Don’t let yourself down when you need you most.

There is a difference between being “hard” and being “mean.” The first is something life can do to you. The second is always a choice.

The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.

Many cultures across time and space practiced ancestral worship. Some still do today, as we see manifest in African tribal religions and Japanese Shintoism. These cultures hold that ancestral spirits continue to exist and exercise influence over human affairs. There is also typically a reverence for ancestors that transcends immediate self-interest. This reverence is based on the recognition that ancestors, in general, and one’s ancestors, in particular, were in large part responsible for creating the world that their descendants inherited. Ancestors also deserve credit for having completed the universal challenge that is life. As a result, descendants owe ancestors a debt of gratitude and honor.

American society today places little emphasis on ancestors. Our society is founded on the enlightenment value of individualism–the idea that the individual is supreme. In theory, the individual has the power to create their destiny and bears sole responsibility for their success or failure. An individualistic worldview diminishes the role of parents, grandparents, siblings, and relatives, and pays even less attention to ancestors.

However, even in a country as individualistic as the US with the least theoretical underpinning for ancestral reverence, I see it all the time. Millions of Americans use the services of Ancestry and 23andMe and are greatly eager to discover information about their relatives (especially if any one of them was the least bit famous).

I always remember the instance when a friend in grade school told me that his ancestors were kings and queens. I had no reason to doubt his story. I have heard my own family members make similar claims. The only difference is my family members tend to go further back in time since the more recent evidence on our family lineage suggests otherwise.

Human beings seem to have a need for a strong self-image–call it identity. In individualistic societies like the US that have relatively weak family networks, many people find their self-image lacking in meaningful ways. People turn to sports teams, political parties, musical groups, and social causes as a source of identity. Some resurrect nationalism, nativism, and xenophobia. And yet others swear allegiance to gangs and mafias. When people find these avenues deficient, they may even go further back in time like my friend, my family members, and the countless Americans suddenly fascinated by their ancestry.

The myriad ways people craft their identity betrays the fact that identity is socially constructed. If identity is individualistic, it is so in the sense that every individual ultimately chooses how to self-define. Some people even lie or delude themselves in the process, as I alluded to earlier, but their misconceptions may form as strong a foundation for their lives as someone who only operates with cold hard facts. For me, the truth is important. I have a hard time ignoring evidence or believing something in the absence of it. And when people realize the truth they built their life around was actually a lie, then a second-order identity crisis is usually the end result.

When I first started writing this article, I wasn’t sure where I was going with it. But now I think I do. It all goes back to the power of the mind. Just as words have the power to create, they also have the power to change. Somebody who lacks identity has the power to develop a positive one that situates them as a meaningful, contributing member of a community. Similarly, someone with an identity built on resentment, exclusivity, or lies has the power to radically reform it. But there is only one captain on every ship. I can’t do it for you the same way you can’t do it for me.

Telling somebody it’s possible may sound like cold consolation. But the biggest obstacle to change is the belief that the way things are is the way things will always be.

Stress kills. You’ve probably heard it 100 times. It’s a fact that stress affects people’s health, happiness, and hormones. Stress is a huge contributing factor to America’s chronic illness epidemic. Today society is more technologically advanced than ever but people are increasingly unhappy because of the pressure we collectively put on ourselves. The pressure to buy a bigger house or car, pay for a better education, get a better job, have a thick bank account for rainy days, and be successful–whatever that means. All of these things are good in and of themselves but I’ve seen how much their obsessive pursuit can rob us of happiness in the present moment. Remember, it’s about the journey as much as it is the destination. And you and I can only enjoy the journey if we take sensible measures to reduce stress. However, there’s another way of looking at stress and that is in terms of personal growth. Moderate amounts of stress can make us stronger and better equipped to handle future life challenges.

A few weeks ago, I featured Abraham Twerski on the true meaning of love. Today I’ve transcribed another short clip of his in which he talks about the constructive role that stress can play in our lives, building on an analogy of lobsters. And you know how much I love nature analogies. The message is simple—today’s stress can be tomorrow’s strength.

Transcript:

There’s something I want to tell you about stress and how we have to look at stress. And I think it’s an important thing because many people have told me from my lecture [this is] the one thing they remember. I was sitting in a dentist’s office and looked at an article that said “How do lobsters grow?” Well, I don’t care how lobsters grow, but I was interested, and it points out that a lobster is a soft, mushy animal that lives inside of a rigid shell. That rigid shell does not expand. Well, how can a lobster grow? As the lobster grows, that shell becomes very confining. The lobster feels itself under pressure and uncomfortable. It goes under a rock formation to protect itself from predatory fish, casts off the shell, and produces a new one. Eventually that shell becomes very uncomfortable as it grows, back under the rocks, and the lobster repeats this numerous times. The stimulus for the lobster to be able to grow is that it feels uncomfortable. Now if lobsters had doctors, they would never grow because as soon as the lobster feels uncomfortable, it goes to the doctor, gets Valium, gets a Percocet, feels fine. Never casts off its shell. So I think that we have to realize that times of stress are also times that are signals for growth. And if we use adversity properly, we can grow through adversity.

