The Sunday News
Itai Chapunza
IT’S January. For many dreams for a better year this time are beginning to seem unreal. They are actually becoming dreams that will only remain in dreamland.
People look at the things they have set out and instantly become demotivated. This should not be so. Never forget, God has empowered you to be great. Mediocrity is not optional.
As much as he designed you to be great, staying motivated for the great job is your task.
It is not God’s responsibility to keep you feeling like taking on mountains.
The trick is simple, if you feel you can do it, you will do a good job attempting to and thereby increase the chances of success. But if you go into it already defeated mentally, then chances are you will be a failure at the end of it all. The first way to staying motivated is to build around your passion and around things you love. Understand that all of us are builders. We build different things, businesses, careers, churches, homes, families. Anything you do can be likened to building. So, build around things that you absolutely love. Don’t waste time in accounting when you clearly want to be in construction.
The end result will be a person that drags themselves out of bed every morning just to go and be beat up by the long day and come back home feeling sorry for yourself. My wife was in that predicament once, she hated her job but had to do it for the sake of money. The solution in such a scenario is to work towards moving to a place you love.
Either by starting the business from your savings or alternatively join an already existing one. Either way, ensure that you love what you do.
Always have goals. Long term and short term. Long term goals give you a picture of what you will be in the future. You subconsciously prepare for this future in the things you do daily. If in your long-term goals, you are to be an athlete, you will probably join a gym. You may also find yourself having body goals because there is a way in which you must be to be an athlete. A future businessperson will probably need to learn to speak English. You prepare now for who you are to be in future. Long term goals set you up in that manner. Short term goals keep you busy working towards things now.
They keep you in focus because they are achievable now. They are an opportunity to reward yourself for a job well-done towards the bigger goal. Meaning the short-term goal for a boxer may be to beat the local city champion, but in the grand scale of things, you look to one day fight Anthony Joshua.
I recently started following a Zimbabwean Dakar rider Graeme Sharp. Inspirational guy. Yes, he is from Zimbabwe and yes, he is actually competing in the Dakar this year. I don’t know about you but when I saw this guy one thing came to mind. “It is doable”. Regardless of circumstance, regardless of all other things we like to claim are the reasons we are not doing it. The thing is, it is doable.
A few days ago, he was penalised for missing a check point and still had a go at it the next day with a positive mind and positive spirit. The long and short story of all this rambling is, be optimistic. While you go after your dreams, one thing is guaranteed, you will face setbacks. But be optimistic. Optimism is the DNA of champions. Always tell yourself, I’m doing it regardless of how you feel on that day. Graeme is a champion, he keeps doing it, not because of results. If you keep doing it, results will come. Just don’t quit.
Follow motivational characters. People that get your spirits up and are getting things done in their own areas of influence. These sort of people keep you grounded in your pursuits because you see them in their own and you get a jolt of energy from it.
Commit yourself to the end result. Always have a picture of the future you are building and commit yourself to it one hundred percent. Never do a half-backed job. Never measure yourself against what you see around you. Measure your success against the future you are building for yourself. If in the future you are going to be a doctor, you cannot call yourself a failure because you are struggling to pay university fees and can barely feed yourself. That is a wrong ruler you are using.
The right ruler will tell you, “You are in the right place because you are in your second year, you are passing, and you’re stumbling towards your victory.”
Never arrive, the day you arrive is the day you begin to shrink instead of grow. This does not mean be an ungrateful person. It just means stay hungry for more. This the trick to staying motivated. When you set goals, work towards them, achieve them, celebrate a little and move on to the next one.
Don’t linger on one achievement, you quickly become a broken record singing one song over and over again. Establish a personal reward system to thank yourself for things you have done. My wife and I do ice-cream every month. This does not matter how much we have to pay for in that month.
That ice cream is a way of thanking ourselves for committing to the goal. We don’t just do ice-cream, we actually look forward to trying out different ice-cream flavours, sizes and types. And each time we do so, we wall into the next phase ready to crush it and reward ourselves once more.
Remember you are only a failure when you give up. Jesus loves you and has a special plan for your life.
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