Tim Ekandjo is the Chief Human Capital & Corporate Affairs Officer at Mobile Telecommunications Ltd in Namibia. A truly appropriate speech from which every sportsman can truly benefit by reading this. I spoke to him on the night of the sport awards and he luckily agreed to avail his speech to me. As i received it from him, here follows:
REMARKS BY TIM EKANDJO AT THE 2014 MTC NSC
SPORTS AWARDS
Right
Honourable Prime Minister, Dr. Hage Geingob
and;
All protocol
observed
Let me thank the Namibia Sports Commission
for affording us the opportunity to speak at the biggest sports gathering and
for allowing us to partner with them once again. I am very happy to see the
Right Honourable Prime Minister here for the 2nd consecutive year,
if this is not a sign that the 2015 sports budget will be tripled than I do not
know, but we shall eagerly wait to see.
When you are invited to speak at such
functions, there is always a general expectation that you must speak along the
topic or the spirit or objective of the occasion, but tonight I just want to
talk about life, and not particularly about sports, because after-all sports is
part of life.
In the creation of humankind, we have all
individually been blessed with a unique and special blessing, and my blessing
is totally different from your blessing just like the uniqueness of our
fingerprints. Because of the unique blessing given to us, there is also equally
a vacuum in this world that only you can fill which becomes your universal
assignment in life. Having said this, this unique blessing does not come ready
made and polished, but it comes in the form of POTENTIAL, which by definition
means “the capacity to develop into something in the future” which therefore places
the responsibility on you to first recognize and invest in developing that potential.
If not developed, that potential goes forever wasted and that is why you would
here so many people say “that guy or that women would have been the best soccer
player, only if...
Now not all of us have the appetite or the
desire to develop their given potential because being successful is a choice no
matter what your circumstances . My
universal assignment differs from yours, and therefore you can now understand
that you can never pretend to be somebody else, or waste your time wanting to
be somebody else, because you will never be that person but yourself. And by
trying to be somebody you are not you are insulting your own intelligence and
being grossly negligent in developing your capacity and attending to your
universal assignment, and in fact surrendering your uniqueness to the
wilderness.
Life should be about living up to your own
expectations and importantly just being yourself. I see so many people trying to fit into
society and living up to other people’s expectations, perceptions and opinions
about them, that they fall into the trap and stop being themselves because they
have allowed other people’s perceptions to manage them. What they in actual
fact do in the process is limit their own ambitions and aspirations, because
you have lost control of your own life by surrendering it to somebody else.
To be successful in life requires you to
stand out and be different from the rest. It is easier to be just like
everybody else, because you don’t have to do much than be like them, but when you want to be truly
noticed, you have to stand out and shine. If you want to be noticed you must have
a competitive advantage, and be the best you can be in something that nobody
else is. So find the one thing that you are absolutely good at and master your
craft in such a way that you become absolutely world class at it, so that the
world will look in your direction when they search for such expertise.
Ask yourself what is the legacy you want to
leave, and how do you want to be remembered one day. The legacy you leave
behind will depend largely on how you lived and behaved here and now. The
legacy you leave matters because there are people and communities who’ve
invested in your personal brand and the impact you make on society has the
potential to inspire millions after you.
In 30 years’ time from now, what measure of gratitude will the world owe
you? Everyone must leave something
behind when they die, something your hand touched some way so your soul has
somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower
you planted, they must see you there.
And when I
talk about legacies I am not referring to material things because we are so
addicted to standing out by sacrificing our identities to material things. When
I talk about leaving a legacy I mean the impact you have made on your own life
and that of others. So I call on you to stop becoming prisoners of material
beings but become audacious people. And if you want to play in the space of
being an audacious person you have to forget about conformity and conventional
thinking if you want to operate in the audacious realm of unlimited
possibilities.
Audacious
men and women are bold in their beliefs and convictions. They are revered and admired in the matrix
because they’ve found a way to channel their energy like a laser in the
direction of their intended destinies.
They become iconic brands, think of Jay–Z, Nelson Mandela and closer to
home Dr Hage Geingob, and that is the space we should graduate into. As pre-eminent business philosopher Jim Rohn
declared: “All good men and women must take responsibility for creating
legacies that will take the next generation to a level we could only imagine.”
Having said this, there is however a cost, or
rather a price to pay for being successful.
