My Story

I have many stories, as I am sure we all do.  And, before I tell you this story which presents some of the worst experiences of my life, I want to be clear that my early years were not one miserable experience after another.  I am writing a story about my life as a success, and it didn’t start out too well.

If I had written a book about some other aspect of my life, it might have started out with a series of positive experiences and you might have thought I had a brilliant childhood, perhaps one to be envious of.  But my story of success starts out differently.  And you can’t understand the turning point of my life as a success without knowing my painful history.

I also want to reemphasize that this is not by any means my only story.  I could have entitled this section, “One of My Many Stories”, but as far as it relates to my life as a failure and my transition toward success, this is, “My Story”.

Little Philip

Both of my parents were raised in extremely abusive households and both left home before completing high school.  They both overcame many of the effects of that abuse and for the most part gave my siblings and I a great start as compared with their own, however some of the more subtle scares persisted.

My mother tells the story of how growing up, her house was always so filthy that they couldn’t walk through any part of it without stepping on clothes and trash at least ankle high and never having a clean dish unless they washed it.  One day without being asked, she went through tremendous effort to clean a room.  When she was finished you could actually see the swept and cleaned floor!  And when her mom came home and saw what she had done, her mom completely ignored the incredible effort and work that was done and focused entirely on the minor imperfection, and in the spirit of perfection said, “You missed a spot.”

My mom, not realizing it, does the same thing she criticizes her mom for doing.  She is a perfectionist who can look at something beautiful and see the imperfections and flaws.  For better or worse, this personality trait was passed on to me and has been a great asset in my work which is always done to perfecting standards but a terrible curse in relating with my wife and children in that I often have pointed out the insignificant flaws when I should have appreciated the overall beauty and accomplishment.

My parents improved on what they were given from their parents and as a result, I have had a far better start than they did.  It is my goal to give the same blessing to my children so that they can have an even better start than I did.

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Before I was born, my mother had just had 2 children a year apart and was at her wits end as a new mother when she unintentionally got pregnant with me.  This was a terrible thing which sent her into the deepest depression during the first 6 months of her pregnancy.  As a teenager, I experienced some of documented issues associated with unwanted fetus’s.  How an unborn child can unconsciously know that they aren’t wanted is beyond me!   But I would rather be born unwanted than be aborted…

Sometime before I was born she had come to accept the fact that she was not going to abort me and decided that she would accept me with open arms.  And I think she did.

She truly wanted what was best for me growing up and she still does I suppose, but it always comes in the form of what she wants for me and not what I want for myself.  She often glories in any minor success that comes as a result of obeying her instructions and can hardly bring herself to acknowledge any of my many major, glaringly obvious and profound life successes that came from following my own path.  And so it is even today.

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I won the gene lottery, kind of…

While I was in first grade, a psychologist tested me and determined that I had a genius level IQ, (more than a few points above Einstein), however, he also diagnosed me with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).  While I was ahead of my peers in many ways, I had a significant lack in reading skills.

The idiot psychologist used the scant information to prophecy in great detailed a bleak future for me.  He told my parents that because of my high intelligence I would be able to make it through grade school but that I would struggle in middle school and eventually drop-out of high school.  He said that I would find it difficult to get more than a minimum wage job like flipping hamburgers and that would be my entire life.  It was quite the prediction!

He told my parents that because my birthday was late in the year I was younger than my classmates and, statistically speaking, children who are older than their classmates tend to do better.  With this in mind he recommended that my parents hold me back and have me repeat my first year of school despite my excellent grades.

My parents decided to follow his advice and I repeated first grade.  As a 6 year old, I did not comprehend or understand why I was held back.  I knew it was not a good thing to be held back and I assumed that I had flunked out due to some failure on my part.  This cause a great deal of self-inflicted emotional trauma to my little mind.

My siblings and classmates also thought I had failed first grade and were sure to repeatedly reiterate that view through much of my childhood making it even more painful to deal with.  25 years later, my sister apologetically recalls with tears in her eyes how she would hold it over me and used it to win various confrontations.  She said, “Every time I got into an argument with you, I knew that I had the “Ace” that would win every time.  All I had to do was tell you that you failed first grade and you would give in.  Your whole body would just look crushed and defeated.  You had no rebuttal.”

