BOOK REVIEW: Nuggets from ‘Get Serious’ by Honest Mukwenya

Author: Honest Mukwenya

Nationality: Zimbabwe

Contacts: honestmukwenya@gmail.com

Cost: 10 USD

Genre: Inspirational

Reviewer: Benvictor Makau         

Honest Mukwenya is a Zimbabwean author and Motivational speaker.

In this book, he reveals that the human problem is less from the external hurdles but more from internally-seated weaknesses, especially psychologically.

Reading the entire book offers you a fresh perspective on life and challenges the readers’ approach to diverse issues of life, rekindling a new desire to try out things again, this time round, with more gusto and deeper purpose. 

1. Choosing peace is a form of self-discipline: The ability to control one’s thoughts and choose peace over pleasing people sets one free from the fetters of disrespect and stagnation. You have to control your thoughts and intentionally get serious about your peace. “If you don’t control what you think, you can’t control what you do,” he says. According to Mukwenya, being serious with one’s peace calls for branching out of comfort, having a plan, pushing life’s boundaries, and jumping on top of any negative energy whispering discouragement to the pursuance of your goals. It demands taking ownership of past mistakes and resolving to flip the page and re-write the story with success, self-discipline, self-belief, and accountability.
2. Your past doesn’t define you; your present does: If you want to join the success thinkers, you must emancipate yourself from pinning your thoughts on past experiences. Instead of living in your past, choose to do something about your future; get serious about it. Successful minds “…set goals into the future, clear targets to push them forward, to light their fire within and give them passion for living. They visualize the result coming to reality into the future,” he says. Do you want to become successful? Forget about the pain along the journey; stop playing the victim of your past; put your tools to work and think of the future’s ultimate comfort, happiness, and fulfillment. Use your past as fuel to the future and not as an excuse. Using the story of Dr. Merjory Chipato, a Zimbabwean Business Woman, Doctor and Author of “I’m In charge of my Narrative,” Mukwenya stresses that in the face of rejection, hardships, stagnancy, accusations and other snags, all which befell Dr. Chipato before she became the gem she is, resilience is the only way to triumph. 
3. “It’s easier to live when you have goals to meet,” as said by Jahseh Dwayne. Beyond talking about your goals and hefty plans, what are you doing to realize them? Are you getting from the complacency of your comfort zone and branching out to a better you? Chasing your goal demands time, dedication, international growth of your social capital, confidently owning your ideas when everybody else is telling you otherwise, and walking into the unfamiliar, as the author puts it. He urges the reader to stop being afraid of the familiar, to dip their feet into the waters and keep going deeper into life’s greatness. And after all has been said and done, never forget those who spurred you throughout the journey.  
4. Become serious about love, but start with self-love: They don’t know how to love, those who haven’t loved themselves first. Self-love will drive you to associate with people with positive energy toward you and who add warmth and color to your experiences. “You need to increase your self-love; you need to increase the amount of time that you spend with yourself; get off the cell phone, get off the internet,” says Mukwenya. Understand the pattern of your habits, fix those that need fixing, and make the right choices about who to associate with to avoid being dysfunctional. Simultaneously, be keen to snatch the best out of yourself because you are the one you have been waiting for. If you treat yourself with dignity and self-love and put all efforts into bettering yourself, “Your world will get brighter and your life will get lighter…,” he advises. 
5. No matter the excuse, resist the urge to quit and abort your dream: Every good thing takes time, proves full of lessons all along the way and most often, involves myriad fails and rising up. There will always be times when you feel like sinking; there will be times of reclusion and loneliness, self-doubt and distaste, but you better keep your wings flapping, pushing you higher and higher toward your destiny. “If you are at your wits end, keep the faith,” he urges. At times, when life seems not to make sense, the way seems dark and your plans threaten to overturn, keep pressing on and remain resilient. 
6. Your mental health is your engine; keep your eyes on it: Develop proper habits and resist any negative energy. Mukwenya says that one thing which steals people’s joy is cultivating a habit of connecting your problems to past events and people you engaged with and living in the confines of a blame game. “Emotions are the end product of past experiences. So the moment they recall those memories of their problems, they all of a sudden feel unhappy; they feel sad, they feel pain,” he notes. When past thoughts become your habit, they severe your thinking and shape your future, with feelings of revenge and self-worthlessness.
7. Learn to shorten your emotional ripple effects: Most people keep certain emotions at heart and use them to prepare for anticipated similar scenarios. This makes them slaves to their fears and emotions, and 70% are already in this category, as research predicts. The best way out is regularly clearing out all cached negative emotions in your mind and hoping for better moments ahead. That will wipe out the chemical adaptations your body has built over time, which are usually drawing you back to past experiences and sucking out your energy.  Just like iron is destroyed by its own rust, people are destroyed by their own mindsets.
8. Refuse to play the victim: Do you feel like the heavens are crushing in on you? You are not alone. This author reminds the reader that you will not achieve your purpose if you play the victim and live a life of complaints. You will not make it out of the nest with a victim mentality. “Where do you see yourself? What do you see of yourself and how clear can you have a vision for yourself?” he implores. You must grab a sense of urgency for your life and move with it. Successful people are driven by a sense of urgency. “The amount of success you are going to achieve in your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you’re comfortable dealing with,” reveals Mukwenya. Know your worth and live by it.
9. Failure is the highway to success: Often, learning something starts with making a mistake about it, which brews the desire to learn it better. Mistakes are part of the learning process, and the road to success is always under construction. The painful story punctuating your struggles is the right path to the victory lying ahead. 

10. Never doubt yourself: Refuse to be your own enemy. Allow no doubts into your head, which will make you strong enough to wipe off any doubts cast on you by outside forces. Self-belief hardens you to trust yourself and rise beyond any negative words from anybody else about you. “The greatest challenge and the greatest obstacle any human will face is their own doubts, their own fears and their own conditioned thoughts,” warns Mukwenya. He says that to win your dreams over, you must fight the most-fierce battles in your life and win them first, beginning with those in your head. To get to the point of reliable self-trust, build yourself in diverse areas of life: professionally, mentally, emotionally and otherwise, and set yourself up for success. 

Indeed, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson said. 

YOU CAN ALSO READ: BOOK REVIEW: I’m in Charge of My Narrative

For more inspiration and to place your book orders, please follow the author on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, all @Honest Mukwenya. 

About the Author

Honest Panashe Mukwenya, affirmatively known as “Emkay” was born on February 6, 2004. He went to Sherwood Park Primary School, where he discovered his writing talent. Thereafter he pursued his Ordinary Level education at Kwekwe High School and Advanced Level at Herentals College, Kwekwe. Honest is a motivational writer and speaker known as “Emkayinquotes.”

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