Life-By-Design

In 1936, Jessie Owens came back from the Olympic Games as the world’s fastest man. At a huge press conference, the first question was asked, “How did you do it Jessie? Four Gold medals, you embarrassed Hitler in his own hometown; you are the fastest man in the world…..how did you do it?

“Oh” he said, “I think it all began when I was a kid back in Junior High School. My coach got us together and made a speech I have never forgotten. The main thing he said was that, ‘you can pretty well become whatever you make up your mind to be in life’.

“As a Junior High Kid, I looked up at my coach and shouted ‘coach I have already decided what I want to be! The fastest man in the world! And my coach looked down at me, a skinny, scrawny black boy and said ‘Jessie that’s a great dream. I fact Jessie, I don’t know if I have ever heard such a dream as great as that. There’s only one problem with your dream, Jessie’. ‘What’s that coach?’…the coach replied ‘Dreams have a way of floating high in the sky; they just float up there like clouds and never become realities unless you have the courage to build a ladder to them, one step at a time”. From that moment onwards, Jessie’s life style changed. He started preparing himself and working at making his vision a reality and ten years later, what seemed only a far fetched day dream was brought to reality.  

Many Ordinary People and a Few Great Ones

I have often wondered why we have so many small, ordinary and common people in life and only a few great ones. How many times have you heard people say of others “if only we had more like him/her around here, things would have been a lot better” What is it that draws this imaginary line between people? What is it that sets the limits on peoples lives?

I have come to discover that one of the secrets of great people is their vision; their mental picture of their desired future. People are ultimately limited only by the size of their and quality of their vision. People with vision conceive a mental picture of desired goal and set their eyes and mind doggedly to ensure that this picture is brought to reality.

Every great invention ever made, was born out of somebody’s mind; from the deep recesses of the unseen; they saw and believed in the reality of an invisible future or goal at a time when nobody else could.  Helen Keller who was blind and deaf was asked “What would be worse than being born blind?” She replied “To have sight without vision”

Disney Land

During the Grand opening of Disneyland; one of most popular theme parks in America, the founder Walt Disney had unfortunately died before the project was completed.  Introducing Mrs. Disney during the ceremony the master of ceremony regretfully commented “How we wish Walt could have been here to see the greatest masterpiece of his life being unveiled”.  After all the applause at her introduction had died down, Mrs. Disney stood up and marched majestically to the podium and the first words out of her mouth were “Walt did see Disney Land, that’s why it is here today” This is the Power of Vision. We all live under the same sky but we do not all have the same horizon. What separates us at the end of the day will be our mental image of who we are in relation to the things and others around us.

Orville and Wilbur Wright

At the turn of the 18^th century an Anglican Bishop intimated to a University Professor that the end of the world must be near because all that could be, have been invented and discovered and he dared the professor to tell him what else remained to be discovered. The Professor gazed at him with wide eyed glee and said “I believe that in fifty years, men would be able to fly” The Bishop retorted “that’s none sense, only angels were intended to fly……..” At that time the Bishop had two boys at home Orville and Wilbur who would prove that they had a greater vision of the future than their father. Just a few years later in 1904, they flew the first airplane.

It is quite difficult for one to grow beyond the limits of their vision of life. Vision sets the limit of people’s achievement in their minds and then they go on achieve this limit.

Two things that have the capacity to affect your vision, positively or negatively; these are perspective and passion:

Vision and Perspective

Having the right Perspective in life simply means that you are able to understand and judge things or events, in their true relationship with other things. It is the ability to think about problems and decisions in a reasonable way without exaggerating or down playing their significant. Two people can be in the same place at the same time and both looking at the same thing and yet see and interpret these things entirely differently. We always see things as we have conditioned our minds to see them. This conditioning comes from our belief system, exposure, life values and experiences.  We thus see things not as they are but as we are.

How you process the things you see and hear will affect how you react to them. Someone with a distorted perspective cannot have a constructive or positive vision of his future. He looks around himself and all he sees is just gloom and the impossibilities and obstacles in life that have guaranteed them that they can never succeed in life. Two terms normally employed when talking about perspectives are Optimism and Pessimism. An Optimist looks at all the obstacles and difficulties in life and still believes that something good can come out of the gloom. In the face of closed doors, they look around them, knowing there definitely has to be another open door somewhere; they don’t stop looking until they find this door. A Pessimist is the opposite; they never believe for example that Sierra Leone can still be turned around and redeem its history that we have always been proud of.   The interesting thing to note is that we fulfil the prophecy of our perspectives. Those who see a brighter future do not give up on today; they work assiduously to make this a reality. Those who can only see doom, never take any steps to change the status quo. They continue in those actions that guarantees the actualisation of their perspective of life.

Vision and Passion

Passion helps you translate your vision to reality.  Translating your vision to reality is a process and not an event; it’s a lifestyle and a continuous process. Many great people started life in the poorest and most humble of homes, with little education and no advantages. Julius Cesar was epileptic; Beethoven and Thomas Edison were deaf; Charles Dickens was lame; Helen Keller was deaf and blind.  What gave these individuals the stamina to overcome severe setbacks and become successful? Each had an inner passion that lit a fire which could not be extinguished.

Passion is the fuel that will drive your vision; it causes your dream to become an obsession that determines what you do daily; it forces the required change in life style; it determines who your friends are going to be, … you only want to spend time with those who can contribute to your vision.

Conclusion

What vision do you have of your future? Do you really know what you want to become in life? When you are alone and away from everybody else, what do you dream of becoming? With the right perspective and Passion, you can sustain this picture in your mind and succeed in bringing it to pass.

