JOURNEYING TO A HIGHER PURPOSE

Dr. Fred Mugambi MwirigiJKUAT

The world hosts four categories of tenants.

Category One

People who are born into greatness but who don’t quite end up achieving greatness in their lifetimes.

Category two

People who having been born into greatness quickly adapt to a life of greatness and stay great.

Some even gain higher levels of greatness.

Category three

People who having been born into families and mini communities that don’t exhibit much greatness, pick lifestyles that exhibit greatness and

end up becoming great.

These people understand where they are coming from and work to improve their wellbeing and the wellbeing of those around them

Category Four

People who are born into mediocrity and remain within the same space of mediocrity throughout their lives.

What is interesting is that these people end up blaming fate for their inability to become

So, what is greatness?

For purposes of our discussion we will define greatness on the basis of the size of our lives.

Some people live big lives while others live small shrunken lives.

Living in greatness• Great people live big lives. They build:– hugely effective organizations and departments– comfortable amounts of income and wealth (over time) – wide networks across geography and societal hierarchy, – lovely close-knit families, – they touch vast numbers of people in unique and personal ways – they provide unparalleled service to their communities and nations,

Contd.

Great people achieve all this through extremely hard but focused work. But most importantly they master their energies to create a magnetic

force that attracts their horizons to themselves. For them, every step they take is a step towards achieving true

greatness.

The not-very great

live small mediocre lives, largely characterized by self-pity and self-defeat.

they live in self-inflicted poverty-refers to ‘lack’ in its general meaning. in their organizations, they are rarely promoted to high positions.

they don’t build significant or lasting networks. At the family front, these people are not able to keep their families

together or happy.

Contd.

These people see service to people and nation as waste of time and effort.

They are selfishly opportunistic, ever wanting to take without giving backFor these people, greatness is not important if it does not bring with it

immediate gain, in many cases of a monetary nature.

Contd.

Greatness is a journey and a destination. As we journey in search of greatness we severally stumble upon

instances or destinations of great joy and satisfaction. These instances open to us opportunities to be great

Some take them up while others do not

Who Becomes Great?

Greatness is not a preserve of any one kind of a person. It is also not a product of luck or fate; some people who find themselves at the cross roads of privilege and good luck still end up not achieving

greatness. Greatness can happen to anyone, you included.

It is a privilege that is open to anybody who deeply intends to be and indeed works hard to become great.

The Dream

• Greatness begins with a dream!

Dreams

For dreams to have any effect they must be directional. They must be focused towards some end

Positive dreams drive us towards a positive direction while negative dreams drive us towards a negative direction.

We ultimately become that which we dream

Experiences and Thoughts

Experiences shape our thoughtsOur thoughts and experiences shape our dreams

Our dreams shape our destiniesOur dreams, if they are dramatic and of value, provide us with the drive

to move towards a certain directionWe must expose ourselves to the right experiences in order to shape our

destinies

Planning

After we have dreamt we must plan Planning is the process of seeing the end in clearly quantifiable terms

and then working backwards to develop our goals, strategies and resources (skills, knowledge, networks, information, finances,

technology, etc)

‘Actioning’ the Plan• Entails studying and arriving at the rightful actions, in their proper

sequence, which will deliver success. • You must consider both the capacity of the action to give you desired

results and your capacity to take the action successfully. • Some actions could lead to success but they are beyond our mental or

even financial capacity. • We achieve success either within our capacity, or sometimes using

extended or borrowed capacity. All these capacities must be marshaled and employed to optimize chances of achieving success.

Living in the dream

No dream has ever been fulfilled while one is still dreaming. For your dream to come true you must wake up from the dream

Unfortunately, there are many who simply refuse to wake up Many people continue to occupy the position of wishful millionaires,

wishful family men and women, wishful landlords and wishful everything. They keep wishing they were what they wish and that is where the

dream ends. They don’t start the journey.

Contd.

Living through unfulfilled wishes is an energy sapping process that leaves one frustrated and unfulfilled.

