Enoch Kabange on Making the best of the New Year!

Over the years, I have read lots of books and consumed other articles, videos and workbooks on self-development. I've come up with a conclusion on what it takes to improve.

Listen to my podcast on this same topic

The mindset game: How far can intelligence take you?

The mindset aspect is so crucial to becoming a massive success. Therefore, knowledge is something you can’t ignore as someone who wants to improve. Hungry people never get satisfied. Does it surprise you that even Bill Gates still reads books? Check GateNotes, you'll see.

Having knowledge is potential profit.

But knowledge isn't and end in itself.

It is a means to an end.

Have you ever seen someone you thought as a dumb person and they go on to achieve success?

Does it strike you that a lot of successful people were considered Mentally incapable?

Check the story of Leslie Brown, I consider him the greatest motivational speaker of all time.

Knowledge and intelligence are just one aspect of the success equation. Intelligence also is a dicey thing. School and the education system are designed to assess the ability to recall facts and theories. Some are good at that kind of knowledge while others aren't. That's a flaw in the education system but that doesn’t mean don't go to school. 

Courage, the ability to stare at your fears and do it anyway

The other variable to achieving success is a trait that may take time to develop. It has to do with the ability to take gut decisions in split seconds and moving straight to action without allowing excuses and fear to come into play. You may call it courage. Yeah, that'll be a good word to describe it. Another word may be the desire to defy the odds. Have you asked yourself what drives someone like Elon Musk? He doesn’t allow the odds to stop him. His projects and business ideas are often grand, things no single person has done and they command a large number of guts, daring attitude.

Some people have little knowledge but have all the guts and courage to do what they think should be their next move. Such people, if good at pattern recognition (Which helps in making intuitive decisions), can soon learn from experience. But I'd rather learn from others and save myself the foreseeable mistakes. This concept birthed the thinking that you can "fail forward" and "The faster you fail, the faster you succeed".

Success coaches and mentors can help in this regard. They can teach you.

Courage simply boils to the Ability to act on knowledge atom.

Action isn't something that comes naturally. We are able to convince ourselves against certain actions within seconds. It takes a strong mindset to set aside the rationalization of everything and why this isn't possible and moving straight to action.

The surprising power of small habits

Habits - These are your savior to acting courageously. We can rewire our brains through thoughts to create patterns by continuously and constantly having a particular thinking attitude or pattern. Once the bee pattern is formed, it becomes easier to do. Consider waking up early. It is difficult at first but later becomes easier to do as you wake up more often. When the habit locks in, it becomes second. You immediately wake up once that time is up. No need for alarms or anything. Eric Thomas puts it this way, "My passion wakes me up, I don’t need an alarm"

This write up is short to cover all of these in detail and a way that you can immediately put to action.

What matters is, you act on the information and knowledge you have. I have given you this information. Use it to figure out your next moves which may be to find some good books on these topics.

The new year is just a human construct. There is no magic in the new year that can change your life unless you start something on your own. I used to hope for certain goals in the new year. None of them ever materialized. Setting goals alone won’t do it. You've got to go deeper, do more and expect less. It takes 10x to get there.

Final words

After chasing quick success for many years, I have finally experienced what I knew long ago. There are no shortcuts to success and if it's a straight road, it probably leads to nowhere fun and nice. Knowledge isn't always power.

It doesn’t take one thing but a host of things that you need. These two (Knowledge and Courage) are very crucial to success but they aren’t the only two you will need. I'm sure as you apply these two, however, you'll stumble on the other success secrets.

Peace out

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I hope this helps in making the new year one you can look back to a say, I started to live in 2020 because of this little piece of knowledge.