Finding Motivation | REV-UP®

When a vehicle pulls into a gas station, they are looking for fuel for performance. Often the quality of fuel we get from the supplier can determine the quality of performance. People are vehicles too and one of the several fuels that we function on is information. Correct information engenders correct performance and vice versa and for this reason one may want to pay attention to the information we accept into our systems.

This is why motivational speakers can be very useful yet extremely harmful in another breadth. Do not be surprised as everything is like a two edge sword. It is useful only when used correctly. On the other hand what is supposed to be a good thing can become harmful if applied wrongly. Like the case of a knife; it is the hand that holds the knife that determines if a knife is good for killing or cooking. A knife is just a knife.

Motivational speaking and people are like gas stations and cars.  Cars are going to need to be refueled every time to keep going. They stop functioning when the gas runs out. It is pretty much the same with people and their favorite motivational speakers. They will pay anything to hear their favorite speaker and it is usually worth it because they will leave there highly charged and ready to move into action on one venture or another.

They are quick to put pen to paper and start writing goals and objectives down because that’s what the speaker had said will help. Of course it is a good thing except; most of these goals never get achieved and the end result is an increased frustration. In a few months they are going to need refueling to go and start on another project.

They have been throwing punches in the dark and nobody wins that way. Punches that don’t have a purpose behind then don’t win a fight. Let me emphasize here that everyone has only one fight.

Goal setting is one of the dangers associated with motivational speakers. They simply tell us to go and set goals and write them on paper. They tell us to break it down into smaller goals and tackle them one after the other. Every where there is motivational speaking you are likely to encounter goals and how it is the only way one can achieve their aims. Goals don’t get achieved simply because they were written down and they are precise and even broken down into smaller goals.  Those are just some of the many attributes a goal should have. There is a rule to the goal game and people are going to have to learn that at some point in time if they are going to achieve anything at all. 

What motivational speakers can never do for you in one session is to help you to understand yourself enough to decide on what your goals should be and why you should choose certain goals and not others. We all know that goals must be specific but based on what? Often there are countless number of things we can do but what goes into deciding the one thing we must choose for the limitless choice in front of us. 

In church one of the most inspiring statements yet possibly the most dangerous is the bible quote “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. When we say this, we must be quick to point out that even though all things are possible through Christ, he does not want us to do all things as by example he did not do all things. He had a clearly identified a mission and he followed it through till it was accomplished. It is when the going gets tough in that mission that he had turned to his father for counsel and inspiration. This way the inspiration was useful as it fires the purpose driven goal.

As general rule; people who believe that they have been put on this planet by God for a purpose must know that they need to know what this purpose is and their goal must be in line with this purpose. Anything short of that is a disobedience of God or as we say in ultra-Performance® a system error.

So while it is a good thing to have a favorite speaker and yes you should pay for his service, you must understand that it is not the most important thing as the fuel you get from the will run out at some point. You must also understand that it is impossible for the speaker understand you your experience especially where he is speaking to thousands of people at the same time. You must understand that he can only provide fuel and cannot tell you exactly how to drive your vehicle and where to drive it to. You must also understand it is going to take more than being inspired to achieve goals.

Purpose is the key thing to be considered before one even decides on a goal. Having a purpose makes the most of the inspiration from your motivational speaker.

When we fail at something too many times, inspiration burns out faster. Goals can become negative when they are consistently not achieved. It takes away the belief that things are achievable. Psychologists have told us that repetitive failure ends up creating a failure mentality. When this happens, a person will set a goal because they have to but subconsciously, they know it won’t be achieved. Frustration increases, Hope begins to lose grounds to apathy. The mind becomes a breeding ground for all kinds of negative elements and the persona is destroyed.

In the mean time you are being told that all things are possible and that anything you put your mind to you can achieve. You nod your head in agreement and you even scream halleluiah but subconsciously you have decided it is not going happen. But you have to try, what else is a living human being going to do. You run around in circles needing motivation every time.

