Hammer and Anvil

In this life, you are either the hammer or the anvil  

-Goethe

I recently chanced upon a TED Talk interview on YouTube of inventor Elon Musk on his yet another ambitious project (but not to him) premised on the idea that the road traffic  menace can be eased by the creation of a network of 3D tunnels that will entail boring hundreds of kilometres.The project,which is to be piloted by his Boring Company in Los Angeles, California will entail a lot of rock cutting, that will needless to mention revolutionise related industries as more efficient boring and drilling equipment will need to be invented.

For those who the name is yet to ring a bell,Mr.Musk is the founder of PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla Motors.

  

During the interview, he passionately explains, with the aid of videographics, of how special elevators will be used to cart  a vehicle down a constructed underground rail which will skate it for  speeds of up to 200 km/hour and at the designated destination, elevate it back on the streets; and with a twinkle in his eye, proceeds to underscore the fact that there’s no limit as to how deep the tunnels can be dug since the deepest mines are much deeper than the tallest buildings are tall anyway!

If that’s too much to take in, driver-less vehicles will no longer remain a concept once Tesla Motors receives the necessary approvals from authorities sometimes next year.Hypothetically,you will be able to nap all the way to work and wake up only when the vehicle has parked itself, if only as a  recompense for early rising. It will be akin to pressing an elevator button and telling it where you want to go.

Of course this guy has the tendency to make everyone feel like they only have a half a brain; but it also got me thinking of how one human being can harness his or her faculties to  conceive and achieve, for purposes beyond his generation, dreams that border on absurdity to the ordinary mind.

Leaders see the distance

The world has been changed by men and women who were courageous enough to believe in their dreams and steered off from the crowd to create and achieve them. In the analogy of hammer and anvil, these are the hammers who endeavor to make a difference by being impactful rather than joining the masses in lamenting over their helplessness. In a world full of challenges, they choose to look for opportunities to be significant and find solutions to problems beyond their own.

They see further than everyone else and can discern how tomorrow could be just as clearly as they do today. Some people call this a gift, others perfected practice, while others attribute this to a lucky upbringing. There might be some truth in that.

Leadership guru John C. Maxwell attributes this ability to see further than the rest to intentional growth. Great leaders always improve on themselves every day by exposing themselves to environments where they can learn, be it by reading, attending seminars and conferences or just by surrounding themselves with quality people-that are smarter than them- who will push them beyond their comfort zone.In his book The 15 Invaluable Laws Of Growth, Maxwell points out  that growth is not accidental.It has to be purposeful as it is the only guarantee that tomorrow will get better.

Myles Monroe,in his last visit to Kenya explained very succinctly why personal development is the game changer.When he graduated from college in his early twenties,most of his classmates got employment in the government and in the corporate world but he was not as lucky for about eight years.But during that time, he did a couple of Masters degrees and two PhDs, and could now make in an hour what his former classmates made in a year!

Learning therefore will imply taking  away the most from each day such  that in a year’s time, you will blush at how little you knew today, but glad you improved on yourself.Resting  on your accomplishments is dangerous, and that is why success is most often people’s greatest enemy.Over time,your trophies will have to make room for other people’s in the cabinet.If this does not, necessity will demand of it.

It is noteworthy that in the early twentieth century, the motor vehicle industry in North America grew exponentially out of the need to replace horse carriages after a study showed that the city would be swallowed up in horse dung if other modes of transport were not sought! This led to the growth of the motor industry where Henry Ford(today's Elon Musk) produced the first moving assembly line in 1913 for mass production of an entire vehicle buoyed by the vision that someday  a car would be a common sight on the roads, a fact that we take for granted today.

Another notable game changer then was eccentric billionaire Aviator, Howard Hughes, popularised in recent times by Leonardo Di Caprio in the movie, The Aviator. Hughes was the first individual to privatize the aviation industry, previously an unthinkable feat only left to  the big muscle players like Governments and their subsidiary companies. He believed it was the way of the future, before most people could see it.

How to be the hammer

Ever notice that there are some people whom when they pass on, the world literally stops to reminisce, if for a moment, how sad life could have been had they not been part of this journey? Of course not everyone can attain that grand status as the Mandela’s and the Gandhis of this world, but my honest belief is that no one should just coast by life and exit incognito, and by this I mean having little or no impact outside his or her immediate circle of relations.It should be everyone’s goal to leave the world with more light and love just because we passed by.

Having put the above matter in to perspective, there are several key ingredients common with all hammers that separate them from the crowd.These are thinking big ,talent and sheer hard work, and excellence in their craft.

Thinking Big

Everything you see began with a thought.

Dreaming has been one of the surest and most inspiring adaptation tactics available to man to ensure survival of his progeny since the beginning of time.Articulated through goals, dreams ensure that there’s a strong pull towards the future (as Jim Rohn puts it) that sustains the attraction towards them.What better goal is there than leaving a better world for your children?

If I own a Mercedes Benz, I might be a hammer to some admirers; but think about the shareholder of the manufacturer.She moulds the future for the world she would like to see in terms comfort, safety and elegance knowing all too well that her great grandchildren will be much safer on the road as a result.