We all desire to become successful in life one day, but when we eventually
become successful we also attract a lot of enemies, or we become enemies of
others. With every level of elevation comes new enemies. This is because the desire to become
successful is in very high demand, that competition becomes unhealthy amongst
your peers. Some of us think success will simply fall from the sky and we want
to be part of the toast to success at the finish line but not the hard and long
journey to success. Our sportsman and women nominated here today have endured
many hours of intensive training and sacrifice to be where they are today, but
some of us also want to be with them or we find fault with their being here
even though we know nothing about their struggles and sacrifices. So we make success the new enemy, something
we all desire to become but the moment we see it on others we hate it with a
passion.
People who have mastered their craft in
whatever they do start attracting the attention of others. People will become
interested in you, some obsessed with you, and they will always talk about you,
criticise you, insult you, rumour monger about you, assassinate your character
and all kinds of things, because when they see you, they see what they have
always desired to become. They will
start judging you with standards they would never ever imagine judging
themselves on, and they will become so obsessed with your life to the extent
that they even forget that they too have a life of their own to live, and make
their lives about writing a book about yours.
When you are a women, it is even worse because they will ask who did she
sleep with to be where she is because it cannot be possible, in the meantime
they know nothing about you. When people do not know you, they speculate, when
they think they know you they fabricate, and when they eventually get to know
who you are and what you are all about and how wrong they were about you, they
hate you for being wrong about who they wanted you to be. So when they cannot find fault with the
manner in which you brilliantly display your craft, they start attacking and
assassinating your character or those you love because they cannot fall asleep
at night knowing that you have achieved what you have achieved, so they
dedicate their lives to making your life a living hell.
When you dedicate your life to helping those
less fortunate than you they label you a show off, when you dedicate your life
to building your own empire they call you a fortunate darkie, when you are
successful in your job they say it is because she is related to so and so, when
you display confidence they will call you arrogant, and just after winning a
world title-they will go on social media and make fun about your use of the
English language and they totally deliberately forget to congratulate you on a
world class achievement, so they will always find something negative to say
about you, because remember you have graduated from their league without taking
them along. So that becomes your biggest
sin. They will go on and on because they want you to respond so that they can
feel good about themselves. When you have declared yourself relevant, don’t
accept invitations to irrelevant discussions because it will require you to
demote yourself to their level which is exactly what they want, then they will
beat you with experience. So if they are silly, or jealous or insulting, it
means you would have to come silly, jealous and insulting too which is not your
level, then they beat you with experience, so live your life without regrets
because you have absolutely no obligation to justify your life to them.
So people ask themselves was it worth the
while investing in my success if all it ever brought me was enemies?, if ever
you had that thought, there is absolutely brilliant news, they are not your enemies,
they are simply die-hard spectators and commentators of your life and indeed
your biggest fans. The bad news for them is that they just haven’t realized
it. Every time they criticise you they
have no idea that they are actually unconsciously praising you, sometimes they
write or talk about you at 3 in the morning, so how can they not be your
biggest fans with that kind of commitment about your life?. Whether you hate Lionel Messi or Ronaldo you
will always watch them whenever they play because you see in them excellence,
and whatever you say about them you will also watch them again and again and
again whenever they play.
So next time you desire somebody else’s success,
you have two choices, either walk up to them and ask them how they have become
so successful and learn tips from them or alternatively, continue to pretend to
hate them in public while you desire them in private, the choice is absolutely
yours. Never in the history of humankind has the world ever erected a statue
for the greatest critic of others, the world only recognizes those who make a
difference in their own lives and that of others, not the spectators of others’
lives.
So dear athletes, thanks for making yourself
and your families and those who look up to you proud. Namibia and the world
need more role models, not role moegoes.
Don’t be shy to celebrate your achievements, but do not become too consumed
with it and arrogant along the way. Remain humble because while somebody will
need you now, you might need them along the way someday.
In closing, I would like to leave you
with a story and message from the holy book, the story is about a woman that
was caught committing adultery. The bible tells us that this woman was caught
in the act and a crowd pulled and dragged her in the street for everybody to
see. They dropped her in the middle of the street and were just about to stone
her to death. The Lord suddenly appeared, just as they were about to stone her
to death, and they screamed, “Lord Lord we caught her committing adultery and
this is an offence punishable by death”. The Lord looked at them and said
“Whoever has never sinned, throw the first stone”. They shamingly lowered their
stones one by one and they all disappeared till there was nobody left. The Lord
dusted her off and helped her up and said to her, “Go home and sin no more”. We
have a tendency to become dishonourable judges of other people’s lives
forgetting that we are sinners ourselves.
I thank you most sincerely for listening
so attentively, enjoy the rest of the evening and go home and sin no more.
