Motivation - Belief

MOTIVATION –  Belief


By Nikki Viljoen of N Viljoen Consulting CC – January 2013

James Allen wrote “Belief always precedes action”.

Well I doubt that it can be any clearer than that!  Why is it then that people still try and do things that they don’t believe in or in fact fail to take action even if it is something that they do believe in?  It’s a shame that so many have gotten it wrong!

I think that on some level, it’s the whole ‘begging bowl’ mentality that we seem to have bought into and also on some level the fact that parents and teachers ‘do’ everything for kids these days, it’s left us with this whole idea that ‘someone’ will do it for us.

Thinking back on my childhood, my parents certainly did stuff for me, don’t get me wrong, but they also taught me ‘how to’ do things for myself and once taught I was expected to do them for myself.  Some of my earliest memories is of helping in the kitchen and believe me it was no ‘mod con’ kitchen that most middle class youngsters have access to today – it was a farm kitchen.  We had an old ‘wood’ aga that was used for everything but baking (which required a more precise temperature)  and it was a very hungry beast that had to be fed most of the day. Sure it produced some divine tasting meals on a regular basis, but everyone had to help – whether that help was to chop the wood into the correct size or carry the cut wood to the box that lived beside the stove or every-time you went out of the back door, to check the heat of the stove and if it was in need of a log or two, to do the honours.  When it came time to prepare the meal, I remember having to stand on a wooden box to reach the table as I peeled vegetables and then cut them up for the meal. Today children get home and sit around on their cell phones or watch TV whilst frazzled mothers who have had long hard working days, struggle to juggle everything that needs to be done before they fall exhausted into bed long after everyone else is asleep.

I went to boarding school long before my 5th birthday – the farm was at least a 3 hour drive from the nearest school.  There all your books were supplied and of course everyone had the same brown paper covers.  Unlike today, the brown paper came in rolls, not the precisely pre-cut sheets that we get today and the teacher showed us how to cover the first one and the rest we had to do ourselves. Today I hear mothers of teenage children talk about having to go home to cover the school books for their offspring and I often wonder if the child is paralyzed.

School projects were done by school children who all had access to the same raw materials and whose own efforts were rewarded with the appropriate marks.  Nowadays parents do the projects for the children, who reap rewards from the efforts of others – now how exactly does that make any kind of sense at all?

I hear parents of children who are about to embark on their tertiary journey, bragging about their children who are ‘following’ in the footsteps of their fathers, mothers etc., in terms of their career choice and when you speak to the child, their passions are in totally different directions.  Shouldn’t people be ‘being the best that they can be’ and if you agree with that statement, surely you can only be the best that you can be at something that you are passionate about, or something that you totally believe in?

So is it any wonder then, that people sit around and wait for something to happen?  Is it any wonder that there is this whole sector of the population, who work in jobs that they hate?  Stuck in lives that they despise, but unable to escape their drudgery because of their inability to act.  Think of all the people who say that they hate Mondays or that ‘can’t wait for the weekends’ and how sad their lives must be because they are going through the motions, without passion.  How very sad is that.

If only they believed in themselves and their ability to find a passion and then act on that passion, they could be bouncing out of bed every morning, excited to start the day, excited to live life to the full, to be all that they could be . . .  and, it all starts with one little action!

Nikki is an Internal Auditor and Business Administration Specialist who can be contacted on 083 702 8849 or nikki@viljoenconsulting.co.za or http://www.viljoenconsulting.co.za