Take Responsibility to Positively Affect the Grassroots.

In my work at Innov8 Consultoria I do a lot of work with agricultural-related business and Non-Governmental Organization. I facilitate strategy development workshops, work on capacity building and organisational development interventions. The role of the NGOs in development and raising the standard of living in our rural areas in highly commendable and should continue. A number of other community actors have also taken the responsibility to make a difference at the grassroots and at household level. I have also met many individuals that have done many commendable things in their rural spaces. Efforts are there but they are not enough. Unless we start seeing the potential of our rural spaces and investing in them proactively, development will be a distant song playing on foreign radios. Should we choose, you and me can do something where we are, with what we have to change the rural development narrative. 

What is regrettable and disheartening is that there is a significant portion of capable and resourced people that have abandoned their rural areas and left them at the mercy of anyone-to-whom-it-may concern and whatever-may-happen there. To use a rural home is just a burial is to abuse a family and national treasure. We can never rise to greatness as developing nations so long as we ignore the rural areas and allow them to be abused for cheap political egos without tangible development. Many people have over the years been playing their part in rural development and it is clear that the new frontier of interest and opportunity is developing rural areas, empowering our people and positively impacting the grassroots. Tooting high sounding verbiage and development rhetoric to small pools of urbanites that are not willing to take personal responsibility while ignoring the great rural majority at the grassroots will hold future generations of our nation hostage to debilitating poverty. 

Take responsibility: If not you, who?

In most areas in Africa, even for city denizens your primary identity is the rural home of origin. In the colonial era, the first interview question used to be: "Where do you come from?" You could not be taken seriously is you referred to some urban area as your base. Much has changed since. 

In Zimbabwe your rural district is still identified in your national identity number. For a few senior citizen, even your kraal is identified in your national identity. To drum interest in the rural areas as a ticket into circles of power is to abuse our heritage. We must start taking active responsibility for our rural destinies. It is gross irresponsibility to treat rural homes as places to bury and confine the poor, aged, sick and dying. This change starts with a change in attitude and mindset. To be cloistered within the urban comforts and forget that the rural areas are not another country, but part of who we are is to be self-deceived. Without taking personal responsibility and interest in developing our rural spaces we will forever be a lost people with confused and stinking priorities. We will be known for singing great ideals and emotive choruses but doing nothing worthwhile to transform and uplift our own heritage. 

You are Strong, Even Though You May Feel Weak!

You are not weak but you are strong. Believe positively for you to progress positively. You may feel weak that does not mean that you are a weakling. You may be at your weakest, but that does not mean you are finished. 

The weak name the future the "Impossible Rock." When you are feeling weak you think that the future is too big to climb; too competitive for you to enter the race and too wide to embrace. Dare to challenge that narrative. Declare your strength and challenge your limits. Refuse to be boxed in mediocrity. 

Weakness is not the time to despair but to recharge. It is the time to declare and affirm that you are strong. So long as your spirit remains strong and resolute you can be delayed but you cannot be denied. Falling to the ground does not mean you have been defeated. You can fall but you will rise again to significance. 

No one and nothing can make you feel inferior without your permission. Once you have settled it in your mind and named the future as impossible, you cannot give your best strength. Never forget, weak today, strong next week. Never let the current tide discourage you from trying and growing. 

A little boy, David, will be the future king, if he can just confront and challenge his mountain. Never let the challenges of today stop you from seeing possibilities in the future. Hold on to your dream, possess your mission. What is impossible today will not always be so. The stubborn rock in your path, will give way. There is a way; there is hope. Do not die in the winter or wither in the storm. 

Rise with a new declaration of strength, confidence and assert your place in your space. You are strong! 

Committed to your greatness. 

Milton Kamwendo. 

Think in New Boxes

There is nothing as stifling as being in a box without windows. In life there are many boxes. The cliche is usually, "Think outside the box." The challenge with this statement is that it is impossible to do. To understand reality you will always need a box or context. To shed new light you have to change the context. You have to switch on a new light bulb. 

Changing the context means adopting a new box. If you think you are a victim, everything you see around you spells limitations. Your mind could be your enemy or friend depending on how you use it. If you adopt the box of abundance you start seeing possibilities beyond your wildest dreams. 

What new boxes do you need to adopt? What new model could you use to look at your circumstances? What boxes that used to work do you need to discard? Never let history or adversity box you in. Adopt new references that make history just what it is - a fact of life and not a crutch or eternal convenient multigenerational excuse. 