This false interpretation of events was written into my subconscious self-image and had a major negative impact on my life, far worse than anything the psychologist had prophesied or foreseen would result from letting me stay with my classmates.

It was not until I was a married man in my twenties that I discussed the events with my mother who provided me with the psychology report that I finally understood the real reason I was held back in first grade.  But at that point, the damage to my self-esteem was done and my self-image was scared in ways I didn’t yet consciously comprehend…

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I was a typical Middle Child and Second Son with all the documented psychological issues that come with those birth orders.

I struggled to find my place of acceptance.  My older brother and sister were, as far as anyone could tell, the perfect children, obedient, calm, straight A+ honor students who rarely if ever got into trouble.  I on the other hand, was… well, let’s just say, I was not so much so.

Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a bad kid.  I was always very loving and kind, I just was just different.  For example, in our teen year my parents encouraged my older siblings to go to on dates and out to parties as often as they could.  I on the other hand was limited to 2 dates or parties a week.  My older brother and sister put high priority on homework and school, while I was committed to do the bare minimum in school and was passionate about not doing homework outside of school.  Sure, I almost always got “A’s” and “B’s” because I was able to learn quickly with very little effort while at school, but I passionately hated doing school at home.

I felt constantly compared to my successful older sister and brother who were the kind of children you would order from a catalog if you could afford them.  Chuckling to myself, I can’t count how many times I would hear from a school teacher or religious leader something like, “Oh, another Stevenson!  I really enjoyed having your older Sister and Brother in my class and I am looking forward to having you this year.”  I am sure they were well meaning, but knowing that I wasn’t cut from the same mold as my siblings, somewhere in my soul I thought, “Wait till you get a load of me…”

Philip – The Formative Years

I was an A-B student, (mostly because I refused to do homework).  My siblings appeared to excel at everything and were well recognized for their successes.

My ADD symptoms did interfere with my life and still do as I am now discovering as a 37 year old.  At some point in my formative years I was given pills to “help me” which my young mind interpreted to mean that fundamentally who I was, wasn’t acceptable, ok, or good enough.  The pills were going to make me better, more like my older brother and sister.  They would fix me because, by nature or birth, I was, broken.  This perception also wrote itself into my subconscious self-image and became a fundamental part of who I was.  Undertones and whispers regarding my condition subtly reached my siblings and this only added to substantiate the their views and treatment of me.

In middle-school a teacher told me that it didn’t matter how well I did because they would pass me on to high school even if I failed and no college or employer would ever look at my middles school transcripts.  I took that to mean that I was wasting my time and I stopped doing homework altogether.  I did pay attention in class and performed reasonably on my tests, but put little to no additional effort into school.  I also had a friend who was caught selling drugs and another friend who was constantly trying to commit suicide and relied heavily on me and another mutual friend as her primary support. All in all, school was the last thing on my mind.  This resulted in my first “D’s” and “F’s”.

My parents were afraid that the predictions made 12 years earlier by the child psychologist were coming true. This also added more evidence to support the beliefs of those around me regarding who I was and what I was capable of accomplishing with my life.

As promised, even though I had failed through most of my middle school classes, I was passed on to high school where I began again to exert the minimum effort to get “A’s” and “B’s”.

Contrary to the early prophecy by the idiot physiologist, I did in fact graduated from high school with honors and was accepted into college where I did well until I made the second best decision of my life and dropped out.

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Although I was committed to marrying a wonderful Swedish sweetheart I had met in high school, through a series of miracles, I met and fell in love with my wife.  If there is such a thing as soul mates, she was mine.  As crazy as it sounds, she immediately recognized me from visions she had had growing up and within a few minutes of one on one discussion she was certain I was the man she had spent years looking for.  She didn’t tell me about any of this until after we were married because she didn’t want to influence my decisions to marry her.

She caught my attention immediately and by the next day I realized that she was my perfect match.  Two weeks later I ask her to marry me.  Against the strong opposition of my mother, we were married 3 months after we met. That was the best decision of my life.

