Joyce
Mbaya
The e-Book Digital Edition
imaGIne your success path
BElieve in the impossible
BEcome who you’re meant to be
GIBÉBÉ™
imaGIne your success path,
BElieve in the impossible,
BEcome who you’re meant to be.
Joyce Mbaya
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GIBÉBÉ™ By Joyce Mbaya
Copyright © 2011 by Joyce Mbaya All rights reserved The contents, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form for any purpose or by any means without the prior written permission of Joyce Mbaya
Book design copyright © 2011 by Joyce Mbaya Cover design and illustrations by Sammy Mwirigi All rights reserved
eBook ISBN: 978-9966-1615-0-5
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GIBEBE AFRICA
Email: gibebe@joycembaya.com
Web: www.joycembaya.com
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D E D I C A T I O N
This book is dedicated to my father Obadiah Mbaya, my mother Eva Mbaya and my two sisters – Valerie and Nkatha Mbaya. Thank you for your wisdom, love and support that has helped me in realizing my dreams I also dedicate this book to my late grandfather, Eustus Mutegi. Thank you for the great message of wisdom and inspiration that you left for me…a precious gift that has given me so much strength in striving towards greatness
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A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S
I start by acknowledging God, my Heavenly Father-without Him I am nothing. He has gifted me and chosen me to inspire and empower people in realizing their greatest potential. I am truly humbled and I thank Him for revealing my purpose to me and helping me stay true to the work He has called me to do.
I would like to sincerely thank the team at GIBÉBÉ that has worked so hard on my projects and continues to support me. I would specifically like to thank Millicent Matingi, Valerie Mbaya, and Sammy Mwirigi. I also take this opportunity to thank the staff and directors at Capacity Building Institute Limited for their partnership and support.
Thanks to all my friends that have also supported me through the sacrifices and struggles towards seeing my dreams come true. Specifically, I’d like to thank Ivy Mumo for all the support as I transitioned into the tough world of 7
business and Wairimu Kingori, who has been my spiritual sister and master mind friend through my journey writing this book.
To so many others, including my former work colleagues and mentors that have been part of my journey, I may not have enough space to acknowledge all of you here - but know that in my heart I am truly grateful.
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C O N T E N T S
THE PATH OF GIBÉBÉ
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IMAGINE
A Granddaughter’s Promise
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Who Am I?
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What Are My Strengths?
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What Is My Purpose?
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What Is My Vision?
82
Imagine: Your Foundation Pillar
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BELIEVE
Believing in the Impossible
91
Know Your Mind Power
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Harness Your Mind Power
114
Believe in Others
125
Take Action
149
Believe: Your Defining Pillar
154
BECOME
Become who you’re meant to be
158
Become an Innovator
168
Become a Project Manager
177
Become a Brand
189
Become a Leader
201
Become: Your Breakthrough Pillar
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WALKING THE PATH
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I N T R O D U C T I O N
I would not trade this moment for anything. Let me paint the picture for you. It’s about 3:00am and it’s raining very heavily outside - The kind of rain that makes sleep sweet. Most people are curled up in their warm blankets, deeply asleep and dreaming away. Yet here I am, typing at my computer, excited about the ideas that I am about to share with you. My life purpose is being fulfilled as you sit there reading this book. I know that it will have a big impact on both our lives.
This book is all about getting to know who you are and how you can channel your greatest strengths and your potential to help you realize your dreams. Many people come to discover their true passions and talents after they have already wasted many unhappy years, others, never at all. There is so much power and potential in you which may remain untapped because you do not realize the importance of your purpose and the potential it has to transform your life. For most of us, when we lose our innocence and youth and grow up to be responsible adults, we also sadly lose our dreams.
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This book means a lot to me because it is my chance to share with you knowledge that I have discovered and applied to be able to achieve so much in my own life. I am twenty eight years old and I am the Founder and CEO of my own company. I have also had the opportunity to work with top corporate companies in the US and in Africa. Two years ago I was selected out of over 50,000 applicants as one of three Kenyan representatives on the competitive business reality show, The Apprentice Africa. I have also had the opportunity to appear in various media magazines and TV shows and share my message with so many people who have attended my coaching programs either as corporates, individuals or entrepreneurs. I am truly on an exciting success journey; walking and living my purpose.
