Wilma’s Success Story
Wilma was four years old when the worst illness struck her life. She was hit by scarlet fever and also pneumonia – and she was hit by infantile paralysis.
Doctors said Wilma would never walk again.
Sometimes experts are right only because we prove them right.
We allow their diagnosis and prognosis to be the fulfilling prophecies of our lives.
They said she was going to be a cabbage all her life – but Wilma chose to prove them wrong.
At first, Wilma struggled with her steel brace, but with determination, she practiced walking so much that by age nine she had thrown away the brace, preferring to walk with a limp.
But who would have known that the semi-paralytic limping little girl would one day be awarded the fastest woman in the world?
When Wilma started running for the high school track team at age sixteen, she was still limping. She was always the last one on the finish line.
The best advice anyone could give her was to quit. She was pathetic.
I bet you the only thing you would do for Wilma if she joined your team; was to get rid of her.
But though Wilma was limping on the outside, she was leaping on the inside.
She refused to disqualify herself. With time the results started to change as the Wilma without learned to conform to the Wilma within.
People noticed she was beginning to appear first in every race. At first, it was unbelievable, but soon enough everyone had accepted Wilma was the hero.
Track songs of praise were soon remixed and composed customized to her name. Yet this was only the beginning.
Wilma was selected to represent America in the Olympics. Unbelievably, Wilma won not only one but three gold medals.
She was the first American woman to win three Olympic gold medals in track and field.
She became famously known as “The Tornado! The fastest woman in the world!”
Her full name is Wilma Rudolph. She is that paralyzed four-year-old little black girl, and a miserably limping teenager who amazingly went on to be the fastest woman in the world!
Gosh! I believe in life! Don’t you?
You will be amazed at what you are able to do when you refuse to measure yourself by what you have gone through.
We all have our shares of pain. Paralyzing pains.
Unlike Wilma, maybe our paralysis may not be physical. It could be moral, mental, emotional, or spiritual paralysis.
What we go through in life goes through into us. Sometimes paralyzing our hidden abilities.
Yet just like Wilma did, we can all dig out those abilities and aptitudes that the circumstances of life had conspired to bury out of sight.
It takes refusing to let the losses of your past make you lose the victories of your present. It takes a choice. Your choice.
For some, their abilities were buried by the kind of parenting they received. The biblical character, Prince Mephibosheth, was dropped by his nurse at a tender age whilst fleeing for their lives.
The kingdom was under military invasion. The nurse picked him up, saved his life, but he was never the same again. The fall left him a cripple for the rest of his life.
In life, just like Mephibosheth, sometimes the people who should have carried you can be the exact people who dropped you.
The father who should have protected you may be the very person that abused you.
The mother who should have loved you can be exactly the same person that never cared.
That person who promised might be the same person who cheated. Or your best friend might have taken your lover…
It’s been long since it all happened, but you remember it as vividly as if it is still happening.
Everybody says you should forgive, and you know you should, but it’s not proving easy.
That’s because it is more than your heart that is broken, but every inch of you, including that part of you that forgives!
Sometimes I wonder if Cinderella ever found it easy to forgive her stepmother and two stepsisters. All I know is she did forgive even though forgiveness was hard.
Life! It has its paralyzing moments sometimes…
Or maybe for you, it wasn’t that serious. What I mean is, maybe it happened in another way that never felt that bad – though it paralyzed you badly.
For example, when you brought the school report home and your Mum and Dad called you dull for not being like your brother or sister, and told you that you are not his child, you are completely good for nothing and he will never pay your fees again.
(When the real trigger for those words was not your school report, but that your Dad was only being cruel because he was not sure you were truly his child.
Or your Mum, had conceived you too young and somehow hated you for taking her teenage years away.)
Those bitter words crippled you. You were too young to notice, but today when you look back, you recall feeling something breaking inside of you.
You just didn’t know what really it was, but on days like those, something deep within you kept breaking down.
It was like a heavy hammer crushing your back. Each blow left you failing to raise your head up straight and face the world as every winner should.
It left your shoulders sagging, always asking yourself,
“Why? Why me? Why was I born…?”
