MOTIVATION – How to grow

MOTIVATION – How To Grow


By Nikki Viljoen of N Viljoen Consulting CC – July 2009

Ralph Emerson says “Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.”

Ain’t that the truth! It really makes me mad when I hear people saying things like ‘Some people are born more equal than others’ or ‘He/She’s had it easy because they were born with a silver/gold spoon in their mouths’!  You see I really do believe that we are all ‘born equal’.  Now before you all start beating up on me – hear me out.  I really believe that we all have the potential and the ability to be the best of who/what we can be – that’s all.  I also believe that we can only be judged on our own potential and not that we can be compared to others.  Yet at some point, many of us think that we can just sit back and watch the world go round as we have achieved everything that there is to achieve.  What absolute nonsense!  There is always something more.

Think about it for a moment – when a baby gets to a certain age, they want to do things for themselves and go places by themselves, so they start to crawl and my goodness if any of you ever met my cousin’s youngest – he could really move when he set his mind to it.  We often used to have to run to keep up with him crawling towards his goal (usually his freedom out the kitchen door).  Kids don’t stop there though.  They don’t think – ok, I can crawl now so I have achieved my goal and that’s as far as I am going to go – I’ll just sit here and for the rest of my life just crawl to where-ever I need to go!  They then at some point stand up and then walk and pretty soon they start to run.  I remember as a child always falling over – I was pretty much just gangly legs at that stage, and my parents were forever telling me to walk and not run – but hey, I had places to go and interesting things to see and do and time was a-wasting, so I ran.

To this day I run – ok, so don’t take that literally, I don’t much like to physically run anymore, but my mind certainly still runs.  There are so many new things to see or to learn.  So many more books that I want to read (most people laugh when they see my reading list, it runs to 26 typed pages), so many new ideas that I want to see reach their full potential. 

So many new things that I want to try.  There are discussions that I want to have with people and debates on controversial subjects that I would love to sink my teeth into.  There are countries that I want to visit and some that I need to re-visit.  There are people that I would love to meet and dishes that I would love to sample.  There are movies that I want to watch or I suppose I could just sit there and say, well I’m done – then what?

Na-ah, not for me – whilst there is still time in the day (or the night for that matter), there is time to do things - for me. Things that will challenge me, make me stretch my brain and make me grow as an individual. 

Things that will help to make me be all that I can be – and then some.

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