Go fir greatness and refuse to remain in your limiting boxes. 

Take Action - Just Do It!

At a 1988 meeting of the advertising agency, Wieden+Kennedy, Nike's advertsing account handlers were looking at coming up with a powerful campaign that would carry the Nike brand into the 1990s. As they banged around various thoughts, Dan Wieden, the Agency's founder had a flash if inspiration from a novel he had read. He remembered Gary Gilmore's last murder me words, "Just Do It!" And that cut it. This campaign with this buy line from Nike went on to have global recognition and captivated minds in the highly competitive sports category for more that a decade. Wherever it's recited, everyone knows you are talking about Nike. 

Many people know what the should do, where they should do it, but they just do not Nike it - just do it. Some in an effort to embolden themselves a little more will take another course, attend a seminar and all the while they know what to do and how. They know they must just do it. After all has been said and done, you will always come back to this compelling and seminal idea: just do it if you want it to get done. 

Life is not waiting and the time for hesitation is behind you. Just do it. Time is fleeing past and aging does not sound an alarm bell. You are not as young as you were last week. The message is: Just do it! Take massive action, refuse to vacillate, equivocate or quiver. Nothing will happen unless you just do it. Take action and you will be pleased with yourself. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. You will never learn doing nothing. 

Use this weekend to start taking action. Get moving what are you waiting for? 

Big Ears, Big Mouth

Take good care of those ears and take good guard of that mouth. 

What you hear determines what you think. Deliberately position yourself to hear inspiring things that charge you forward and inspire you. Negativity and cheap gossip is the staple diet of fools. You do not have to wait for other people to inspire you with their words. That would be placing your destiny in the hands of other people. Speak to yourself and program your mind for greatness. Tell yourself where you are going and not where situation is taking you adrift. Some people call this affirmations, other people call it positive confession and whatever you call it, please just speak it to your ears. 

When you write out your goals always make sure you make your goals big and inspiring. You can tell if your goal is big enough by the way your mind rebels at the mention of the goal. Small goals will leave you always obsessed with toys. Once you have set your big goals the next step is to verbalise the goals.  Speak and verbalise your goals until your believe them yourself. Every morning when you awake read out your goals. Read them with passion and let your ears hear and you will not be where you are for long. 

Your greatness is in your mouth. The words you speak spoke have become your reality. to or boom for you speak positively. Refuse to speak like a fool. Your words are shaping your reality. To change your life change the words you have habitually speak. Your vocabulary sells you out  as a winner or fool. Never speak to placate the negative people around you. Speak according to your faith  and not according to your fears. Let your mouth carry you to your destiny. 

Hear big, speak large bold and inspiring words. 

Work does not kill

Looking back, it would sound like child abuse that I had to contribute to the family income through trading at such a tender age.  Yes, I had to stand at places I would today consider dangerous and unfit for children. However, then we thought little about it. While some people could have felt pity for me, I never felt I was a victim, of what? Selling was fun  it infused some adrenalin rush into my blood system. I still feel this pulsating feeling whenever I am in the retail store. It is a feeling that cannot be equated to anything. Only retailers would relate to what I am saying. 

Work is only drudgery when you have not connected with your passion and you do not see meaning in your work. I knew that after school, I would remove my uniform and get on with the business. I never thought I was being forced or abused. Work does not kill but laziness does. Work is not abuse but development regardless of income. Work is fun and anyone who has not discovered the thrill in his work is a glorified slave and is not likely to make a success of his career. Work is pure love in action and to take my work away from me would be to kill me. 

Take Relentless Action!

It is easy to take action when it suits us and when it is comfortable to do so. Easy convenience is not a cousin of greatness. True greatness is revealed when the stakes are high and you dare take action relentlessly when you would rather quit. Quitting is easy and most people do. Giving up is easy, and most people do. The true hero is one who can stick to the knitting against all odds. Who can take action despite the sting of opposition. The key to greatness is action, relentless action, undying action. Without action there is nothing else. Behold the mighty tortoise who makes progress when he sticks out his head out of his shell. 

Calvin Coolidge was full of insights into the anatomy of heroism when he wrote: “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” 

There is no silver bullet to heroism except persistence: stick-to-itivenss. Certificates, impressions, history, pedigree and anything else we may dare parade can never take the place of persistence and relentless action.