Becoming a Person of Influence by John C. Maxwell

Author:John C. Maxwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2010-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

1. Everybody Wants to Be Somebody

There isn’t a person in the world who doesn’t have the desire to be someone, to have significance. Even the least ambitious and unassuming person wants to be regarded highly by others.

John remembers the first time these feelings were stirred strongly within him. It was back when he was in the fourth grade:

I went to my first basketball game when I was nine years old. I can still see it in my head. I stood with my buddies in the balcony of the gym. The thing that I remember most wasn’t the game; it was the announcement of the starting lineups. They turned all the lights out, and then some spotlights came on. The announcer called out the names of the starters, and they ran out to the middle of the floor one by one with everybody in the place cheering.

I hung over the balcony that day as a fourth-grade kid and said, “Wow, I’d like that to happen to me.” In fact, by the time the introductions were over, I looked at my friend Bobby Wilson, and I said, “Bobby, when I get to high school, they’re going to announce my name, and I’m going to run out in the spotlight to the middle of that basketball floor. And the people are going to cheer for me because I’m going to become somebody.”

I went home that night and told my dad, “I want to be a basketball player.” Soon afterward, he got me a Spalding basketball, and we put a goal on the garage. I used to shovel snow off that driveway to practice my foul shots and play basketball, because I had a dream of becoming somebody.

It’s funny how that kind of dream can impact your life. I remember in sixth grade we played intramural basketball, and our team won a couple of games, so we got to go to the Old Mill Street Gym in Circleville, Ohio, where I’d seen that basketball game in the fourth grade. When we got there, instead of going out onto the floor with the rest of the players as they were warming up, I went over to the bench where those high school players had been two years before. I sat right where they had, and I closed my eyes (the equivalent of turning the lights out in the gym). Then in my head I heard my name announced, and I ran out in the middle of the floor.

It felt so good to hear that imaginary applause that I thought, I’ll do it again! So I did. In fact, I did it three times, and all of a sudden I realized that my buddies weren’t playing basketball; they were just watching me in disbelief. But I didn’t even care because I was one step closer to being the person I’d dreamed about becoming.

Everybody wants to be regarded and valued by others. In other words, everybody wants to be somebody. Once that piece of information becomes a

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