Your graduation is the first step in a journey of life-long learning, discovering who you really are, not what your parents, your socialisation or your ethnic community deemed who you are, and shedding toxic inherited beliefs.  

In South Africa, self-worth is increasingly defined by material success, ostentatious displays of wealth and bling. Practise healthy self-worth. You are valuable, worthy to experience happiness and have the right to be unconditionally loved for who you are, not what you are doing. 

In South Africa, the increasing corruption of beliefs, culture, religion, and politics has resulted in many adults struggling to make meaning of their lives.

Have a healthy concept of what success is. Success is about striving to develop to your full potential – to become the best you. It is about doing your best, continuously learning, and improving. 

Find a purpose quickly, a goal you want to achieve, which matters to you – which directs your actions, decisions, and behaviours. Research has shown individuals with a clear life purpose are likely to be more resilient, focused and even happier than those who do not have. 

Do not seek external validation from others. If you struggle to find a purpose, think about the things you do that make you happy, feel meaningful or inspire you. 

Actively do new activities, meet new people, and read widely. Read beyond your professional interests and topics that are beyond your cultural, belief and worldview comfort zone.

Learn from people you think have a life of purpose. Volunteer. Give something back. Get involved – from donating blood, organs, and bone marrow, to filling potholes, establishing a sports club, and sitting on a school governing body or police community forum.

Refrain from having a fixed mindset, which only sticks to beliefs, ideologies and traditions learnt from family, cultures, and political organisations – even if these are harmful to you, others, and the environment. 

Rise above limiting beliefs imbibed from your family, village, and political organisations. Limiting beliefs are described as “ideas we hold about ourselves and the world that prevent us from becoming the best version of ourselves”. 

Limiting beliefs include the one belief that things or circumstances will or can never change. Limiting beliefs are also denials, such as only the rich will prosper, true love does not exist or the impact of corruption on public services, breakdown of law and increasing poverty, is overhyped. Limiting beliefs could also be about other people, such as all white people are racists, or all black leaders have good intentions.

Despite your limiting environment, your fate is mostly determined by how you act. Many suffer from the limiting belief that their circumstances are so dire that they cannot change them without external help.

You may not be able to control outside events, circumstances, and pressures; however, how you react to these will shape your fate. Ultimately, take firm responsibility for how you live your life, not for it to be determined by outside forces. 

Only if one can challenge one’s beliefs, assumptions and cultures can one come up with imaginative solutions to complex problems. 

Make regular audits of your beliefs, cultural, political and upbringing assumptions. Are they toxic? Are they harmful? Are they relevant for our times? Are they constitutional? Don’t fall for political, ideological, religious, or cultural groupthink.

South Africa is the world’s most diverse country. Explore friendships and partnerships beyond your own group, colour, and culture. You will be enriched. Cut out toxic relationships – whether family, intimate or friends. 

Do not have a scarcity mindset, which is a belief that one has limited resources, and therefore focusing one’s energy on what one does not have and failing to see the opportunities in one’s environment or within oneself. 

Nurture a growth mindset. Catherine Cote writes that someone with a growth mindset does not allow his or her past, whether environment, experience, or failures, to define their future. 

See the opportunities. Often, after what appears to be failures, is a door to the greatest opportunity – only if you have the growth or positive mindset would you be able to grasp such opportunities. 

Have a clear set of values to guide you, to give you purpose and to give you meaning. Let these include integrity, kindness and taking personal responsibility for your actions. Always be honest with yourself. Regularly audit yourself, whether you know your values.

Eschew thinking in extremes or black or white thinking or “polarised thinking”, which prevents individuals from seeing the world as “complex, nuanced, and full of all the shades in between”. 

Do not fall into victimhood. Accept the past – and move on. Refrain from being a prisoner of anger, resentment, and bitterness. Be solution-seeking. 

Banish the fear of failure, the fear of trying, and the fear of taking on unfamiliar challenges. See failures as learnings, opportunities for growth and development, as lessons to be learnt, to make better strategic decisions in new circumstances, and to work even harder to achieve your goals.

Often what appears to be failure is the catalyst for success. 

Be comfortable with making mistakes. Mistakes are not judgements of your character, sense of self or identity, but opportunities for learning. 

