Mr President, Stop This Dangerous Game (please)

The president of Namibia Dr Hage Geingob recently declared that: "Some Namibians are praying for me to fail."

(Read the full article on by Shinovene Immanuel here)

I would like to caution the president on such dangerous behaviour. My co-author, Siegfried Lange and I are in the process of writing a book about human nature. Specifically about the sub-conscious patterns of behaviour we tend to engage in which cause us to trip up and never reach our real potential.

With this statement the president is engaging in what we call "The Law of Search". In a nutshell, by focusing his attention on something (in this case Namibians "praying" for the President to fail) the president is in danger of "finding" evidence proving his assumption.

In our book we discuss the Law of Search in detail and include the impact that this sub-conscious behaviour may have on your relationships and your career.

The president is playing a dangerous game since the Law of Search states that he will focus his attention only on the negative rhetoric going around. This will confirm his thinking and may cause him to reject contradicting information. If he gets to that stage he may start to think that everyone is rooting for him to fail and therefore it doesn't matter what he does it will be seen as failure.

Finally he may then fail to see the difference between constructive criticism and criticism for the sake of criticism. His initial assumption then becomes an ingrained pattern of thought which is increasingly hard to change.

Therefore, Mr President, please stop this dangerous game.

Critically evaluate all the information presented to you. Look for both positives and negatives in each opinion (criticism) and use your experience and reasoning capability to choose the best course of action. Choose the course that is best for all the people of our beautiful country Namibia.