Be Specific

A certain young man once made a prayer to God and here is the prayer he made:

“Dear God when I grow up I want to have a vehicle that can accommodate many people and I also want to have a bag with lots of money always,” the young man concluded.

Well God was moved with his prayers and He granted him his wish by making him a conductor of a huge bus which accommodated lots of people and he also had a bag with lots of money always.

The moral of this story is that when you do anything in life you need to be specific exactly about the outcomes you expect.

Being specific is to be able to determine what it is exactly that you need to achieve.

Most people are not really specific in life, especially teenagers, they are wishy washy and jump from the river to the bank often than necessary. They do not have clarity of purpose and they do not know exactly what it is they want to achieve in life.

If a man does not know where he is going any road can take him anywhere. This is because they do not know exactly what they are really about. They are easy to derail because they do not have a set path in life.

Vavariroyashe Chipunza (18) from Norton said she likes friends who are focused towards achieving something because they add value to her life.

“I do not like being friends with anyone who does not have a single clue about where they are going because they slow me down. People like that can take you away from your path and take you nowhere in particular with them,” said Vavariroyashe.

You see if you are not specific anything becomes good enough and you do not have real goals and challenges to pursue. You are not alive to the possibilities around you as a young person and that means you cannot grab them and utilise them for your own good.

When you are not focused you are just like a fighter or boxer who fights without vision or target, he just beats the air and throws punches randomly, wherever the punch lands is good enough for him. That does not really win the game. What wins the match or scores winning points is being specific and aiming at the impact points. This is what made Muhammad Ali the greatest boxer, his ability to be specific with his blows. He knocked out some opponents in a matter of seconds because he was focused and specific on the key points. You too need that!

Teens need to be specific especially at such a tender age so that they specialise in certain areas and become masters in those areas. This is the only way to build Zimbabwe into the economy powerhouse of Africa and the world. If the teens we have now are not really specified we run the risk of having jacks of all trades but masters of none. We can never have young luminaries of Global acclaim hailing from Zimbabwe if we do not have young people who are specific about what they want to achieve.

Do not try to be everything and anything because the danger is at the end of the day you might amount to nothing at all. Choose the path you want to follow and pursue it aggressively. The danger with most teens is the desire to do everything that everyone else is doing. Sadly however this practise does not build up champions.

There is no reason why Zimbabwe should send such a small delegation to the Olympics and overburden Kirsty Coventry with all her medal hopes. If we had young boys and girls that were specific in choosing a career in sports we would have a bigger team in London because we have enough talent. In a recently published story in the Herald, Owen Black one of the Tennis legends of Zimbabwe, said the only way his two kids could compete professionally is by ensuring that they hit 10 000 balls before they are eighteen years of age. Now that’s being specific!

Schools and other institutions need to help teens become more specific so that they can become experts in their chosen field. If 19-year old Keshorn Walcott from Trinidad and Tobago could win the Javelin gold medal at the 2012 Olympics then certainly Zimbabwe can also produce the next generation of gold medallists in the Olympics and achievers on the world stage in other arenas.

If you fail to be specific remember you might end up like the boy with a huge bag of money and in charge of a vehicle that carried a lot of people, LOL.