As a Man Thinketh
Assessment by Kagame Vincent Sebikari (Uganda)
1. What is the main idea that the author is trying to convey in the book?
Thinking: Positive thinking result in positive outcomes while negative thinking leads to negative results. Therefore, it’s thinking that creates and stimulates discovery and perception. This is supported by Albert Einstein – “The whole of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking.”
The right minds, the power of the mind is fundamental in developing a character of leadership. Also Professor Teresa Amabile and Mukti Khaire suggest that the first priority of leadership is to involve the right people. Thinking drives passion and generates new perspectives. For one to pursue their passions requires high level self-control, It is from this that victories are attained.
To attain success, leaders need to lift their thoughts. No achievement without sacrifices for example business achievements will require calculated risks and maximum utilization of scare resources. Moving the argument along, this will create the notion of thinking outside the box to solve a specific problem or overcome a challenge. Failure, weakness or strength is one’s own making. It is up to one to stand up to the task at hand. Successful entrepreneurs know that it is essential to think big enough as a result preparation is vital before undertaking any task and minimize negative thinking. It is those who are prepared that are in position to take advantage of opportunities as they came.
2. What were the seven ideas which were personally most important to you and why? List these seven ideas followed by an explanation after each one as to why it was important to you. Use personal examples from your own life.
i. Thought: thoughts motivate us in developing measurable objectives.
It is from this that one is able to have ambitions like creating a free and peaceful world. Intellectual or business achievements are a result of thoughts where by new products or services are created to solve a specific problem.
ii. Character: leaders ought to demonstrate good character.
Since leaders are role models to young generation, necessitates living by example. This calls for courage and knowledge while defining problems.
iii. Vision: In order to achieve any set strategic goal, we need to keep a vision.
It’s this focused vision that will help us build and acquire necessary skills for personal development. What are required of leaders are principles with vision to be strong advocates for development/change.
iv. Idea
As a leader, it’s critical that you consider how best you can achieve your ideas; how best your ideas can influence others for the common cause or goal. For that reason, doubt and fear are the great enemies of motivating the initiative.
v. Purpose: this allows one to develop an approach to achieve the overall goal or idea.
The strength of character is in the purpose to success and triumph for the future. It is the purpose that contributes to the setting achievable objectives. Also Dr. Clayton Christensen suggests that create a life with purpose.
vi. Creative force: for one to overcome fear requires creative thinking.
It is the creative force that helps us deal with difficulties and bring fruits of success in achieving set goals. Through creativity one is able to build a strong mental power. Creativity enables to find solutions by making guesses or formulating and testing outcome
vii. Achievement: to achieve success, one needs a creative force or mind.
This requires positive thinking and hard work. In order to rise or conquer failure takes one’s inner character. Further, to attain achievement, sacrifice needs to be made for example noble prize winners will tell you that sacrifice was made in terms of time or resources to achieve success or discovery.
viii. Healthy Body: cheerful thoughts help individuals to achieve healthy bodies.
This calls for a creative force. Many leaders like liberation leaders support this argument that healthy body is imperative.
ix. Serenity: for one to have wisdom requires calmness of the mind.
Self-control is a result of long and patient efforts. This ensures that people are in control of their emotions.
3. How will these ideas or lessons help you in a practical way, both in your daily personal life and in helping you to create a better world? If so, how?
Taking action to achieve identified objectives; develop an evaluation process. As a leader avoid selfishness, arrogance, dishonest, greedy, and corrupt judgment. Also teaches us to leverage information in new ways of making and delivering something. One’s creative force helps in developing and generating ideas by asking what is the real problem? by brainstorming generated ideas; picking the best option. No matter how the crisis might be, effective leaders have to act say by taking responsibility.
Creative is most characteristic of successful leaders. For example John Nash was able to solve mathematical problems due to his creative abilities, for that reason creative thinking is vital in solving community injustices or to perform a given task.
Positive thinking creates new inventions that can be used all over the world. Apple Company’s revolutionary gadgets have been used across the global. This has helped to increase its sales by creating new products, appealing designs and powerful branding by applying creative force.
Passion is fundamental: we learn that Steve Job’s passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve our everyday lives. Further, we ought to use our gifts to create a better world.
Preparation is of essence: many battles have been lost due to poor preparation. Many teams in sports have lost matches due to unfortunate preparation, this call for preparation in advance. Furthermore, we learn that the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. The stronger the effort input, the greater the results other factors remaining constant. Diverse perspective: leaders from all disciples should be open to diverse perspectives as they foster a culture of creativity.
4. Quotes: Are there any statements which the author made that particularly got your attention? If so, please quote them and comment as to why they were important to you.
