Pepe Minambo’s Be Inspired Before You Expire is a motivational book of a different kind. Sure, you have heard that before. And you have every right to be skeptical. Still, give me a moment to explain why this book is so different.
Thank you. The author talks to the reader and not at the reader. This approach omits the teacher-student aesthetic, which often characterises such books.
He is also innovative in his preachments, as it were. “In the art of motivation, there is what is known as the ‘Beatitudes of Success’. One of the most inspirational is: Blessed are those who are inspired, for they shall make the world a better place,” he shares.
The fulcrum of this message is not its biblical undertones. Rather, what the author is telling us, is that inspiration and expiration are two ends of the same stick.
If you are uninspired, then you are likely to expire. The right attitude is, thus, the seedbed from whence inspiration sprouts. It is the reason for ideas that attract money and the will to gird one’s loins in the face of danger.
The author acknowledges that the world breaks us all, but some of us manage to get stronger in the broken places. For instance, his father was a well-heeled man, who was also an absentee parent.
Minambo’s anger towards his father is palpable. However, he does not allow this anger to metastasise into bitterness.
Instead, he urges the reader to treat the present as a currency that has not lost its purchase.
“Just know this, yesterday is a cancelled cheque, tomorrow is a promissory note and today is ready cash; invest and spend it wisely!” he advises.
One of the ways he was able to embrace this notion was to find himself.
This happened when Ken Blue, a visiting pastor from San Diego, California, USA, sat him down.
Blue, a respected motivational speaker, told the author that he should become a motivational speaker, while the two men were at a seminar of business leaders in Mombasa, Kenya.
Impressed by the way the author moderated the event, Blue urged him to become a “destiny maker” by embracing his natural gifts as a speaker.
The author, after some hesitation, agreed and has never looked back.
We all need people around us who believe in us, he says. However, the best thing in the world is to believe in ourselves.
So find yourself through self-awareness, like the boxer Muhammad Ali did.
“There’ is not a man alive who can floor me,” Ali boasted. “I am too fast. I am too smart. I am too pretty. I should be a postage stamp. That is the only way I will ever get licked!”
The author channels the self-assurance of Ali as a means of informing the reader of his (Ali’s) self-awareness and how such an abundant understanding of self is the beginning of greatness.
With every effort on this hallowed path to greatness, there are speed bumps though. The author advises that in the event of our failure, we must take the good with the bad in order to find our moral centre.
At this stage, we can balance our failure against the feeling that we have failed in order to turn that feeling the right side up. This will place success on the right side of failure.
“To fail is not a tragedy, but how you fail can be. Wisdom requires that in the vent of failure, always fail forward. I would like to challenge you today to never quit, never give up because tough times pass and tough people survive,” he writes.
This is easier said than done, right? But there are people who have done this and they continue to inspire themselves and us all. In short, they inspire instead of expire. And so can you.
Title: Be Inspired Before You Expire
Author: Pepe Minambo
Published: 2009
Pages: 124
Price: Shs20,000
Availability: [email protected]