One of the questions people ask me all the time is how I have managed to achieve and successfully manage all these things, more so at my age. This question as well as my vision to inspire and empower you with this knowledge helped me realize that the secret to my success lies in an exciting path called GIBÉBÉ.
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I invite you to walk with me down that path and also discover how GIBÉBÉ
can change your life. I do not claim to have all the answers, but I do feel that my entire existence and ongoing success is based on certain choices and decisions. I hope that sharing my experiences can help you walk the same successful path. I also hope that by sharing my story you can also search within you and realize that you also have a story to tell. One that you can start to build on right now if you join me in unveiling power that you may not have realized is within you, yet is the key to unlocking your potential.
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T h e
P a t h
o f
G I B E B E
i m a [ G I ] n e
[ B E ] l i e v e
[ B E ] c o m e
T H E P A T H O F G I B É B É : I M A G I N E , B E L I E V E , B E C O M E
Welcome to the beginning of an exciting road. First of all, I will commend you for your courage in walking this path for the very idea of personal growth and discovery is scary to many people and we go through our entire lives avoiding situations that would expose us to ourselves. Yet the rewards for those who are willing to walk this path are greater than any of us realize.
This is your personal quest towards discovering how to transform your aspirations into achievements. Think of it as though you have travelled to a remote land in search of this path known as GIBÉBÉ.
After many months of searching and seeking, you have finally met someone who knows and understands the path that you seek. You have searched for many years for this knowledge and you are now ready to complete your journey and reap the rewards. I will share with you this knowledge and this path and walk with you as your guide.
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The Path of GIBÉBÉ is made up of three pillars that ultimately lead you to Success. These pillars are major stepping stones and create a process that can lead you to transform your dreams into successful achievements. When combined, their names also build upon each other to form the actual word: GIBÉBÉ
THE PILLAR OF THE SUN: imaGIne… your success path THE PILLAR OF THE STARS: BElieve… in the impossible THE PILLAR OF FIRE: BEcome… who you’re meant to be You can now see that the path of GIBÉBÉ has been derived from the three pillars that it symbolizes; imaGine, BElieve, BEcome. In Swahili, we have a word that maps the true meaning of this path… the word “ JIBÉBÉ ”, which literally means, “to uplift yourself”… or in this case we can think of it as “to improve or transform yourself”.
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Your journey to success using the path of GIBÉBÉ will be unveiled by exploring these three pillars and the knowledge within them. As you complete each pillar, you will realize how it becomes a key stepping stone on your journey and you will be shown how to apply the knowledge within each to realize your breakthrough.
The path of GIBÉBÉ is a challenging one and you must prepare yourself accordingly for there will be many insights and mysteries that will be revealed – some of which may be difficult to fathom.
In order to begin the journey you must start by opening up your mind. If you succeed in this, then the path will be illuminated and will become clear.
During the quest, you will discover important steps to your success. You must unveil these steps and successfully navigate the lessons that shall be revealed to you. As your guide, I will reveal my own experiences that helped me complete the journey and in turn this will help you unlock your own path.
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As you discover the knowledge, also know that purpose and success can only be perfected through practice. As you learn the path of GIBÉBÉ, you also must place yourself in situations that will reveal to you more deeply how this knowledge can shape your future. There is a reason why children are more likely to achieve self discovery than adults. It is because they are open-minded and have not formed opinions and beliefs that would form a barrier to change and transformation.
Scientific Research has now proven that when we are conceived, we have the same potential in each and every one of us. You know deep down that you have the potential to be as great as the most important and wealthy achievers of our time. So why then are we not all successful? The answers are right there in front of you! From the moment we are born, we start to be impacted by different messages around us and by the environment we are exposed to. We go through different experiences and teachings and we quickly begin to form opinions and thoughts that start to influence who we eventually become. This is why it’s so important that you open up your imagination and your mind so that reading this book is not just an action 18
but becomes an experience that will truly start to show you how you can reveal your greatest potential.
I cannot do this without you. I could be telling you about the guaranteed formula for winning the lottery or an expert system that would immediately make you millions in your business but none of these things would work if your mind garden is not watered and ready for the seed to grow. Think about what I will be sharing and how you can make it practical in your daily life.
And this is the goldmine of it all: the ability not only to listen, but more importantly, to apply as much of the knowledge we gain as we possibly can.
Realize that there is a reason why this knowledge is now being presented to you. In the great journey of life, we are often given opportunities to think about our purpose and our success as well as how to grow and develop faster and this is another one of those opportunities, knocking on your door.
