In 2015, I was assaulted by two men who had broken into my home. I ended up in the emergency room on Valentine's evening. Luckily it was a hospital where I had friends working, so I knew I would get the best treatment possible. The emergency room physician told me that I was family and they were going to take good care of me, but that they had to amputate my left leg that night because of all the damage, which included my lower leg being broken into thirty-five pieces.
I refused, and over the next few days, I suffered a pain I had never before experienced in my life. To find a way to save my leg from amputation, I had my x-rays sent to the six best surgeons in Los Angeles for this type of injury. All six doctors refused to try to reconstruct my leg because the prognosis was abysmal, and they all recommended amputation as well. Fortunately, I found a young forty-two-year-old doctor named Jonathan Saluta who agreed to attempt the surgery; and if it didn't work, he’d amputate my leg. He told me I could die if the leg wasn’t amputated, but I refused. I still declined and visualized that I only wanted to live out this life in a whole healthy body. If not, I would reincarnate and start over. The surgery was a success, and Dr. Saluta told me I'd be bedbound for six months, then in a wheelchair for two years as I recovered. I decided I’d recover in half that time. So I worked mentally to overcome and to recover faster from my multiple surgeries. I ended up spending three months in bed, two months in a wheelchair, and four months on crutches. In total, I recovered in nine months versus the predicted two and a half years. My partner left me, I almost went bankrupt, I lost my jobs, and had lots of different challenging experiences.
But in the end, I accepted responsibility for everything that happened to me and just pushed forward. To be successful you must commit to accepting responsibility and facing everything that happens to you in your life. Don’t shy away from problems that will only make them grow larger and more complex and they’ll end up costing you more time and effort to resolve. The Law of Indirect Effort can also be applied to a challenging problem. If you’ve tried everything you could think of to resolve the issue, then switch your attention to something else and come back to the issue later. Now, this depends on how much time you have to resolve the problem; sometimes you have months, weeks, days, or on some occasions only seconds to find a solution. Nonetheless, take time away according to how much time you can spare. Dealing with issues immediately allows you more time to think things through and develop the best solutions. When possible, I like to sleep on an issue. The next day, all of a sudden so many options will open up to resolve the issues at hand. Solutions that were not obvious the day before will present themselves when you give yourself some time to think things over.
Successful people don’t allow feelings to get in their way. Instead, they use those emotions to power themselves and get ahead. I concentrated on my recovery goals and my plans for success. I visualized my goals and kept focusing on them only. I didn't allow negative self-talk or the other problems in my life stop me from succeeding. This is what you must do to overcome the obstacles in your life and move forward with all your plans.
After this incident, I cleared my mind, forgave everyone involved, and thanked God for the experience, and the valuable lessons I learned. That part of my life was closed, it was history. Stress and struggle make you tough. If you remove all the adversity from your life, then you would remove all the learning. Teach yourself to appreciate the tough times that come your way; see them as teaching tools, and your fears will disappear.
Think about climbing a hill, and then climbing the same hill over and over, but every time you climb it, 5 lbs are added to your backpack, and you have to carry the weight up the mountain with you. That climb is going to get harder and harder every time. That is what your life will be like if you allow emotional baggage to build up in your body. Every time you have a challenging experience, overcome it, resolve your feelings towards the experience, and move on without adding more weight/emotional weight to your backpack. This will make it easier to enjoy life with less of a load to carry, and not allow the past to dictate your future happiness or success.
When you get into a tough situation, I want you to think about the movies Bourne Ultimatum or Mission Impossible. When Jason Bourne or Tom Cruise get into situations that seem impossible to escape, they always stay calm, don't complain, cry or panic and a solution always appears and they survive. Your life should be the same; never accept that you're at a dead-end, instead calmly think your way out of things. The way to do this is only to see possibilities. Don't waste your time thinking about the failures; it will only attract them into your life. Be confident that a solution will present itself; it always does.
Retrain your mind to be mentally tough. Teach yourself that it’s OK to be uncomfortable and insecure about the future. Avoiding risk will stymie your growth, opportunities, and prevent you from becoming successful. Think about your job; if you go to work every day and do what you're supposed to do, you’ll probably have a job for a while and you’ll be able to pay your bills and continue your life as is.
Instead, make a list of things you’d like to do, but haven’t done because you’re scared or have been procrastinating. Start taking small risks and build up to larger calculated risks, that will lead you to achieve your goals. The more you get used to taking risks, the easier it will be for you to take them, and the more you’ll be willing to take them.
For example; imagine you get an idea for starting a business selling shoes online. You’ve never done it before, so you’re scared and worried that, if you invest all your money and go into debt and your business fails, you’ll upset the balance of your life and put yourself in danger of losing your apartment, car, or even your job. We all fear the unknown, and it’s normal to have these feelings. In fact, the riskier the venture, the more fearful you’ll be. Your ego may try to save you by making your boastful to others about what you’re doing, making you compete with people who could help you, and triggering your scarcity mentality convincing you that there isn’t enough to go around. When the first uncomfortable situation comes up, you become frustrated, quit, and see yourself as a victim. You see yourself as a victim because it’s easier to blame your failures on something else instead of taking responsibility for what happened. This is a typical scenario for someone who is operating from fear, scarcity, and lack of confidence. So, instead of putting yourself through this, you’d rather avoid new things and taking risks. These feelings are all false and are the reason most people don’t try pushing themselves to do new things and build success.
An alternative approach to this same opportunity would be to embrace it, be grateful, and give your best to make the most of the opportunity. You manage your risk by taking small risks little by little and building up towards the ultimate goal. In your mind, you know that security doesn’t exist and you’re willing to sacrifice safety for growth. As an uncomfortable situation comes up, such as, how to transport your shoes to the customers and still be able to make a profit, you remain calm, study the situation, and look for solutions to solve it. As you develop the problem-solving abilities for these unique situations, you start to teach yourself how to solve these problems better and more efficiently. You get better and better at it, and instead of having a scarcity mentality and hiding your solutions from others, you build your abundance mentality and start another business in transporting shoes, and you start teaching and helping others how to have the same success you’ve had. You’re not seeking wealth, you’re seeking success. But your vision and your problem-solving skills have just solved a problem that many shoe salesmen have had, and for providing that service and solving that problem for others, they are willing to pay you for it and you become extremely wealthy.
If you stay confident about yourself and believe in what you’re doing, a solution will present itself and you’ll problem solve along the way. This simple example is what you must do every time to erase the training you’ve received all your life to be safe. Instead, train yourself to be successful focusing on the possibilities of success, not on the possibilities for failure. This mindset will change your life. Embrace your vision, operate from love and abundance.
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