Five years from now, or even tomorrow. You will meet with someone you met today or some years back with whom you may have exchanged ideas about how your futures will be like in terms of your “prospective marriages”, business ambitions, etc. and may have also discussed your ideas and goals. They looked really good at the time. Sometimes you were described a positive thinker who is on the road to success.
As you compare your “talk, then” with your experiences “today”, one of the following two things will happen: you will be excited to share your accomplishments, or embarrassed to discuss them with that person. This will because you either would have Improved significantly or completely underdeveloped yourself. Maluleke Hlulani Int’l, a known speaker and business coach loves to say “love does not get better by chance, it gets better by choice.” I truly believe he is right. It has to be made clear that your life is not anybody’s lottery project that may or may not work well. It’s not a gambling tournament, it’s a personal journey whose road is constructed by choices. Whether you arrive at your destination of purpose or not, is your choice.
REASONS FOR EITHER ONE OF THE OUTCOMES ARE
- The values you have developed and adopted. Your values shape your thinking and actions. People without personal values are tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. They are swayed by every blow.
- The way you trained yourself to see life and respond to it. I head of this statement, “it is not the weight of the object that’s too heavy, its your muscle that’s weak to carry”. Your ability to respond to challenges is based on how you have developed yourself.
Growing up in the villages made me realise this is true. Ordinary people celebrate when it rains for a moment after a long sunny day. But then, they complain about the same rain they welcomed with joy few hours later. At the same time, a farmer will celebrate even more if it rains a bit longer because it will water the orchards and fill the dam such that it becomes easy for him to continue with the plantation. Their response to the rain is not due to the rain it self, it is attributed to the meaning of rain to either one of them. A farmer is trained to appreciate the importance of rain because it brings in production. An ordinary person complains of rain because it keeps him indoors unnecessarily.
The quality of the choices you make daily. The kind of results you are seeing in your life are an elastration of the kind of choices you make. People with a well established value system have a clear understanding of the impact of their choices in their lives. When I see what people are getting out of their lives, I can tell of their value system.
IMPACT OF CHOICES
You are where you are today because of the choices you made yesterday. And you will be where you will be tomorrow because of the choices you are making today. I have often heard people say “I have worked hard for so many years...now I am reaping the rewards.” Your actions decides your results. It is however, possible that you may be doing much and getting less. In that case you need to check other factors such as the environment where you are working. But in any case, you reap what you have planted.
I believe that your choice have some form of effect in your life that are decided by natural laws. Take for example, the such as “for every action, there is a reaction” as stated by Sir Isaac Newton; no matter how we can argue that law, you will still find it affecting your life, one way or another. Our choices determine:
• Whether we live in the comfort of what we have today, hoping it will stay that way, or we create better opportunities for ourselves.
• Whether we live from hand to mouth, or plant a garden that will sustain us beyond working years.
• Whether our choices fulfil short term needs or long term purposes.
• Whether we allow the desperations of today to make us ignore the consequences that our current decisions and actions have on our future.
Our actions are usually based on two value systems. These systems have a bearing on what you see in many African people. If we can be able to overcome these somewhat distorted mentalities, we may be able to overcome poverty in Africa.
1. The hunter’ Value System (can be called the African or the consumer’s value system). This system is based on the strong desire to satisfy the immediate need and less about the future or long term consequences of today’s actions. It is also seen with a compulsive material consumption and inability to preserve wealth.
2. The farmers value system. This system focuses on the choices and actions employed today in relation to the results or bearing they have on the future. These are described well by the ever so wise King Solomon when he said “cast your bread upon the waters, for you shall find it after many days”. He teaches people to sow in the morning, at noon and at night and never observe the wind. Unfortunately, only a few minorities have grabbed this liberating truth and has set them free.
Both the systems have benefits, losses and consequences, but the first value system has more consequences than benefits.
The Hunter’s value system
This is the systems that tend to see small things as big and big things as small. Usually small problems are magnified to an extent of terrifying people from taking positive action. At the same time, the things are real problems that require focused, intelligent attention and solutions, they are often ignored or banked for future intervention which more than half the time, they are never looked at again until crises arises from such ignorance.
