Give sight to your mind to see possibilities

This week, I had training in Naivasha at a hotel I have been to before. It reminded me of my experience there.

On that day as we headed there, I thought the driver had missed the way because the bumpy road seemed to lead nowhere. The driver had to assure me that we were not lost. When we finally arrived, before us was this beautiful hotel with an impressive golf course.

It got me thinking: What is it that will make any human being to invest millions of shilling in the middle of nowhere and expect people to go there?

The answer is vision

It is vision that makes you see treasure where others are seeing pressure. Vision takes you beyond your last performance, whether it was good or bad. If the performance was good, vision makes you set higher targets. If the job was bad, vision makes you see that you can still excel.

Vision is the compass of destiny. People do not fail due to adversity. Neither do companies fail only because of the economy. Every failure is largely the manifestation of a lack of vision.

How else would you explain how the same adversities that many have blamed for their failures are the platforms on which some great successes have been initiated?

If you always have excuses as to why you could not meet your targets, then you are a risk to the organisation. Don’t give explanations for failure when others are having manifestations of success.

The most powerful enemy of vision is a blind mind. You cannot possibly execute a task if you don’t see it. The seeing that we are talking about here has nothing to do with your eyes. It is a seeing with your mind.

The reality is that if you have a seeing mind and blind eyes, you will accomplish more than a person with seeing eyes and a blind mind. Take American musician Stevie Wonder, for example. Blindness was not an obstacle to his success. There is also Ifeolo, my blind cousin who is a law professor today.

These two people demonstrate that a person can lose their sight but if they don’t lose their vision, they will still go ahead and achieve success.

That is why the biggest tragedy of all is when people have seeing eyes but they deliberately aid and abet the blindness of their minds by tolerating ignorance.

The other thing many of us tolerate is the fear we grow up with from childhood. Usually the baby has no concept of fear until he is told by the parents what not to do. Then the baby touches the flame of a candle and learns fear by experience.

As we grow up, the mistakes a lot of people make is that they hold on to all the beliefs and fears of their childhood.

The key to breaking out of your past is to challenge it. One of the questions I had to ask to challenge the poverty of my past was, “All these people who are successful, do they have two heads?” the obvious answer was no.

I also asked if their brains had special wiring. The answer again was no. Once I was convinced that they did not have a natural and biological advantage over me, I went to next level of questioning. “What did they do to become successful?”

I knew that the secret of men’s success was in their stories and that many of them had written stories in books. So, I saved some money and once I had enough to buy a book, I would go for it.

Since my major issue was finances, I carefully selected the books. I remember first going for every book that had “millionaire” on it. I bought books like, The Millionaire Mind and The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J Stanley: How to Think Like a Millionaire by Mark Fisher and Marc Allen; The Millionaire Note Book by Steve Scott; The Millionaire Course by Marc Allen; Cracking the Millionaire Code by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen, among others.

I also read the Laws of Prosperity by Kenneth Copeland and Breaking Financial Hardship by David Oyedepo.

As I read these books and asked questions, something began to happen. My mind began to see more possibilities than obstacles. I was changing my mental environment and before long, it began to affect everything around me. The rest is history.

One important thing I noticed was this: When I was neck deep in poverty, I had a credit line of about Sh.100 with the neighborhood kiosk where I picked things like milk and sugar.

At that time, the owner of the kiosk was by far better off than me. Today, the story is different. I have moved on but there has been no significant difference in the life of the kiosk owner.

The difference between that wonderful kiosk owner and me was that he accepted where he was as a destination, while I considered my place then as only a bus stop.

What made the difference? I suppose it was my vision and ability to challenge my conditions. Unfortunately like many people would do, the kiosk owner began to look for excuses as to why I could move on and he couldn't.

I have discovered that once a person accepts where they are as their fate and once they are not willing to challenge their conditions, there is very little that anyone can do to help them.

Negativity is free of charge. It takes no effort to program your mind with negativity. However, changing your mental environment and giving sight to your mind takes effort.

No matter how bad or good your performance this year has been, you can set the tone for next year. Challenge your performance to provoke yourself to the next level.