I am the kind of person that loves watching series that engage my mind and challenge me to look for solutions to tough problems. For that reason I love watching and re-watching ‘24’ and ‘Prison Break’.

In ‘Prison Break’, we see prisoners trying to do all they can to break and escape from prison. Sometimes they take days and days digging a hole only to reach a dead end but get the courage to start afresh. They never lose hope until they are out of prison.

One of the most interesting, though annoying character in Prison Break’ is T-Bag. He repeatedly encourages his friends to avoid the ‘captivity of negativity’. This speaks volumes to us at this point in time when a general wave of discouragement has engulfed a section of Africans who feel that the continent has sunk so much politically and economically.

It is human to get tired and weary, but we should never allow that to kill our stamina to fight on till we get what we want in life. And we should never use weariness as an excuse not to do what we should do. It’s common to find some married people refusing to take care of the needs of their spouses, adults not voting, employees mistreating customers and people not caring about the environment just because of weariness.

When it gets to some African opposition politicians it gets worse. Some of them want to give citizens an impression that the political climate in Africa is too bad to change and thus, any effort we put towards changing it is futile. But the truth is that they are just too tired to come up with any new constructive idea; so all they can do is criticize, criticize and criticize.

If you want to succeed in life, never get too tired to do what you must do. If you become too tired for your marriage, others might take over your spouse. If you get so tired in your business, customers will seek service elsewhere. If you get tired for God, it’s your spiritual life that will suffer.

Can you be too tired to eat? Can you be tired to dress up? Can you get too tired to defend yourself against danger? When you meet a snake can you say you are too tired? You have to either get a weapon and hit its head or spring up like for dear life.

Many people who think they are too tired to act on their dreams are simply victims of the captivity of negativity. They have possibly had a bad past where their efforts to change their situation did not bring about the desired results and so they have become hopeless and desperate.

Sometimes the captivity of negativity results from what we feed our minds on (what we listen to, what we read and what we watch).

Thus, if you want a positive mindset, choose to feed your mind with what has positive energy – that which empowers, encourages, inspires, motivates, energizes and raises you to do whatever you must do to succeed in life. Also make sure you always have positive company around you.

Robert Bake Tumuhaise is the MD, World of Inspiration & Founder of the Authors’ Forum in Uganda.