By Michael Dalton Johnson

Our lives are often swept along by the duties and responsibilities we have assumed. We don’t have time to reflect on the course of our lives. If your obligations and commitments seem to control your life, you’ll find these observations useful.

You are great. You are far greater than you imagine. You are a unique entity given the power to create your own life. When you look outside yourself for self-definition you are giving your power away. However, when you understand and accept that you alone possess the power to define yourself and your life, there are dramatic changes. You will find new clarity, focus and confidence. You’ll also find that using this incredible gift is both exhilarating and challenging.

You are in charge. Think of your life as a movie. You are the writer, director, producer and star. You choose your co-stars and extras. Whether the movie is a smash or a flop is in your hands.

Your thoughts determine your outcomes. This is one of the great mysteries. There are a lot of theories about this phenomenon but no one really knows how it works. However, it does work and reveals the astonishing power of your thoughts. If you think you are average, you are. If you think you can’t win, you won’t. Conversely, if you see yourself succeeding, you will. If you expect great things to come to your life, they’re on their way.

You bring others with you. Your courage and confidence to examine your life and make changes will have a profound effect on those around you. When you lift yourself up, others are lifted up too.

Your life. Your responsibility. The first and most important rule is to take responsibility for everything that happens in your life. Following this rule puts you in command. Winston Churchill said, “The price of greatness is responsibility.” While I’m certain he was talking about fighting wars and leading nations, his statement applies to your life as well.

You have the power. Life will inevitably send you your share of setbacks, problems, disappointments and losses. These things are beyond your control. How you react to them is not. Listen to the voice within you and realize you have a choice. You have the greatness to persevere, to forgive, to smile, to lift yourself and others up and to move on.

Seeds of Greatness

You can be a total winner, even if you’re a beginner
If you think you can you can, if you think you can you can
You can wear the gold medallion, you can ride your own black stallion
If you think you can you can, if you think you can you can

It’s not your talent or the gifted birth
It’s not your bank book that determines worth
It isn’t in your gender or the color of your skin
It’s your attitude that lets you win

It doesn’t matter what you’ve done before
It makes no difference what the halftime score
It’s never over ‘til the final gun
So keep on trying and you’ll find you’ve won

Just grab your dream and then believe it
Go out and work, and you’ll achieve it
If you think you can, you can
If you think you can, you can

By Denis Waitley

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out is to risk involvement,
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas and
dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To live is to risk dying,
To hope is to risk despair,
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken because
the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing,
has nothing, is nothing.

– William Arthur Ward (1921-1994)

The other day I was speaking to my cousin who is one of the closest people to me and he shared a very interesting revelation. You see he has a dream to own an Audi S8 which costs over 120,000$ and thats before the local revenue boys even ask for your shipping documents. Not to mention he wants to have a net worth of about 5million dollars in the next 5years. Now thats a BHAG!

Now, he realised that to actually achieve these dreams, he needs to have a much larger Mindspace than what he currently has. What is Mindspace you ask? Well some call it mind set but i say it’s the capacity or scale of the positive and empowering thoughts and beliefs you have.

Basically as long as your thoughts and beliefs are congruent with your dreams, you will achieve them. In my cousins case, if his thoughts and beliefs allow him to comprehend flying to Germany to customize the machine he wants, wire the money to Audi, put it on a plane to deliver it, give URA another cheque of UGX 100Million, then reach into his wallet and pull out another UGX 250,000 to fill up the gas tank, well lets just say it will probably happen very quickly. His Mindspace tells him that this is as normal as putting on clothes.

However, if his Mindspace is too small, well lets just say the closest he’ll ever get to that machine is pictures and videos on the internet.

Napoloen Hill says “What ever the mind of a man can concieve and believe, he will achieve” and the Master Himself says “As a man thinketh, so is he”. The point I’m trying to make is that our mindspace dictates directly the kind of results we have in life whether they be successes or failures.

My cousin rightly realised that inorder to achieve his dreams, he absolutely needs to increase his mindspace. Further more, his mindspace has to grow so that he can also accommodate the changes necessary to actually own such a car. The house where he will park that car, the maintenance costs to run it, the amount of money he’ll need to carry in his wallet daily, the friends he’ll have(and enemies), the standing in society that he’ll project, the level of business transactions he’ll be executing.

A great Mindspace is essential for a great life!

So if you have a dream, you will have to enlarge(or shrink) your mindset to accommodate that dream and everything that goes with it. Basically wealthy, successful and happy people have very large and positive mindspaces while poor, unhappy failures have tiny dark mindspaces.

So i ask again, how’s your mindspace?

This is the Family mans Creed. It goes out to all the men out there, married or single, we are still charged to live to these standards.