Having the right purpose and the right goals has a way of activating your self motivation system, something that we all have and must find. Most of the highly accomplished individuals have this as standard. They find a reason to do things from within and any external motivation or inspiration from a speaker or an external source is just a useful bonus. This breed are like self powering vehichle that knows how to generate its own fuel not really needing to be fuelled at a gas station.

But are we not forgetting something? The extent of your belief or faith determines whether your goal can be achieved or not. If you have no faith you have almost nothing.  You must therefore as a matter of urgency eliminate anything, circumstance or even persons that drains you of your belief fuel and failing consistently at something is perhaps one of to consider first. It is time for some introspection don’t you think?

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The Excellence Delusion

Excellence is a great message and it is preached and taught a lot these days. We even have conferences about it but in the struggle to reach what we believe to be excellence, it seems many of us have misunderstood the concept. Many are trying to reach the top and it matters very little how. The dictionary definition of the word excellence itself; the quality of being outstanding or extremely good, can be misleading as much as it can be revealing. Having spoken to a few people on the matter, from my perspective as a performance coach, it is even clearer that we could really be misunderstanding the idea. I am calling it an idea for a reason as it gives us a chance to explore it further. It is my hope that this article will help us rethink what excellence really is and how it relates to peak performance. Peak performance is about being the best that is possible for one to be-- excellent or perhaps extremely good.

Often we reward individuals for an excellent job done. We tend to think that because they provided us with a great product or service or perhaps because they are at the top, they have excelled in their field and therefore deserve to be labeled excellent. Well, here is something to think about: A person who excelled in their field is not necessarily a good thing unless it is linked to their overall usefulness to humanity. This means uniting both parts of the dictionary definition into one force so that you have thorough positivity.

Hitler (wicked as he was)in many ways was an outstanding person who excelled very well in the arts of genocide and crude eugenics, if I may dare to use such an illustration. By many people’s standard of excellence, he was a great organizer; indeed his kind is very rare in history. Yet not many of us will be willing to accept him in the excellence hall of fame. Of course there are a group of people who bask in the glory of  the great work he did and are happy to wear his symbol with honor in a society which has forbidden these symbols- to them he is the icon of excellence. There is nothing surprising there, even Satan has followers.

To associate evil with excellence is a very challenging enterprise. This is simply because excellence must of necessity represent progress for life and hence must be inherently good. Let me state here that good has more dimensions than can be discussed within the scope of this article. Many fail to realize that excelling in our fields (i.e. one’s work or means of earning a living) is the means by which the larger spectrums of our lives are powered. This is even clearer when we understand the place of self-knowledge and purpose. This is because the full force of what we can do is released only by the person we truly are. Who we really are is something created to serve a purpose in the larger scheme of things. Our purpose then of necessity, must be in sync with the larger purpose of life and it is then; that excellence becomes truly excellent. Translate that into Christo-lingo; your purpose must be in line with God’s purpose in order for you to reach your true destiny.

When we are excellent by nature i.e. extremely good people, then this positively affects our output and the lager spectrum of our lives. We may have a lot of talent and ability but unless it is put to positive use, it is negated into anti- life instead of pro- life. What this means is that the skill and talent that should be assets are now liabilities. I have already pointed to Hitler as a negative example but there are many others spread across the annals of history. When we are good at doing bad things we cannot be described as good, much less excellent. It is not only the outcome but rather an attitude based on humanity’s quest for good which makes achievements honorable and admirable. Achievements are good only because it brings humanity to a new progress threshold.

Being the best in our filed is therefore not enough to be called excellent and we must be careful with who we are awarding with trophies of excellence. I remember a song by reggae musician Peter Tosh in which he sought to justify negative behavior in the youth by how they have been pointed to the likes of pirates as great men. By our standards of excellence, pirates and murderers qualify as men who have excelled in their fields and hence can be the examples for others. The world has seen genius fraudsters like Yellow Kid who are now role models for fanatics of the Robert Green cult. If indeed Osama Bin Laden was capable of the kind of organization we credit him for, then he must be a genius of some sort and as we have seen, he is a role model for many but are their actions pro or anti life. What Mr. Laden represents can therefore not be described as excellence although he did stand out.