Sammy Rangel’s life gave him every reason to be angry, bitter and resentful. And for a long time, that’s exactly what he was. Physically and sexually abused as a child, Rangel ran away from home at age 11 and joined the Maniac Latin Disciples. He spent years engulfed in a life of violent crime, lengthy prison sentences, drug abuse, and promiscuity. Rangel took the first step toward transforming his life with the help of a prison drug rehabilitation program and soon after his release started working for a Safe Streets Outreach Program in Wisconsin. In 2011, he co-founded Life After Hate, a non-profit whose mission is to help people leave hate groups. He is the author of Fourbears: Myths of Forgiveness. According to its description on Amazon, the book is “a graphically illustrated guide from tortured child, to remorseless beast, to healing and change.”

I first heard Rangel’s Ted Talk over a year ago. It was powerful and inspired me to stop making excuses in life. There are a few mottos I like to repeat. One of them is, “If he can do it, I can do it, too.” Other people’s testimonies can sometimes help us recognize that many of our limitations are self-imposed. If Sammy Rangel, who was barely given a puncher’s chance, found the strength to move forward in life, what’s holding you and me back?

Recently, I stumbled across the same video and was surprised to find that there was no transcript or subtitles available. The talk is 22 minutes long and is a lot longer than most content of its kind on this site. That said, I was willing to spend hours transcribing it because I believe it is a message that can help people heal. Resentment, they say, is like drinking a poisoned cup and waiting for the other person to die. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is strength. It makes life better every single time.

Keep reading, and I’m confident you will get something out of Sammy’s testimony.

What I have learned is although the details of our lives may be different. The underlying process of getting stuck or suffering in our parts of life is the same for all of us. We do not have to be victims of our experiences or in the way that we tell our stories. But interestingly enough, stories are the only way out. And it is us who create those stories. We hold the power to change our stories and what they represent. I invite all of you to consider if it would serve you well to create a new story and a new path. And to please remember that the things that held you down will one day hold you up.

Sammy Rangel

Transcript:

Today what I’m going to share with you is a difficult story for me to talk about, and it may be difficult for you to hear. I was 41 years old when I discovered that my mother had killed my brother Renee. I was sitting in my office waiting to see the next patient. I had about 3 minutes before that appointment started. And when I read the article and this news came to me–it said that my mother had beaten my brother with a Tonka truck when he was 20 months old. At that time, that article was dated January 5 of 1969 and my mother would have been about 5 months pregnant with me. The email went on to say that my brother had died at 19 as a result of his injuries. He had permanent brain damage, partial paralysis down the side of his body, and the article said that he was losing consciousness and bleeding out of different places from his body. As I was sitting there, what I imagined myself–what I wanted to do, what I knew I was capable of, was getting up, taking off my suit coat, walking to my car, finding where I knew my mother would be, and taking her life.

At this stage in my life I had obviously overcome a lot of the abuse, a lot of the neglect and torture that she had put me through, but for some reason I was more angry at this than anything I had experienced previously. And it became quite apparent that at some point, my family had conspired to keep this secret from me over 41 years. It was just a twist of fate that I was able to discover this news. So I knew I had about those 3 minutes to pull myself together because I knew then, even though I wanted to, I was not going to get up, I was not going to drive toward where my mother was out, and I was not going to kill her. What I was going to do was pull myself together so that I could meet my responsibility to the next patient coming into my office. But in those 3 minutes I relived quite a bit of what she had done to me.

I was 3 years-old when my mother left me and my sister with her brother. And I can remember him motioning to me to come to him through a mirror that laid or rested on his bedroom doorway. When he was calling me in, I knew I didn’t want to go in there, but I felt powerless. And so I found myself next to the bed. He was naked. He was fat. He was ugly to me. And behind him I saw my sister crying. And even though I shouldn’t have understood what was happening, I did understand what was happening. And he pulled me on to the bed, and at that point my sister tried to defend me. She was just a couple years older than me at that time. And I remember him threatening her, that if she didn’t shut up that he would kill us both. And then he raped me. On the same night that he raped my sister.