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In the past few years, I have seen myself move faster on my own success journey and I have seen my aspirations becoming one achievement after another. These accomplishments and many others are what have led me to believe that anything is possible and also to see that the strategies I am about to share with you can really work in helping you achieve your dreams.
By applying these ideas in your own life, you can begin to set yourself apart and see yourself going from ordinary to extraordinary.
Your success journey begins now…
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T h e
P i l l a r
o f
t h e
S u n
i m a [ G I ] n e
Imagine Your Success Path
Like the sun rising, this is the
dawn of a new day. I must
begin by harnessing my
imagination to understand
myself, realize my purpose
and see the strongest
elements of me that will
contribute to my success.
The beginning of all
achievement is in “self”
A G R A N D D A U G H T E R ’ S P R O M I S E
“To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all” Anatole France
It all began when I was seventeen years old - my life changing moment. The experience that forever shaped who I am, and that I hold responsible for so many inspired and good choices that I’ve been blessed to make in my life.
Looking back, sometimes, I wonder what I would have done differently if I had known what that moment would mean to my life. I did not recognize it for what it was at the time but it was the beginning of my journey on the path of GIBÉBÉ.
The life changing moment is different for each person. It may be a memory of something that has already happened; it may be a loved one’s belief in us and our abilities to succeed. It could also be a difficult situation that you have been through that forced you to stop and evaluate your life and your decisions. The way to recognize this moment is that it makes you restless.
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By this I mean that you are no longer satisfied with settling for the norm, you want more. And not only do you want more you start to see that you can have more and you truly start to reach into your innermost child and believe that whatever your mind conceives it can achieve-that your destiny is within your reach.
My grandfather had always been a monumental figure in my life. As a child, his booming laughter and voice, his toothy grin and the twinkle in his eye when he greeted me, calling me, “His little darling” was a warm part of my life. Based on our African tradition, I had been “named after” his wife –
Kathomi – which means “the one who reads”. This was the reason why he called me, “His little darling”. It still amazes my parents and my family how much I have lived up to the legacy of that name.
My grandfather was a well read man for his generation, educated, able to speak fluent English. My mother’s stories on her upbringing (as his daughter) clearly tell of an intelligent man who had a profound legacy and impact in his time.
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My love affair with mathematics (and the sciences in general) also had a lot to do with the fact that my grandfather taught me my first multiplication tables. I was nine years old and had been struggling to make sense of this evil thing called math and when I went to spend the holidays with my grandparents, he somehow turned something that had seemed so impossible into something fun and interesting. My teachers were perplexed when I went back to school after and had been transformed into a straight A Math student – a reputation I maintained all through my school years.
When I was seventeen, we made our annual trip to visit my grandparents, as we had many times before. This is a common tradition in my African culture, where families that live in the cities and towns travel and spend the holidays in the traditional homestead or the village. We had made the trip many times before and that time it was no different.
I remember being grouchy and sulking at my parents for making us spend the holiday in the village instead of being in the city. I had thought about all 25
the excitement I was going to miss out on and how my friends would have interesting stories to tell about their holidays once we got back to school.
Later though, my adolescent misgivings seemed so childish when I thought of all the things I could have given to go back and have the chance to make that journey again, make that journey with the awareness of what I was about to learn and how those moments were going to change my life.
The light at the end of the tunnel had been the fact that I would get to spend time with my grandfather. He still had a way of making me feel like a princess even as a teenager. I could barely wait for my dad to park the car…
As he had done all my life since I was a little girl, my grandfather had stretched his arms smiling and called out, “My Little darling, come say hello….” And I had said hello, as I looked up at him, feeling like a small girl as I always had around him and glowing with the pride I saw reflected in his eyes.
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That day passed like many other days I had spent at my grandparents’
home in the village, my mum was hustling and bustling and catching up with her family, my dad was sitting on the front porch enjoying the view and sharing the latest political intrigues with my uncles. My sisters, my cousins and I walked up and down the tea plantations awed by the serenity and beauty of nature.
I did not think much of it when my grandfather asked to speak to me as this was also the norm when we visited. He would always take time to find out how I was doing and offer words of wisdom to me - his darling.