The legacy Mahatma Ghandi left us with; has a great deal to do with the person he was. It is the likes of him and Mother Theresa that lived the excellent life. They excelled at living life itself powering it with the enterprise they were involved in. Their values were very clear and they stood by them. Unless it benefited the whole they did not get involved. They were not out for a selfish interest; they sought to improve humanity by their very existence. They served with everything they had in them and this is the reason why a person with the family name Ghandi will stand tall and proud while others with family names such as Hitler may seek a change of name. Ghandi sought to do a good thing using a good method; what many had tried to accomplish with hate he accomplished with love. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jnr knew this too and used it effectively.

Often when we are in difficulty to choose between whether the means justifies the end or the other way round, a consultation with our two internal voices becomes imperative. We pick and choose for our convenience hoping to reach the top where we will be recognized as one who has excelled. Values fail when tested enough and we do that one thing that we hope nobody will find out… just this one time and we will enter the arena of the excellent. Very soon, we will be awarded with the excellent trophy and we will proudly or shamefully hang it on our wall for everyone to see. When men and women of excellence are assembled, our name shows up on the list. Yet, deep down, we are harboring a little secret that is capable of taking the glory we have worked decades for away in one swoop. This can be at best described as building a castle on the sand; you will spend the rest of your life trying to stop the wind from blowing.

Well here is a tip: to pretend to be something we are not is evil. The very nature of evil itself requires an attempt at mimicking good and this in fact, is what makes it evil. Evil needs to look like Good in order to access the privileges good has so it can accomplish its goals. That is why a person who wants to rob you will come looking well dressed and present themselves well in order to gain your trust- they want you to think they are good first. They need to look and sound good. It is then that they are able to do what it is they want. This is not different from the people who appear to us as having excelled when indeed they have done the most unethical things to get to where they are.

That we created a great product is not enough unless we deliver it with excellence, too. It is then that the full power of the product can reach the distance which it is capable of reaching. We as humans are not different in this regard- excellence is a character that must permeate our very being. It is a way of thinking and must be born out of positive progressive thinking. It must seek to add to life and must NEVER be dissociated from God. We must understand it as a necessity to serve humanity and ensure that when we are called excellent, it is for living our lives the best way possible powering our existence through the means by which we earn a living as a means to serve humanity in truth. 

We must come to understand that it is the person we are (structure) and not so much what we are capable of by way of talent or ability (content). When the two get a good balance, however, we perform at our peak and hence reach true excellence. True excellence is not simply choosing something you can be good at and doing it to the best of your ability, it is understanding the person you are and making the most of it by using it to serve humanity adding to life in an exceptional way. Its rewards go beyond money, trophies, certificates and honorary PhDs. It is a powerful legacy that surpasses everything else and gives meaning to the saying, “good name is better than riches”.

The following questions help you make a valuable assessment

What is your own definition of excellence?

What is your preference, end justifies the means or the means justifies the end? State your reason

What does the world say about Gandhi and Madeba?
What names can be said to be the direct opposite of these two and why?

What is your current occupation?

Email the answers to  spidup@csdafrica.com to join our no-obligation,  one month free performance coaching program           

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Structure and content

Life gets its meaning from structure and hence, unless we give it one structure or another, it will be unlivable- it simply will not make sense. Ironically, structure itself is a very fluid concept that becomes what we decide it is. This is comparable to water that assumes three different states depending on how we treat it. When frozen into solidity it is ice, when evaporated it is gas. Somehow I get a feeling that its most comfortable state is the liquid state but that is not up to me to decide. It is not my place to decide for you what water is even though its chemical composition is constant.

The life we live gets its meaning from us and so you will find life does not have the same meaning for everyone - yet we all have a meaning for it and that is what determines what we do with it. We are the most active force in the creation of our circumstances. Money is the most important thing in the world because we have decided it is.

Liquid gets its shape from its container which then becomes the structure and liquid itself the content. I find that people are the same- in fact I daresay that everything in life can be broken down into structure and content and it is the quality of the structure that determines the usefulness of the content as the liquid gets its shape from the container. Even when frozen into solid ice, water must assume a certain shape that will be based on a container in order to get its form. Your life is the way it is because of the structure you have given it.

