In barely four days, January 2017 will be added to the pages of history books, merely to be recounted but never to be revisited.
Lately, I began to realise how unconsciously I had begun to lose steam, the vigour with which I started the year, my plans, my focus, my drive… there were nights I felt drained out, confused about the possibilities of the future I had scribbled down for the year. So I decided to take a break and re-examine why I was losing steam, why I have failed to hit my personal goals for this month, why I should not give up but press on to the mark set before me. I know many are wearing my type of shoes, losing steam just a few steps away from the starting line.
So, I began to meditate on how to catch the needed fire, get the needed adrenaline to run through this year with head held high.
The vital question arises ‘Why do we lose steam?’
The first reason why many of us lose steam is because we did not set out with goals in the first place.
If you are familiar with the game of football, imagine a major match, let’s say between Barcelona Vs Real Madrid, with thousands of fans in the stands, millions sitting on the edge of their sits, grinding their teeth and staring into their TV sets, people betting on and off line with so much money at stake, coaches, journalists and players all on pitch, and just when the referees show up and the whistle is blown, the cameras turn to both ends of the pitch and we see there are no goal posts! What an insane situation that would be, it could be termed the greatest pitch disaster in football history. But do you know that’s how many of us start our year or approach our dreams in life? We are all excited about our dreams; who and what we want, where we hope to be, but we so often fail to set out goals to achieve them. It can be tiring, were the match to start in the given scenario, the players would run, dribble and play, the crowd will cheer but it would end with blistered bleeding feet, exhaustion mixed with frustration and absolutely no result. It’s like running a race without a finish line. It’s also similar to starting a car without defining where you’re heading; you’ll end up by a roadside with either a flat tire or an empty tank. Setting out with goals has the propelling and compelling power to drive us to accomplishment. Goals are like a target at a distance, they form the aim and the path through which our bullets travel. They are like a vision afar that the heart always needs to beat after.
Another reason why people lose steam is discouragement.
Maybe you began the year on a positive note and somewhere along the line, you encounter some unexpected challenges, or people told you your dreams are not worth it and won’t fly, maybe it’s even lack of support from your loved ones, friends and or family, or you didn’t get that much-needed fund to fly that project or idea. However true the situations may be, you have to realize that no one (realistically) actually wakes up expecting to be involved in an auto crash, have his or her legs amputated and walk on wheels the rest of their lives, but terrible things do happen out of the blue, we can get caught up in unforeseen events, the sun can go down and the lights can go off, but until we look carefully to find the COURAGE in our dis-COURAGE-ment, we may never find the need to forge ahead. It’s high time we begin to readjust our mindset and accept that failures, discouragement, hardship and disappointments are an integral part of life, while they shouldn’t be our approach to everyday life, they, however, happen to every known man on the face of the earth. The bigger picture, however, is not the circumstances we face but how we face them; it’s not about the war we face but the warrior within us. I can’t remember where I read or heard this, ‘you can break my body but you can’t kill my spirit.’ We must learn to thrive and survive, whatever may come our way. Stop asking ‘why me?’ should it then be your neighbour, brother, mother or friend? Would that be good enough for you? The greater advantage of problems to those it comes to is an underlying ability to overcome them and a strong mind to dismantle them.
Read below, a true life, inspiring story of an athlete which I adapted from http://brainprick.com/john-stephen-akhwari-the-greatest-last-place-finish-in-olympic-history/ to drive home some points:
It was on a hot Sunday afternoon, October 1968 Olympic Games; 3:00 pm local time in Mexico City the men’s marathon started with 74 participants but 17 of them could not finish the 26 mile race. At 7pm, it was almost an hour since all marathon runners had crossed the finishing line when suddenly; a lone runner wearing the colours of Tanzania emerged through the stadium gate literally hobbling. The event left the last few thousand audiences amazed with what they experienced next – the man who emerged was John Stephen Akhwari, who while running, had fallen down and had badly hurt himself. He was bleeding and his knee had got dislocated from the joint.
Considering the severity of his injuries, Akhwari was repeatedly asked to quit the race but he denied. He fell, dragged himself, ran in between but finished the marathon limping over the line. On the finishing line, he received a huge applause and almighty cheers from the little crowd. His body was exhausted but not his spirit; his competitors crossed him one by one but his determination rewarded him in tremendous pain. Akhwari never won any Olympic gold medal but he became the greatest example of never-give-up spirit, and a tale of courage.
When he was asked the reason of doing such kind of crazy act, he replied,
“My country did not send me 10,000 miles just to start the race; they sent me to finish the race.”
Ever since, John Stephen Akhwari has been honoured and symbolised as the living example of courage and determination. In 1983, he was awarded a National Hero Medal of Honor. In 2000, he was invited to the Olympics in Sydney, Australia and 2008 he was invited in Beijing as a goodwill ambassador to inspire the Olympic athletes for the 2008 Games.
To be continued…
- Melchizedek, son of Michael
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