Your Best Foot Forward

Do your best

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.     

Colin Powell

Aim to work at the peak of your abilities. Excellence is the mark of someone who wants to be at the top of their game in whatever area of life. It is a lofty ambition that shouldn’t be taken lightly. A majority of the people are comfortable with good enough. Little do we realize that good enough keeps us from the best. Nobody is called to do just good enough. We are required to constantly put our best foot forward.

If you had a choice between two doctors  or service providers in whatever industry and you got to know that one gives exceptional service while the other one does just the bare minimum., is there doubt about who you would want to serve you?

Excellence is a virtue espoused in God’s word. God’s word tells us Colossians 3:23 Whatever you do whether in word or deed, do it with all your heart. Do it as unto the Lord and not as unto men. I do not care what your religion is or who you hold in the highest esteem. One thing I know is that you will always give the best when dealing with that person you esteem highly. Assume that you are serving the President of your Republic, doesn’t it go without saying that you will want to give your very best? Now that should be your attitude and approach irrespective of who you are serving. You need to be known for the thoroughness with which you do things. Resist the temptation to be average or at worst mediocre. Instead endeavor to deliver great results every time you are tasked with something. Make excellence your trademark and you will never run out of people to serve.

So what is excellence if we are to delve deeper into the conversation?

Dictionary.com defines excellence as the fact or state of excelling; superiority; eminence. Among the synonyms given for the word excellence are preeminence, distinction, transcendence, merit and virtue.

The Collins dictionary defines it as the state or quality of excelling or being exceptionally good; extreme merit; superiority. We are talking about something being of high quality.

The idea is that to pursue excellence means you are not willing to settle for the ordinary. You are committed to giving that which is outstanding and beyond expectation. You are not here just to participate, you are here to excel. Upon you is the ability to be the very best at what you do. Most of the time, we just haven’t made up our minds that we want to excel. Some of us do not want to commit to excellence because it can be very demanding. When you think about it though, you realize that a lot of the hurt we see around us is because somebody chose to be sloppy about their job. A lousy father or mother will bring up children who are a problem to the society. A sloppy engineer will oversee projects that will collapse and cause injuries or loss of life. A doctor who does just good enough will inevitably lose patients who would have survived if handled better. A lousy teacher/lecturer will churn out half-baked graduates who need extra training before they are useful in the marketplace. I could go on and on but I know you get the picture. Think about the consequences of doing your job minus that pursuit for excellence. Who is likely to suffer? What is likely to go wrong? When you answer these questions honestly, you will ditch your pleasure and begin to put your best foot forward.

In a world of extreme competition, an excellent approach to anything you are doing sets you apart from the crowd. Anyone who excels at what they do, has people beating a path to their door. I saw someone comparing what Cristiano Ronaldo earns to what scientists and researchers earn and feeling that there is a discrepancy. The argument was: what is the value that Ronaldo brings compared to what scientists can do with regard to finding solutions to COVID 19? The feeling was that what the researchers do is highly valuable and they should be compensated more. I agree with this reasoning to a certain extent but I have a different view as well. Whereas everybody needs to be compensated well and relative to their contribution, there is also the reality that in every field some people stand head and shoulders above the rest. For every Cristiano Ronaldo, there are thousands of footballers who are struggling to make ends meet. In the same breath for the thousands of poorly remunerated researchers there are a few who earn very highly. The reason is that they are perceived as highly valuable in their respective fields. One of the things that increases your perceived value in the marketplace, is the excellence with which you carry out your duties or responsibilities. You see Ronaldo excels at entertaining football fans with what he can do on the field of play. Truth be told we rank entertainment very highly; perhaps more highly than we ought to but it is what it is. Those scientists who earn more than others also have something outstanding about them. And I argue that among other things, they execute their roles with a spirit of excellence which is a tall order for a majority of those who complain about discrepancies. To put it lightly, for every Kempinski, there are thousands of Kibandaskis. People choose Kempinski because of the attention to detail and what goes into delivering that experience. It’s not about the food per se because it’s no different at the Kibandaski, it’s the quality of the delivery that determines where people flow to.

