“A genius without a road map will get lost in any country.” – Brian Tracy

As a practicing real estate consultant I’m probably quite alive to the reality of this profound quote by renowned management and success coach Brian Tracy. I recall one of my former bosses religiously emphasizing the fact that no valuer worth his salt should leave the office for a field inspection of a property without a map of the area under consideration. While the objectives may be rather divergent, the principle rings true whether one’s in quest of a property being appraised or in pursuit of an aspiration in life.

Even a genius with all his or her mental endowment or prowess will still fail to arrive at the desired destination unless armed with a road map. A daft individual armed with a proper road map will whip a genius at this game. Regardless of the country – the economic terrain or physical surroundings and circumstances of life, failure will be the natural consequence if one is not armed with a road map.

Do you have a road map for your life to get you to your desired port or destiny? Or are you banking on chance to arrive at that all important end? The writer of Latin maxims Publius Syrus remarked, “It’s a very bad thing to become accustomed to good luck.” You may be hoping that somehow some way things will pan out just fine. The reality is that life won’t. In fact, business philosopher Jim Rohn said, “The future doesn’t get better by hope; it gets better by plans.”

In the absence of well laid-out plans and mapped purposes, one will definitely get no further in life than a door swinging on its hinges. I call to mind the several instances when one is called upon to attend a fund raiser to help somebody’s kid go to college. While I’m not against benevolence, an honest look at matters might probably unearth the fact that the parent (-s) concerned could have done better. College is not an emergency. This kid has been growing since the day he/she was born and any person with basic foresight will know that ultimately, fees will be needed for college. But maybe they just chose the path of neglect.

What if they sized up what lay ahead (as far as the kid’s schooling goes); mapped out a plan to get to the desired end and consistently worked at it? Say, they took out an educational insurance policy paying as little as 1,000/= monthly at 12.5% to arrive at about Kshs. 650,000/= in 18 years? Sounds easy to do, or does it? But, “The things that are easy to do are also easy not to do,” said Jim Rohn. It’s easy to save but it’s also easy not to – we subordinate future good to the tyranny of immediate gratification. So we make no solid plans; proceed on our life-journey without proper maps; leave a whole lot to chance and keep hoping that by some stroke of providence we’ll clamber to the summit of our aspirations.

Success or failure has got nothing to do with the external factors – the nature of the country – rather it has all to do with whether one has the right road map for his sojourn here.  No matter how endowed or talented you are, you will get lost and never make it to your destiny unless you map out your course and allowing for minor course adjustments along the way, consistently stick to a road map.

Quote of the Week:

“Shallow men believe in luck….Strong men believe in cause and effect.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There is a point in every race when a rider encounters his real opponent and understands that it’s himself.” – Lance Armstrong

In the race that life is, one often finds that he is racing not just against other opponents on the track, but against a myriad other issues – the spectators or fans expectations; the naysayers; the teacher who said one would amount to nothing more than a hill of beans and so forth. All these and more would seem to point to the fact that the race is really against opponents out there – things or people outside your internal environment. The big tragedy with such is that it becomes very easy for one to be caught up by feelings of helplessness.

“I can’t do much against him – don’t you know he is the reigning champion?” “Don’t you see they are playing at home and have the whole packed stadium behind them?” “They have admirable pedigree as far as this particular sport or competition goes, so we are ill-matched against them.” No wonder a wise man once said, “Every time you think the problem is out there, that thought is the problem.” For that kind of a mindset tows in its wake convenience-thinking and all the maladies attributed to it. It’s convenient to excuse one’s sloppy performance because the opponents have one or two things going on for them that you apparently don’t.
It’s convenient to attribute one’s loss to the caliber of the other competitor’s talent. Lance Armstrong, who bounced back from a near fatal battle with testicular cancer, got to the point in his racing career when he realized that the real opponent in a cycling race – and any other race (life included) for that matter – is himself. He wrote in his book, “It’s Not About The Bike: My Journey Back To Life”, “In my most painful moments on the bike, I am at my most curious, and I wonder each and every time how I will respond. Will I discover my innermost weakness, or will I seek out my innermost strength?”

That from a man who came back from the brink to win a remarkable and to date unmatched seven Tour de France titles.  It is only those who arrive at the shores of this great realization that often sail on to mastery and untold success in their lines of endeavour. To be intimate with the fact that the real opponent in this race called life is not some amorphous or even well-defined individual or things out there but rather resident within.

The great majority of people go through life without ever really encountering the real opponent; without being man – or woman, if you wish – enough to have an encounter with the man in the mirror and realize that the enemy doesn’t lie somewhere out ‘there.’ A stern look into the mirror at the man or woman you see in that mirror will bring you face to face with the greatest opponent you’ll ever come up against in all of life’s myriad contests. If you can get over that opponent, no one or nothing outside you can stop you from attaining all that you were ordained to be.