Philip the Dropout

There was an unspoken understanding among my family that I was different, and not in a good way.  (In many ways, there still is.)  Somewhere along the line I had unconsciously accept the underlying criticism and quiet disapproval as the reasonable and expected result of who I was.  I just accepted it without question as normal life.

I remember vividly the first time I realized that this was not normal or acceptable.  It was during a Christmas reunion with my family and their spouses and children.  I had just been married two month earlier.  My mother handed me the last box of my personal belongings to take home declaring with a friendly chuckle, “Now you’re finally moved out.”  Not remembering what was in the box, I opened it and began to sort through the memories it contained.  In it I found various high school awards, letters and metals I had earned.  Metals I had won in track competitions, varsity letters for drama, All-State choir, rifle team, wrestling team and cross country team.  There were awards from church achievements and boy scouting, etc.  There were quite a number of honors, enough to fill the whole shoe box.  My older brother was shocked and asked in critical amazement, “Where did you get all those!?!”  I began picking them up one at a time declaring what they were for and he stopped me mid-sentence and said, “No, I mean, You’ve never finished anything in your life, where did YOU get those!?!” (Implying that I couldn’t have possibly earned them.)  He was genuinely surprised!!

Although there was most certainly an underlying feeling and view in my family about me, it hadn’t to my memory been openly expressed since middle school.  It was however present and had quietly and subtly torn me down and engraved itself into my core being over the years.

As he began to crush me with his words, I instantly felt my normal reaction of resignation and acceptance until immediately following his statement, his wife’s hand flew like lightning, making audible contact with my brother’s chest followed by a greatly disapproving “Come on, Really!?!”

My brother was just as surprised as I was.  We were just running the scripts we had learned growing up and she had broken the cycle and woken both of us up.  This was the first time I realized that I shouldn’t be talked to or about in this way.

I brushed his comment off as a rude and untrue statement, but I was surprised because if there had been any question as to how my brother saw me, it was clearly resolved in that moment.  Now, he didn’t intend to be mean at all.  He was just running the script he had learned growing up and he was greatly surprised by all this hard evidence which contradicted everything he knew about me.

And in all fairness, in many ways he was justified in his beliefs.  My philosophy from an early age included a principle which essentially encouraged me to try lots of new things.  However I had another principle of philosophy which encouraged me to not continue wasting my time on those things which were not enjoyable or logical.  In short, I was not bound to endure the hell of a bad decision made without experience or knowledge.

My brother on the other hand was bound by his philosophy to complete everything he started no matter how painful or illogical it was, regardless of how uninformed he was when he began.  So, I would attend a club or sport, without commitment, and when I decided that I didn’t enjoy it, I would stop attending even if I excelled or received awards and letters.

An example of these philosophies in action is found in my decision to drop out of college.

When we got married, I had already given 1 year of my life to college without much return.  After marriage, I was financially supporting my new family and attending college which was extremely difficult and slow.  We would not have survived if it were not for the $200 a month from my mother in-law.  I was making $8.25 an hour as a part-time sales manager for a telemarketing company and attending college part-time.

Sometime after our first year together, my wife and I realized that at my current speed, it would take me 4 more years to get a 4 year bachelor's degree and that would probably earn me $35-45k a year.

That was a lot of time and effort for a very little return.  We decided that I would be served better by dropping out of college and spending the next six months learning to be a Cisco Certified Network Engineer.  Under this new plan, I would be able to make a minimum of $45k within 6 months.  And the growth potential for my chosen field was above $100k per year.  To verify this, I called multiple employers and recruiters who were hiring the skill sets I was considering.  Sure enough they told me that I could expect to make between $45 and $80k within my first year.  So, we made the decision to drop out of college and begin studying at technical school.  It was truly one of the best decisions of my life!

After I got my first certification Comptia A+, I quit working as a sales manager and took a job working in a call center for Microsoft technical support.  It was an entry level job, but it would build my technical resume and provide me with excellent hands on experience.

Along with the decision to drop out of college.  We also decided not to tell my family what we were doing because we knew from experience that the criticism and negativity they would give me would bring stress and opposition that we didn’t want to deal with.  There was no way they would support us or encourage us and so we could not include them in our plans.