Excellence is a journey. You must make up your mind that you will not give anything less than the best every single day as you step out. You do not have to wait for anything or anyone. You must start right where you are in your pursuit for excellence. If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work. Thomas J. Watson.

Like breathing, you need to cultivate it until it becomes second nature. The more you work at it, the more you will see room to get better. When you become complacent, you lose your ability to improve and settle for something less than the best.

Excellence brings with it a number of benefits including an increase in your confidence and self-esteem. There is an appreciation you have for yourself when you know you gave your best to your tasks. It also earns you recognition and praise. You cannot hide excellent work. It has a way of rising to the top. People take note of anyone who is going above and beyond. With recognition comes reward and promotion. Opportunities keep flowing in the way of those who are excelling at their current station. Excellence glorifies God. When we do well, it reflects well on our Creator because we have brought the best attributes within us.

I will wrap it up with a quote from Aristotle. ‘Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.     

I know you enjoyed or were enlightened by this article which is why you came this far. Do us all a favor and press that subscribe tab on your right. 

You want to go deeper into the excellence conversation? Hit me up on WhatsApp +254725832477 or Email: samuelmwinamoa@gmail.com

Have you heard an opportunity to check out my Book Blessed to be a Blessing? Here is a link where you can take a look

https://samuelmwinamo.ck.page/91a9bdeddf

Take Charge of Your Time

 

Make the most of today

 Did you know that time is the most finite resource you have? That no matter how hard you try, time once lost can never be recovered? Did you know that the secret of the ultra-wealthy is that they leverage time by making others work for them thereby multiplying their productivity?

What do you do with your time? How do you extract maximum value for your time every single day? Let’s cut to the chase. What do you intend to do today or what are you doing today to optimize the utilization of the valuable resource that is time.

In this article, I will share a few tips on how to make the most of your day every day. 

The English say time and tide wait for no man. So how do we go about ensuring that we stay on top of things when it comes to time?

The first thing you must do is determine how much time you have to work today. From the time you wake up to the time you intend to sleep there is a number of hours available for you to do what needs doing today. Not all your waking hours will be spent working. There is time to prepare, travel, eat and so on. What time is left-when you subtract everything else-for you to work on what needs to be done. When you get clear on how much time you have, you can allocate yourself the tasks and how they will be spread out through the day.  

Gather the tools you need. To avoid wasting too much time unnecessarily, make a point of gathering the tools you need for the tasks ahead of you in advance. If you can leave your ‘office’ the previous evening with the tools you need to start off the next day, the better. If that is not possible, then you must create time early in your day to put every tool and requirement in its place because it will save you precious minutes along the way.

Start early you must develop the habit of getting started as early as possible on your tasks. There is a burst of energy available in the morning that must be spent on your most significant tasks of the day. For a majority of us, thinking creatively occurs best early in the morning when the mind is still fresh from sleep and unoccupied with a million things. There are exceptions to this of course and I recognize that but by and large, we find ourselves falling into this category. It is also less noisy in the morning and you can really make quick progress on challenging tasks before the noise of the day kicks in. Starting early also reinforces the discipline of rising up early which in itself boosts your levels of confidence making you capable of so much more.

Define your deliverables. What are your deliverables? What are those things that must be done today for you to consider your day a success? What kind of outcomes or output do you want to see from your day today? When our expectations are defined we are much more likely to focus on accomplishing them as opposed to when they are vague. If you aim at nothing you always hit it with precision. This is because for you any outcome is acceptable. To avoid falling into this trap, it is wise that you have clarity on what you want from your day and ask/go for it unashamedly.

Prioritize. Beyond knowing your deliverables, ask yourself which among them is most significant to you. Which of them must rise to the top of the pile. You want your most important and urgent items at the top of your list. These are tasks that you must see to personally because their accomplishment has a great impact on your long term interests. Next on your list must be the important but not urgent. This can come later in your day after you are done with tier 1 items. The third tier is urgent but not important. These kind of tasks you can do only after the first two but in case you have little to no time, then my next tip applies. The not urgent and not important can as well be thrown into the garbage can because you have no business doing anything that has no bearing on the future.