“Man holds key to every situation, and contains within himself that transforming and regenerating agency by which he may make himself what he wills.”
“Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals.”
This helps one to remain focused on the cause, vision or idea. This teaches us to develop strategies that will lead to achieve the set vision or idea.
“To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to achieve. Aspirations are imperative in obtaining desired goals.”
Dreams lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. For one to have and achieve set visions, it comes with a dream for instance better Africa. This is supported by “the greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream.”
“Dreams are the seedlings of realities. All great things normal start in form of dreams. For those who perform miracle can testify that it started as a dream.”
“Calmness is power. Calm man is always loved and revered: Leaders ought to solve their differences in calm manner.”
The basic idea is to demonstrate how your thoughts, attitude and beliefs create your experience in life. Ones experience is shaped by attitude and belief. Successful business people have positive attitude towards work; negative attitude result in decline in performance.
“The core principles of success, personal empowerment and transformation: it is personal empowerment that leads to success and transformation. Empowerment takes different shapes for example in form education since knowledge is power. Those with human capital contribute massively to community development and transformation.”
Thought allied fearlessly to purpose become creative force. Creative individuals don’t fear to take risk. Steve Jobs was fired from the company he had started but due his fearless drive managed to create even better components.
“The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good. Despite the great success, one ought to be respectful to others.”
Therefore, leaders should use their influences in solving community problems rather than for personal gains.
“Self-control is strength. Nobel Prize winner, President Mandela demonstrated this very well that self-control is power. Even the ordinary trader will find his business prosperity increase as he develops a greater self-control and equanimity. Trader’s normal exhibit greater self-control by avoiding unnecessary expense or by reinvesting gained profits.”
“Right thought is mastery.”
For any individual to be knowledgeable at any field say leadership, management or politics, right thoughts are must. It is this that creates individual motivation. Motivation is the most common traits among effective leaders.
5. Is there anything in the book that you do not understand or are unclear about, or are there ideas which you disagree with and, if so, why?
Ideas are clear and straightforward to follow.
6. Did the book contain exercises for the reader to complete? If so, did you complete all of the exercises and did you find them helpful?
No exercises but all units were helpful.
7. Was there anything you read in the book that you would like to comment on that was not covered in the previous questions? If so, please comment.
The most important aspects (lessons and quotes) were covered.
Please rate the following questions on a scale from 1 to 10. Ten is good and one is poor.
A. How interesting was it to read? 9
B. How helpful were the contents? 8
C. How easy was it to understand? 9
D. Would you recommend it to others? 10
E. What is the overall rating you would give it? 9
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Assessment by Kagame Vincent Sebikari (Uganda)
1. What is the main idea that the author is trying to convey in the book?
Learning: How you can support your learning yourself by what is available. There’s so much to learn so practicing helps one to know what they can do or what they can’t. Therefore, one has to be careful and content while practicing. This calls for continuous studying and committed to practicing so as to attain high performance. Learning is goings-on of gaining skills. Example of learning: flying makes learning fun.
2. What were the seven ideas which were personally most important to you and why? List these seven ideas followed by an explanation after each one as to why it was important to you. Use personal examples from your own life.
i. Learning: there is no limit to learning.
All great individuals started by learning for example political, business or entrepreneurs learn from role models. Knowledge can only be broadened by learning such as creativity skills can be enhanced through learning. Learning can be in form of new language, saving more earnings or fitness training. For example, one wants to become a business leader; reading business books will quickly facilitate the learning of the basics. Learning helps to bridge the knowledge gap and expressing the acquired knowledge. This process results into wealth creation.
ii. Time: there is a correlation between time and output.
This is supported by Isaac Newton who worked on his idea of gravity for twenty years. If time is spent wisely then the results will be high or greater for example higher pay rates for overtime. The time we spend practicing each day, result in direct upshot. Business companies that spend time creating; innovating new products/services make more money such as Apple. Most of online firms spend more time working on the computer to reach clients. Also time plays a critical role in negotiation.
iii. Practice: Practice makes perfect.
This is also supported by James Clear who suggests that practice is learning. The more you practice, the better you become in utilizing the given time or resources for instance in formula one racing more time spent practicing to drive, better results. Learning and practice impacts one’s imaginative yield. One’s ability to improve will depend on input effort and practice. At hand is always a need for new knowledge that will yield new consequences for example marketers will have to make sales calls to reach out to more customers. Time to market is essential. Therefore, practice enables one to remain focused on doing something or accomplish set object. In order to remain focused; passion, experience or personal skills are vital in matching the opportunity.
iv. Special and gifted and divine
This necessities willingness in pursuing any dream or developing our special talents, every individual is gifted and has a special talent therefore the challenge is how best to nature the talent. According to Michael Jordan, hard practice enabled him nature his gift of playing basketball. Therefore, should put in all energy in any given project.
v. Think: Effective leadership involve creative problem solving, thinking is of essence in determining tactics to apply on any task for instance one to think creatively will require connecting unrelated ideas.