Eventually we told my mother what had happened to us at the hands of her brother, and she did worse than nothing about it. She continued to make us show this man affection and respect. We had to spend time with him. We had to sit on his lap. We had to kiss him on the cheek when we greeted him. And this happened over many years. When I got that message, I realized that my mother had picked up with me where she had left off with my brother.

By the time I was 8 years old I had already tried to kill myself for the first time. Oftentimes, I wasn’t allowed to eat. I wasn’t allowed to sleep. I wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom. And I had other siblings, and quite often the beatings I was taking could be happening right here and my siblings could be watching TV, or playing, or talking as if nothing was going on a few feet from them. The scars you see on my head are not from other men, are not from the streets. These are scars I [have] because as they would cut my head open with objects, as they were hitting me, I didn’t get to go to the hospital to have stitches or to get my broken bones fixed.

A part of the abuse was deep humiliation. A part of her cruelty included not being able to use the bathroom. And I would often have to walk around in my underwear in front of my siblings and family because she didn’t want me to be able to sneak food into my mouth or into the bathroom or into the basement when I went to go do chores. And so there was no hiding the fact that eventually if I needed to go to the bathroom and they wouldn’t let me, I would eventually sh*t and p*ss on myself. And if I did that, she would often make me take my underwear off and put them in my mouth, and then put her hand over my mouth so that I couldn’t throw-up, I couldn’t spit it out. And if I had the nerve to throw up, she would punish me even more.

I reached a turning point at 11, just after my birthday. I remember on this occasion I had snuck out of the room. I used to have to kneel next to her bed, and I remember crawling very quietly on the pattern on the floor that I discovered wouldn’t creek as loud as I snuck out in the middle of the night. And I found myself back in the room standing over her with a knife. And I was debating killing her, but there were 2 reasons that I remember that prevented that. One, I was afraid. I don’t think I was born to kill. And the other is I loved my mother deeply despite all that abuse, and I couldn’t bring myself to do that. And so I made a choice. I made a choice to leave. To run away. And that was a pretty big event because as a result of the abuse, I had no friends. I had no sleep-overs. I had no one in the community that I could go to. I was going into a completely unknown, unfamiliar, isolated space in the world.

And it didn’t take long. Within that first year, I was having sex. I was drinking. I was smoking. I was doing cocaine. I was in a gang. I was violent and aggressive, carrying weapons. I had dropped out of school and right before I turned 12, me and my 11-year old girlfriend buried our first child together. When we went to the hospital while she was in labor, they put me in a room by myself. And eventually a doctor opened the door and he rolled in a table, like a medical table, and on this table was a blue napkin that looked a lot like a tablecloth. And there was something underneath there. And then he left and he closed the door behind him. I had a feeling that I knew what was under there, but your mind can’t quite grasp it just yet. And eventually I got up and I lifted the paper towel and there was my dead son. He had been dead 2 days before she gave birth to him, and so his body was already starting to decompose. He was green and black and other colors that nobody should have to see on a baby. And his head was like a balloon filled water, it was just lop-sided and laying on the table. And there was no one there to talk to me about that or to process that or to make sense for me.

And I walked out of that hospital and I remember feeling less like a runaway and more like a throwaway. I felt that no one would be there to help me process or to understand my life or these experiences. And I remember moving from being scared to being angry. And I expressed that anger through violence. I escalated the type of violence. Before I was fighting but it was more defensive, now I’m choosing to be aggressive. Now I’m choosing to start fights. Initially when I went to the streets I remember there was a situation where a man asked me to participate in a murder. As he was killing someone he asked me to finish. And I couldn’t bring myself to that. But now after this situation, I felt like I wanted to kill, I felt like I wanted to hurt someone. And I remember me and my friend, we picked a homeless person–an innocent victim–and we beat him up and I tried to kill him that day. He had done nothing to us but it was my expression.

Eventually, that led me to going to prison as an adult at the age of 17 years old. And I was sent to prison not for the crime I actually committed but because of how terrible a teenager I was before I became an adult because the crime they sent me to prison for was usually considered a minor crime but technically it was enough to send me away. And I ended up in a maximum-security prison because I was fighting all the time, I was talking crap all the time. I had no problem cussing you out or trying to pick a fight. For the record, I wasn’t a very good fighter, but I was wiling to fight.

This prison that I walked into had a pretty hostile climate. I walked into racial tension between the whites and the blacks. And very soon after arriving there, a race riot kicked off. And it was the white against the blacks, and as a minority I had to side with the blacks if I was going to join the fighting. And we were quite outnumbered. There was about 10 of us willing to fight and about 30 of the men that we were going to be fighting. And we knew it was clear which side you were on. I myself had 2 knives in my hand, and the whites were armed with knives and spears and metal chairs and mop ringers–you name it, anything that could hurt or maim you. And the order was given to start fighting.