Delegate. I mentioned above that the ultra-wealthy know how to leverage time to get more done. It goes without saying that when you have so much to do and limited time-as is so often the case-delegation becomes your friend. You need to find a person competent enough to do the tasks that you can’t find time to or the tasks that are not very high value but still necessary for the smooth functioning of everything else. Just like organizations outsource non-core functions, individuals must learn to delegate non-core responsibilities so that they spend more of their time on those core tasks. (Offer a local workplace for mundane tasks)

Eliminate distractions. The challenge of living in our connected world is that there can be so many texts, emails, DMs, tweets and much more that are keen on stealing our precious time. I am sure you can relate to that time when you told yourself I will just check this one update and then continue doing what I was doing before. How you ended up spending the next 20-30 minutes on FB is anyone’s guess but the thing is that the little update just cost you half an hour of time you would have accomplished much. Distractions can also come from people who want to pop in time and again to catch up, say hi and all those seemingly harmless things we do daily. Maybe a DND note on your door would send the message to any potential catch-up colleagues. Do you need to put your notifications off within a certain timeframe? Is it worthwhile to put your phone on silent mode? What do you need to do to eliminate distractions? Just go ahead and do it. (Suggest tools that can be used to eliminate distractions)

Schedule Email and Social Media times. Because you must eventually come to the point where you need to look at your emails for important updates, go ahead and schedule a set time every day to look at them. In this time ensure you respond to all pending queries and requests. There is no crazy urgency when it comes to emails. If there was, the concerned party would have called to tell you to check out his email. Because also of our social nature, it is important to create time within your day for social catch up both on and offline. There is nothing wrong with looking at your Twitter when you have scheduled it. A little chatter over tea break will not hurt your productivity by a long shot. Socialize.

Keep your focus till the task is done. Build your ability to focus on one task until it is done. Do not be a touch and go kind of person because at the end of the day, you find yourself with too many projects hanging in the balance and it begins to stress you. Discipline yourself enough to say this is what I set out to do and no matter how challenging it gets, I am going to stay on course until it is done. You must refuse to be thrown off balance by little setbacks in the course of your day.  

Pair up activities. Another secret of getting more out of your day is to pair up activities that can be done concurrently. Think about listening to a podcast or an audiobook while driving from one point to another. Or using your lunch break as an opportunity to catch up with a friend or a prospect. A drink in the evening does not have to be a solitary affair. You can pull a friend or two and have a meaningful conversation in the course of your unwinding.

Automate. If any of the tasks you need to do can be automated, do the honorable thing and invest in an automated system to do the task for you. We have a lot of intelligent machines that can do some of our work better than us. We need to be ready to let them do it so that we can be employed in higher value tasks that need human ingenuity. We are entering the age of the autonomous car. That can only mean one thing. That you have more time on your hands to do things on the go like reading a book, having a meeting, making calls and so on. Take advantage of all the advancement in technology to free up more time for yourself. (Sell Automated solutions for tasks)

Catch your breath in between tasks. It is advisable to take a moment or two to catch your breath as you move from one task to the next. Taking a deep breath or stretching your limbs a little bit helps to keep you alert. Some people give themselves a power nap which could be as short as five minutes and they feel rejuvenated to go on with the rest of their day. Whatever you need to do, do it to refresh your mind especially after a mentally taxing task. There is a productivity technique known as the Pomodoro where you engage intensely in the task at hand for about 30 minutes then take a break before you go again.

What hacks are you applying in your own life when it comes to time? What have you learnt from this article that you will incorporate into your management of time? Let me know in the comments below. 

Would you like to delve deeper in this conversation on Time Management? If your answer is yes, reach out to me on samuelmwinamoa@gmail.com or +254725832477. 

Photo Courtesy of networkworld.com 

Dealing with your past

 

Whether it was a successful one or a failure. Whether you are proud of it or not, your past is the past.

