I was born in Salt Lake City Utah. Utah’s a great place to be a kid because it has mountains, skiing, rivers, lakes, deserts and everything in between. I was fortunate because my parents are great loving parents as well. I was the kid who tore things apart and put them back together. Things like TV’s (The families first color TV), Radios, cars, or whatever were on my hit list. I was also climbing on top of everything and very creative.
I had one flaw, or so I was told, I got bored easily. In school I did not excel and I was different than everyone else. My parents were told when I was in the second grade that I would need “SPECIAL EDUCATION†because I would never excel but they were required to offer it. I read this as dumb! I was put in the “retard†school for some time and did not excel well at all. They sent me for a battery of test to find out what was wrong and nothing could be found. One teacher decided that I should take an I.Q. The results came back and everyone was astonished, I was off the charts. Of course, I knew nothing what that meant I just figured that I was dumb and could not handle school. They put me in a program called SRA. I have no clue what that is but basically, I worked at my own pace and in one year completed the entire K-6th grade packets. I was in the third grade at this time. Although this was a good thing, I guess, I was very discourages because I was different and set apart. By this time, the damage was done.
In high school, the story was the same. I was an “Underachieverâ€. It meant nothing that in the sixth grade I spoke good Russian and won awards a BYU for my ability. I was still dumb. I never really excelled other than in challenging classes like computers, chemistry, electronics and math. They were fun. My senior year I needed one English credit. I had played hooky most of the year smoking weed and drinking like a fish but when the chips were down, I studied hard and just in the nick of time I aced the final exam. The teacher said I was gifted and she had never met a student that had potential like I had. Do you think I heard any of this? Nope! I was DUMB! In 1979 I graduated by the skin of my teeth.
Right after high school, my high school sweetheart broke the news to me that she was pregnant. Yee Haw, Just what I wanted to hear. (Slight Sarcasm inserted), we were married and I was now on my own. I was a member of the local Volunteer fire department and it was there that I discovered they real joy of drinking. I found that I could run with the big boys, feel a part of something and serve a genuine purpose. The downside of this is that alcohol, drugs and whatever else I could find seemed to take away all the emotions and feelings I had buried so long ago but always felt. My drinking escalated to a level that would pickle even the best rock stars like Keith Richards.
My wife called me an alcoholic on every occasion she could find and my friends seemed to not like partying with me anymore. It would have made sense to stop the drinking at this time but it was more comfortable to just feel dumb again. By age 27 I was not doing much in the way of firefighting and my real job was very stressful. It was an important job running a major natural gas transmission companies pipeline system and any mistake could take the lives of workers and customers or turn a city cold. What a great job for a dumb guy! I worked shift work and one night I came home to find that I had been cleaned out. Everything but my computer was gone, Kids, Wife, Furniture, cars, everything! I was destroyed but in some sick way, set free.
My drinking excelled to level I never imagined possible and I lost everything else I owned. The house, my car, my motorcycle were all gone. All that remained was my girlfriend, my job and my life. I had a few weeks before the house was to be repossessed and I was laying on the couch when I saw an advertisement for a rehab center. It made sense and I checked myself in. Through rehab and AA I have not had a drink since March 14th 1989. It does work. However, this is really the beginning of the story.
Being sober was great, but in the process of getting sober I lost my job. I was fired in the treatment center. Nothing like getting let down slow. I had a lot of free time and was miserable inside. I felt like a major failure. I started college and completed one year but I felt so unfulfilled that it was pathetic. I dumped my girlfriend, who stood by me through all of this, for a sicker model. Once again, in my misery, I was watching late night TV when this annoying charismatic buffoon came on TV and started going on about happiness, passion and all this other crap I didn’t want to hear. That’s right, Tony Robbins.
For some unknown reason, I wanted the tapes. Personal Power was the program and I was able to get my mom to buy them for me. I could not afford them, heck she was paying my rent so I could live at that time. This turned out to be the second most important thing my parents ever gave me, my life being the first. In this program I found a way to erase, if you will, the pain of that past and convert it into power.
I completed the entire process and set forth some pretty wild goals:
Find a good loving woman who could support me in my dreams
Get a Harley
Fly an airplane
triple my salary (At the time I was at 10K)
Have a nice house
Own a helicopter (Got this one from TR I believe)
Get a good job (Honestly, I can’t remember what I was doing at the time)
Get a boat
Get a nice truck
There were others but these were the highlights. Within two years, I achieved every goal except the house, Helicopter and motorcycle. I carried these goals in my wallet for several years on a piece of paper and looked at them often. Later in life I would get that motorcycle and I still have it today. I have a beautiful house and a condo in Hawaii as well as a new Condo in Roatan Honduras. I sold the boat and my amazing wife was bummed. She liked the boat. It’s amazing, the two best days in a boat owner’s life are; the day you buy it and the day you sell it. I no longer needed the headache and someday, I am sure my wife will create the desire in me to have another boat. Now let’s move on to occupations.