As we spoke that day, I could tell there was something very important he needed to tell me and of course my mind wandered, like any teenage mind would in the face of such serious discussions. But there was an unusual note of urgency and persistence in his tone that had made me pay attention.
One aspect of our conversation stood out in particular and has stayed with me since…
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“If you remember nothing else about what we’ve spoken about today, you must never forget that you have a crown on your head. Since you were a child, I have seen great potential in you and your purpose in this world is of grave importance. Your crown makes you special, it’s made up of all your talents and gifts, the things you have been given to enable you to achieve your purpose….
…Wearing this crown is a great responsibility and you will encounter situations that may try to take this crown away from you. You must be careful whom you share your crown with and you must treasure it and be sure to see your responsibility come true. Never forget, Kathomi, about the crown you have on your head and promise me you will remember my words and heed them”
I made my promise to him and when we left his words had remained with me as I tried to make sense of what he had told me.
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I did not think much of that conversation until a few months later when my grandfather passed away. It had all seemed so surreal when we received the news that he was gone, almost like a bad dream, and for me everything else after that happened in a blur. It was a painful experience to lose him in my life and our conversation that day translated into my life changing moment.
The last conversation I had with my grandfather left me with a great legacy and I felt I owed it to his memory to see it through.
I started to read leadership and motivational books and to search for this greatness, this crown that my grandfather had spoken to me about. Self awareness became the tool and the comfort that would help me make sense of my crown and what I learnt in the process completely transformed my life. I took an active interest in my success and in my life – my first leadership role in high school was as a result of this life changing moment. I became the chairlady of my “house committee” and also became a “senior student prefect” in my last year of high school.
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This is how I began my journey with the first pillar of GIBÉBÉ – imaGIne – as I tried to understand what it meant to have a crown and how I could fast track my journey of success and greatness.
I believe you also have a crown, whether you recognize it or not, and the goal of this first pillar of GIBÉBÉ is to become self aware and help you realize who you are, your strengths, your purpose and your vision as the foundation of your success.
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W h o A m I ?
The simplest strategies are often times the toughest ones to implement.
The idea that you need to know who you are in order to achieve your goals and aspirations may not seem very inspiring but all you need to do to realize just how many people have missed it, is to think about all the meetings and places you have gone where people are asked to introduce themselves.
First there is a subtle shift, a wave of discomfort, as people start to glance this and that way… paying closer attention to who is in the room as they wonder what to say. You can almost sense that most of them wish that they didn’t have to go through this moment and a few have already marked out the exit and are rapidly calculating how to use it without making it obvious that they have chosen to escape.
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More importantly, this experience doesn’t occur once or twice in our lives –
there are countless instances where we’re asked to brave it out in front of a group people as we introduce ourselves.
And yet many people are no closer now to making this moment work than when they first had to do so, as a child in school or in front of family at a young age. The reason is that it’s not easy to introduce yourself when you’re not sure who you are. By who you are, I am not talking about your name and job title. Let me show you what I mean: Imagine that you have been given the honor of introducing your favorite sports team in one of the greatest matches that they are going to play. If you’re not a sports fan, you can imagine that it’s your favorite celebrity, getting ready for the greatest performance of their lives.
This is indeed a special moment and you want to get it right – so much so, that you may even do some research on their accomplishments to be sure that you have made it an introduction to remember. Because you’re their 33
greatest fan, you’re not lacking in lavish praises and words to describe just how great this team or celebrity is.
You stand up armed with your facts and praises and you are so excited and have so much to say that you’re even worried that you don’t have enough time.
Now imagine that you have been randomly called upon at a major business conference or in a class to introduce to everyone what a molecular de compressor is. I can see you standing there, looking around nervously and wondering what in the world it is and why you had to be the one chosen to look like a fool in front of the others. You lack the words to say anything because you have no clue and you’re worried about looking foolish before your classmates or colleagues.
Do you see my point? For most people the reactions in the second scenario are closer to how they feel when asked to introduce themselves. They don’t 34
know what to say and are nervous and scared about what everyone is thinking!
My point is: many of us assume that we understand who we are yet the truth is we do not. And because we don’t understand ourselves, we try to walk the success journey thinking we know where we’re going when all we’re doing is guessing which way we should go and assuming this will somehow lead us to great achievements.
One of the traits of successful people is that they are confident – and this confidence stems from their knowledge of themselves and their purpose.
This is what makes it possible for them to stand in front of ten people or ten thousand peopl