I have come to the conclusion that we are all nostalgic about the days gone by. Why is it that we can’t seem to disentangle completely from the past? Is it even necessary to break with the past? What benefits lie in having a clean break with your past? In this article we will tell you why holding on to your past is a burden too heavy to bear and what you should do about your past. 

Everyone has a past that is as unique as they themselves. There are great and memorable moments in your past just the same way you have some not so pleasant experiences you can go on and on about. You cannot run away from the past that you have. What you can do is celebrate it, learn from it or put it in the back burner of your mind. 

Some of your gratitude must be informed by what has happened in your past. You have many pleasant memories of what the past was like. For such memories there is need for you to reflect with gratitude because they represent the good times of your life. They must never be diminished in your sight irrespective of what is happening presently. They should be used to put perspective into your thinking. They must remind you-even if things are very thick presently -that one time they looked good. Your great experiences of the past can help you stay hopeful in the face of adversity when you remember that you had victories to savor. They can give you confidence as you look to the future when you remind yourself that there was victory for you in the past and there is therefore an opportunity for future victory.  Your past victories are a shot in the arm. They can keep you optimistic and motivated. David is one man in the Bible who used this kind of thinking for ongoing victory. In remembering how God had helped him deal with the lions and the bears which had attacked his flock in the wilderness, he knew and believed it was possible to conquer Goliath. He faced Goliath with a confidence born out of his past victories. We too must think like David in our response to the challenges we are facing currently. We must look to the past for inspiration and reassurance that we’ve got this.

Your unpleasant memories serve the role of reminding you where you do not want to go back to. They can remind you of the wrong choices you made in your past. They will keep you grounded and help you take a more measured approach to issues in the future. Once beaten, twice shy. The questions you should be asking yourself from your unpleasant experiences are: what lessons can I learn from what I went through? Where did I go wrong? What happens when I face a similar situation in the future? Those who fail to learn from their past mistakes are bound to make them over and over again and suffer compounded losses as a result. You must develop the habit of milking all your experiences for what they are worth. Do not allow any experience of yours go to waste just because it was negative. You owe it to yourself to distill the valuable lessons embedded in your bad experiences. This guarantees you growth, progress and a better future.

At other times the best reaction to your past is to leave it in the past. After you have extracted the lessons and expressed gratitude for your past, it is best to leave it where it belongs. If not it has the potential to become a massive weight on your shoulders.  This can take two broad forms.

First it can make you complacent because you choose to revel endlessly on how great the past was. There are people who still talk about how great they were 20 years ago but have nothing to write home about today. Whereas it is not bad to look at the past with nostalgia, if that makes you absent from the present then it is robbing you of your life. You can be grateful for the past as you work to create many more pleasant memories. Celebrating the past should not be a hindrance to building something good today. Imagine what would happen if the world got stuck in the industrial revolution. How much progress would we have made today? When you remain stuck in your past accomplishments, you rob yourself of the chance to do something better, something more. There is much more land to be conquered, much more territory to be taken. Celebrate but be quick to go on to the next one because therein lies progress. 

The past can also be a burden when you choose to wallow in its lowest moments. Just because you messed up at some point does not mean your whole life is defined by that one moment. There is a huge danger when we allow our traumatic experiences of the past to become the defining moments of our lives. If it takes professional counsel to help you break free from your trauma, failure, loss or whatever is holding you back, by all means go ahead and get it because your life will remain static for as long as you don’t deal with those aspects of your past. Many people have short circuited their lives and rendered themselves ineffective because they refused or couldn’t find the help needed to break from their past. 

Do any of these scenarios define you? Are you stuck because of an over the top experience and wondering where else to go from here?  Let’s talk managing success. Are you finding it hard to move forward from a particularly taxing experience? Is that something you would want to talk about? Let me find you the right help by commenting on this post or sending me a DM on +254725832477. 

A fresh Start

A fresh Start

Is there ever an age where you should just give up and stop trying to make changes in your life? Have you gone too far that there is no room for back tracking? Is it too late to rewrite the story of your life?

