The Greatness Within You by Les Brown

Author:Les Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: G&D Media

7

THE POWER OF EMPOWERMENT

Now I want to share some steps with you that are required for making it through tough times. I want you to write this down. The 10 steps I want you to practice. This is for your first 100 days of this year and beyond. Here’s the first one. Be thankful. See, regardless of where your life is, my favorite book says, “In all things, give thanks.” See, it’s easy when things are going good for us to be focused on the negatives, but you want to be thankful even in tough times. There’s something to be thankful for.

I’ll never forget the first home I bought for my mother. We went into foreclosure because of me, because of my negligence, because of my not paying attention to the details. I’ll never forget when we had to pack up and go back to the roach-infested home in Liberty City that I had so proudly moved her out of. I’ll never forget the look in the neighbors’ eyes and the shock of them saying, “Mamie, are you back? Are you all back?” I can still hear Mama saying, “Yes. Yes, we are. Leslie lost the house, but it’s okay. We’re back.”

I felt so humiliated. I felt so defeated. I was at the back of the truck. I was crying and people were looking at me. I was thinking about the fact that I had let Mama down, and I had let myself down. Tears were coming down my face, and Mama came to the side of the truck. She said, “Boy, hold your head up.”

I said, “Mama, I can’t. I feel so stupid right now. We are right back where we started.”

She said again, “Hold your head up.” She put her hand on my chin. She said, “Hold your head up. You have nothing to be ashamed of. We still have each other.”

That was Mama saying, “It’s not about the house. We’ve got each other.” Wherever we are in all things, be thankful. Something good is going to come out of it. You have to have that kind of mindset. We took the furniture into the house and the roaches were so glad to see us. “Mamie’s back,” they were saying. “We’re going to have sweet potato pie. Mamie’s back.” Oh my goodness.

Hold your head up. Yes. Robert Schuller was right about experiencing tough times. Tough times never last, but tough people do. Here’s another thing. Not only must we be thankful, we must be thoughtful.

The reason most people collapse during tough times is that they are making decisions out of their emotions and out of their fears. Zig Ziglar calls it false evidence appearing real. You want to think. This is the time for high-level thinking. You want to calm yourself. You want to get grounded and you want to think your way through this situation. Almost all of us have been here before. Adversity introduces you to yourself. You can come up with some solutions right now, but what happens is that most people, rather than thinking, they’re being driven by their fears.

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