Invest in Brand You!

Invest in your personal brand. Brands are everywhere - Coke, Nike, Mike, Royco, Buddie, Roil, You, Me and many others. You are also a brand and you have a category or space you influence. 

No brand ever grows without any investment. People will never stop talking about anything they choose including you. What they say when you are present is not as important as what they say when you are absent. What they say when you are not within ear-shot is your the real character of your personal brand. 

Invest in your personal development and build your capacity and competence. Whatever you invest in building your brand will always come back to your with multiplied benefits. 

Any thing you invest in learning and growth will always come back to you compounded. You can never be made smaller by learning anything from anyone. Learn daily and from every source. Learn in any style that works for you. 

You want your personal brand to be a premium brand that delivers something valuable. Me too is never good enough. Personal branding requires your commitment and attention. You can never shine without some polishing. Greatness without some work on your part is mere gambling. Polish yourself daily, consistently. Pick yourself up if you fail and keep learning. 

Learning allows you to reinvent your life daily. Improve with age. If you do not get better, you will just grow bitter. Buy a book, take a class, watch a documentary, write a paper or blog, attend a seminar, do a research, meet a mentor, participate in a group. Whatever you do, refuse to let a day pass while you remain the same. Grow daily and you will shine gradually. 

Application ideas:

1. As a brand what do you represent? What words are associated with your name? 

2. What are you learning daily this week? This month? This year? 

3. What is your brand vision? What are you becoming? Don't be arrested by your present situation. 

Committed to your greatness.

Milton Kamwendo

©2015

Negative is a luxury you do not afford

You do not afford the luxury of a negative thought and orientation. Facing the wrong direction is a costly venture. Brooding on negative thoughts creates in your a disadvantage complex that holds you back. Cut the code of negativity. Refuse to eat negativity, talk negative or be negative. 

You life will never change until

Your thinking does. Change your thinking to transform your life. When you think negative you block your mind from creating and imagining. Negative mindsets never breed winning strategy. Worry is distorted imagination. 

Think possibilities. See possibilities. There is always a dark, dysfunctional side to anything, but choose to face the light and dreams of possibilities. Above the cloud of despair there is always a light shining and a future that beckons. Choose light, not darkness; faith not fiction. 

Create space for thinking and reflection. Starve your mind of the opportunities for worry, regret and fear. Replay your vision of the future and stop terrorizing yourself with your personal horror movie. Read, think and reflect. Invest time into thinking and reading. 

Unless your broaden your canvass your thought, you shrink your universe of options. Your issues cannot be solved by the thinking that created that birthed your problems. To do differently you have to know and understand better. Negativity assumes that the past and present is a continuum into the future. Do not let anyone rob you of opportunities of today and the possibilities of tomorrow. The problems and opportunities of today will not be there forever. Go grab them!

Committed to your greatness. 

Milton Kamwendo. 

Build new capacity!

Wherever capacity exists, blessing abounds and excellence is expressed. Wherever capacity is lacking simple things take longer to get done, if done at all. 

Building your capacity means that you are able to do more than you could before. You can go further and maximize your potential and opportunities. You are able to handle bigger challenges, think in a more structured manner and resolve bigger challenges. 

You are not building your capacity if you let your competence level stagnate. You cannot do, be and have more if your capacity is not growing. 

Lifting the same weights will not help you build strength. Merely doing things out of habit does not in any way mean you are building your capacity. Stretch a little more. 

Never be satisfied with old capacity, limited thinking and mere repetition. Do not die while living. You are no longer learning when you are now stuck in routine. Keep building and growing. 

Ideas for action

1. In what areas have you stagnated? 

2. What new thing did you do or learn in the last 6 months?

3. What could you do to start stimulating growth and development in your life? 

Committed to your greatness. 

Milton Kamwendo

Be Negative and Win Complaining Friends.

Negativity is the shanty dormitory town that many run to for refuge; where their excuses are validated and approved. Negativity has friends, relatives, comrades, cousins and neighbours. However all the kinsmen and friends of negativity are loud, always complaining, cynical, glum and depressed. 

If you are negative you have conversation advantage. In a queue you will always have someone to complain to and commiserate with. If there is no one you will always have the weather to curse. Negativity makes you a sharp analyst. Suddenly you give eloquent analyses of what is wrong, who caused it and why it is broken. You always seem intelligent and clued up. Negativity bequeathes you with prophetic powers. Suddenly you can foretell the gloom ahead, the doom we are in and the mess that will never go away. Many nod, shake their head and walk away. You feel vindicated and satisfied. At least you have followers who also see what you see and hopefully are experiencing what you are. Negativity makes you feel needed, appreciated and listened to. In a conversation you are never odd, because everyone is complaining also. You fit in perfectly. That helps your feelings, but takes you nowhere like a rocking chair. 

The only problem with negativity is that it is like sun glasses. When I was young my father has some dark green sun glasses. I used to sometimes try them and they were fascinating to look through. Putting on the glasses, everything around me had a greenish tint. The color was so real. I could swear that the whole world was greenish. That was true until I removed the glasses. Negativity is like my father’s green glasses. Once you are looking at everything through the green negativity glasses everything is negative. Even in the midst of opportunity you will see negativity first. 

Never forget that while you are putting on your green negativity glasses, not everyone is putting on the glasses. Never let opportunity pass you by while you linger in negativity. Do not allow other people’s negativity become yours. As you assemble your choir of negativity singers, do not forget to look closely at who is in your audience. It just may be that you those who see what you do not see are too busy with life to be entertained by your negativity. Never let those who are not going anywhere, discourage you from exploring the world. Never create your world on the negative and dull templates of the prophecies of the lazy. 

You do not afford the luxury of a negative thought and disposition to life. 

Committed to your greatness. 

Milton Kamwendo.