There are two forces that exert tremendous power on all humans ultimately pulling them like magnets to their destinies. The first of these is the controlling desires or the gripping vices. These are enervating habits and marauding lusts that always inhibit a man's quest for success. Men need not be saints in order to be successful, but it is imperative that they attain some level of self-discipline in order to achieve sustainable success. Uncontrolled habits have been known to bring down even the greatest among men. The most lethal of these are the thinking habits. I will not dwell much on bad habits, but it is important to point out that every habit begins as a thought. The second force is the power of the dominant dream or overriding passion. By this I do not mean an idle wish or a dilute desire but an ardent ambition and a fervent passion that is accompanied by pictures of the desired future state in the mind. Bad habits have a pulling down, gravitational like power while the dominant dream has unstoppable forward thrust.
Regardless of how successful or how checkered with difficulties the past has been, the future need not be like the past. Today does not have to be as dreary as yesterday. If today is filled with shame and drudgery, tomorrow can and should be refreshingly different. The future belongs to the dreamers. A man earning hundred pula a month today can earn a million dollars a year in future. A floor sweeper in the ministry of finance can one day be the minister of finance. A junior journalist today can be tomorrow's media magnet. There is no limit to what you and I can become. Your circumstances may be less than ideal or totally unfavourable, but they will not remain so if you can conceive of a dream and strive towards it. The future can, and should be dramatically, significantly and enormously different from the past and the present. Here and now, I would like to take this opportunity to issue a challenge to you. Dare to dream of a glorious future, and of reaching heights where only champions are found. Having said that let us proceed and explore some truths about dreams.
* A man's world is built upon his vision of the future. A blind man is surely limited by his reach because he depends on his sense of touch to grope his way forward. An ignorant man is undermined by his lack of knowledge, but the achiever is limited by only his vision of the future. All achievements begin as thoughts. Thoughts that are linked with other thoughts and developed become ideas. The mighty baobab tree begins as a seed, so also all great achievements begin as small dreams. The great achievers of this world are those that dare to carefully and patiently nurse and develop their dreams. Somewhere in their minds and certainly on paper they have graphic word and pictorial descriptions of the future. They appreciate that it is not a disaster to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is tragic to live with no dream to pursue. The failures entertain idle wishes and vain thoughts and by so doing attract failure, vanity and smallness to their lives.
* The greatest enemy of the future is the past, and the greatest enemy of your dream is within and not outside you. Many people unwittingly use the past as the consultant on their future. Their failures and frustrations of the past make them fretful about the future. To their detriment they keep pictures of past hurts on their minds. By constantly revisiting these unhappy moments they develop very low opinions of themselves. Consequently, their dreams are small and their actions are at best timid. Winners do not consult their fears and past hurts and disappointments. They pursue their dreams knowing that everyday brings with it an opportunity to get closer to the attainment of their dreams. They do not frustrate themselves by thinking of the things they failed to accomplish but they excite themselves by dreaming of what they can still accomplish in the future.
Winners also realise that the most important conversations they will ever have are with themselves because every waking moment man speaks to himself. His ideas, dreams and thoughts are all conversations that he constantly holds internally with himself. The loser shoots down his dream in his secret world of internal conversations, but the winner builds it up. The winner deliberately speaks in his heart and also audibly to encourage, affirm and exhort himself. He not only imagines himself succeeding, but also speaks to the champion within.
It does not matter how old or how successful you are, you can still have a dream
It is important that you make a very conscious and deliberate clarification of your intentions at the beginning of each day before you set off into the mad rush of the day's business, and at the end of each day before you retire to bed. Without big dreams we sentence ourselves to the jail of mediocrity. He who cherishes and nourishes a beautiful vision in his heart and pursues it with unrelenting pace and resolve will one day realise it.
Dare to dream big dreams and make plans to fulfill them.
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