Eventually, my mother realized that something was going on when during a phone call she asked how school was going and my response didn’t jive with some aspect of college life.

I was immediately bombarded with well-intended criticism, doubt and stress from everyone in my family except my dad who fully supported our decision.

Up until this point I had earned 5 professional certifications accepted around the world.  It was during this onslaught that I failed my first Certification test which was actually one of the easier Cisco Certification Tests.

I stop talking to my family to refocus on preparing for the test.  A week later I retook it and passed.  I didn’t allow my family’s opposition to impact me further and passed all my future tests the first time.  I now had the following letters after my name:  CCNP, CCNA, MCP , Net+, A+, Linux+

Not only did I have the certifications, but I knew the information.  My school had even asked me to teach a few classes for them which I did.  My students loved me and would tell me that I was the best teacher they had ever had.  All of my students passed their exams within a month of taking my class.  The school had discussed offering me a full-time position as a teacher but unexpectedly closed for unknown reasons.  It was time to apply for jobs and move on with my career and success in life.

Up to this point, our plan was working perfectly, but I was about to hit the biggest wall of my life…

Philip the Failure

Sure, I was a little afraid of the transition from student to professional worker, just as anyone would be, but there was something else stopping me from getting a job.  I had a mental block which neither my wife nor I understood.  Looking back I can clearly see that I was the victim of self-sabotage created by my self-image.

I started out being unmotivated.  I knew I needed to look for jobs, but I always found something else to do that seemed more important in the moment.  I couldn’t force myself to do it.  I felt sick by the thought and made excuses for not even trying.  My wife saw how hard a time I was having and began to look for jobs for me.  When my wife would find a job I would look at it and then disqualify myself before even applying.  I wasn’t a perfect match for the position or I didn’t like where the job was located or they paid too much for my lack of experience.  If I could find a reason to disqualify myself, I did.  If I found the perfect position and couldn’t disqualify myself, then I didn’t apply for weeks and the job would be filled by someone else before I even took action.  It was like pulling teeth to put together or even send my resume.

Again, my wife stepped up and began sending my resume to companies and applying for jobs on my behalf.  She applied to almost everything and let the company decide whether I was a good fit or not.  I started to get calls from lots of companies but I wouldn’t answer them.  I couldn’t even bring myself to call them back.  In my mind I only heard reasons why I couldn’t or shouldn’t bother.  One excuse after another.  Consciously I would convince myself to press forward and make calls but it would take weeks to call back and by then, the position was already filled.  This carried on for months.

A job opened up with the company I was already working for.  It was another call center job providing network support for Nortel Networks.  I applied and got the job.  (Now, I shake my head and laugh at myself because I was so overqualified.  I studied for the Nortel Network certification and passed the test in a week.  It was so basic as compared with what I had already done with Cisco.)  I was now making a whopping $12.75 an hour.

The moment I started I was the most certified and knowledgeable engineer on the team.  I was working far below my skill set.  I knew my stuff and I was good at what I did.  Everyone came to me to help them on their toughest issues.  Even with the very little experience I had I should have been able to get an excellent job making $45k/year.  I was surprised at how many college graduates with Bachelor's degrees were on my team.  I see now that they were going through similar difficulties.  While I worked at Nortel Networks I was gaining experience and improving my resume but it only looked good on paper.

While I worked at the call center, we kept trying to get a “Real Job” equal to my education.  Every time I hit a hurdle, my wife overcame it by doing it for me.  Eventually she was finding and applying for the jobs, emailing job responses and even scheduling the interviews.  She did everything she could to help me progress.  Of course, ultimately she couldn’t get a job for me.  And because I couldn’t force myself to do the interviews all her efforts were wasted.

You could imagine how confounded and frustrated she felt!  My wife was at wits end with me!!  She was freaking out!  She felt upset and frustrated because no matter what she did to help me, I was not able to pick up the ball and move forward.