I subscribe to President Donald Trump’s school of thought that if you are going to think,you might as well think big anyway.Having  big dreams helps you overcome setbacks along the way.You will be able to insulate yourself from critics and negative energy from your environment as we’ll see a little later.

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon.com advises that one should adopt a regret minimisation framework whereby you project yourself to,say,when you will be around 80  years old, and then look backwards.This will help you to minimize the number of regrets you could have had by the time you reach that age and thereby push you to take bigger risks today towards your goals.Seeing the distance will help you dream bigger dreams. And what if you don’t get to 80 years? At least you will have lived a full life!

You do not have to be an entrepreneur to make a difference. President Obama’s courage and vision for a cleaner and greener economy when his government invested more on renewal energy as an alternative to fossil fuels, was a catapult to the growth of the vehicle manufacturing that is reliant on renewable energy. It is noteworthy that Tesla Motors benefited from a government loan from the Obama government for the part-production of  its electric cars. This sentimental reason could explain why Musk recently dropped out of the President Trump’s Advisory Council after the latter recently withdrew the US from the Paris climate change pact signed under President Obama.

Talent and hard work

If I can rank the first of the best days of my life as an adult, it must be when I first held my first born son in my arms.

The second best day is when I realised that it is practically impossible to fill my brain with information;that there’s no limit as to how much I can learn! Scientists from the University of Southern California demonstrated (About a decade ago) that the human brain has an estimated storage capacity of 256 exabytes(or 256 billion gigabytes) - the equivalent of 1.2 billion average PC hard drives,enough CDs to make a stack which would reach beyond the moon and 15 libraries for every person on the planet!

This informed my going the whole hog philosophy.

For instance, if you are going to learn how to bake a cake or some type of desert, why begin straight at the recipes level? How about learning the origin of baking, its etymology, cultures that introduced the beautiful art to the world, the first person to commercialise the craft, types of cakes, best and worst recipes, world leaders who endorse cakes, great books and podcasts about cakes, the masters of the craft, cakes that changed the world, competitions on baking, cakes in the Guinness books of World Records, source of the best ingredients, and perhaps befriend a nearby teacher known to you who can help you skip a few mistakes in the learning curve!

Imagine now standing on the supermarket aisle with a cake recipe in your hands. You have options and know exactly what you want  right from start and do not fear experimenting. You can be sure that after the first few attempts at  baking, you will be looking forward to showing off your skills to anyone, starting with family of course. This is because they  are likely to be outright honest with you and won’t comfort you with lies and therefore, help you improve. You might just discover that therein lies another talent, because ultimately talent manifests itself where there is a nurturing environment. You will hardly notice the hard work  involved as long as your goal is to produce the best cake.

Each  one of us comes in to this world packaged with a gift or talent from the Almighty God necessary to navigate through life and impact the world in a way that generations to come will find a better place to live in, just as your fore-fathers did for us. This is why it is considered the great equalizer amongst men.

It is not selfish; if utilized for the benefit of others, it can propel the owner to greater heights. For instance, If you had a talent for running at fast speeds in your earlier days in school, that talent would make little difference now if you have not run since. It will die with you, and you will have to account for it(Not my words).But what if you nurtured it by training hard and learning all you could about the sport? By now you would have represented your flag and brought glory not only to your country men but to yourself.

Without its full appreciation, talent also has the potential of being misused. Poet Maya Angelou equates this to the workings of electricity. Once an appliance is plugged in to the socket, electricity has no say as to its use, be it to light up a cathedral or to electrocute a man in an electric chair.

Talent,however,needs nurturing. Most A-players have been able to hone their talents as a result of proper parenting and having a nurturing environment. That does not mean that without these two factors talent will not develope;they only serve to accelerate its manifestation. Elon Musk grew up in Africa and he went on to live with his father from age nine after his parents separated(So, there goes your excuse out of the window).

What is certain is that hard work is the  only nourishment for talent. That is why it takes time to discover it if you are just lazying around,wasting the bulk of your productive time on social media and news channels instead of programming your mind with positivity which is just as readily available. If they tell you you have a beautiful voice,why not look for opportunities to volunteer as a speaker, or sing in the church choir to polish up the gift. Like an onion, it is hidden beneath layers and layers of hard work and there’s no doubt that at some point you will shed a tear.

Genius is hard work as well. A little research on Elon Musk’s childhood indicates that he was always surrounded by books. Since he was nerdy at school and didn’t make friends quite easily as the other kids, his mother says that he would spend most of his free time reading books. Musk corroborates this in an interview,that he would walk in to a library and after he had read all the books, turn to encyclopedias!(Who does that?) Look at what they made of him.

Books have a way of opening up our imagination and feed our creative minds. They replace a closed mind with an open one as someone has accurately put it.That is why I have little doubt that his SpaceX program to colonise Planet Mars with a million people will happen during our life time(Though I’d rather err on the side of caution on this one).

Excellence in your craft

This in itself is not enough.

