“Follow the grain in your own wood.” – Dr Howard Thurman
When I came across this great quote from Howard Thurman, a Clergyman of the 1900’s, few images and thoughts came to my mind.
Think about this statement for a minute. What does it make you think of? I started thinking about, “find your own path”, and “beat to your own drum”, and countless others. What makes this so common is the fact that it rings so true.
If for example, on Monday mornings especially, you find yourself saying, “it’s going to be a long week, I can’t wait for Friday!”; “It’s going to be a long day, I can’t wait for knock-off time!” ; “Oh my God! I hate Sunday afternoon, it leads me to Monday!” These are strong indications that you are NOT FOLLOWING THE GRAIN IN YOUR OWN WOOD! You are not doing what you should be doing.
Don’t spend most of your time running away from something that you spend most of your time doing, like your job, learn to love it and ask yourself this question, ‘what is this challenge teaching me? What can I learn from this? Learn the lesson and improve from it.’
Life is about self-discovery. Everyday should present itself as an opportunity for you to get closer to who you truly are, not as another painful experience. Suffering presents itself in two ways – suffering with meaning and suffering without meaning. When you go through pain for a greater good – it’s suffering with meaning. The second suffering is when you have just accepted suffering as your fate and meaningless pain as you don’t see any benefit beyond it. Learn to be true to yourself. What are you supposed to do with this wonderful life of yours? Seek and you shall find!
Veli Ndaba is a leadership and Insightful Speaker, Life-Coach and Neuro- Linguistic Programming Practitioner, Author of three books (You Are Born to Win, Your Dream is Calling You and SWITCH ON!), Newspaper Columnist and Entrepreneur. To book him to help you and your team unleash your greatness, contact him on veli@velindaba.com, www.velindaba.com and 083 304 9773