Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Nelson Mandela

he American leadership guru John Maxwell notes that a leader must win people’s hearts to win their heads, because people will only follow a person they feel they can trust. Nelson Mandela demonstrated an exceptional capacity to do this. In declaring him the South African of the decade, the Financial Mail said he has “the gift of being able to make other people feel better about themselves. That is such a big part of his true greatness; occasional ordinary human failings of judgement but never of principle.


"According to Maccauvlei Training Magazine, he would get up at four o’clock in the morning and exercise until six o’clock before the day’s work. In the evening there would be study schedules from five until seven o’clock.

Nelson Mandela on anger: “Anger is a temporary feeling – you soon forget it, particularly if you are involved in positive activities and attitudes. It is not easy to remain bitter if one is busy with constructive things.”…


on his hopes: “Many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountain tops of our desires.”…on reconciliation: We need to reconcile our differences through reason, debate and compromise.…on tolerance: You should be tolerant of those who have views that are different to yours, because you will win by the correctness of the position that you take.Victor Frankl, who survived detention in a concentration camp, and lived many more years, wrote the following in Man’s Search for Meaning:
“We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way."

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