I have a great job today. I am the VP, Research and Development / Engineering for a software company. For some time this title was my identity. Scary stuff because it’s an unstable world in software development. I started out just after I quit college as a nuclear physics lab technician. What a fun job, some of the times like when I got to play with reactors or build automation systems or develop software. But it certainly had a boring side and after some time the company downsized and closed. I was jobless once again but not defeated. AR principles were at work and I created myself as a software developer. Up to this point I dabbled in programming and had made some great strides but I was not a programmer. I beat the pavement selling myself to anyone who would listen. Not an easy task for a guy who had a low self esteem and not much skill in this area but I finally, after tons of rejection, found a taker. This company designed software for Option Trading and I was put over an Option Trading research project writing “C†code on a UNIX system. I knew a little “C†but I was clueless on UNIX. Basically, I faked it until I made it and everybody loved my work.
I left this company after two years because, through connections, Price Waterhouse Coopers had heard of my work in this area. Scary because I knew how to make a computer trade, I couldn’t do it myself. PWC paid me well to write risk analysis software and I was in heaven. But that heaven didn’t last because I grew tired of poor management and restricted ideas so I took another offer from a company that had heard of me through the same company that told PWC about me. This company needed someone to run their engineering department. They offered me a good income to start out and I jumped all over it, moved the family and the rest is history. Now I come full circle, I make substantially more than my original wage and I have achieved more than I ever dreamed possible. Then, I became complacent.
Always in the back of my mind was the desire to do the PPI tapes again. I bought myself a copy of PPII because I have no clue were those original tapes went. A month after I bought PPII and was in the process of doing it, I saw that same charismatic buffoon (I crack myself up and say this in a loving way) on TV while sitting in my Kona Hawaii Condo so I also bought me GTE. In doing PPII I have re-energized that fire within. I have new dreams, or have awakened old dreams, and want more from life. I have a passion for living and a desire to excel to levels that seem as far away today as where I am today would have seemed 14 years ago. I still have that same great wife and she thinks I am nuts but she supports me and that’s what matters.
Since the writing of this story I have added a few new chapters. On a sunny and muggy day in August 2003 I was leaving for work and while standing in my garage I got this really weird feeling that my house was going to burn down. Now whether it was premonition, some sign that I subliminally picked up or whatever the case, I have no clue but I arrived at work and at 10:30AM I received a phone call from my wife. The message was short and to the point, our house was on fire and burning to the ground. I cannot even begin to tell you the horror that dove deep into my soul.
I jumped into my car and immediately started the race home. I live 20 miles from my work and as I hit the freeway, I could see a huge column of smoke rising into the air to the north. About that time a friend and neighbor called me and told me that the house was a total loss and that the flames were going through the roof and there was a huge explosion. When I arrived to the scene there were fire trucks everywhere and the house was a loss. Everything I owned was in the house and it was all gone save a few items. The good news, nobody was hurt and life goes on.
I had been doing Personal Power, Time of your Life and Get the Edge in the past few months and it was time for me to step up and step up I did. I became the foundation that my family depended upon to survive emotionally and physically. I came through in flying colors.
Then in January, 2004 I was on a vacation to Salt Lake to visit family and friends when I decided to go snowboarding with my son. This was my second time riding and, although I am an exceptional skier, I was a poor snowboarder. On the first run of the day I took a massive wipeout that fractured my ribs and collapsed my lung. I spent the next 10 days in and out of the hospital and while in a hospital bed my brother in law presented me with an opportunity in Network Marketing with Nu Skin / Pharmanex. Being that I was so opposed to Network Marketing, it came as a shock that I actually entertained the idea. Maybe it was the morphine I was on. LOL.
That decision to join a network marketing company has raised my life to an entirely different level because I suddenly realized that for my business to grow I had to grow and it has made all the difference in the world. I have now been a distributor for Nu Skin for almost three years and I have been persistent through so many trials and growths. I have now become a great communicator and learned to sincerely love people and that is the biggest gift anyone can ever ask for. I have all the opportunity to make a difference in so many lives and when I wake up in the morning, I see pure possibility. It truly is a wonderful life I have and live.
I hope that my story inspires someone and drives them into action because that is really the key, action. I hope that someone will have a better life or that in some small way I can affect them positively. Today I know the importance of striving to be outstanding and helping others to achieve their best at the same time. They really are one in the same.
General, Mountain Climbing | admin | 
December 11, 2007 2:48 pm | 
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