One day after a communication class we were taking from an experienced psychologist, (a trusted friend of my wife’s family), she stayed to talk with him about how to deal with her frustrations.  She cried as she explained to him our goals, preparation, efforts and what she did to help and how regardless of her efforts I would not move forward.  She wanted to know what more she could do.

Recognizing that the problem wasn’t on her part, he asked us to set an appointment with him for the following Monday so that he could try to help me work through my block.

On Monday, we showed up for the appointment and after a few questions about the overall problem, he asked me to relax into a comfortable recliner.  As I sat there, he asked me to describe the feelings I had when I thought of calling people back and sending out my resume.

I was not accustomed to paying attention to my feelings.  At some point I had learned to ignore them or shut them off as a coping mechanism to deal with the sting of criticism, (both internal and external).

Soon I was able to pinpoint a spot in my chest at the level of my heart, where the feeling seemed to originate.  I certainly couldn’t name the feeling, and I had a difficult time describing it, (I am very much emotionally illiterate as a result of shutting down and ignoring my feelings).  As I tried to describe what I felt, my mind began to bring forward the image of a small stone pot that was sealed shut.  I can still see this little white rock pot like jar in my mind.  I somehow knew that whatever my problem was, I would find it inside this little rock pot.

After some minor effort I finally broke the pot open.  Inside I found a small black solid rock.  Again, I intuitively knew that whatever my problem was, it was inside of this rock.  Not knowing exactly when it started, I was now fully immersed in the imagery being guided by the questions the psychologist asking.  I found myself in darkness save a little light that seemed to come from underneath a locked door to the left.  Not finding anything else to work with, we spent what felt like an hour trying to break this rock open to get to the root of my problem.

In guided imagery, everything is symbolic.  The symbols of the sealed pot and the rock show how hard I had hidden and buried the problem in the back of my mind.  As it all happens in the mind, you are able to influence, manipulate and explore these symbols as needed to accomplish the goal.  To that end, I had created in my mind all sorts of tools to help me break into this rock.  I had tried to open the rock with a sledge hammer, dynamite, a jackhammer and a number of other things as well to no avail.  No matter what I tried, I couldn’t break through this rock which was protecting me from a truth that I was not yet willing to learn.

When our time was nearly up, the psychologist concluded that I had hidden the problem from myself so deeply that we would need to come back later and try again.  When he said this, I was holding the rock in my hand thinking of another way to force it open.  Realizing we were out of time, I simply sighed and gave up.  I opened my hand and “let go” of the rock so that it rolled off my hand.  As if in slow motion, I saw the rock fall to the floor and break in half…

After everything I had tried to get inside the rock by force, I found that “Letting Go” was the trick.  (A valuable lesson there!)

Inside the rock, I found a tiny rolled up ribbon of paper.  I told the psychologist what had happened and asked him to give me a few more minutes as I retrieved the paper.  I unrolled the tightly rolled paper ribbon and read the words out loud, “I am a FAILURE”. 

I had dealt with such criticism my whole life and was un-phased by it.  Actually I was overjoyed that I had finally got to the root of my problem and even more so that it presented itself the form of a ribbon of paper which could easily be burned up.  Symbolically, if I could destroy the symbol of my problem, then I would have symbolically destroyed problem.  I reasoned that all I had to do was simply burn the little paper and my problem would disappear in smoke.  Great plan, so I thought...

I conjured up a match and proceeded to burn the small paper ribbon.  No sooner had the flame touched the end of the paper than the paper ignited bursting into a large flame which slowly burned its way toward my fingers.  As the paper caught fire, the light from the fire illuminated the dark room I was in so that for the first time I could see where I was...

The room was dark, damp and miserable with what looked like black slimy mold everywhere.  It reminded me of a an old castle dungeon on a dark night like the kind you would see in a movie with nasty rough rock walls that glistened in the light.  The floor and ceiling, like the walls, were dirty and depressing.

Prominently written on every wall, in white spray paint, hundreds of times in different directions and sizes so that it filled every inch of wall space were the words, “I am a FAILURE”.

Everywhere I looked as I turned around and around I saw the same statements of failure.  It was as if there was a FAILURE statement on my walls for every criticism, judgment or condemnation I had ever received.  I was surrounded by it!  It now had my full attention!