If you wish something and then watch someone else implement your wishes and make millions or achieve other successes out of them you

will certainly feel depressed. Living a life of wishes ultimately becomes an agonizing experience.

You must move forward from your wishes

Stepping out from the ‘Wishful Club’

After wishing then the journeys of both winners and losers begin

The journey of the loser After the feel good moment of wishful thinking, the loser quickly

reconciles with the occurrence and rationalizes the wish with an excuse as to why she cannot succeed

Unconsciously, the loser tells herself, ‘a big house was never meant for my kind’, or ‘ that is for the rich. I don’t come from a rich family’

Once you have resigned to this conclusion a negative conditioning of the mind that can get as hard as concrete is created in you.

The journey of the winner

For you to achieve your dreams you must jump out of the club of wishful thinkers and start doing something.

There are absolutely no free lunches. Once you are done with planning get out of the planning cycle and start

working.The winner is able to quickly shift from wishing and starts working

Overcoming the Hurdles• Successful people achieve their successes by first recognizing the

obstacles that hinder them from crossing from wishes to actions• You must learn to overcome three illusory hurdles:i. I lack resources (especially finances)ii. Time is not ripeiii. I do not have what it takesIn most cases these hurdles are more psychological than real

The Duality of PersonalityEverybody has a dual personality.

There is the personality you know and want us to know but there is also that other personality that you know you have but wish we don’t get to

know about. We all harbor a private personality and a public personality.

These two personalities function within each one of us concurrently and seamlessly.

The private personality is the personality that reflects who we are

The Duality of Personality

We also have public personalities Your public personality represents the person who you would like us to

see.This personality can be referred to as ‘the pretender’. The pretender is, therefore, a reconciled personality- the person who you think the society

wants to see and interact with

The Duality of Personality

Success, thus, requires an intelligent interpretation of the environmentWe must then blend our public as well as the private personality in

alignment with the environment This will help you to gain acceptance and recognition within your

environment

Reconciling the Dual Personalities

Once you have understood what the society and other forces around you perceive to be positive or pleasing behavior, you must then slowly and,

sometimes, involuntarily adapt to that behavior in order achieve acceptance and recognition by your society.

Greatness comes by Giving greatly

You receive more when you give moreGive your mind, give your effort, give your prayers, give your loyalty, and

give your whole self to your chosen calling. In so giving you will receive. You will receive peace; you will receive

wealth; you will receive love; you will receive prosperity. But just like the Holy Books say, for you to receive you must give without

expecting back.

The road ahead

I believe that you can achieve greatness, excellence and success. But you must want to achieve it so badly before you can quite reach it.

Your horizon is beckoning. Rise up and walk towards your horizon.

The road ahead

Doubt will be created all around you, don’t allow the doubtful to create doubt in you.

Don’t allow the weak to create weakness in you. Don’t, by any means, allow voices of defeat do deafen your ears with

negative statements. Don’t allow the spirit of failure to dampen your spirit of greatness.

You are a spirit of victory.

The road ahead

The journey to greatness will certainly be riddled with challenges. Sometimes your closest allies will desert you,

Sometimes you will experience dry spells financially. Sometimes you will be accused wrongly and even persecuted for

working hard and achieving results. Sometimes powerful forces will conspire to bring you down.

The road ahead Spare moments to meditate, not upon the challenges, but upon the

opportunities that are hidden inside those challenges.

Meditate upon your strengths, your hopes and your aspirations.

Populate your mind with thoughts about people who have succeeded in life

Think about the good and the noble things.

The road ahead

When you succeed please spare a thought for the millions who are yet to realize their potential.

Sadly many of these will go to the cemetery having never realized the riches that are locked inside them.

The road ahead

Help those that you can, especially those that have been put under you.

Mentor them, lift them up, show them this path of greatness and guide them through it.

The road ahead Remember when your greatness comes, you will need to enjoy it.

There is only one way of enjoying greatness, the only way of finding meaning in your greatness. That way is the giving way.

When your greatness comes, by all means give it away and it will keep coming back.

www.drfredmugambi.com

Thank you