One of the most powerful lessons I’ve ever learned?
I think probably the most powerful lesson that I’ve ever learned is that our greatest challenges truly do become our greatest successes if we keep working at them. The challenge was literally placed there in our path to give us the opportunity to overcome it.
And growing up as a young person, I was not really well-liked. I was kind of an outcast. I was a little bit rough around the edges and I can definitely see how I brought most of it upon myself because I didn’t have the social skills. I had a big ego and I was always on the defense because, you know, I’d go to school and get picked on, I’d come home and my older brother was waiting for me. And he had been picked on too, so he needed somebody to take it out on and I got to be the scapegoat.
I was constantly fighting and constantly in defense mode, always having to stand up for myself, always under attack. And most importantly, always feeling under attack
I started a business when I was like 17 years old. It was a multi-level marketing business. And I went gung ho. I bought all the stuff, I got really into it. I was going to Salt Lake like 40 miles away to go to the office every single day. And then I ended up opening an office here in our closer hometown Ogden, which we’re just up out of the mountains out of, and I had all these folks that were driving from all over the place to come and do these presentations and do all this multi-level marketing for this amazing health and fitness company.
And literally, every single person in the whole place told me, “You need to read this book.” And, “No, I’m okay.” |No, you need to read this book.” “No, I’m okay.” Anyway, the book was called How to Win Friends and Influence People. But I was 17. I was a fighting champion. I was always in defense mode. I was really, really blind to the fact that as the saying goes, as a teenager, I really did know everything. And my cup was full. I could not accept any more. I couldn’t take it anymore.
And I ended up actually getting kicked out of that office that I started and signed the lease on and did all this stuff for. And it was one of my most powerful lessons to date because here I got kicked out of this office, I was absolutely broken inside. And no matter how big my ego was and, “Hey, it’s not me, it’s them,” I couldn’t get over the fact that this had happened to me and somehow, I had brought it on myself.
I get the book. I read the whole book in one day. It was full of every single thing that I knew, that I was energy sensitive and aware, but I could not put my finger on the fact that it was energy, that this energy was being shifted and moved.
It was an exchange between me and another person. And most importantly, I didn’t really understand what it was that people as a whole were looking for.
When I read this book, it was like all of these experiences that I’ve been fighting all piled up and said, “Oh, well, I’ve already experienced that. Oh, I can see it. Oh, I can see it. Oh, I can see it all. Oh, I can see it. Boom. This is the coolest thing ever,” because it had all of the answers to all of the different challenges that I’d been going through. And all of a sudden, it gave me the tools to turn my challenges into a game.
And at that point, things really, really turned around in my life and I found out just how much fun and amazing, or a more amazing experience it could be to not just be talking to wait for my next turn to talk, but to actually listen to other people and find out what was going on with them.
And this book opened so many doors for me, but at the end of the day, I guess the most powerful lesson that I got out of it is the more resistant I was, the biggest challenge. As soon as I let down the resistance and I said, “Okay, I need to go with this flow,” it became what I feel is one of my greatest strengths. And since I care about people and I love people, it was the tool that I was looking for. And if I had just got out of my own way earlier, that freight train would have hit me way earlier. I wouldn’t have had to go through those painful experiences to get me to look the way that I did.