I realized immediately that this was not something I could just shrug off and that it was a bigger deal than I had thought.

When Reality Sets In

Over the next week, I became more and more aware of this aspect of my subconscious self-image.  By the end of the week I could see how it had affected every aspect of my life since I was held back in first grade till that very moment.  It was incredibly painful!  All the emotion I had blocked to cope with the insults and disapproving looks was now surfacing.  I realized that not only did others see me as a failure, but I saw myself as a failure.

I began to see with perfect clarity how this has affected my whole life.  I saw experience after experience in which I was held back from great things.

I could see it influencing me now and I had so much clarity that I could see how it would influence me in the future.  It was as though my entire life had been mapped out for me and I could read the map.  It didn’t matter what I did or how hard I tried, it would ultimately end in failure, just like it always had.

Sure there would be little successes along the way, but nothing important, nothing major and always those minor successes would be fleeting.  I had earned my certifications for example, but I couldn’t get a job that used them to any real degree.  I could see this same problem with so many things in my life.  Constantly being held back by fear and failure.

By the following Sunday, I knew, nothing doubting, that this was bigger than me and fundamental to my being.  I was in fact a failure.  It was written into my DNA.

I concluded that I was a hazard to myself, my wife and my new baby daughter.  I would never be able to give them the life they disserved.  I was broken and nothing could fix me because I was the problem.  And I was a problem that couldn’t be fix.  It was like being 6’2” tall.  It was who I was.  I could change my eye color as easily as fix my problem.  I was a failure and that was that.

Now I had only been married for about 1 ½ - 2 years now and had a beautiful baby girl.  I loved my wife and daughter so much that I couldn’t bear the thought of dragging them through my hell.  I knew where I was going in life and they didn’t have to come with me.  I couldn’t let them come with me.  It was my cross and mine alone except that my poor frustrated wife had married herself to it.  I was doomed and I couldn’t allow them to share in my fate.

Without talking to her, I made the hardest decision of my life.  I was determined to leave them that night.  It was their only hope for a happy future.  I would send them all the money I made so they would be cared for financially until they could find my replacement whom I was certain would be far better for them than me.  This was their only hope at having the life they deserved and which I wanted for them.  I could see no other way.

That evening, I sat at the kitchen table writing out my goodbye letter explaining how much I loved them and why I was leaving.  Thoughts of missing out on my daughter’s milestone achievements and how perfect she was flew through my mind.  I thought of the cherished memories I shared with my perfect wife that would haunt me for the rest of my miserable life.  I thought of all the milestones I would miss as my daughter grew up.  I balled my eyes out soaking the letter with my tears, but I knew what must be done for their sakes…

The Miracle

My tear soaked goodbye letter had filled 2/3rds of a page when without warning it happened!

In one moment was sitting at the kitchen table with tear soaked cheeks and a pen in my hand writing a farewell letter and the next moment I was standing in a brilliant room made of glowing marble.  At the center of the room was an oval platform three levels high, each level being a step to the next.  Standing on the top of the platform was Jesus Christ, my personal deity.

He held out his arms beckoning me to come to him.  I moved forward and still crying, I collapsed in in his embrace as I reached the top step.  He was crying also and without words I understood that he was crying because of my pain and misery.  He held me in his loving arms and we both cried for some time.

While there, I could feel the most exquisite love.  I have never felt so much love directed toward me.  I was also keenly aware that he knew everything about me, the goods and bads.  He knew all of my struggles, challenges and flaws, and yet, contrary to what I had been taught my whole life, he was not hurt by them or upset with me for them.  His only concern with regard to my “sins” and flaws was that they caused me pain and he was sad to see how much pain I was in or had experienced as a result of them.  But as for me, even in this most awful state, all I felt from him was perfect love and unconditional acceptance of me, just as I was, flaws and all.

After a few minutes of self-pity, I came to my senses, looked up at him and shaking my head, I said without speaking, “Thank you for this experience, it is wonderful , but so what, nothing has changed, I am still a failure.”