People have physical structure in terms of the skeleton that gives our bodies the shape it has. Without the skeletons I am not sure what we will be reduced to- a bag of flesh perhaps that will have to roll around on the ground- see it is difficult to imagine how we will live without structure. Structure is therefore a crucial necessity that enables everything.

As humans we function on an infinite number of structures and, as I said before, it is what makes it possible for us to live as it is how we give meaning to life. We have cultures, religions, ceremonies, time etc. All these determine how we live our lives but most importantly it is who and what we are that makes all the difference and who and what we are comes from how we see ourselves and how we choose to be. While we may assume the same religion and life philosophy, we are still unique in structure no matter what. 

While foreigners may think of the Ghanaian one way and give all of us a character, they will be able to find individual difference between each person. While two people may come from the same family and attend the same schools till they both get a PhD, it is their structure that will make them different individuals. In this case formal education as we know it becomes the content that will get its shape and usefulness from structure- who and what we are.  This is why we can have a good accountant and a bad accountant, a good lawyer and a bad lawyer. The good and bad coming from how the technical intelligence of a lawyer is being applied and that is based on how he sees himself. For the lawyer and the doctor are in another sense containers of medical and legal information; and hence we must be more concerned about the structure of a person than his or her training.

It makes sense therefore to allow the structure to give the content its place and the content must function through the structure. When a person chooses a religion for example, he or she gets personal moral codes that he or she believes to be right from it and hence is provided with a structural system with which he or she must function as a person. A Christian doctor in this sense may not necessarily be the same as an atheist doctor or a worldly doctor although they have gone to the same medical school. The difference comes from their structure which is based on their religion.

In researching the idea, we have reached a conclusion at the CSD that people need two kinds of education and indeed they do get both in one way or the other. Except we tend to put the content ahead of the structure in a cart before the horse fashion. We seem to think that the cart is the more important of the two though it is the horse that provides energy for the cart to move as the cart is almost useless by itself. A horse, however, on its own can move without a cart.

 “I am a lawyer”, “I am an accountant”, means nothing until we have given it structure by the person we are. But if the structure does not influence the content, a conflict is created such as, perhaps, what you get from square pegs in round holes. Who and what we are is heavily influenced by our very nature- all the way down to our physical structure.

That UsainBolt must be a sprinter is a combination of content and structure that is working perfectly well. When this happens, the only possible result is the fastest man in the world. The very physical nature of Bolt is designed for speed.But how does he know what to do to get the most speed out of himself? He has to be provided with the right information based on years of research by others who probably never run a 100metres race in their lives. The same information in the wrong hands will turn out to be useless if that person’s structure does not enable it. Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligence system provides us with an idea of how different we can all be in terms of our cognitive make-up. That each one of us belongs to one of his eight categories of intelligence; and it is this that should determine our choice of vocation. He is indeed referring to natural talent and capability, which, in itself, is a component of structure.

I am in complete agreement to a large extent as I believe that this natural intelligence that we have is the way we are informed of what it is we are; perhaps to put it in a cart before the horse fashion what we should become. It gives us a hint of what purpose we must serve. To understand this is to magnify this hint by gaining the right content (formal education and training) and, by our very nature, making it more useful.

 Structural education therefore leads us to a good understanding of the self and its various components. For a person to reach the peak of their performancethey consequently need to develop their structure and allow it to influence and shape the content. They must ensure there is compatibility between the two as the absence of this will mean conflict. Conflict by its very nature works against progress and therefore is anti-peak performance. 

It appears many of us are walking around with this conflict between structure and content and trying very hard to be the best at what we do. Structurally, we have been taught that hard work is what will bring us success and because of that we are actually fighting a vocation in the name of hard work. In the midst of our war we have not noticed that those who are the best at it are actually relaxed in it and make it look easy. Peak performance is an effortless venture and those who seek it must seek it effortlessly. 

There are very specific elements that must be a part of a person in order for them to maximize their capability and all of these elements are components of structure. In fact, content itself must be compatible with the structure, or else the whole system will malfunction and underperform.

