Few years ago, I served as Treasurer of Big Bullets Football Club. Honestly speaking, serving as a treasurer of a team that had no sponsorship at that time was a daunting task.<\/p>\n
Despite all the challenges the team faced, there were two huge lessons I learnt. The first lesson was that failure is a product of failure mentality.<\/p>\n
The second lesson was that champions are not made during the actual crucial game but during the long hours of strenuous training. Winning championships in sports is about disciplined commitment during preparations.<\/p>\n
For Big Bullets, winning championships was more that thorough preparations as it was also about making sacrifices and dreaming big. Officials, players, well-wishers and supporters made sacrifices to ensure that the team maintained its winning formula throughout the season.<\/p>\n
Words like \u201cimpossibility, failure or defeat\u201d never existed in our minds. Whether we had money or not, the team would still travel to Mzuzu play a game and win. In those days of financial difficulties, officials used to sacrifice their own resources to supplement the revenue from gate collections and donations from other well-wishers.<\/p>\n
I recall in those days, players could sometimes go for a week or two without receiving their training allowances. Sometimes they could go for a month or two without receiving their salaries, but we still soldiered on and continued winning games.<\/p>\n
Fortunately for us, we had very mature players who understood the financial status of the team and the sacrifices various stakeholders made to ensure its sustainability. Despite the financial challenges, the team kept on winning one game after the other. The team which had no sponsorship even made history by winning the Super League and another trophy.<\/p>\n
In my regular interaction with the players, it was clear that they had a winning mentality. Allowances or no allowances, the players used to prepare each game seriously. As a matter of fact there was no talk of defeats, \u00a0\u00a0poor condition of the pitch, poor this or that. As each game approached, the focus of the players was to win at all cost.<\/p>\n
It was a football club with a winning mentality. At that time the fate of teams which had good sponsorship but were operating with mentality of failure is well chronicled in the media.<\/p>\n
Writing on this issue of winning mentality, renowned motivational speakers Norma Moscoso and Jerson Blanco once observed that although we all live in the same world and experience different situations that affect us positively or negatively, there is a powerful resource that draws abysmal differences and gives us a particular lens to perceive, assume and react to these daily events. This resource is called mentality.<\/p>\n
The mentality that everyone has is like a prism, a particular lens that allows a person in a situation to only see one problem, one obstacle or another reason to complain, to desist and for another, to discover a challenge, an opportunity to learn, to help and even a business opportunity, observed the two authors.<\/p>\n
Some have the mentality of success while others have the mentality of failure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mentality of success helps you prosper, to expand your world, your relationships, to make the path toward your objectives a non-torturous one, but to have a clear vision, to be a process that you enjoy and are impacted by.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mentality of failure however, is one that makes you focus on a black dot in a white canvas, leads you to waste opportunities, to distance yourself from people in your social circle and complain about them, to have excuses and problems become your daily bread.\u201d<\/p>\n
As we march to 2019, our politicians need to develop a mentality of success instead of being trapped in mentality of failure. Political developments that have happened in the region offer our politicians great lessons on the need to have positive mentality.<\/p>\n
In Zimbabwe, former President Robert Mugabe sacked his deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa when succession struggle within the ruling ZANU PF reached a climax. It is obviously that Mnangagwa complained bitterly deep-down in his heart about the sacking but that never made him resign to fate.<\/p>\n
He sneaked out of Zimbabwe and strategised how to make a comeback. With the support of his allies in the military, Mnangagwa\u2019s plan worked and today he is the country\u2019s head of state.<\/p>\n
In South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa had to fight his way to the top after former President Jacob Zuma pulled his own shocker. Instead of supporting his own deputy (Ramaphosa) to be his successor, Zuma decided to support his former wife.<\/p>\n
Ramaphosa never lost hope but focused on his strategies. He was elected leader of the African National Congress and just few days ago he ascended to the position of South Africa\u2019s head of state.<\/p>\n
Lesson learnt. Like the players of Big Bullets of yesteryears, Mnangagwa and Ramaphosa never dwelt much on the challenges they faced but on solutions to those challenges.<\/p>\n
If you want to be elected a councillor, a lawmaker or State President in 2019, have a clear strategy of how you will win elections. But if you assume that complaints about challenges you are facing will catapult you into power, you are wasting your time.<\/p>\n
In life, let\u2019s accept that our fate and our destinies are in our hands. Our success or failures are the product of our own plans and our own actions. Blaming everything else on someone else is a mentality of a failure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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