He softly smiled and without a word, he simply pointed his finger toward the edge of the room where a door automatically opened up in the wall.  On the other side of the door was my room.  It was the same room which had been made of dingy rocks with “Failure” painted everywhere in white spray paint.  But it now it was different!

Where there used to be dirty moldy rock walls, I saw beautiful cream marble walls just like you might find in the most exquisite temples.  The walls, ceiling and floor radiated with bright light.  Where there had been darkness and depression, I now felt brilliant joy and peace.  Everything was beautiful, new and clean!  It had miraculously changed!  And not only had it changed, but it was every bit as beautiful as Christ’s room.

One thing that stuck out to me was that the change was so complete that there was no trace or evidence of the old room was left.  If I had worked with the counselor, he might have helped me “renovate” my old dingy room and tear down or hide the old walls behind new ones but I knew in my heart that as with any construction job a room could be remodeled but there would be some evidence of the remodel even if it was just the mental debris from the job.  This was different.  There was no debris.  In fact, there was no evidence at all that the old dungeon room had ever existed.

As a marveled at the beauty of the room in its current condition and how completely it had been changed, I found myself shocked and confused and asked, “How is this done?”  To this question, Christ responded, “This is who you have always been, nothing has changed.  It never was as you saw it.  What you saw was the illusion created by the darkness in the world.  You could see it because you believed it.  And your belief gave it power in your life.”

I recognized that just as my room had changed, so too I had changed.  I was no longer the failure I had been.  There was no sign of failure in my room which was a symbol of me, and so there was no failure in me!  I began to cry again with as much deep feeling as I had before but now my misery was replaced with indescribable joy!   The realization of what this meant to me was keen and powerful!  I had just gotten my wife back!  I would get to raise my daughter!  I could do anything I wanted!  I had a future that was brilliant and fresh with unlimited hope and opportunity!  I had just been given the whole world!

A moment later, I was sitting back in my chair, holding my pen looking down at the tear soaked paper.  I was still crying my eyes out, but my reason for crying was intense gratitude and joy.  I was a new man…

Immediate Change

 

It is important to note that I didn’t walk out the door that day as an instant millionaire.  I didn’t instantly know how to get a good job.  I also didn’t immediately get the highest pay on the market for my skill set.  But, I was a new man.

It was like waking up mentally.  I could move forward, make calls, answer calls and do what was needed whereas before, I couldn’t bring myself to do any of these things.  No, it was effortless and even exciting.  I looked forward with excitement to making progress.  I was excited and anxious to talk with hiring managers and even to proactively call them before they called me.

I was able to do interviews with confidence and pride with a positive attitude and knowing that I could have the job that I wanted.  Within a month of this experience, we were moving to Las Vegas where I had accepted my first professional job making around $40k.

Within a year I had received a number of raises and was making almost $50k.  In that same year, my wife and I had purchased a new house as well as 2 very profitable rental properties giving us additional income and a net worth of $450k.

Over the next 2 years we had flipped properties until we owned 13 rental properties valued at over $3,500,000.  In 2003 I was making enough income from my rental properties to retire, so I quite work to spend more time playing with my family and managing our growing little empire.  Life was great!

In 2006 we began to feel the effects of the pending Real Estate crash.  After 3 wonderful years of retirement, I went back to work for a second time as a Cisco Certified Network Professional.  Even though I had not worked in my field for 3 years, I was able to obtain a position making around $60k which was more than I was making when I retired.

In 2007 the Real Estate Bubble popped, and for markets like Las Vegas, it didn’t just pop, it burst!  Properties that had been worth $350k would eventually drop to $50k before slowly beginning to rise again years later.

During the first 6 months back in the workforce, I found that I was overqualified for the position I was in.  So, I trained my assistant and moved him into my position, hired a new assistant for him and found a new job making over $100k per year.  This was a milestone for me because even though I had come this far, I still had to overcome a mental block stopping me from making more than $99k.  I overcame that mental block and have never made less as an employee.