People in this system usually have one natural talent but are not able to industrialise it. They can be seated on a well of Gold, but never realise its potential. You see, this kind have the ability to catch a good prey but fail to roast it ant eat. Proverbs 19: 24 says “a lazy man buries his hand in a bowl. And will not no so much as bring it to his mouth again.” And further says in chapter 13:23 that there is so much food in the land the poor. The question is why are they not eating it but starve to death in a fat land?
I believe the following explains their behaviour:
• They focus on what is seen and needed now, to satisfy the needs of today. Anything hidden does not exist in their vocabulary. For something to exist, it must be visible or have been seen before in their natural eye.
• They focus on enticing activities that may not have any pain involved (most of the time). These don’t like to pay the price, and enjoy later. They want to eat and then, pay. Sometimes they do not afford the price and end up losing life or pay it with their dignity. They do not see that life tends offer opportunities wrapped in hard work and temporal pain.
• They think of working when they want to eat, or to get something to satisfy the need of today.
• They tend to think on their stomach. They make decisions that are motivated by a hunger. Hence they can start rich and end in poverty because of the consumption mentality.
• They work like worms, mostly eat their food and leave nothing, or a stink. Worms are very important part of the ecosystem. They help in making sure that the natural grazing land gets fertilizers from decayed natural products. The problem is, after eating and turning carcases into secondary products, they die. Their life cycle is be born and then eat your way to death.
• Hunter’s usually do not see the diversity of their wealth.
- Like African’s: they can be surrounded by so much wealth and opportunities and not see them. They can import the food that they have because they can’t process it. I mean, Africa produce so much from the wealth of natural resources such as Gold, Diamond, Oil, Platinum and many other products, but we still have to send these products to be processed else where.
- I believe that’s why many foreign nationals flock into South Africa to South Africa. Thy can come to your village, or city and start a legitimate business next to your house, or even rent your garage to take the wealth that you did not see.
- South Africans see Poverty... Foreigners see wealth.
• They have long term exposure to negatives that end up becoming realities.
• They are skilful in Identifying their prey: but they are somewhat underdeveloped in catching the pray. If they do catch it, they struggle to process it.
- They can identify one prey, but spend the whole day trying to catch it, and fail. The good thing about them is that they can study the animal so well: how it sleeps, how it moves, its weaknesses, etc. But the same animal that they have studied so well, still plays mind tricks with them that leave hungry and frustrated.
- Mostly they have more abortions in their minds than they give birth to what they conceive. If ideas were tangible products that expires if not used, some people’s minds would be dirtier than a Municipal Waste Site
• They are single minded. They can only pursue one thing at a time. Hence the phenomena of multiple streams of income sound like unnecessary. Instead, they would rather work over time. They can’t have two investments at once but settle to work for a salary for life. Once they get into one thing, it’s difficult for them to pursue another goal. Because of lack of diligence, they are put to hard labour for life. Systenious Makhubele, a speaker and author of Get Out of Your Way says; if hard work paid more, our parents would be very rich.
• They use more strength, time and resources to achieve one single item. Their activities cannot be equated to the results.
• They can’t breed their own food; they rely on what is available out there.
• They have to start afresh every day. They cant develop a system that sustains their provision without them. For them to eat, they have to go to the field by themselves. Similar to the tender business. You can wake up broke, sleep rich and be broke again the following day because your business can’t produce products that sell themselves and generate income when you are not watching. You are not rich until you make money in your sleep.
• They don’t know how to expand to new territories.
• They think that the only way to get rich is by putting extra hours without redesigning the system.
• They have more but cannot determine the value of what they have. Hence the poorest nations are those endowed with more natural resources, they can’t decide on the price of what they have. They cannot even process it to secondary products. They eat what they have as it is.
• They have a plan for the next weekend or two, but have no idea how their lives should be in five years. Live in the moment
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I WILL SHARE WITH YOUR THE FARMER'S VALUE SYSTEM ON MY ENXT ARTICLE.
however, let me conclude this articel by siting that successful people are those who had the courage to answer the questions that we were all asking and later turned around to sell their answers to us (not my own).
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