It is then of extreme importance to spend time understanding and developing one’s structure, i.e. the person you are, even more than content. Daniel Goleman, a renowned psychologist and researcher, proposes that one’s emotional intelligence, a key component of structure, makes success more predictable than their technical intelligence. What this means is that a person may have a great deal of talent and training but lack of emotional intelligence resulting in negative structure which will limit his or her success. In any case understanding what one must train in, or deciding on what vocation one must be involved in is to be based on a good understanding of structure. 

Allow your content to be based on the structure and enable your maximum power to manifest itself in an effortless matter! If you are going to drive a train, be sure to drive it on rail tracks. Do not let the fact that it can move on a road if you force it to fool you. You will never get the maximum speed out of it that way. 

See if you can explain your own structure. REV UP!

Structure and content is a component of the CSD® ultra-Performance® training system. The components of structure include Emotional Intelligence, Social Intelligence, Spiritual Intelligence, Financial Intelligence, and LoveLogic®. Check out our website for our concept of how to unlock these items among others.

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Rabbits just don’t fly| REV-UP®

Of course everything is possible but what are you going to do? That’s the part most people don’t get. They assume they have not been able to move mountains because they don’t have faith the size of a mustard seed. That’s true but you know what, Jesus himself did not move any mountains. Don’t get me wrong, I know what he meant by moving mountains and it is certainly not to be taken literal.

 But is everything really possible? I will be a typical Ghanaian and answer that with a question. Can a rabbit fly? Yes/ No/ Maybe. Err uncertainties eh!  Maybe with some evolution over several trillions of years it might grow some wings but that’s a bridge we will have to cross when we get to it? My guess is no. So seriously it might be foolish for a rabbit to even consider flying at all. For now though it is an absolute absurdity to ask a rabbit to fly. But if it gets to learn how to fly, can expect it to fly better than an eagle or even a robin? Frankly I don’t see the point as we have so many varieties of birds we can’t even keep track. To have a flying rabbit that does a terrible job will be an exercise in futility. Perhaps even a waste of the tax payer’s money if you know what I mean.
Nevertheless a flying rabbit can be interesting to see and probably be ground breaking but what will it take and how realistic is it? Does the rabbit believe this to be possible? Does it even know how it is possible? Will a flying rabbit make any difference in any life or what purpose will a flying rabbit serve? If you wanted a flying job done, will you turn to a flying rabbit or an eagle? If you can answer these questions you are free to stop reading now!

Choosing to do something should not simply be because we can do anything. Actually its is gross iresposibility to do things simply because we can do them. Consider the size of the catalogue life presents and see if you can do everything in it. I will give you a million years and you still won’t finish it. It is just too huge- and I am an optimist.
The ability to make things happen has several constituents and even steps. One of these constituents is confidence. If a person has no confidence they can do something, they don’t try and even if they do, they do it half heartedly and expecting negative result. Now half hearted you yourself will admit; does not translate into the kind of faith that is capable of moving mountains.

So where do we get confidence? “Self knowledge, Purpose and Experience just to name a few. If a person knows herself well enough it means she is clearly aware of what strengths and weaknesses she has. And believe me when I tell you; everyone has something. Unfortunately most people do not know what they have. But when they do find out, they change almost overnight. They start thinking differently and start acting differently because they start seeing themselves differently and a new door opens in their lives. Actually the door has always been there they just never noticed.
Soon enough, purpose shows her pretty face. Knowing one’s self leads to understanding of purpose to a reasonable degree. (I say reasonable degree because I have come to understand that most people need help in order to understand their purpose properly- but that’s a really good thing because then I have a job). Knowing your strengths and natural talent means being aware of your gifts and the combination of natural endowments, interests and skills and understand what you are going to use them for and even why. These are the numbers we need; to create the combination that unlocks the purpose chest that you are already sitting on. In case you didn’t know purpose is an incredible force that revs up your performance in any field of your choice.Once the purpose is discovered and understood properly the confidence goes above average. 

