In the last post I said,
“Every day you produce cold thoughts that freeze your life to the same imperfect place, or you create warm thoughts that thaw you and let you flow into other possibilities.”
Why Most People Never Get Started in Life
What is really stopping you from stepping into the life that you want is the freezing excuses that you have let occupy your mind.
They have turned you into a snowman that stands frozen in one place for a whole lifetime.
5 Snowmen in Cinderella’s Kingdom
Let me tell you something about Cinderella that nobody knows. Nobody knows it because nobody has told it.
So from here… drum roll please… the Cinderella story continues…
In Cinderella’s Kingdom, in different cities, there used to be five snowmen born every winter.
But most beautifully, when summer came they would melt up and flow away from their frozen stagnant life.
Whenever you feel stagnant, maybe it’s because you have become as frozen as one of these snowmen…
Here are the five snowmen, and over years of coaching people and speaking to business people in different countries, I’ve found that these Frozen Snowmen and Snowladies exist in real life too.
Which one among them has been, by any chance, You?
1. The Snowman of Never-Ready City
In Cinderella’s kingdom, there was an untold city called Never-Ready City.
Mr. Snowman of Never-Ready City never got started on anything because he always said he wasn’t ready yet.
He never followed his dreams because he was ever waiting to feel ready.
Don’t be like Mr. Snowman of Never-Ready City otherwise you will take three years perfecting a business plan and by the time you are ready your business idea would have long flooded the market.
Competition would be high and your business would be too far behind.
“I’m a perfectionist, that’s why things take longer for me to complete,” that’s what most citizens of Never-Ready city often say. They are often very wrong.
What the Never-Readians don’t realize is that what they consider as strength is actually one of their major weaknesses.
What makes this Snowman’s perfectionism a weakness is the type of drive behind it.
Usually, the Never-Ready’s perfectionism is driven by a fear of failure rather than a sense of sophistication.
He is so scared of failure that he can’t get anything started.
He doesn’t believe in his product enough to release it to the world. He is too critical of his gift and doesn’t know that real sophistication is only attained by getting started.
In my business workshops, I give an example of Facebook, a social network with more than two billion users (as of the year 2024). They started their product the lean simple way.
When Facebook first started it didn’t even have a wall to place posts (Newsfeed).
Consider how much people love gossip! Then tell me what is a social network without a Newsfeed?
I will tell you… It’s a total bore!
But they had to start off boring in order to learn to be interesting. They learned it through time, they learned from the people who used their product.
You need preparation. Preparation time is never wasted time.
However, so much time is wasted in hesitation disguised as preparation.
The fear of failure and the fear of rejection can be a freezing fear that keeps you ever trying to be ready.
Loosen up and get started on something, “don’t take life too seriously, no one comes out of it alive anyway!”
2. Amanda the Snowlady of Never-Fair City
In Cinderella’s kingdom, there was also a city called Never-Fair City.
Amanda the Snowlady of Never-Fair never got started on anything because she was always busy complaining why the world isn’t fair.
Cinderella could have acted like Amanda of Never-Fair City.
She could have broken into tears halfway along the palace lane, weeping why she alone had to be the last to arrive at the party as though she was a crusher.
She could cry why life was not fair, or be angry at why God had taken her mum away and left her to fight the battles of life alone. She could have screamed, “Why me!!!”
However, Cinderella knew that sometimes bad things happen to good people.
And that the people who cry “Why me?” when the bad happens wouldn’t scream out the same words when the good happens.
Life is unfair in two ways, firstly in that it gives us the bad that we think we don’t deserve, and secondly by that it gives us the good that we truly don’t deserve.
Thank God the world is not fair otherwise none of us would stand the life that we truly deserve.
Some wish they had been born poor so they could learn the true value of wealth, and some wish they had been born rich so that they wouldn’t have felt the fangs of poverty.
Some wish they had been given a chance to love many people and lose, so that they wouldn’t feel like they lost out on something.
Yet some wish they had found true love the first time, so that the first cut – the deepest cut of love – wouldn’t have caused any bleeding or pain.
Life is not fair and doesn’t have to be, we have to learn to do the best with what we have got.
“Life is only fair in that it is unfair to everybody,” so goes the adage.
You can still win in an imperfect world.
You can’t control the winds but you can adjust the sails.
Expecting the world should be fair is a cold thought that freezes your life into a stagnant block of ice.
Thaw up, Snowlady of Never-Fair City – the world is beautiful just the way it is!
3. Adrian the Snowman of I-Can’t Land
The Snowman of I-Can’t Land doesn’t do anything because he believes he can’t.