With Gods help I will do my best to:

Praise and Honor God daily in my thoughts, my words and my deeds thus establishing the foundation for my success as a true family man.

Honor and Respect my Wife, loving her as Christ loves the church and faithfully demonstrating my life long commitment to providing for her needs.

Spiritually protect my Family, by consistently interceeding in prayer for their needs, establishing the Word of God as our homes final authority. Boldly declaring “As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord”

Emotionally protect my Family, by speaking words of blessings and encouragement, spending lots of time together and remembering to be slow to anger and quick to extend mercy.

Physically protect my family, through hardwork, preparedness and diligence, understanding that my call as a family man requires daily sacrifice.

Be faithful to my Family by ensuring regular weekly church attendance and faithful giving of my time and resources in addition to maintaining relationships with other Christian men for accountability and edification.

Ask the Lord daily for Wisdom and His empowerment that I may walk in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control

Allow no other activities to distract me from my number one priority which is to be assured that my family proclaims Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior

Shalom

A series of events over the past few days have left me feeling low spirited, frustrated and defeated. I feel like a fraud and a failure. I’m not the person living the life I know I should be.I’m not achieving my goals or following my dreams. To encourage myself I decided to rewrite one of my favorite poems by Marriane Williamson, “Our Greatest Fear” that I came across in my usual morning readings.

What is My Greatest Fear

My Greatest Fear Is n­ot that I am Inadequate,
My Greatest Fear Is That I am Powerful Beyond Measure,
That I can do and achieve beyond my wildest dreams
It is my Light, ­not my Darkness That Frightens Me,

I Ask Myself, who am I to be Brilliant and Wise?
Who am I to be Wealthy and Respected?
Who am I to be Handsome and Loved?
Who am I to be Talented and Fabulous?

But the real question is, Who Am I not To Be?
I am a Child Of God, a Prince in His Kingdom.
My playing small does ­not serve the World.

There is ­nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that others won’t feel insecure around Me.
I was born to manifest the Glory Of God within me.
It is n­ot just in some people out there; it is in Me too.

And, as I let my own Light shine,
I am consciously giving you permission to do the same.
As I am liberated from my own fear,
My presence automatically liberates You.

~The Apprentice~

I don’t have a wristwatch. It’s not for lack of desire. Lord knows I’ve always wanted one. For years I’ve longed for one. It’s just that the one I want costs $10,000- Mutwalo gya doola as they say. Ok i know what you must be thinking. He’s lost his black mind!

But here’s the thing. It’s a fantastic watch. Actually, to call it a watch feels like calling a Bugatti Veyron a car. It’s a time piece. Swiss made. A heritage that goes back to the early church. A name that even the most ignorant hip-hop rappers know. It’s the Brietling Super Avenger Chronometer.

The Breitling Aero Marine "Super Avenger" with white face and leather strap.

The hand made watch from Zurich Switzerland is part of a long standing tradition of excellent time pieces made for the most demanding professionals in aviation and navy for the last two hundred years. It’s worth every damn cent.

I love the company slogan-Breitling, Instruments for professionals.

Now you may say, well that all sounds well and good but $10,000? Thats a whole car, 3years living expenses or a great deal of aid to the suffering people in Haiti. All very True. But consider this. Whether I buy this or not there will always be other people in need, disasters, famines and so on. (and it’s my lovely wife who is obliged to buy it for me-he he he)

The belief we commonly have is that if I use $10,000 today, i have irreversibly reduced the worlds wealth and millions will suffer for it. Er No! That is what is commonly referred to as the scarcity or poverty mentality. The belief that the resources in the world are finite and there isn’t enough to go around. Untrue.

There is plenty to go around. Hundreds of thousands of these watches are being sold worldwide and still the worlds wealth increases as do it’s problems. And believe me, when I can spend $10,000 on a watch, think how much I could spend on charitable giving? At least 10 times that amount for sure.

I believe though, at the end of the day, it’s important to know what you want and to go for it-legally of course. And I want a $10,000 watch made by a 200 hundred year old Swiss company that I can pass on to my great grandson. Why not?

Should I fail to get it, there’s always the $4500 Tag Heuer Carrera

Shalom

A friend of mine and long standing business owner Mr. Karangi Karibui of 5th Dimension Architects flattered me by endorsing my blog and the beliefs I aspire to. He thought my readers would be blessed by this poem written in 1927 by Max Erhman. I hope you enjoy it and thanks Karangi!

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

A couple of months ago, I was speaking with the Rogue King, about what drives us to do the things we do and make the choices that we do. He suggested to me that perhaps we should look deeper, to our core values.

So what are our core values? Well simple put they are the things we believe in the most that direct what and how we think about our life. There are hundreds of values that we each hold but some hold more power over us than others. For example some peoples core value is love. For others it’s family or power, money, religion etc.

