POWER OF THE MIND : EVANGELIST DICKENS ODHIAMBO OGANGO

Nothing is more powerful in the world than changing your mind. You can change your residence, clothes, friends, job, career or nationality but if you don’t change your mind, your world will remain the same for a lifetime.  
We perform in accordance to the picture we have about ourselves. Our world views. All you have ever achieved could be a tip of the ice berg of what you can achieve.  You are 95% of who you are by age 35. To live up-to your full potential, you need to shift the operating system until winning in life fuses with your subconscious mind. 
Your thought controls your life. Your mind is your greatest asset in this life. It’s the key to peace and life (happiness). Unmanaged life leads to tension, pressure, stress and chaos. A managed life leads to strength, security, serenity and peace. If you want a healthy mind, you must feed your mind with truth. God is more interested in changing your mind than changing your circumstances. 
Stephen R. Covey argues that if we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms.  
We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are. If you don't get out of the box you were raised in, you won't understand how much bigger the world is. Just because something has always been done in a certain way is never a sufficient reason for continuing to do it that way. It is Albert Einstein who argued, we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. 
As the bonfires of knowledge grow brighter, the more the darkness is revealed to our startled eyes. What we see depends mainly on what we look for. Life is not a problem to be solved, but rather a mystery to be lived. Our duty therefore, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. The journey to the light starts with a candle. Once it's lit, darkness has gone forever. 
There is no reality in the absence of observation. If you believe in something, no proof is required. If you don't believe, no proof is sufficient. Universal opinions are often mistaken for universal principles. What if you reached the end of your life only to discover it was all wrong? You barely survived. What a tragedy to realize on your death bed that you never lived!  
Was your life worth living? If you died today, what dreams, what gifts, what talents, what ideas will die with you? Have you been benchmarking with too low a standard. Suppose the Lord tells His angels to write on your tombstone, ‘Not used up’, and then reveals to you all you were meant to be? Could you be having the wrong picture about your capabilities? Could you be living way below your privileges?  
In the last nine months, I have taught many inspiring topics like: You Don’t Need a Job; Fake Money; Personality Dramas; Why Men are Linear and Women are Cyclic; Don’t Go Down Without a Fight; Secure Your Life in 90 Days; No Man Stands Alone; Re-invent Yourself – the Art of Personal Branding; and Starting all Over Again from Ground Zero. And honestly, I have received countless moving testimonies of changed lives as a result. 
But if I must teach you only one thing this year that would propel you to a whole new level of imagination, it is about shifting your paradigms – changing your world views. This is truly your defining moment. You can't change the fruit without changing the root. The best analogy I can give to stinking thinking is death. Paradigm shift, on the other hand, is like resurrection. 
The term paradigm shift was introduced by Thomas Kuhn in his highly influential landmark book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn shows how almost every significant breakthrough in the field of scientific endeavor is first a break with tradition, with old ways of thinking, with old paradigms. 
Everything you don’t use, you lose. This is the law of use. And the Lord Himself said, ‘to those who have, more will be added unto them, and unto those who do not have, even the little that they have will be taken away from them.’ Most people fail in life NOT because they aimed too high and failed to achieve but because they aimed too low and achieved. The rate of change in the world is phenomenal. There is just no space for whiners. Unfortunately, the world comprises of only 5% movers and 95% observers. Are you a mover or an observer? 
How then do you become a mover? Paradigm Shift. Shift Your Thinking. Change your mental pictures. Reload your operating system. Invest in self masterly. Do you take time to go to classes or self improvement seminars? If you don’t, you will make a settlement. Taking a less option than you were originally designed. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to be a loser. You don’t get in life what you want, you get who you are. The best investment you can ever make is in yourself. Do you sell yourself cheap? Have you packaged yourself below your Maker’s Master Plan? 
Few Africans deliberately invest in themselves. Especially those living in the African continent. We prefer to bleat about our colonial heritage. We find solace in second class global citizenry status. We have accepted to play second violin. ‘For how long?’ I ask. When shall third world rise up to be first world? When shall the last be the first? Answer: when we undergo a mind shift. A paradigm surgery of our thought system, individually and corporately as a people. Now is our time. 
It is time we shifted our focus. What do you read? What do you watch? When is the last time you fed your mind with the pure and the clean? Do you need to shift your associations? Look at the guys around you. Are you living together or dying together? Surround yourself with people whose definition of you is not based on your history, but your destiny. As one of our African proverb goes, if there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do us no harm. 
Check the people in your circles? Are they an asset or a liability? Do you need a shift of your environment? Do you need a shift of your self-talk? From a defeatist picture to a victorious picture? Did you know our own fears are often self fulfilling? 
If you truly look forward to a quantum leap in your life, join me as we examine, Changing the Picture, at Laico Regency Hotel on monday the 6th June 2016 from 6pm to 8pm. These are not empty promises. I don’t speak for attention. I speak with intention. I invite you to listen and subscribe for inspirational articles.

 

EVANGELIST DICKENS ODHIAMBO OGANGO - COACH, CONSULTANT, TRAINER. MENTOR AND MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER