Many moons ago I was working on a house that my dad, brother and I purchased for a rental. My dad wanted to show us how to start getting ahead. It was a great learning experience. Both good and bad.
The owner had been a city official that was trying to move up in life and I would see him out jogging and he seemed to have big plans. Well he started going through some marital problems and he and his wife quickly sold their house and moved away. We were cleaning up the usual things left behind by former owners or renters and among that stuff was a book. My dad picked it up and said haha look what he was reading. I looked at it as he threw it on a pile of garbage. I was the MAGIC OF THINKING BIG. I looked at it every time I walked past it. I felt like it was calling me. Saying pick me up. Read Me! I picked it up and briefly looked through it and a few things caught my eye. I laid it down and I went back to work. I was thinking about that book. It was old and beat up and I couldn’t figure out if it was so good, why did he leave it behind. Maybe it failed him. Maybe he failed to follow through. I don’t know. I didn’t know him well.
Anyways, that book kept calling me because I was in a positive direction frame of mind and that title intrigued me. My dad left and I stayed to keep working which I usually did because I was the work horse of us 3. I want to get this house fixed up as fast as possible and maybe get another house.
I was alone in the house and I walked past that stack of garbage one more time and stopped. I picked it up and looked at it again and laid it aside to take home. Well I read that book completely. It was life altering. It was a great book. It was an old book at the time but the information was timeless. It made me believe stronger in the possibilities of achieving whatever I wanted to do.
About a year after that we bought another house with a garage apartment and again I was the workhorse but I loved it. I wanted to get done. My dad was pre-heart attack and my brother thought everything would just happen so it was me. We also hired a couple people to do some work that I couldn’t or shouldn’t do. I did the apartment almost by myself and got it done very quickly. The house had been vacant for years. It needed basically everything. We paid to have a roof, wiring, plumbing and a new furnace but the work of the wall board, plastering, painting inside and out and many other things was primarily on me. I got it done. It was monumental. I thought big and to repeat another great quote, I knew “If it is to be, It’s up to me”!
So while I was involved in these projects my karate training had been pushed to the side, sort of. I didn’t totally quit though. I was a black belt at the time so I had a grasp on the basics. I actually would save a space in my work area to do kicks katas and do spin kicks which I wanted to perfect at the time. I still had karate in mind. I knew I had to work like crazy so I could get back to doing karate.
Karate had called my name a few years earlier and wouldn’t let me go. So I got the houses done and got back to my karate training.
We first bought a house then a year later bought another. One year later I got my 2nd degree black belt and a few months later my sensei asked me if I was interested in taking over the karate club.
The rest is history. I’ve had the school for almost 30 years now and have had some great experiences and trained some awesome people. We’ve had a couple great tournaments and have formed the Warriors United, an awesome organization. Yes there were people along the way that said I couldn’t do it. That I was thinking too big. But the times that I dove in and thought big and really believed that I could, I would achieve what I set out to do.
I read that book and it set me on a path of self belief, because some guy left that book behind to be thrown away. Sometimes you find inspirations in the weirdest places but don’t overlook the things that will change your course in life. There are those bits of knowledge that are mind altering. I call them quantem leaps. There are things that after you see, hear, experience or understand them that are life changing. There are things that changes everything that happens in your life after that.
Look for your tidbit, your golden nugget, that bit of knowledge that will set off your quatum leap!
Don’t be af
