Sit and Watch Your Life Reel Through!

I love sports. My interest in sports pushed me to know the rules of many sport events that I would never participate in or probably never witness others playing. In particular, like 75% of the 170 million people in my country, I love football. I so love football that I used to sit long periods at a time discussing the players’ rumors, the possible transfer headlines, the problem with referees and lots more. Sometimes our discussion leads us on journeys back in the days and we vividly describe events that happened then.

Recently in one of such discussions we traveled back in time to the world cup event of 1994 – US ’94 it was popularly called – and discussed the many euphoric moments. Our country was represented for the first time on the biggest football stage on the planet. We went there as African champions and I vividly remember thinking – rather erroneously with hindsight - that we would be certainly unstoppable after gloriously conquering Africa just some months earlier.

Suddenly it dawned on me that this sports event I was vividly describing was twenty years ago! Where had all the time gone? Twenty years! If this was US ’94 then I am twenty years in the future. The obvious question that arose was, “Was this the future I envisioned?” I refused to answer not because I didn’t know the right answer but because I didn’t want to hear it.

Our lives do not come to us all at once. I remember my father describing fifty-year-old events “as though it were just yesterday.” Our lives come in years, and years in months, and months in weeks, and weeks in days, and days in hours, and hours in minutes and seconds. It stands to reason that what you do with the seconds – the very second you are living through right now – determines what will be the outcome of the results you will produce in the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and ultimately in your life.

If the next twenty years – 2034 – would bring better outcomes I must ask myself the difficult question, “What am I doing with this second?” It is the same with you and your friends and your family. We have all the power to choose what we do with this second but we have no power whatsoever to determine the outcomes we would experience in the next twenty years.

Choose wisely.

Transition Person II: How To Be One

No matter what has happened, is happening, or will happen, there is a space between those things and our responses to them. ­– Stephen R. Covey

It is important to be a transition person. You get to stop any unwanted trait in your family, work, church, or community. In addition you have the privilege of starting new paths and traits for the next generation. In a way you become a definer of the future.

It is important but not easy to be a transition person. It takes the intentional development and use of several virtues to break a chain. A chain breaker must be disciplined, courageous, focused, creative, and consistent – among other things. Without these virtues developed in a transition person effective transition wouldn’t be possible.

Effective transition is only actualized when the people coming after you actually take to your reformed path. People may like your path, or speak positively about your ideas but they must get to the point where they actually take the steps you require of them before you can consider your transition as effective.

So how do you bring about effective transition? You must be:

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1.     Open to instructions. The person that will effectively transit must be open to new instructions he isn’t used to.

2.     Obedient to instructions. You don’t know it all. No one person does. When you receive the right instructions obey.

3.     Willing to change. You cannot be an effective transition person if you remain uncomfortable with change. Be willing to leave your comfort zone.

4.     A sower. You must sow to reap. It is a principle for growth.

5.     Patient. You should remain patient with the process. Don’t expect immediate results. Your target is the future not the present. Remember.

6.     Unafraid of being tagged a nonconformist. All transition persons are called names. Nelson Mandela was called, “The Black Pimpernel,” Jesus was called the Agent of Beelzabub. You won’t be different.

7.     Willing to pass down the baton. You will be an incomplete transition person if you don’t pass down the new baton to the next generation thereby starting a brand new change. It is said, “There is no success without a successor.”

Transition Person I: Don't Continue the Rusted Chain

No matter what has happened, is happening, or will happen, there is a space between those things and our responses to them. ­– Stephen R. Covey

 It is easy – much easier – to react to things rather than respond to them. We are taught in physics that action and reaction are equal and opposite and so we internalize that and give back what has been given to us.

In the same way it is easier to continue the chain of what we see around us rather than break it. In our desire not to be the weak link we become blinded to the fact that the chain we are protecting is rusted. A rusted chain is the family in which mummy got pregnant out of wedlock, first daughter, second daughter and third daughter let's it "happen" to them. It is a business in which boss is verbally abusive, manager verbally abusive, supervisors verbally abusive. It is the home in which father beats mummy, sons beat girlfriends.

We all have had (or still have) our share of rusted chains. The easy thing to do is ensure the rusted chain doesn’t break with you. For example, my Dad gave himself to alcohol for much of his young life and I found myself with an alcohol bottle every evening in my early youth. Not only that, I initiated my younger brother! I had to get to the point where I spoke sense to myself to not continue the habit I so hated in lovely daddy.

It is only when you decide not to continue the rusted chain that you become a transition person. A transition person, in the words of Stephen R. Covey, is “one who stops unworthy tendencies from being passed on from prior generations to those that follow.”

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          The transition person is a chain breaker. He doesn’t sit back and allow life happen to him but makes life happen. He doesn’t react to stimulus, he responds to it. He recognizes that he has the power to determine how his life turns out and decides daily to take only the steps that ensure the rusted chain breaks.

Transition persons are priceless to the future. They are the hope we have for a better tomorrow. They are the reasons we will not have better yesterdays. They set a different example for the next generation to emulate. Do you want to be a transition person? Sure you do! Follow my next article as it shows how to be one.