Six months later we followed an intuition and moved to Texas where I quickly recognized the benefits of working contracts and became a full time self-employed contractor.  It was now 2008 and I was making $175k a year.  All this happened during the recession from 2006 to 2008.  In those 2 years since I had returned back to work from my brief 3 year retirement, I had increased my employee income from $70k to $175k a year.  (Over a $100k per year pay increase!)  This was what I was doing as we were entering into an international recession!

Over the next 3 years I continued to work as an onsite contractor and increased my income by $10-18 per hour, ($20-$35k per year), every 6-12 months!  While people were being laid off, I was getting raises.  Not just little 3-5% raises, but raises that some would consider a reasonable income all by themselves.  We were now deep into the recession and I was making more than ever.

In addition to making more money, I was working less.  I would take at least 1 full month off every year, and about 3-4 weeks in non-consecutive time in addition to the standard holidays.

In 2011 I was contacted by a previous client who offered me a position making a base rate of $350k/year guaranteed and between $100-250/year in additional work for an expected total of $450-600k/year.  As much as I liked the money, I had recently decided to change my focus from making tons of money to spending as much time as possible with my family.  I calculated that to make $500k/year in this position I would be away from my family 60-80 hours a week (including travel to and from work).

I turned down the opportunity and made my new motto, “Work from home and working as little as possible.”  This also meant that I needed to make as much as possible for my time.  I ended up working an average of 20 hours a week from home and brought in $125-215k/per year.    My wife and I had arranged our finances so that I was able to making enough to support my family on 30 hours of work a month.  Everything else that came from my work and our investments was gravy.

By 2013, (less than 7 years from my brief 3 year retirement), I was working an average of 20 hours per week with some weeks not even working an hour, and I was bringing home over $200k per year.  I was living my dreams.  I had gained the Midas touch and everything I did turned to gold.

Helping Others 

Over the years my wife and I realized that this “Failure to Thrive” condition is not unique to me or to a select few.  Everywhere we looked, we saw people who were surviving, not thriving.  They were dealing with the same mental challenges and setback that I had been.  They couldn’t see and didn’t know what we knew, and that was holding them back.

We have traveled from one end of this country the other, worked with over a hundred companies and many hundreds of people.  The self-limiting and self-defeating signs of failure are everywhere!  We can’t count how many people we have met who should have been making double or more their present income based on their knowledge, experience, schooling and certification levels!!  It’s like a pandemic!  So many people are mentally disabled and limited to a fraction of the life they should have!

We wanted to help them. We wanted to give to others what we had been given so they could experience the unlimited potential inside them.

Through a series of events, I was fortunate enough to experience living as both a failure and a success back to back. This gave me unique insight into both worlds and the contrast was clear.

My wife and I learned the principles that set me free from the limits of my own mind and opened the door to limitless potential. We also learned how to use guided meditation to help people discover their own subconscious programing and change it with a similar process to the one I experienced that miraculously changed my life.

Over the next 15 years we have been able to coach and assist many others who were not reaching their potential.  Again and again we have seen our friends double and triple their incomes without additional education in as little as 1-2 months.  We have seen their utter excitement as they tell their families they just landed a new job making 2-3 times more income.  We have seen the dream like disbelief and tears of joy as their new reality sets in and they become accustomed to the success that they have long deserved.

Our only regret is that we have seen so many hundreds of people that could benefit from our knowledge and experience and we have not had the time to share with them the information we have received that would certainly change their lives.

When we look at these sad people, we see my former self. We see the desire for greatness coupled with their sad acceptance that it is just out of their reach or the struggling and hope that maybe this will be the break they need.  We know their struggles because they were our struggles. For this reason, we are writing this book.

While the focus of my experience was financial success and the ability to provide a good life for my family, we recognize that success comes in many forms, (family and romantic relationships, health, happiness, spiritual success, world impact success, etc.). The principles for success in whatever form you seek it are all the same. These principles apply universally to achieve all forms of success.

This book explores the root cause of mental failure and the self-limiting behaviors that cause us to fall short of our dreams, the known and unknown psychology that helps us understand the connection between cause and result and how to transform our core programming from failure to success.

While this process can be completed using the information provided in this book, some people prefer to use a guided meditation process to clearly view and change/remove their self-defeating behaviors. This option will also be discussed at the end of the book.

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