Positive thinking results in significant performance or improvements. This will act as change agent for leadership. One has to weigh if the activity being undertaken will benefit the general public; and put in practice what we think about.
vi. Choice: since resources are scare, choices have to be made in order to select the best alternative.
This requires thinking very carefully before choosing one thing or course of action in preference to others; by working within the limits will ensure better exploitation of resources thus we make choices on daily bases e.g. the choice of the business owner to gain a larger market share and find new revenue and profit channels. Decisions are based on the conclusion drawn from the possibility.
vii. Idea of freedom: individuals have the ability to act as they choose.
This sense of freedom enables people to achieve or identify opportunities like economics or education through taking actions in face of all odds. If you invest more in education then will enjoy freedom of being well-informed. Idea is the first stage in starting a business. Further, new ideas can be generated by changing or altering the existing ones.
viii. Finding yourself
The act of learn and practicing helps individuals to determine what they are good at or can do better than others or competitors for example resourceful thinking abilities are trainable. Finding yourself will allow one to rectify the mistakes and self-awareness consequently creating a competitive advantage.
3. How will these ideas or lessons help you in a practical way, both in your daily personal life and in helping you to create a better world? If so, how?
You have worked hard. Self-confident is paramount in one’s daily personal life; self-confidence fosters self-esteem. Inspiration is decisive. Leaders should inspire the less fortune. The following steps will help in determining or creating a better world.
Setting goals is the first step in all we wish to do or achieve;
Be prepared to learned; love what you are doing or learning.
Undertake all necessary learning activities;
Share the learning or learn from others (role models);
Undertake the review process for example always set objectives can be improved; and
Learning requires planning. Leaders need to plan ahead.
Despite uncertainty of the future or outcome, keep learning.The aim of practicing is to develop skills of an individual. Practicingis a continuing process. Furthermore, Learning enables one to make sound decisions. It is therefore no surprise that even strong enterprises or brands spend time communicating the message to customers and getting feedback so as to improve their services. In order to master a computer program, one has to practice how to use it numerous times so flexibility and perseverance are important.
4. Quotes: Are there any statements which the author made that particularly got your attention? If so, please quote them and comment as to why they were important to you.
“There’s so much to learn! Learning is process and takes different forms.”
This is important in a way that for one to forecast the future has to learn from the current or past. Also Instructors play great role in the learning process. If you learn nothing, can’t change anything or make the world better place.
“Let’s try it again.”
Despite the challenges or failures, keep trying until you get it right. This calls for courage and determination. It is determination that will push individuals to go still higher tomorrow. This will lend a hand in generating alterative solution such as add new products or services to existing markets or expand existing business into new markets and customer types.
“You can go to any place and to any time that you wish to go.”
This teaches us that we should not limit ourselves while pursuing our dreams or visions. World records have been broken and others set due to this.
“We’re free to go where we wish and to be what we are.”
If we are ready and prepared to learn then no limits to heights of achievements. For example new business and leadership models have been developed to improve competition or results.
“You know nothing till you prove it!”
Continuous learning or practice will enable one to demonstrate / prove best what we know or can do. The great Pele proved his soccer skills by scoring many goals both at national and club level.
“I want to fly more than anything else in the world.”
This clearly demonstrates passion. Individuals need to love what they are doing or wish to do. This helps one to force on one task at ago.
“The only true law is that which leads to freedom.”
Injustice or unfair treatment of others will not yield freedom or better outcomes.
“Nothing more than your thought itself.”
Positive thinking is fundamental to a better world, setting achievable goals or objects. Learning starts with thoughts.
5. Is there anything in the book that you do not understand or are unclear about, or are there ideas which you disagree with and, if so, why?
The book was not clear-cut to follow.
6. Did the book contain exercises for the reader to complete? If so, did you complete all of the exercises and did you find them helpful?
No specific exercises.
7. Was there anything you read in the book that you would like to comment on that was not covered in the previous questions? If so, please comment.
Let us lead to serve.
Please rate the following questions on a scale from 1 to 10. Ten is good and one is poor.
A. How interesting was it to read? 6
B. How helpful were the contents? 8
C. How easy was it to understand? 7
D. Would you recommend it to others? 8
E. What is the overall rating you would give it? 8