Nowadays, having more than one skill is the only sure way that you will last and be ahead of the pack  in the marketplace. This entails positioning yourself as a human capital where your multi-dimensional growth can be of benefit to your clients or your employer. In due time, you will become a resource; an institution that can be referred to as an authority in your field. Being so good that they can’t get their eyes off you, to quote Robin Sharma, is a goal worth pursuing.

At Google, the chairman, Eric Schmidt says that they only hire people who are interesting, which is another way of saying they prefer candidates with other special skills unrelated to job applied for. The fact that you were top in your class or have the relevant experience alone does not guarantee employment there. For instance, the directors insist that their sales people are former Olympians.Mr.Schmidt himself was hired because of his extra skill as a pilot. Now you get an idea of where the world is heading.

It is noteworthy that men like Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela were accomplished lawyers in their own right. Elon Musk is a trained Electrical Engineer, while icon environmentalist, Mama Wangari Maathai was  also a professor in veterinary anatomy.All hammers have a particular skill or competence that they have excelled at.Think of any.

Having said that,mastery of your craft is a necessary pre-requisite to becoming impactful as it entails getting the respect of your peers and most importantly mastering yourself, thereby giving you the boldness to reach for the stars. What you do beyond that is what will polish your third eye perspective and help you see potential quite readily.

The hammer is broken by the anvil – George Orwell

The anvil represents the masses who wait on things to happen to them and for them. They are rarely solution-oriented and therefore are not concerned about the potential opportunity at hand. This majority group always expects someone else to take responsibility for everything because they feel inadequate. Politicians thrive on this group’s docility as they surrender their power of charting their own path to them, or in the business world, to the C.E.O or B.O.D.

The anvil are often the people who put you on a pedestal and are the same ones who can easily cause your downfall. Shakespeare is quoted thus,’’ Reputation is an idle impression oft got without merit and lost without deserving.’’

You can only despise them at your own risk because there is nothing really great that one can accomplish without people. This is where inspiration by example comes in to play.

So, do you see yourself as a hammer or an anvil?

NEGATIVITY

In military lingo, The Hammer and Anvil tactic used since the beginning of organized warfare, including by Alexander the Great, entails attacking the enemy on a head to head combat by surrounding them from the flanks and hitting them hard. This weakens them as the remaining soldiers in the middle are left with little choice but to scatter for their lives.

The same would be a suitable approach when one is dealing with negative forces and energy vampires(to use Robin Sharma’s phrase) in your life.

In all your dealings, banish them completely with all the ruthlessness you can master and surround yourself with optimistic and positive-minded people. Not yes-men and women, but people who choose to see the bright side in every situation.

Your greatest detractors are those who know you too well-your friends and relatives who’ve been with you all along but didn’t notice the seeds of greatness in you; or even your colleagues at work, whom you spend half of your life with but who may judge you on a very narrow, work-related parameter. Note that it is not your role to prove them wrong but an opportunity for you to search for the truth which is more illuminating.

Finally, forget the news! Sorry journalists, but News do not reflect the real world since they focus on negativity, which sells more. There are too many nice things happening around the world today and heroes pushing our limits as humanity for the better. News like Richard Browning’s flying suit or Ugandan Dr.Brian Turyabagye’s smart jacket that can accurately diagnose pneumonia,do not receive as much spotlight as some gory societal issues that are forgotten as soon as the news anchor calls for a commercial break.

Therefore,it is prudent to sift as much of it as you can and not let it be the only brain nourishment; Good books,podcasts and journals are a better replacement; otherwise Garbage in Garbage out automatically takes effect.

Flood your mind with positive thoughts

Negativity is poisonous! Most people do not reach even of half their potential because at some point  in their lives someone told them that it cannot be done, or they do not have what it takes-whether they were right or wrong is immaterial- and now they can’t even start. Motivational speaker Les Brown points out a study that showed you need to be told YES 17 times! for each NO you are told for it to clear out of your subconscious mind. Read that again.

 

Think about the gift that’s in you yet to be expressed for fear of confirming what your naysayers said. The best-selling novel yet to be written, the award-winning play or the inspiring,melodious gospel music yet to be composed; the grandest architecture or the most spectacular goal ever scored are all lying in within you if you work hard on your talent. You could be denying us that joy of witnessing excellence for the sake of courting acceptance from people who might have given up on their own dreams.

That is why the advice that you choose your associates as you do fruits rings true.

You have what it takes to enrich this world in a way that you never thought possible, but you will never know it until you start.

Not everyone will love you. As a matter of fact if everyone does, you’re not doing anything significant. Your dreams need not make sense to everyone, if anyone, who listens. If they do they’re not big enough.Moses,in The Bible, was mocked by the two Jews when he tried to break their fight when they asked him, “Who made you judge and ruler over us?” Yet he was! As ten years after fleeing to the wilderness he returned to Egypt with a bigger mission to set the captive Israelites free.

Elon Musk advises that while dealing with critics, focus on the signal and not on the noise.

Therefore, aspire on a daily basis to be significant in your own beautiful,unique way that will ease the burden a little for humanity.

In conclusion, I urge you to ponder on these words by Bishop TD Jakes:The whole world has turned its head to hear what you have to say. Do you have something to say or not?

If not, start working on it.