Now I know you are wondering about the experience part by now. That happens when we take action. If we choose an activity to involve in, our first experience with that activity is a make or break affair. If that activity happens to fall in line with our natural talents, we experience a fair amount of success and this is very important no matter how small. That’s when we hear the expression,”I think she is a natural”.
 The little successes then become the fuel which powers us to carry on. As we experience small successes, we start on a success mentality platform and cultivate success thinking which then a habit becomes. From then on, failure is unacceptable because we are used to success and we believe it is the only thing there is. With every engagement in this activity your level of confidence grows further because of experience and over a period of time we are seen as master of the game. Some argue that a period of ten years can get a person to their peak in any field but that’s another story for another day.

On the other hand a failure start and consistent failure will cultivate a failure mentality that kills confidence. A person who fails all the time approaches a task with the intention to fail (though he may not be aware of this) because he has programmed the subconscious mind this way. In my line of work we call it a failure mentality. No mountains can move this way on failure mentality because it lacks the faith needed.
In this sense all things are possible but not all things are possible for you. Life itself provides us with guidelines as to how to live it and it was us to play a role- not all roles. The way I see it, it is supposed to be stress free and almost effortless venture. Some plants thrive well in some types of soil and struggle on others. Yet when the right seed falls on the right soil, it grows effortlessly bringing forth abundantly and wastefully. This is no coincidence.

 Those who believe that God created everyone and everything for a purpose must understand that the power to move mountains rest within the purpose. So until you find it, forget the mountain because you could be trying to move the wrong mountain. Not to perform the function for which God created you must be the height of all disobedience. Consider the parable of the talents. 

If you happen to be a rabbit, it is possible to consider what new and creative ground breaking out of the box thinking you can do on the ground. Perhaps you could be the one rabbit that decides that carrots can be combined with lettuce to make a more nutritious meal. Or you could create a trap for humans so they can get a taste of their medicine and make rabbit trapping a thing of the past.  The opportunities around you to be the superstar you want to be are limitless but you can only see them when you look through the rabbit’s eyes. A bird’s eye will show something that is only useful to a bird. 

Motivational speakers will tell you a lot, but listen wisely. Because a simple statement like anything is possible could be the source of all your problems. To be the best you have tomore of what you already are but thats another story for another day.

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There is power in your past.

I have heard a lot of views on what the past represents. Whiles it always makes a very interesting conversation, things always seem to travel one road. The idea most people have is simple- forget your past. It’s a heavy baggage that will weigh you down somehow. 

The idea itself seems to have originated with motivational speakers as I have personally heard some speakers pushing this idea rather hard without reservation but is this really true? Is the past really a negative baggage? Possibly- but it is more a question of how you treat the past than the nature of the past itself.

If we were to construct a timeline for our lives, it will be easy to see that the past is one of the three time components of our lives and that the present is really only a current picture of the past.  That we have consistently shaped the present by everything we have thought and done in the past; that the present (gift) that many speakers are crazy about will indeed become the past and that what we do with the present can be as a result of what we have learnt in the past and the future will be shaped by what we do now that is based on the past. Hence the past has everything to do with the future. When you touch fire with your bare hands and got burnt, it is that memory that that keeps you from repeating the act and even going further by avoiding any contact with fire. Without the experience, you could probably have a more damaging experience with fire as you have not understood its true nature.

Thinking like this gives the past a new meaning even if it is a negative past that some may refer to as a baggage. Of course anything can become a baggage or as we say in the philosophy of performance- a liability. But like everything else it is not the nature of the past that is the problem but the meaning you give it. It is not so much the gun but what we do with it. 

We can therefore take a very negative past that could became a baggage and turn it into a powerful fuel that can cause change in the future based on what we do with the present. Those who say the present is a gift must understand therefore that it is only because there was a past that we have a present and that this present was given to us by the past and that past was actually a present that gave way to a more current gift -the present.

So here is the point: While it is true that the past can be a baggage that weighs you down, it will be a disaster to eliminate the past as it is a key component of your very existence and it is the only window through which you can see how and why you have arrived at the present or how you have received your gift. And if you do not like the nature of the gift (the present), it is only the past that can tell you how you got it and hence how you can get a better present in the future. And that it is how we choose to treat the past that is the crux of the matter and the nature of the past. The past is like everything else, it is either an asset or a liability- its value simply comes out of how we think about it.