These are questions we grapple with all the time as long as we live. In this article, we will think through these questions and see what options we have in this regard.

You can approach this life in a number of perspectives and each bears great implications and it is therefore very important that you choose the right perspective.

There are those who approach life as victims. They believe that life just happens to them and they have no control over any aspect of it. They cannot see what they could do differently to change the outcome of their lives. They believe in a fate that has been sealed which they can only live by. Such people will not attempt to make any amends. They will let everything flow as it comes

Others will live with the understanding that though life happens, they can do something about it. They do not deceive themselves that they have ultimate control, but they do all what is within their power to order their lives in a particular direction. They have a victor’s perspective. Which perspective would you want to live with as an individual?

I would choose the victor’s mentality any day of my life because it keeps me hopeful that there is something I can do about what is going on with me right now. For you to have the impetus needed to rewrite your story, you must first believe that it is possible. The idea that you have zero control must be banished from your mind. The same way you must also banish the notion that you will sit back and do nothing as you wait on God to do it for you. More often than not God provides the means but He still expects you to rise up and do it yourself. He provides guidance but it is your role to respond obediently.

After you have come to terms with who you are, if you don’t like who you are, or if you can improve on who you are then the next step is to start making adjustments as is required of you. Never for one moment think that you have run out of time. For as long as you woke up today, you must live your life with the realization that today you can take even one step to correct your reality. What matters most is not the big leaps you take to reverse your movement. It is the baby steps that build you the momentum you need for the big leap. Without focusing too much on how far you have gone or fallen, the question should be what you can do today to reverse the trend. You must always scan your surroundings to identify the wiggle room you have and make the most of it. If a hand is all you can move, by all means go ahead and move it. If you have the chance to take two steps do not think about the ten you cannot take.

The moment your eyes open up to the reality that your life is not what it ought to be, it is time to rewrite your story. It is time to paint a new picture of yourself. Understand that there is room to start over again. An addiction is not a death sentence. You can reverse the trend. An extravagant lifestyle is not in your DNA you can get rid of it. And even if it is found in your DNA, there is room for gene editing to end up with the desired make up. What pieces of your life can you get a hold of? What you need to do is quickly gather them together and begin to build something beautiful out of them. From ashes comes such beauty as no one thought possible. All it takes is a heart that believes and a mind that is ready to go to work and make these things a reality.

Do you feel the need to rebuild your life? Do you think you need a fresh start? Would you do with a helping hand in this regard? Respond in the comments and we will continue this conversation. You  can also reach me on +254725832477

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Your best Treat

The best gift for you-Self Awareness

Happy New Month! What are you grateful for concerning the last 9 months? what are you looking forward to this month and last quarter of 2020? 

Today's article is on a topic close to my heart-self awareness. There can be no genuine attempt at Optimizing your life before self-awareness. We build from the known into the unknown.

How well do you know yourself? What are your core competencies? Limitations? Areas of improvement? Gifts/talents? How do you make use of all your endowments?

Self-awareness is the beginning of living your life. Before you understand yourself, you live at a very shallow level at best. At worst you live a fake inauthentic life that is nothing close to who you really are. The saddest thing that can happen to you is for you to live ignorant of who you are. It is a travesty to the world and yourself.

When we fail to take the time to understand ourselves, what happens is that we live life by someone else’s script. We quickly bend to the opinions and preferences of others. We are left trying all manner of things all of which don’t work and leave us frustrated. The key to a peaceful, guided and contented life is to know yourself. There are no struggles to fit in for those who know themselves and are comfortable in their own skin. You do not need to fit in with the acceptable script. You are called upon to bring your unique signature onto the things you do and this is only possible when you know what that signature is.

The world around you does not need more of the same. We are where we are because our collective thinking has brought us this far. This same thinking cannot take us further than where we are. We must embrace new thought patterns that will elevate us to a whole new level. When you fail to embrace your uniqueness, you keep all of us stuck where we are.

