Africans Way

If you don’t know who you are, everyone will define you and you will spend the rest of your life trying to fit into the “boxes” in which they put you. “Know thyself”. You may have heard this phrase from many speakers and writers. But what does it really mean to you?

Do you consider yourself as a brand? As defined by David Ogilvy, a brand is an intangible sum of a product's attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it's advertised. In simpler terms, it is a kind of something as distinguished by its distinctive characteristics. People often say that someone has not found himself. There are elements that you can find in you that contribute to who you are. A bigger responsibility lies on your ability and willingness to polish those attributes, skills and image to create the person you want to be and how you want other people to perceive you. You are unique, special and original. Stop trying to be an imitation. We live in a global community, and competition in every corner is becoming tougher and tougher. This competition applies to opportunities in business, jobs, bursaries, sports and many areas. This calls for one to discard mediocre attitude and strive for excellence, being the best at who you are and what you do.

Why do you buy a specific brand instead of the other? It could be because of its reliability in performance, a symbol of status, your mother always used it, loyalty, price and many other reasons. Largely, it is because of the way you perceive that brand. Marketers and brand managers spend a lot of time to ensure that they create a product in line with their brand, influencing consumers’ minds to perceive their product as the best. How often do we consciously create personal branding in ourselves?

The way you conduct yourself determines if people will want to associate with you or not. In the olden days, if a young person misbehaved in the presence of the elders, you would hear them asking, whose child is this? Have you ever wondered why? It is because you are a representation of your family, your business or employer and your nation. You are an ambassador. For example, during the 2010 World Cup, if the “visitors” from other countries see someone holding a South African flag or wearing Bafana Bafana jersey being rude or misbehaving, they won’t say, “John misbehaved”, but they will say “South Africans misbehave”. That is the great power you have to build or destroy. It is therefore in your hands to ensure that in all your interactions you build a great reputation and create a powerful and best brand that people would ever want to associate with.

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As we proceed with our daily life there are people that we always engage with, it can be a person at work who is cleaning, security personnel, the guy that you always see on your way to work, your bus mate, the shop assistant that you always see, the delivery guy that collect and deliver parcel at work, you customers, suppliers, etc. These are people that we always meet and they form part of the circle of people around you. People mentioned above exclude your former teacher at school, school mate, your relatives, etc because you always take note of them as they directly impacted your life and you actually noticed their contribution in your life. What I want to talk about here is the first group of people which you interact with them on daily basis and you do business with them while you think you are just doing your work for a day.

Whatever is happening in our life is not just happening; however there is always something that we can learn from it. So have you asked yourself why God at this specific time strategically placed you in a position where you interact with these people that you see on daily basis? What exactly have you withdrawn from your interaction with these people that you are placed with? Maybe the first question to be asked is that are you taking notice of these people or are you opening yourself for an engagement with these people that are in front of you?

The reason I’m saying this I have seen people that you least expecting to get help from, actually receiving help from them. Besides getting help, you are sometimes learning something from interacting with them of which that can be of your great help going forward. Remember you learn from each and every incidence you encounter in life it can be good or bad. So open yourself for more learning it will makes you a better person in future. We need to remember that people we met long ago in most cases we have learnt from them already so there is a little new things that you can look forward to when you try to reconnect with them. It must be the fact that you need to move to the next level of growth that is why you were removed from them, so take up the challenge of learning and learn.

We are not saying disregard your family, your old friends, etc, stay in touch with them, however if you always try to live the past life in present time you will have a little development in your life. The reason for that is because you don’t want to learn and move forward and to understand the importance of the place you are strategically positioned presently.

I have learnt this in my entire life where people outside from my family become so resourceful to me more than the people that you might expect to be. Even the guy next door to you, might be of a great help to you. Our challenge is that we are bound into family tradition, where you only highly consider people from your family or relatives. In most cases that has been proven fruitless e.g. when hiring a person because s/he is your relative/ family member/ friend only to find a person is not even in a position to do that job or getting that business deal. That normally results is poor workmanship which discredits you. This challenge as well that develops a situation where people feel as if you need to belong to a certain family or group to make it in life that demoralizing the society with the capacity.

Good people let us not allow the growth which will be in sailors; we need to fulfill the plan of God to place us where we are and to have the circle of people we engage with. Each and every person is important and let try find out the purpose of knowing or of interacting with people you deal with on daily basis.

By: Musa Gumede

Your achievements are the fruits of what occupies your mind. Everyone’s progress lies in what s/he thinks all the time. They even go as far as saying we are what we think. I agree with that statement as well, I have seen people who are the living examples of that. People who will tell you that they chose to forget about their negative past and focus on the brighter side of life. These people have achieved a lot through forgetting things that will let them down.

