Quotes by Archibald Marwizi

Eat right. It’s not just about too much or too little food. Eating right means knowing the right selection of foods with the right nutrient content and in the right quantities, taken at the right frequencies to maintain a healthy body and mind.

A hygienic environment, proper waste and sewer disposal, clean water and all efforts that destroy disease-carriers like flies and mosquitoes will reduce the spread of disease and promote good health. My home challenge for a hygienic environment is that we should be responsible enough to make sure we are safe and comfortable eating apples in the toilet and bathroom!

One key habit I adopted is washing or sanitizing of hands every time, especially after using the toilet, before eating or handling food and whenever I go to visit someone in hospital and after leaving the hospital. Also use proper protective clothing in other circumstances like assisting ailing relatives and friends with communicable diseases.

Whilst a level playing field cannot be guaranteed, one thing that is guaranteed is your fair share of challenges. It’s not a matter of IF they come, but WHEN you will encounter them.

Exercise must become a regular part of your day or personal effectiveness system. Do not wait to start exercising because you want to lose weight or because the doctor has given you some scary update on your health. Exercise to keep fit and stay healthy. It’s not too late to start now.

Numerous studies have proven that physical health and longevity are linked to eating a balanced diet, maintaining proper weight, exercising regularly, abstinence and proper sexual conduct, avoiding tobacco and alcohol, maintaining a clean and hygienic living and working environment, knowing and keeping track of your health status all the time. How do you rate yourself on all these?

If you are a person of faith like me, then learn to discern between what requires medical intervention and what requires spiritual or even psychological specialists. There are enough physicians and specialists to deal with medical conditions, allow them to play their part without disturbing their interventions by adopting untested bush-advice.

When catering for your spiritual needs make sure that you authenticate the capacity and qualification of the person or people you allow access to your spiritual being. Being careless in this regard is as dangerous as allowing an untrained person to treat you or operate on you to address a medical condition. While the bush-doctor kills your body, the false spiritual leader will destroy body, soul and spirit. Therefore use your belief’s spiritual standard, not a merely mental or intellectual standard, to get spiritual help.

For the Christian, the Bible, the Holy Spirit, guidance from trusted leaders and a revelation from your growing personal relationship with God go a long way to provide guidance. Learn to distinguish between spiritual blackmail and Godly Bible-based advice or warnings. Study your religion or belief and know it for yourself, heavy reliance on a third party for prolonged periods will sometimes open you up to possible abuse.

Ask yourself - How do I see myself as a leader? How do I use my personal mission and vision to create leadership focus? What does my mission or vision mean in the context of leading others? How many people are going to succeed in their endeavours, through my leadership influence? Do I expect of myself, what I expect of those who follow me? Or I have my own separate standards for the same principles I expect others to live by?

If you disconnect yourself from principles you believe must work for others, then you create a leadership brand that is not genuine and that will lead you to say one thing and practice another. This is the reason why knowledge and mastery issues covered at a personal level, must be revisited with a leadership focus.

Your vision at a leadership level needs to be more global and selfless, it needs to go beyond you. Reflect and project your dream for a perfect world, even if you can only make it a great world.

How do you visualize the success of those parts of the world falling under your leadership? What about the success of your organisation, your family and all the people related to the two institutions? How fulfilling are the results of this personal evaluation? What can you start doing about it, today?

Why is the world in need of a leader like you? You must lead for significant impact. As a leader, find the “cause” driving your leadership brand and pursue its resolution with passion and excellence.

There are silent killers like poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related conditions. These remain a daily and ongoing catastrophe, but they rarely manage to achieve and sustain, prime-time headline coverage on the news. Why not report on these until someone acts on them?

If the UN and other international multilateral institutions are sending troops and weaponry, now they must begin to fund training and leadership development at the same levels. The new war must start with the quality of beliefs and dreams that are planted into the hearts and minds of school children at a personal level and permeate the driving philosophies of entire societies and communities.

My personal convictions drive me to join those like-minded, in the recruitment of a growing army without guns, no hatred or prejudice, but with a leadership voice of influence and harnessing resources to create the change they desire. The major problems facing the world, particularly our beloved African continent, will not be won by sanctions, cruelty, ethnic cleansing, revenge, guns or bullets. The challenges are not largely externally motivated, so the platform to change them must shift. Shift from selfish to selfless, from external to internal, from behaviours to beliefs. Some of them are externally sponsored but self-inflicted, whilst most of them are due to greed, short-sightedness, abuse and selfishness.

As you strive for personal effectiveness and leadership excellence, there are local and global questions that you will inevitably have to face. These range from poverty, corruption, terrorism, food security, scarcity of resources and overpopulation among others. Your power and influence for significance in leadership excellence will increase in direct proportion to your ability to find effective and sustainable practical solutions to some of these real-life challenges.

Realistic and unrealistic expectations will be placed on you, demands will be made, fair and unfair judgment will be passed. Your growing leadership intelligence should reflect in your objective response or reaction to these challenges – remember more eyes than you can see are watching you. Know when it is prudent to make a comment, to set the record straight or just not comment. Decide which invitations to accept and which ones to send a representative or to turn down. Continuously reflecting on your mission, beliefs and values will make this process more objective.

Because leaders and influential people are just as human as any other person, they sometimes forget that by doing little extra things to become extraordinary means they no longer have a completely private life. You must be willing to pay this price because if you don’t, the consequences can be more disastrous. Learn to plan and be deliberate in also ensuring you and your family can still enjoy quality private moments.