40+FAB Blog

Point of view or paradigm is very personalised and unique to the one who has it. I could say, what you see has the ability to make or break you, but then that statement would be inaccurate, because it’s not ‘what’ you see but ‘how’ you see.

As a young boy, my sister and I were walking down a street in New York and increased our pace leaving our dad behind. As we turned a corner, we saw a lion sitting right on the pavement, we immediately turned around and ran back to our dad shouting lion, lion. He calmed us down and when we came to the corner reluctantly, what we thought was a lion was actually a big dog with lots of hair around it head.
It was not actually what we saw that scared us, but how we saw it. How many times have we fled from situation or challenges, opportunities or open doors, never to revisit them again because of how we saw it?

I love this quote that says “When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change”. We must practice challenging our paradigms and points of view to adjust how we are truly seeing things. If you pull your little finger close enough to your eye, it will cover the mountain that stands somewhere on your horizons.

If you have said “I can’t” where someone else has said “I did”, then it falls on you to find out how they saw it. Adopting a new perspective will go a long way in enabling you to turn around situations that you previously thought impossible.

40+FAB Blog

There is this analogy used to describe someone who is so good at persuading people to do anything. They say “He is so convincing that he can sell sand to the Arabs”. If there is one thing the Arabs don’t need, it is sand you would think.

However, in 2014 the United Arab Emirates imported an estimated $456 million worth of sand, stone and gravel for various construction projects. What would make people who have an abundance of a resource by pass what they have and buy something similar from elsewhere?

The answer lies in value. People will pay for what is considered valuable. The one who is able to create value will have people eating out of their hand. 

Did you know that the ones who have created the holiday tourism industry, selling comfort at lush hotels with white sand beaches are partly responsible for the demand for sand? Countries all over the world that do not have this white sand are importing it from countries that do, so they can create beaches that tourists would love to patronise. 

It is good to be persuasive or convincing, and many spend months honing those skills, but if you know how to create value, you will not need to do much convincing as you will have people lining up to get a piece of the value you have created.

40+FAB Blog

The start of any great endeavour always begins with a why, what we call purpose.
I like to think of purpose like a seed, because within it is all the information, innovation and motivation to grow to become what it is supposed to be. An acorn seed will never grow into a  grapevine no matter what interventions are made to it.

It is not enough to have a purpose, you must pursue it. There are many gifted people with great ideas and a sense of purpose but they are lacking pursuit. There were some seeds that were recently discovered in the Pharaohs tombs in Egypt, they were thousands of years old and had never released their potential, scientists were still able to detect that their potency was intact and they would grow once planted. Your why will always produce whenever you actively engage it.

To pursue requires doing enough homework to ensure that purpose is realised. There is a season to plant tomatoes, there is a climate and ground that makes it yield. Pursuit requires wisdom, patience and faith in the process.

Once a purpose connects with one who pursues, the result is usually progress. You cannot put the cart before the horse and expect to make any advances.

The next time you are struggling to realise any progress, think about the seed, ask yourself if you started from a place of purpose. If so, keep pursuing, progress will not be absent much longer. 

40+FAB Blog

The mirror has been a fascinating tool to man for millennia. Very early, we discovered the power of the mirror and its Ability to give honest feedback devoid of flattery.

The reality is one cannot make meaningful improvements without accurate feedback. Even the wicked witch in the story of Snow White could not manipulate the mirror to show her what she wanted.

Feedback is essential and we must become good at gathering clean and honest feedback. You wouldn’t get much from a smudged mirror, so don’t waste time getting feedback from people that will tell you what you want to hear.

Like the magic mirror, feedback will point you to the fairest in the land. Rather than seeking to destroy them, make it an aim to emulate their winning qualities. As you keep improving, that mirror on the wall will soon tell you that you are the fairest of them all.

40+FAB Blog

Have you ever wondered why getting to the end of a  journey, race or huge task could be problematic?
The assumption is that this is the case because tiredness sets in, but that is not 100% true.

Do you remember the story of the tortoise and the hare? The hare felt like the job was done as he had made considerable progress compared to the tortoise. That sense of accomplishment made him relax before completing the race, he eventually lost.

I read a statistic that most car accidents occur within a few kilometres of people’s homes, the conclusion of the report was that people tend to relax when they are getting home and this impairs their judgment as they are not as vigilant as they should be.

You can’t afford to turn off when you are close to the end, when you are almost there, when you are at the last mile. As they say, it’s not over until it’s over.

40+FAB Blog

I am yet to meet anyone who lives for the next criticism they will get. Most people hate, fear, avoid or disdain it.