You didn’t notice it but those past circumstances broke something in you.
It was your self-esteem, your self-image that kept breaking.
Your outer spine still looked as strong as steel but your soul spine had been shattered by those bitter words into a jelly spine that left you hanging your head.
And do you notice how you didn’t fully recover? You became so extra sensitive to everything around you.
Small things upset you in a big way.
Small events unlock all the past episodes of your life, like a Pandora’s box past memories suddenly explode into your face.
Small things make you cry.
Small things are big things to you.
Thus because though they seem small, they are connected to your long past experiences and that makes them feel tall.
Sometimes it was not your parents’ words that hid your abilities – but just the failures and weaknesses that their lives exemplified.
It is easy to take your parents’ failures for your failures too since we say we share the same bloodline.
However, growing up means finding yourself in a world that is constantly trying to define you.
The identity you were given at birth was only meant to get you started, with time you must figure out your own.
Even when starting a business, the capital is always less than the profits your business will generate in its lifetime. Capital is meant to be less than the profit you desire.
Your past was meant to be what it is, a starting point, capital for a profitable lifetime lying ahead.
Your past doesn’t need to be much, but it can be used to generate much.
What are You Good at?
The ant is a tiny creature, but God gave it enormous strength to carry loads fifty times its body weight. (insect.about.com)
The anaconda has no hands but it can squeeze to death something weighing two hundred and fifty kilograms.
A dung beetle can pull something 1,141 times its own body weight. If the dung beetle was human, it would pull six double-decker buses tightly filled with people. (onekind.org)
God has endowed every creature with a hidden strength of some sort that qualifies that creature for success and for survival. It might not be in the size, complexion, or melody of voice – but every creature of the universe is endowed with its own unique life advantage.
The question is, “What are you good at?”
You might not be good at everything, but definitely, you are good at something. And nobody is good for nothing. People only say those silly words when they are upset.
It’s only when you take them seriously that you risk being as silly as they say.
Tony Robbins spent years broke and taking menial jobs. But when he discovered what he could do best, and committed himself to it, in less than ten years he was a tremendous success.
Today he has coached tens of thousands of celebrities around the world and flourishes as a multi-millionaire.
Celine Dion was born into a poor family of musicians. She was the last of fourteen children, the only thing she enjoyed more than others was hand-me-down clothes and shoes.
Born in rural Canada, every icy morning she braved her way to school.
One day, Rene Angelil heard Celine sing. In everything, she was human but in her voice, she was an angel.
(We all have a part of us, a talent of some sort, that reminds the earth of heaven.)
Celine’s story almost sounds like a Rapunzel fairy tale! Angelil loved her voice so much that he gave up his home to fund the rise of Celine to fortune and fame.
The rest…well the rest is history. They later got married and lived somewhat happily ever after.
Celine brought out her ability, and her ability brought her out of her circumstances.
You have to discover your inborn ability because it has your future locked up in it.
4 Keys to Finding your Hidden Abilities
I. Don’t mistake your difference for incompetence
In 1919, Walt Disney was fired by his Kansas City Star editor on the grounds that he lacked “imagination and had no good ideas.”
Disney went on to create a work of the craziest imagination people of his generation could ever fathom.
He created the first moving animation films including the grand Mickey Mouse.
Today Disney Animation studios is worth 74.9 Billion US Dollars. All these were the ideas and imaginations of Walt Disney.
Did Disney really lack imagination and good ideas? No!
It’s not like Disney had bad ideas, he just had different ones that’s all.
Only that, in this world, difference is commonly mistaken for incompetency.
What can you do differently from everyone else? Why not give it a second thought before throwing it away?
Remember: the real value of your work lies in how differently you can do it from others.
ii. Obsession is a result of hidden genius
J K Rowling was fired from Amnesty International because she would spend the whole day writing stories on her work computer.
No one knew she was the one who would go on to write the Harry Potter series of novels that sold more than 450 million copies, and were acted into the famous Harry Potter movies.
Writing was the only thing Rowling felt like doing. It was more than just a hobby – writing was an obsession. Your genius is hidden in your obsession.
Your obsession can be your hidden genius seeking a way to express itself.
