! Dare believe the infinite source. God designed the universe to work in harmony with your belief system. In life, the limiting factor is your sight. We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.
What do you see? As for me, I chose to see from God’s perspective. He says, ‘Let the weak say, I am strong’. What we see depends mainly on what we look for. Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived. Our duty therefore, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We perform in accordance with the picture we have about ourselves. Our world views.
All you have ever achieved could be a tip of the ice berg of what you can achieve. To live up-to your full potential, you need to shift the operating system until winning in life fuses with your subconscious mind. The journey to the light starts with a candle. Once it’s lit, darkness has gone forever. As the bonfires of knowledge grow brighter, the more the darkness is revealed to our startled eyes.
Shift your limits and reveal who you are to the world. The ceiling in your life are your thoughts. You cannot perform in a manner that is inconsistent with your thought system. If you died today, was your life worth living? If you died today, what dreams, what gifts, what talents, what ideas will die with you? Have you been benchmarking with too low a standard?
We will be judged for the talents we never used. There is a problem that was supposed to be solved by your gifts. My brother, my sister, the voice of greatness is calling you – don’t postpone yourself. Change the picture and see yourself from God’s eye view. See yourself as you really are. See yourself from the truth perspective NOT from your temporal situations.
Dr. Kinyanjui is a gifted and talented motivational speaker whom many reknown regional figures regard as the leading motivational speaker in the region. To get to know more about him visit http://www.kinyanjuinganga.com
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