Even though there are lessons to be learnt from some critics, their opinions can also act as a deadly poison that paralyses if not received the right way.

In life, we can never run away from the abundance of criticism. Did you ever hear the story of the man, his son, their donkey and their belongings? 

For every scenario of how they chose to travel, they were bitterly criticised. If the men were on the donkey, they were cruel to the animal. If only their belongings were on the donkey, they were stupid. If father only was on donkey, he was a bully. If son only was on donkey, he was disrespectful, and so on. Eventually they concluded that they would do what was best for them and not pander to the opinions of the passers by that they did not even know.

Have you noticed that no matter what you do, someone somewhere will have sharp words to hurl at you for not doing good enough? 
Critics will never cease, so never loose sleep over any of them, never allow the fear of their words to cripple you.

Be like the men and the donkey and live your life doing what you believe to be best in all good conscience and never let the fear of criticism in.

40+FAB Blog

Have you ever been in the mood to just do nothing?
I am not talking about just wanting to have a lazy day, it’s more of a feeling of not being able to stir yourself up and get going. For anyone who is productive in one way or another, this mood can be quite disturbing and may even trigger some anxiety.

The mood to do nothing could however be a warning sign of burnout and this should not be ignored. That lethargic feeling that won’t go away even with a strong cup of coffee might be saying you need a break.

There is a lot of talk in the work place of today about managing stress and burnout. One of the key principles of management is knowing what you have. Know yourself well, body and soul. Knowing your limits physically, emotionally, psychologically and intellectually is key. When you are overloading, be quick to stop to avoid a breakdown.

Put in your plan ways to get stronger or handle more in all those areas. Work out a way to get proper rest, refreshing and recreation.

When you get in that mood to do nothing, heed the sign and take action to revive yourself, replenish and fill up all your tanks so you can get back into a flow of productivity. 

40+FAB Blog

Details are boring to most people and definitely painful to go through.
Have you ever tried to review the fine print for anyone of your software or phone contracts? There are pages of information and it is quite excruciating to go through. No wonder they say that the devil is in the detail.

As difficult as it seems to deal with the details, they are very necessary. Those that value antiques or make luxury fashion have a keen eye for details. Recognising that extra detail identifies the difference between common work and a masterpiece.

You might be in the vicinity of great value that is hidden behind the details. Develop your capacity to stick with the details, sooner rather than later, you will find the value behind it.

40+FAB Blog

People can be very judgemental, harsh and cruel when they are left to preside over issues that are not close to them.

You see a mother with screaming children and immediately judge, they are spoiled. Someone turned up late to a meeting and you judged them as lazy. Someone raised their voice in a conversation you were not privy to and you judged them as aggressive.

It is bad enough when we hastily judge people for their actions, but it’s even worse when we judge them for their ethnicity. I love the way comedians use the line “Is it because I am black” in their jokes.

It highlights that too many times situations are coloured by ethnicity and the argument on what a responsible human being should have done or not is drowned in the prejudice.

What is right is right, regardless of where you are from or what you look like. Similarly, what is wrong is wrong. This is true justice.
There have been cases of people from different ethnicities doing the same thing, one is called a criminal, and the other is called mentally unstable. Double standards create more harm than good in society.

Think about how as a child you were treated harsher for doing the same thing as a sibling and the reason for your treatment could only be explained as your sibling being preferred to you. What resentment it created. I know you also hated the teacher’s pet at school.

We tend to judge others by their appearance and actions, but expect others to judge us only by our intentions. 

How different the world would be if we were less judgemental, less prejudiced and ready to give others the benefit of a doubt.

40+FAB Blog

I have come to realise the power of thought. Literally everything that a human being does has been born out of their thoughts.

In the 19th century, it was thought impossible to fly and that the materials to make it happen did not exist. However, the Wright brothers thought differently and the quality of their thoughts found materials that existed and turned them into product that made men to fly.
Many things that were thought impossible and only doable by some means of magical power have now been accomplished, not by magic, but by thought power.

Our thought is that thing that is able to take materials, structure them, form them and transform them into meaningful product. Something is not possible because of the quality of the materials that exist to make it, but rather by the quality of thought intended to create it.

The thought of a house is agnostic to materials as people have built from straw, wood, mud, stone, ice, metal, silver and even gold. All these materials will pass away, but the thought will always remain and find a way to recreate with whatever materials are available. The intangible thought is never limited by the tangible material.

We create and we destroy by the silent invisible power of thought. There is great power at the tip of your thought, harness it and harvest it to make your life and world a better place. As the great scientist Voltaire said “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking (thoughts)“.