The key element here is known when to forget and what to forget in life. Imagine living in the past. That mean you will be tailing and time will be ahead of you as well. Your achievement will be the achievement that was achieved by people in your past. What are they achieving now will come to you in some years to come. There are some consequences of moving forward and forgetting the past.

That is why today we have highly successful people who are from humble background; however they chose not let the background detect their destination in life. This is the skill of forgetting your weakness and focusing on your strongness and build from there.

We have seen relationships tumbling apart because people enter into a new relationship without first dealing with their previous relationship, especially if it was abusive. The art of knowing when to forget and what to forget comes handy in that scenario as that helps you to focus on the current relationship and enjoy it. This will help you to see and understand that people are unique and they possess different qualities and personalities.

Imaging a person who doesn’t forget at all, s/he will have a pile of grudges in his mind. There be a little way forward in that person’s life and he will always think on how he can revenge and defend himself. On the other hand if he took what happened previously as a learning curve for the future that will put him somewhere in life. Here comes again the importance of learning of when and what to forget.

As South Africans I don’t think that we would have been living in a peaceful country like this if certain men and women never took the decision to forget about the past and focus to the future. I’m referring here to the apartheid which was a crime into humankind, however it is now a thing of the past and there are no grudges held against anyone. The prosperous nation focuses on investing to the future through looking forward with things that will benefit the nation. This art of knowing when and what to forget can produce limitless rewards.

By: Musa Gumede

In this motivational message I want to look at a very touchy subject in people’s life. It is touchy because it has implications in person career and daily living.

I’m referring to a situation where you disappear in eyes of people, receiving less recognition or people just forget that you exist. We have seen this happening to our celebrities; it can be in soccer, music, acting, etc. However this happens even in your life, where you feel that you get no exposure or attention in whatever you are doing.

One asked me that: “what must one do if s/he was a public figure, but now s/he is no longer commanding that status”. The mistake that is normally committed by people is to walk and force their way back to the podium once they occupied. In doing that they attract a lot of unnecessary negative attention. We need to understand that in life sometime we disappear in order to appear again. So there will be no appearance without a disappearance.

I want to look at the critical important power which is within us. The power to comeback after a crisis, after you have fallen, during time of adversity and difficulties. You must know you can come back, because you do have the comeback power.

Many successful people I know they have common characteristics. They have what it takes to overcome set-backs. If you look at their road to success you will see at some point they encountered some form of obstacles. However understanding the power in them to come back, they overcame those obstacles. This is what I call the comeback power.

Our tremendous challenge is to change the way we think and behave.

One of my favorite author said “Our deepest fear is our light” We often ask ourselves who am I to be successful, bright etc? Whereas the question we should be asking ourselves, who am I not to be not successful?

We suffer so much from this ailment of not believing in ourselves and it’s very easy to under estimate ourselves. Bishop TD Jakes calls it “Grasshoppers mentality”
That mentality delays or at times it robs us our breakthroughs and success.

In life nothing is truly yours until you understand it, not even yourself. An Irish proverb says,” You have to do your growing, no matter how tall your grandfather is” God created you separate, unique, special and original. All you need to do is to discover and be yourself.

By Musa Gumede

The environment surrounding us can tell you how you should look like and how you should behave yourself e.g. when attending business conference or going to a social gathering. We concentrate more on what people would like to see in us and indeed we try by all means to reflect that to the world. Is that you? Or is what you want people to think of you?

Sacrificing your true self for the sake of portraying an image of a person you are not.  So that make me to ask the question “Is this really you or not?”

Remember the last time when you were alone in your room and you were certain that there is nobody looking at you. How you handled yourself? How you talked to yourself? The person you are, is that you person you are when there is nobody looking?

Do that person you are when there is nobody looking known by people outside?  If the answer is no, then you are still living under the oppression of the environment around you and you want to portray the image you are not and that is the concern.

Live Who You Are

If you are not living who you are you are in a danger of dying without living your life; however you were living the life that is dictated to you by the environment. Remember you are unique and God created only you for a specific purpose. If you are living your life genuinely, you are near to find your divine purpose for you to be here in this planet earth.

Is this really you or not? Finding you’re true self can begin now as to put a stop on this identity crisis. Close the door in your room, make sure that you are alone, and ask yourself this question. Do I live life to please other people so they can love me? Do people know what I don’t like, and what I like?

Once you have shown who you are when there is nobody looking and you are satisfied that this is really you, it will be the only time you will know which areas of development you can work on in life when relating to other people. The key factor here is that get out of the cocoon, show people who you are, maybe you can inspire people the way you are or you can get assistance to develop yourself on who you are for the better.