 In our economic system, your income will be determined by three factors:  first, the kind of work you do; second, how well you do it; and third, how difficult it is to replace you.

If you want to increase how much you are paid, you must increase your value to your company by arming yourself to do beyond what is expected of you and make yourself indispensable.

The following are steps you can take to double your value:

1     Make yourself indispensable.

Commit to doing your job so well that you make yourself indispensable.  Make it very difficult for your boss to be able to replace you. Statistics prove that about 20% of employees of any business are critical to its success and do about 80% of the work to keep the company alive. To double your value, you must work yourself into this 20% of bracket super-employees and stay there.

In my life time, I have changed jobs at least three times. On one occasion, my employer asked me to try my new job for a month and be sure that I want this job then I could turn in my resignation letter. If I did not like this new job, I could return to continue with my old job.

In another job, my employer refused to accept my letter of resignation. He preferred to suspend my pay and keep my employee file dormant. Should I decide I want to come back to the company even after one year, I would still have a place in the company.  This is my idea of making yourself indispensable.  

2.   Think like your boss.

To survive and succeed, every business must get this right; “Make the maximum revenue at the minimum cost”. This is called the Bathtub theory of economics. Money flows into the business bath tub through the taps and flows out through the drain.

Your boss is constantly concerned about plugging the drains in the business and turning on more and bigger taps.

 What is left over between the tap and the drain is called profits. You must become a profit finder. Your boss must not see you as an expense item; a way to lower costs during tough times. Always be on the lookout for ways to bring your employers more revenue and eliminate unnecessary costs and wasteful expenditures.

Commit yourself to your bosses goals and objectives. Let him know by your words and action that your goals are the same as his.

Thinking like your boss doubles your value and quickly sends you up the management ladder and gets your earning the salary of your dreams.

3.  Do more than you get paid for

Success is what you do after you have done what is expected of you…. no one becomes a hero by doing just what is expected of them …  Salary increases are always preceded by increased employee value.

The secret is to continuously keep your value several steps ahead of your pay levels. Your boss will continuously struggle to catch up with and close the Gap between your contributions to the company and the compensation you receive for your services.

Do me a favour put these steps to action; it is a must that your value to your company will increase continuously…… dragging your pay upwards in the process.

Continue to design and bring to pass the life of your dreams one step at a time!!!!.     

This story is very intriguing. It is a story of the Limitless capacity of the Human being; of powers that we all have lying dormant on the inside of us, waiting for an opportunity to be ignited.

Two Women, Fatu Koroma and Nancy Kanu; both in their late forties and Fatu already a grandmother; from Kontaline and Mayemibana villages. These villages both have a total of 67 houses just outside the country’s capital, Freetown.  They sold palm Oil and Agricultural produce to upkeep their families.

Deliberately chosen by the elders in both villages and were flown to India in January 2007. They have never been to school; never been to the country’s capital; never flown in a plane and never travelled so far away from home. They were essentially in a strange land, wearing strange clothes and eating strange foods.

Trained together with women from Bolivia, Afghanistan, Mali, Cameroon etc.. nobody understood their dialects of Temne and Krio. These pressures alone were enough to make anyone run away.

On top of that, learning about electronics and fabricating complicated solar energy parts; identifying components without the written word… only from their colour and learning only with their hands about soldering and installation and establishing a rural electronic workshop to repair and maintain the units in their villages.

Incredibly, this is what they achieved in 6 months. They returned in July 2007 without no paper certificate, but knew more about solar installation than engineering graduates who have gone through 5 years of university education in Sierra Leone.

They set up shop and in two weeks completed the electrification of 67 houses in both villages.

What is the lesson in this story?  You have a limitless capacity to be great (Gen 1:28, Phil 4:13); you have powers lying dormant inside you, waiting for an opportunity to be ignited; Acres of Diamonds all around you.

Apply your life, skills and talents to your world. Find a problem around you that you would love to solve; go all out to acquire the necessary skills required to solve this problem. Then get to work and do not stop until you provide the solution for this problem.

The more significant this problem and thus the solution, the greater the returns you receive from your investment in life. This is one secret to greatness. So keep designing and keep bringing to pass, the future you were made to experience, one decision and one action at a time… We join all Sierra Leoneans to give kudos to Safer Future Sierra Leone and their donors for making this happen.

Please enjoy this video clip…

On Sunday 18th October 2009, we had a conducted tour of important places in Washington DC, as part of our Global Leadership forum itinerary. It was almost a somber event; as I stood outside the gates and gazed across the  sprawling lawns of the East wing of the white house almost in disbelief.  I could easily have pinched myself to wake up from my slumber. Who would have thought that, given my background, I would be standing in so close proximity to one of the most important political buildings in the world.

On the night of Monday19th October, we attended a  reception held in our honour at the State Department; at the Benjamin Franklyn Ball Room where state receptions are held. We were indeed dintinguised guests of the United States of America. One of our program coordinators, a white American citizen who could easily be in her mid to late forties, quitely crept closer to where I stood, totally relishing this lifetime experience and whispered “In my wildest imagination, Iwould never have imagined being a guest at the state department”.

If a midlife bonafide American citizen can consider this a privilege, what would you expect me to say?

Truly dreams can come true ….. never stop dreaming and believing….. I was not supposed to be here, but I am here anyway.

You should never want to do something so badly that you fail to see the negative signs and you fail to tell yourself, you could be making a mistake. there is a fine line between when you have to go by the immediate facts or your gut intuition.