This calls to mind a character called Pogo, the ‘philosopher’ from Sunday Comics who said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” You don’t have to look any further, and if you can overcome that enemy – there are no limits to what you can achieve!

Quote of the Week:

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” – Lao-Tzu

“More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has ever been taken from the earth.” – Napoleon Hill

I have watched some small time miners or seekers of gold in the western regions of Kenya and the toil they have to go through in their often futile pursuit of that precious metal that gold is. Some of them have been on that path for years on end, with little if anything to show for it other than bottled up frustration, bodies afflicted by exhaustion and lives ebbing with each passing day. Poverty still fetters these miners even as they keep on pursuing that elusive metal that in their opinion would catapult them to a life of riches and perhaps some much needed relief from their arduous toil.

It is doubtless that some of them took their last bow without ever setting foot on the shores of their aspirations leaving nothing much to their credit except a sad tale of unfulfilled lives. Napoleon Hill, author and one of the premier success teachers, noted that while people threw caution to the wind, sold off their possessions and staked all they had in pursuit of that precious ore, with most of them have tragic ends; there was untold quantities of gold resident within the greatest mine ever discovered – their thoughts.

Deep within their minds, there existed myriad veins of thought which if properly or skillfully mined would yield returns unrivalled even by the gold they so sought after, often with dismal results. The wisest and richest man who ever lived – King Solomon – seemed to have appreciated this when he penned the words below:

“Happy is the man who finds wisdom,

And the man who gains understanding;

For her proceeds are better than the profits of silver,

And her gain than fine gold…

Wisdom is the principal thing;

Therefore get wisdom, and in all

Your getting, get understanding.” (Proverbs 3:13-15; 4:7)

The gain derived from a well programmed mind that gives birth to portent thoughts cannot be compared to the proceeds from silver or even fine gold.  The Buddha noted that:

“We are what we think,

All that we are arises,

With our thoughts.

With our thoughts, we make our world.”

Considering that all that we are and will ever be arises from our thoughts, why is it that it is the only mine pit in the world that is least mined and least developed by seekers of wealth? Now that it is evident that ascension to the pinnacle of our aspirations hinges on our thoughts, why is it that we have given but fleeting attention to the greatest gold mine ever?

I figure the majority of men like complex things and theories of how to mine real gold and find it hard to buy into the fact that the best gold ever mined resides right inside their minds. May be that’s why not so much attention is given to developing our thoughts systems; working on the programming of our minds so that the thoughts churned out, when aptly employed lead us to success unfathomed.

Quote of the Week:

“Whatever the mind of a man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”- Napoleon Hill

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” – Henry Thoreau.

In a world punctuated by ceaseless pressures and quests for advancement, plenty of folk often find themselves striving to keep up with peers; workmates, neighbours, classmates – name it. May be even trying to keep up with the Joneses; trying to look the part in a society that seems to place a greater premium on having than on being. It is doubtless that this enormous pressure to measure up and to avoid the vortex of failure or inconsequence that seems to define many a life can be rather draining if left unchecked.

However, in the drive to keep up, we often find ourselves dancing to beats that don’t quite resonate with who we really are and what we are all about. For the music that our bodies can comfortably dance to emanates not from drummers outside but from a different drummer – resident deep inside us. With the incessant pressure to conform, we find that we have let ourselves and our pursuits be defined and measured by yardsticks that are foreign to our own innate constitution and wiring.

And when one does not keep pace with his companions, he is deemed strange or even ‘not with it’. No one usually takes the trouble to consider that it is possible to be tuned in to a different drummer; to be stepping to a different beat all together.

“Everyone has his own special vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment.  Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated.  Thus, everyone’s task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.” – Victor Frankl.

Adrift from the realization that you have your own special tune; your very own mission and unique opportunity to make a contribution in life, it becomes easy to find yourself trying to dance to the ‘common’ beat being belted out by society’s countless drummers. On that track, you’d need more than luck to arrive at the summit of the potential within you. It is psychologist Carl Jung who said: “Your vision will only become clear if you look into your heart; who looks outside only dreams, who looks inside awakens.”

The only way you will ever actualize the immense potential of the seed of greatness you have been endowed with is by looking intently and steadfastly deep within; adjusting your antennae to the frequency of the broadcast within – and step to that sound or beat; no matter how far or measured. Meaning, you endeavour to live the life which you have personally imagined or crafted – even if it doesn’t appear to keep pace with the Joneses. Just make sure you are running your own race; living life on your own terms and not just waltzing to every beat wafting on the highways of life. Just remember that your task in life is as unique as your specific opportunity to implement it.

As Nobel Prize winner for literature Joseph Brodsky observed, “One’s task consists first of all in mastering a life that is one’s own, not imposed or prescribed from without, no matter how noble its appearance may be. For each of us issued but one life, and we know full well how it all ends. It would be regrettable to squander this one chance on someone else’s appearance, someone else’s experience.”