A middle-aged woman had a tragic heart attack. People responsible swiftly took her to the emergency room. On the operating table, she had a near-death experience. Seeing God, she asked if this was it. He said, “No, you have another forty three years, two months, and eight days to live.” Upon recovery, she decided to stay in the hospital and have a face-lift, a liposuction, a tummy tuck, the whole works. She even had one come in and change her hair colour, figuring that since she had so much life remaining, she might as well make the most of it.
They discharged her from the hospital after the final procedure. However, while crossing the street outside, a speeding ambulance crushed her. Arriving in God’s presence, she fumed, frothed, and angrily asked, “I thought you said I had forty-plus years to live.” God replied, “I did not recognise you.” That is why John Mason reminds us to seek to be real and authentic in his heroic book titled Imitation is Limitation. Be what you are. This is the first step towards becoming better than you are. Oscar Wilde advised, “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”
Deep down inside, if you are a musician, then make magic through music. If you are a teacher, teach. If you are a preacher, preach. If you are a dancer, dance and rejoice. With this in mind, we shall have paid homage to the words of wisdom woven by William Boetecher, “The more you learn what you do with yourself, and the more you do for others, the more you will learn to enjoy the abundant life.” Do what is most natural for you. Be yourself. Whatever you are, be a good one. Trust your own instincts. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else’s. Sydney Harris observed, “90% of the world’s woes come from people who do not know themselves, their abilities, frailties, and even their real virtues.”
The curious paradox of life is that when you accept yourself just as you are, then you can change. Never wish to be anyone else but yourself. For Doris Mortman warned, “Until you make peace with who you are, you will never be sated with what you have.” All good things are the fruit of originality. The person who walks in someone else’s track hardly leaves his own footprints. He who has no opinion of his own, but depends on the opinion of others, is a slave, or a jailbird. To only dream of the person you are supposed to be is to waste the person you are. Nobody is as disappointed and unhappy as the person who spends his life longing to be somebody else. The person who trims himself to suit everybody will soon whittle down himself. Leo Buscaglia put it aptly, “The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Do not allow anyone to put you in that precarious position.” Do you want to stand out in the world? Then be yourself. Be what you really are. This is the first step towards becoming better than what you are now. Orison Marden advised, “No man could be ideally successful until he has found his place. Like a locomotive, he is strong on the track, but weak anywhere else.” Choose to be yourself. Avoid following the crowd. Be an engine, not a caboose. Average people would rather be wrong than be different. Herman Melville wrote, “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” Conformity is the enemy of growth, progress, success and satisfaction. You are destined to be different. Therefore, dare to be different. Follow your own star. Trace your true north. As long as you are trying to be like someone else, the best you can ever be is number two.
Trying to be like someone else is self-defeating. One of your main purposes in life is to give birth to yourself. You cannot reach your destiny by taking someone else’s road. Samuel Johnson ascertained that almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display colourful qualities he does not possess. Do not let your life be an endless struggle of being what you are not, and doing what you should not do. Walt Disney discovered that the more you are like yourself, the less you are like anyone else. Actually, the more you are like Jesus, the more you will become as you are supposed to be. In a larger sense, you are like a tree — be fruitful.
Do not be common. The common go nowhere. You must be uncommon in order to be a champion. Almost every very successful person is a little different. Your sole responsibility is not to remake yourself, but to make the absolute best of the mettle that makes you. No one ever became great by imitation. Imitation is limitation. Do not be a copy of something. Make your own impression. Dare to be different. Just be yourself. Consider these wise words from one of history’s greatest artist: My mother said to me, “If you become a soldier you will become a general. If you become a monk, you will become a Pope.” Instead, I became a painter, and ended up as Picasso.
Our business in life is not to get others, but to get ahead of ourselves — to break our own records — to outstrip our yesterday by our today — to do our work with more force than ever before. Wise words of Ralph Waldo Emerson lends this form of thinking cache of credence, “It is impossible for man to be cheated by anyone but himself.” Our best friends and our worst enemies are the thoughts we have about ourselves. Therefore, we should stop looking only at where we are and start looking at what we can be. Be careful of where your mind wanders. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale warned, “Do not build up obstacles in your imagination.” No one can defeat you unless you first defeat yourself. Self-image sets the boundaries and limitations for each of our individual achievements. Charles Caleb Colton observed, “We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves. It is a civil war.” When you doubt yourself, you are akin to a person who enlists in the ranks of the enemy and bears arms against yourself. You carry with the world in which you must live. When you have a dream, your mortal mind can be the biggest foe. Malcolm Forbes observed, “Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.”
No wonder, James Allen, the author of As A Man Thinketh advised: “You are the handicap you must face. You are the one who must choose the place to be. You are your own doctor when it comes to curing cold feet, a hot head, and a defeatist attitude.” Your future depends on many things, but mostly you. You may succeed if nobody else believes in you, but you will never succeed if you do not believe in yourself. Zig Ziglar welded words this way, “What you picture in your mind, it will work to accomplish. When you change your mind-set, you automatically position yourself for peerless performance.” Martin Luther King advised, “Every man must do two things alone: He must do his own believing, and his own dying.” When you compare yourself with others, you will become bitter, vain, or both. For there will always be people better or worse than you are. Making comparisons is a true path to a litany of frustrations. Joan Welch sagely said, “You cannot clear your own fields while counting the rocks on your neighbour’s field.” Once again. It is a waste of time and dissipation of energy to compare your life to that of other people. Life is full of fun when you do not keep score with others. Success really is simply a matter of doing what you do best — and not worrying about what the other person is going to do.
Never measure your success by what others have, done or gone through. It is never fair to engage in baseless comparisons. Do not tell other people tell you what you want. Do not take anybody else’s definition of success as your own. You have to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather is. God rarely uses a person whose main concern is what others are thinking. In fact, judging and comparing yourself to others is a tremendous waste of energy. This twisted thinking impedes progress and success. If you think you are doing better than an average person is, then you are an average person. You carry success or failure within yourself. It does not depend on outside conditions. Success in someone else’s life does not block you to access your own success. If Ochieng’ — the scribe from Siaya — compares himself with John Grisham, he will never write right. Therefore, do not measure yourself with another man’s coat. Do not evaluate yourself through someone else’s eyes. On the judgement day, God will not ask me why I was not Abraham, Joshua, Caleb, Billy Graham, or Barrack Obama. But why I was not Victor Ochieng’ — the peculiar penman from the sultry shores of the large lake.
By Victor Ochieng’
The reviewer is an editor, author, trainer and peripatetic public speaker.
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