At first, I didn’t believe I was a good writer until I saw people who couldn’t write as good as I could touch more lives than I did.
If you have something that people ever complimented you for, then you are good enough. Go for it.
People are easily aroused to envy, if there is anything that they praise you for having done well even without asking them, then take it seriously, you are so good that they can’t hide it.
Don’t spend your life disqualifying yourself on the Land of I-Can’t. The fact that you can’t do it as precisely as the person that inspires you doesn’t mean you are failing to do it.
They are not better than you, they are just different from you.
In my book How to Do More with Your Talent I write…
A great thinker Tonderai Mandaza once said, “The word Talent comes from a Greek word talentos. It means ‘money’. So when we say “everyone has an inborn talent.” What it really means is everyone has ‘inborn money.’ Your talent is your wealth.”
– Moffat Machingura | How to Do More with Your Talent
To say you can’t is to freeze your income stream, but when you believe you can it thaws up and starts to flow again.
4. The Snowman of Never-Wanted-to
The reason some people live frozen at the same level of life is because they tell themselves they don’t want to change, they don’t want to be rich or famous; they tell themselves that they don’t want to be successful.
That’s exactly the same thing boys say when they are turned down by a girl they just asked out.
“She was never that amazing though, it’s not like I ever really wanted to be with her anyway…”
Or what girls say when their crush guy pretends not to even notice them…
“He is just looks, otherwise, there is nothing interesting about him really.”
The point is, when you think you don’t have what it takes to make money, create fame or change your life in some special way, it is common to defend your weaknesses by claiming that you don’t need the money, the fame, or the change.
Cinderella wanted the palace so much it made her cry. She didn’t know how to get it, but that didn’t stop her from wanting it.
The same goes for all the successful people that you see. Their success started with a desire they didn’t fully know how to fulfill.
Don’t let the fear of failing to accomplish what you want to stop you from wanting what you want. You can learn to do anything you want if you want it bad enough.
Desire unlocks creativity. Where there is a will, there is always a way. How steadfast is your will, how strong is your love and how deep is your desire?
Admit to what you want, your life will thaw up and start to flow away, O you snowman of Never-Wanted-to City!
5. The Snowman of Hardvale City
Right in the city of Hardvale, another untold city in Cinderella’s kingdom, you will find a snowman on top of Mt Hardvale.
He is ever transfixed and frozen to one spot all his life – he is afraid to make important decisions for only one reason… “It’s hard.”
The reason his life has no movement is because he is looking for easy roads in life, and life has no easy roads.
Hard is not the problem, the problem is you want it to be easy.
One man came to me, he was caught up in a difficult marriage. He was always broken, and it was slowing his life down.
Sometimes he would move out, and because of love, he would move back in and try to make things work. For years that cycle of pain kept him stagnant and miserable.
One day I finally told him, “if you want this pain to end you have to make a hard decision.”
He said, “what should I do?”
I said, “either you go back to your wife and never leave that house no matter how much you fight.
You will stay there when she kicks you and will still lie on that bed even if she calls you stupid and dumb like your father… You are never going to tell anybody about it.
Not even your family or your friends, counselor, or even me, your advisor. It will be a closed chapter…
Or you are going to pack your bags, and leave that house right now, and never go back despite the dreams and the kids you have together.
This means leaving despite what people say and how expensive the divorce lawyers are going to cost, and how threatening the abuse allegations your woman is going to fabricate against you.
And again, you will never tell anybody about your relationship ever again!! It will be a closed chapter.”
And he said, “That’s hard.”
To which I replied,
“Staying with that person is hard, leaving that person is also hard. Choose your hard!
The truth is looking for easy is what has kept you stuck in the same pain for so many years in the first place.”
That’s how our conversation ended. Knowing that his marriage wasn’t redeemable, he stopped trying to please people or his ego – he left.
I don’t think he was weak, weak people don’t make hard decisions.
Then just in the first week, you should have seen him! His face was glowing.
He looked all brand new and I’m sure he felt that way too! His joy was on his other side of hard.
That’s the same advice I’m giving to you right now. Choose your hard.
Some moments in life will only be changed by being hard, choosing hard, working hard, and pushing hard. In my book Life Capsules for Success, I write that
“Follow your dreams, I am not saying it’s going to be easy, but I am saying it’s going to be worth it.”
– Moffat Machingura
There is a room for you at the palace.
You have dreamt a better life, now be the fairy godmother and make it happen.
If you work hard, life will be easy. If you work easy, life will stay hard.
Next Chapter…