This reduces the whole thing back to thought as it is thought that ends up as behavior after we have passed it through our emotions who’s responsibility it is to tell us the quality of the thought. It when we ignore the warning from the emotion that we arrive at a negative behavior which creates negative circumstances. Choose ye this day how you decide to think about the past as it will decide whether it is useful or not. As for me and my house we dare say that it is possibly the single most valuable resource we have as persons and those who do not have a past do not exist and hence will not have the present or the gift.

Treat you past better and you will have a better future.

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Eureka! in a barber chair

It is amazing how life is always teaching us something new every day. The only problem is most of the time we are not paying attention. There are lessons in every little thing, event and situation it is only the searching eye and the attentive mind that is able to decode the lessons within.

 I think I may have had one of those “Eureka” moments when I woke up and found myself in a barber‘s chair somewhere in Achimota. Now that wasn’t my usual barber... in fact, I do not have a usual or favourite barber like some of the guys do. But I realize now- that could well be the reason why they always look better than me. These guys take their time to make sure they look the way they want to. Sharp!

Now I am not very big on looking after my appearance. I won’t have an answer for you if you ask me why so let’s not even go there. At least not yet. So you can imagine that I do not particularly like going to the barbers. I usually go there when someone who cares about me starts complaining. Well, this was one of those occasions. My hair had practically overgrown to a disastrous degree, and my lady friend who I was visiting in the area won’t walk around with me looking like that- or so went the threat; so off I went to the barbershop as I was ordered.

Of course, that is not the end of the story; if anything, it was the beginning. I sat in the chair, looking at my face in the mirror. After a while, I told the confused-looking barber to start cutting away. But he didn’t know where to start or what exactly to do with my hair. “Just cut it... you know- like you do for everybody else”. After what seemed like a long debate about hairstyles, he showed me a chart with hundreds of different styles on it. I was to pick a style. God! I didn’t even know there were so many styles for men. What planet have I been living on? I still couldn’t choose anything. Frankly, I didn’t know what I wanted. I had come to the shop hoping to look better but without a clear picture of what I wanted. Well, that is how I ended up again with a haircut that I was not exactly happy with. But did I even know I wasn’t happy with it. I didn’t know what I wanted.

Normally this wouldn’t matter much but today I had a lady friend to impress. I paid my two cedis and started complaining.  It finally dawned on me- most of the guys will go to a barber shop every weekend. The regular visit ensures that the hair doesn’t outgrow the style. Also they maintain one barber who knows what they like so there is hardly any misunderstanding when they need a haircut. They put real effort in maintaining a style which explains why they always seem to have a clean cut. They know exactly what they want!

Well that was my “eureka” moment: going to the barber shop is like doing anything else. You embark on a mission without a specific goal in mind, you could end up with anything. As long as there is activity, there will be a result. Of course, I did get a haircut. Unfortunately, I didn’t like the result but who is to blame. If I had a clear picture of what I wanted, I am sure my barber friend would have done his best to give me that.

Frankly, I still never got to the barber shop enough, and I still don’t have a barber of choice but believe me, I have decided on a new look,  and I am going to fight tooth and nail to get it and maintain it. At least it provides me with something to measure my looks against. I can decide whether I look right or not. Now, this should pass for a punch line of some sort. If you don’t have a yardstick, how can you measure anything? You have no way of telling whether it is right or not. It is like saying I will hit a target when you can’t see it clearly.

That is what specific goals do for you. Well this epiphany starts my library of eureka moments which I intend to share with you as we go along. But if you look for lessons within your own environment, you will find a few.

So what is the lesson here? Whatever you want to do for the day, the month or even the year, be as specific as life will allow. I mean to the tiniest details. You will find that you will get what you really want most of the time. Anthony Robbins said that life will give you what you ask of it. When you are not precise about what you want, life will give you a rough idea of what you want. Don’t blame life. It is what you asked for.

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