Your obsession can be life’s promise of what you can succeed at doing.
What are you most obsessed about?
iii. Your curiosity can be a pointer to your hidden competency.
Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, began by secretly conducting chemical experiments at the Western Union work office.
One day he was fired. And he deserved it. It was after one 1967 night when he spilt corrosive acid that ate through the whole office floor.
Thomas Edison was curious about new things.
New things need new places; that is why he was fired.
Yet it was this curiosity that led him to be a famous inventor. He invented the light bulb. There would be no home or city lights without Edison.
Or at least it would have taken a long time to come.
In his ability, that is where his success and fame were locked up.
The key to unlocking that ability, with its success and fame, was his curiosity for science.
What are you curious about? What do you wish to understand more in this life and world?
Your curiosity is a sign of an ability deeply locked up in you. I urge your mind to let your soul go free.
iv. The reason you are bad at everything is because you are good at something.
There is no need to be good at everything because life is not long enough to do everything.
You just need to find something that you are good at; and make that one thing your everything.
Isaac Newton miserably failed at almost everything and was only good at mathematics.
At one time he was left in charge of a family farm, and he failed dismally.
That is why he was sent to Cambridge – and today we know gravity, to fly across continents and to the moon – all because of Newton’s scientific discoveries.
He was bad at everything because he was good at something.
Do you seem bad at everything?
Then you are blessed. At least when you find the one thing you are good at you won’t waste time trying to be everything.
3 Reasons Your Abilities May Still be Hidden
I. You desire to be like everyone else
At university, my classmates used to call me a geek when I exhibited knowledge about something we had never learned in class.
I can’t blame them, I knew something about everything – I knew of Plato and other metaphysical philosophers, I knew of supernovas in astronomy, I knew of the law of diminishing returns in economics, I had studied endocrinology in biology and I enjoyed Newton’s Laws of Motion from physics…
They said I was a geek, they were right…but by then I didn’t like those words.
One day, Tafadzwa Manzegudu, a good friend of mine – we called her Faffie in short, gave me an amazing statement that helped me accept myself the way I am.
I had complained that the way they called me geek made me feel out of place when she said…
“Moffat, there is a difference between feeling out-of-place and feeling outstanding.”
Gosh! Those words struck me!
I still remember that phrase today just as vividly as the first day she said it.
I wasn’t feeling out of place, I was feeling outstanding and confusing the two.
Being out-of-place is bad but being outstanding is good – it’s easy to confuse the good with the bad simply because they sometimes feel the same way.
Your ability will separate you.
You will not be among everyone else but you won’t be out of place because you will be in your right place.
You will be outstanding in your field.
Some sacrifice their abilities hoping that is what will make them fit in.
But we are not born to fit in, we are not remembered for fitting in; it’s when you find the field in which you can be outstanding that the story of your life will be worth telling.
ii. Your fear of commitment
When you admit that you are good at something, the next question would be, “So what am I doing with my talent?”
The reason most people refuse to admit to their abilities, is because they don’t want to commit to a life of applying that ability.
iii. You are surrounded by ability suppressors
Even without a history of failure, people may still not believe in you.
Don’t take it personally.
It’s not you that people don’t believe in, it’s themselves.
They see you as they see themselves. And because in themselves they see nothing worth believing in, they feel like they would be fools believing in you too.
It’s not like they don’t believe in you, it’s that they don’t believe at all. They are unbelievers.
On the other hand, people who believe in themselves believe in others. This is because they know extraordinary things are done by ordinary people.
They understand there is nothing great about greatness.
You have to believe in yourself and know that those who don’t believe in you don’t have the power to stop your dreams from coming true.
Go Unlock your Hidden Abilities
Cinderella never knew so much power lay on her side. Power to command the prince’s affection; power to break off from a ludicrous cinder past and emerge in the magnificence of palace living.
Remember the celebrities we talked about. They are where they are today because they chose to sing the songs of ability when their circumstances were trying to cause them disabilities.
Take your abilities seriously, a big part of your future lies locked up in them.
The best time to begin was the day you were born, the next best time is now.
Next Chapter…