Fear of rejection will limit your career, undermine your personal happiness and stunt your development. Inaction because of fear of rejection means you are living a life of pretending – which is not physically healthy – rather than an authentic one, and the world will be missing out on the brilliance of your true self. 

What appears to be rejection, failure and disappointment should not define who you are, and should not result in a loss of your sense of self, identity, or self-worth. Such things are not permanent, but transitional.

Character is when everything goes wrong, and one still does one’s best, coping with setbacks and not being influenced by someone else’s prejudiced view of oneself – whether friends or partners. 

Take responsibility when you do wrong. Generously own when you are at fault but accept your faults without self-blame. Being vulnerable is not being weak, but shows strength. Ask for help when you need it. Asking for help, especially when those we trusted have failed us in the past, may be difficult, but it is crucial for self-care. 

Learn to say no – if saying yes would go against your values or will cause you hardships, but when saying no will make you unpopular. Ask what you need, rather than marginalising your needs. It’s better that a person or company say they cannot meet your needs, than stay quiet about your needs. Being a people pleaser is harmful to yourself. Face your fears head-on.

To be successful, building a measure of resilience is key. Resilience means bouncing back after setbacks, remaining positive and looking at the lessons learnt for future strategy. Cultivate an optimistic attitude. See your life as the journey of the hero – find ways to recover from setbacks; navigate unknown territory. 

Get yourself your personal board of directors – people who you admire, within and outside your circle, who can hold you accountable for personal and career decisions, goals, and targets. 

Strengthen your emotional intelligence. Managing one’s feelings means understanding that one has to acknowledge what one’s feelings say, that one’s feelings have a role; how to voice feelings appropriately, that one has to deal with one’s feelings constructively and not become a prisoner of one’s feelings.

Bad things happen to good people. Sometimes one is simply unlucky. It is more important how one positively responds to setbacks. Do not sit back until the conditions in your environment are conducive, favourable, or familiar to act – but do so proactively.

Assert your agency. Actively take “control over your own behaviours, decisions and actions in shaping up your life as opposed to relying on external circumstances, conditions and environment to decide what you can and cannot do”.

Be careful how you talk to yourself. Negative self-talk has a way of undermining your own power, agency, and purpose. Be kind to yourself. Treat yourself with compassion, love, and consideration. See yourself as your best friend. 

Self-care is important. A healthy relationship with oneself is crucial. There is no reason to feel shame about who you are. Be kind and gentle to yourself. Love yourself. Treat yourself as your best friend. Each of us is born unique – beautiful in our own image. 

You are worthy of happiness. If you don’t learn to like yourself as you are, not only will others find it hard to do so, but it stunts your potential. When you find yourself veering into negative criticism of yourself, self-answer it with compassion.

Have life-long participation in physical activity – whether running, walking or cycling. Pursue wide interests beyond your profession.

It is critical to nurture your spiritual intelligence. Find a spiritual practice – something that works for you, whether meditation or prayer; it will be critical for your inner health.

Forgive easily. Forgiveness certainly does not mean accepting, becoming friends with, or reconciling with those who harmed you. Rubin Khoddam, the US psychologist says, “Forgiveness is not saying what happened was okay”. Forgiveness, says Khoddam, “is choosing to accept what happened as it happened rather than what could or should have happened”. 

Forgiveness is not being weak. Forgiveness is hard. It demands inner strength. In my own life, I have now accepted that forgiveness, and letting go, as hard as it may be, is crucial for my own personal wellbeing, health, and mental state. 

Forgiveness is an antidote to remaining stuck in victimisation mode. Do not live in the past; refrain from victimhood. Violence is not a solution to problems.

Always live in hope. To live in hope does not mean denying difficult realities. It means “facing them and addressing them”.

Rebecca Solnit puts it beautifully: “Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognise uncertainty, you recognise that you may be able to influence the outcomes – you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable.”

Finally, listen to your body. Its discomfort will tell you when you make the wrong decision or if you are with people and situations that will cause you harm. Live as if every day will be your last. Love consciously. 

Stay curious. Stay humble. Stay grateful. DM

This is an extract from Prof William Mervyn Gumede’s recent address at the graduation ceremony and the 125th anniversary of the Elsenburg Agricultural Institute, Stellenbosch.