It is important for us to know and choose our core values are because they color everything we do in life. It’s like our constitution. A person whose core value is Family for example will make all decisions about what they do around their need for family. The career he chooses, the car he drives, the type of person he marries. It’s all connected.

I decided to look at my own core values and I thought I’d share with you what I have chosen to be my guiding values in order to achieve my dreams and life purpose.

Love

I live and give love to all around me including myself. I give love regardless of how I feel but as directed by Gods word.

Responsibility

I am 100% responsible for my life and the results I experience. Everything I am, have or experience is a result of the choices and actions I’ve made in the past. I always have the ability to choose my response in life.

Integrity

I live congruently with my beliefs and principles and do not compromise them. My word is my bond.

Positivity

I maintain a positive attitude at all times, always looking for the upside in every situation. I believe every problem is an opportunity disguised.

Faith

I put my complete trust in God and the gifts, skills and talents he has placed in me.

Teachability

I am a constant learner, always striving to get better each day, in every way.

Courage

I stand and face my fears each and every day to accomplish great things. I seek opportunity and not security.

Compassion

I extend kindness, compassion, understanding and grace to all who need it.

Giving

I am a generous giver of my money, time and resources for the highest good of all.

Self Discipline

I maintain strong control over my will, emotions, passions and thoughts at all times keeping them focused for my greater growth

Diligence

I work hard at everything I do with the utmost care, excellence and attention to detail.

Excellence

I hold myself to the highest standards in all  that I am and do. I do not live according to the worlds standard but to Gods

Health

I work diligently to ensure y body is in great physical condition through healthy lifestyle choices

Creativity

I believe in using all of my God given creativity to imbue my life, relationships, work and passions with fun, excellence and impact

Personal Growth

I constantly seek to improve on every area of my being through learning and application. The better I am, the better my life will be.

Vision

i always have a clear Godly vision for my life which i pursue daily.

Peace

I seek to live in peace with everyone in as much as it depends on me. I gaurd my inner peace and I’m guided by it.

I am still discovering more of myself and adjusting accordingly. Some values we have don’t benefit us and it’s imperative to identify them and remove them while picking out ones that pull us forward. I’d like to hear some of your core values so drop me a line.

Shalom

Hey everyone, Happy new year to you all and welcome back. It’s great to be alive and back again for a new year. You could be sick, in jail, or dead or dying but nope, here you are reading this blog. So lets thank the Master for life and another chance to do things better.

The beginning of the year is a particularly intriguing time. It’s perhaps the only time in the year (except for our birthdays) that we really take time to reflect on the past and future seriously. Thats why resolutions are generally made at the start of the year.

For the last three years I’ve been in the habit of not making resolutions. I find that new year resolutions generally set me up for failure. They are usually not made with the right convictions and then followed up with really weak efforts. By end of March, I’m caught up in the waves of daily life and nearly forgotten most of my resolutions . Then the end of the year comes and I beat up myself because I didn’t even make a scratch in my resolutions. Does that sound familiar?

My solution to this crap cycle is to have a constant set of personal goals that I work on regardless of whether its a new year or not. I find this to be much a more progressive and fulfilling approach. Have your 3months, 1year, 5year and 10year goals at all times. They give direction, focus and hope.

An interesting alternative for new year resolutions is having an overall Yearly Theme. I found this on Steve Pavlina’s blog, an individual whose material i find to be exceptionally deep and insightful. His approach is to have a general theme for each year. For example 2008 his theme was Health, 2009 Relationships. This gives you a nice framework that helps you focus on a particular area of your life for one whole year whilst still working on your regular life goals.

Whatever you choose to do for 2010, what I can say is any resolution, goal or theme is better than just floating through the year and seeing what happens. As the saying goes “if you don’t know where your going, any road will take you there”.

I read somewhere that we tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a single year and underestimate what we can do in ten years. It hit me so hard to realise that we’ve just completed the first decade of the century! Think about that for a moment. 10 years. I think of all that i could have achieved by now if i’d only made serious commitments and goals ten years ago!

Heck, i simply decided to have flimsy resolutions and see where the year takes me. Now I’m still as far away from achieving my dreams as i was 10years ago! That is disturbing. I’m certainly not going to make that mistake with the next ten. I encourage you not to make it either.

So I bid you health, wealth and love in every aspect of your life in 2010. May be prosperous, may you become a greater person than you ever dreamed, may you conquer giants and love and be loved deeply. And may the Master be your guide, your strength, your refuge and your hope in this year and beyond. Amen

Let’s make 2010 a spectacular year.

Shalom

“I hope you live more, love more, laugh more, dare more, take mind blowing risks and achieve more in the new year.” New years SMS from a friend