So how self-aware are you? Your whole life this far has been making you and preparing you for this moment. Nothing has happened by chance. What can you gather from your unique experiences, upbringing, education, interactions, connections and so on that you have been taking for granted. No experience is worthless whether negative or positive. If only you can learn to look at it from a different perspective, you might just realize that in each experience lies a lesson or lessons that can serve you far much better in your current station in life.

Have you taken the time to understand your gifts and special abilities? Are you conversant with your talents? You will never exploit what you don’t know. Precious stones and minerals rarely stay on the surface. They are buried deep within layers and layers of soil. This is why you cannot discover your gifts when you live at a shallow level. There is need to dig deep and staying still plays a critical role in this regard.

In our busy world that is always in a hurry, taking time off seems to be a foreign idea. We find it strange to put off our phones and televisions, gadgets and gizmos and that is why we are just coasting through life. We live in a world where we’d rather pass time binge-watching Netflix series than connecting with our true selves. This is a sure recipe for an ignorant existence.

We need to take back our lives by all means possible. We need to ask deep penetrating questions of ourselves. We need to seek understanding of why we are here? We must answer those philosophical questions that have no quick answers. We need to connect with the one who made us and it requires a stillness that is unheard of in our busy world. We need the calmness deep within if we will open our eyes to what lies in there. This is much more important than anything you can do if you are interested in living that authentic life.

You also need to do it as a matter of urgency seeing as there is no point living ignorantly. The faster you can get around to understanding yourself the better for you because you have a longer time frame to live your life authentically. Imagine living a life that flows out of the deepest part of you from the days of your youth. There is nothing more fulfilling than this.

Becoming fully aware of yourself or living consciously is the best gift you can give yourself today. 

Beyond knowing who you are, part of self-awareness involves knowing where, when and how you are. There is need to figure out where you are in life in each and every area. You cannot begin to make any adjustments in your life until you are clear on where you currently stand. The key to this kind of awareness is to place yourself in front of the mirror and scrutinize the details of where you stand. There is a deep need for honesty in this regard if you will make any meaningful change. You have to truly tell yourself I have made this amount of progress for two major reasons. First it shows how much gratitude you need to live with every day and secondly it gives you a clearer picture of how much further you have to go. A good example is to have a look at your current finances. What is your current financial position? How much do you make regularly? What constitutes your recurrent expenditure? What is the exact amount you spend on each line item? Where are the opportunities for you to salvage something? Where can you make an extra coin? These kind of questions force you to have a good hard look at yourself and to make the necessary changes. There is no better transformation other than that which comes from a point of intimate knowledge about yourself.

Ask yourself which dispensation you are living in. it is important to know when you are living. Without that, you end up applying the tactics of the Stone Age in this 21^st century. When you live has a strong influence on how you live. What used to be so far removed from the common man 50 years ago, is very much within his reach today. What does it mean to live in a world where we can do all our computing on a hand held device? We have entered the dispensation of artificial intelligence. You must ask yourself how you will live in this dispensation. How can I take advantage of the time in which I live to accomplish much more than I thought possible? It is about making the most of the time in which you live. Esther 4:14-Who knows whether you came to the kingdom for such a time as this?

The next question is kind of cliché because we have talked about it ever since we knew how to converse. It is the question how are you? Many of us by default answer ‘I am fine.’ That is the answer you can give a stranger without much thought but when you are in the process of knowing yourself, you must go into the nitty-gritty of answering this question. You must delve into what areas are doing great in your life and what areas are ailing. You must use as much detail as possible to describe what it is that is currently happening in your life. So the next time someone asks you how you are, beyond giving them that short cliché answer, take it as an opportunity to really look at yourself and describe what you see. It can be a very daunting task. Not many people have the guts to look at themselves introspectively. This is because it reminds them of their humanity and how much work they still need to do on themselves. The picture is very ugly sometimes but someone has got to do it if they want to change what they will look like tomorrow. 

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In my book Blessed to be a Blessing I answer the question of who you are from the perspective of Your endowments. You can check out it's intro by following the link below. 

amazon.com/author/samuelmwinamo 

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