On Saturday, we received an early morning visitor \u2014 a relative who wanted to catch me and my husband before we left the house on our various errands. She came asking for help. The severe January rains had damaged her maize crop and she had reaped a scanty harvest. She wasn\u2019t the only one affected. She feared many would go hungry this year.<\/p>\n
I shared with her what I\u2019ve observed in neighbouring countries where people aren\u2019t so dependent on maize but eat a rich diet comprising a variety of staples. She enthusiastically told me about futali \u2014 a sweet potato dish mixed with groundnuts flour. She even described variations of the dish using sweet potato, cassava, or green bananas. I suggested it was time for us to stop defining food as nsima and think more diversely about our diets. She still requested money for a bag of maize and warned she\u2019d probably be back periodically throughout the year for additional assistance because of the predicted hunger.<\/p>\n
In business school professor Dr Srikumar Rao\u2019s book \u2018Are You Ready to Succeed? Unconventional Strategies to Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life\u2019, he tells the story of an old man who lived in a valley with his son. They were poor but happy and envied by their neighbours. One day, the old man used all his savings to buy the young wild horse for breeding. That same day the horse jumped the fence and ran away. The neighbours sympathised, \u201cHow terrible!\u201d to which the old man replied: \u201cGood thing? Bad thing? Who knows?\u201d<\/p>\n
Ten days later the horse returned with a whole herd of wild horses. The old man secured the enclosure to prevent further escapes. The neighbours gathered again \u201cWhat good fortune!\u201d to which the old man said: \u201cGood thing? Bad thing? Who knows?\u201d<\/p>\n
While his son was training the horses one of them threw him to the ground and broke his leg. It healed crookedly and left the son with a permanent limp and endless pain. \u201cSuch misfortune,\u201d the neighbours empathised. \u201cGood thing? Bad thing? Who knows?\u201d answered the old man.<\/p>\n
That summer, the king declared war and all young men from the village were forced into the army. The old man\u2019s son was spared because of his injured leg. \u201cTruly, you are a lucky man,\u201d exclaimed the neighbours, crying over the loss of their own sons. \u201cGood thing? Bad thing? Who knows?\u201d said the old man.<\/p>\n
Leadership expert Dr John Maxwell teaches that the greatest difference between successful and unsuccessful people is the way they think. \u201cPeople have no shot at success until they learn how to think correctly\u201d Maxwell states. The biggest difference in the way successful and unsuccessful people think is their perspective on life\u2019s challenges.<\/p>\n
Cateura, Paraguay, is arguably the poorest place in South America. The town sprang up around capital city Asuncion\u2019s rubbish dump and is home to 2,500 families who make their living scrounging through the rubbish. There\u2019s no electricity, plumbing or clean drinking water. Broken homes, illiteracy, drugs and crime are rampant.<\/p>\n
While working as an ecological technician at the landfill, Favio Ch\u00e1vez, a former music teacher, became deeply concerned that Cateura\u2019s children needed something to keep them out of gangs and help them believe in a future beyond the dump. He began offering music lessons on instruments built from recycled garbage.<\/p>\n
Today Ch\u00e1vez has taught music skills to over 120 children and the Recycled Orchestra performs regularly to global audiences. Well-wishers donate money and musical instruments and famous musicians give their time and talents to mentor the youth. When asked by an interviewer if he wanted to leave the slum now he had travelled all over the world one of the older children replied, \u201cThe secret is not to run away from a place. The secret is to change it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Necessity is the mother of invention. Everything ever invented was created in response to what we commonly label as problems. Sometimes hardship is what we need to push us outside our comfort zones. Maybe my relative\u2019s dismal crop isn\u2019t a tragedy but an invitation to think more creatively.<\/p>\n
The Bible describes a sick man who lay by a pool for 38 years waiting for someone to put him in when the water was stirred by an angel once a day. Only the first person in the water could be healed. In 38 years he hadn\u2019t thought of inching his way to the edge of the pool, ready to topple himself over when the angel visited. He hadn\u2019t thought of negotiating with whoever supplied him with food and water to throw him in at the right time. For 38 years the man lay there without devising an alternative strategy.<\/p>\n
No wonder Jesus asked him \u201cAre you really in earnest about getting well?\u201d 50 years after independence perhaps we should be asking ourselves the same question.<\/p>\n
Dr Maxwell believes the daily routine of every successful leader should involve taking a few moments at the end of each day to evaluate their experiences. \u201cYou will never make the most of the day that\u2019s coming until you evaluate the day that has passed,\u201d he advises.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t be quick to label circumstances good or bad. View every occurrence as a learning experience. What is the situation teaching you? It could be setting you up to become a transformational leader. Like Favio Ch\u00e1vez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Saturday, we received an early morning visitor \u2014 a relative who wanted to catch me and my husband before we left the house on our various errands. She came asking for help. The severe January rains had damaged her maize crop and she had reaped a scanty harvest. She wasn\u2019t the only one affected. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2392"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2397,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392\/revisions\/2397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}