As we started fighting and we’re all trying to kill each other at this point, a guard came in much like on a cat-walk [a runway or ramp] like you see up here. And from above he started shooting and when he shot, everyone ran. But unfortunately my position–my escape was between the whites and the door out. And so my back was against the wall. And eventually the guard who came in to start shooting left again, and that signaled another round of fighting. And those white men came to get me–I’m doing my best to fend them off. An acquaintance–if you can call another person in prison such a thing–saw that I was isolated and cut off, and he joined the fight to help protect me and to help me find a way out. And at that point, that guard came back in and another shot rang out.

I looked to the side and I saw my friend who had joined was shot in his side–had a rather large hole. He was laying on the ground, the whites ran back to their cells. And I remember the guard yelling at me that if I were to touch him, he would shoot me too. But at this point, I had no fear, I had no sense of danger. My friend was screaming, and the ironic thing is that I have two knives in my hand, and I’m looking at a group of men who are armed. And yet they shot him because he was black. I grabbed my friend and I dragged him 150 cells to the other side of the building that I was in. And it was immediately apparent that the guards were not going to allow me or him to go to the hospital. No one in, no one out is what they said. And I asked several times and when it was clear that there were going to allow him to die, I started fighting with the guards. And then other people came out to help me, and we eventually took over that cell hall and took the keys from the guards and we forced our way to the hospital that was in the prison. By that time, my friend had already passed away.

I spent the next 28 months in segregation and isolation for that but because of my courage, or my role, in that prison riot. I started to gain more respect and more power through my gang. Almost immediately from the hall 28 months after spending that much time in the hall, I was released to society. I remember going in as a street punk, a kid who was just loud-mouthed and willing to fight to now I’m still loud-mouthed and willing to fight, but now I have power, now I have authority, and now I have embraced hate, not just anger. And when I embraced hate I was willing to kill for any reason. And I’ve always said, I had more animal in me than human at that time.

So it’s no surprise that just a few months later I was on my way back to prison in another state for even more violent crimes. As a gang leader at this point walking into that prison, I was able to take over and take control of prisons rather easily. I was able to have guards beat up or inmates beat up. I had access to resources that others would find hard to get. And eventually that led to me more encounters, and while I was in that prison system I beat up 4 more guards. And I spent approximately 5 years out of the 7 that I stayed there in segregation and I was transferred 17 times.

And what was ironic to me was that on one of these occasions, a man had said he felt he was in danger for his life because of my presence. And so they came and got me in the middle of the night and put me on the bus and were transferring me to another prison. And when I got to that prison and as I’m walking off, the security staff recognized me and then told the bus driver and their staff “This man cannot come here. We’re not equipped to take him here.” It is one thing to be locked up for many years, and it’s another years to be kicked out of the well completely. When a man is rejected even from prison, where is there left go? And so it was a deeply shaming and humiliating experience in many ways.

At some point, I was forced into a treatment. And at this point, I thought I could go into this treatment, outsmart myself, and outsmart the people there who were meant to give me help. I was willing to play the game because I was willing to fight for the carrot on the end of the stick, which was an earlier release than if I didn’t do the prison program. So I said, “I’ll go there, I’ll play this game.”

In the process of treatment, I remember my counselor asking me in front of my peers to talk about my mother. This struck me as very odd, I had not talked about my mother since I ran away from home, and had no desire to. And he pressed me, and when he asked me to do that, almost with the first word came the tears. I described all that abuse, all that neglect, all of the times she made me go to school smelling like urine, all of the times she had pulled patches out of my hair, all of the times she had left wide open gashes and cuts on my body. I had no problem expressing that.

And then he did something very strange. He took a chair, and he put it in front of me. And he told me to imagine that my mother was sitting in that chair. He said “What would you say to her if she was sitting here?” I was like I don’t want to talk to her. And he pressed me, and as I thought about what I would say, I remember saying “How could you do this to me? How could you do this to us? Why did you do these things?” But of course no answer came.

And then he pressed me further. He asked me to sit in the chair. I had no desire to sit in that chair. Did not want to empathize. Did not want to understand her perspective. I wanted to hate her and blame her. And I felt wholeheartedly justified in that stance, in that position, because much of what she had done was unforgivable if you asked me. But I did. I looked back at my chair, and I racked my brain what would she say. The only thing I could come up with was “I’m sorry.” Here I am in my late 20s still trying to see her as a human being underneath all that hate. Then he asked me to go back to my chair, and he asked me how I was feeling. And I expressed all those feelings of being a victim, being abandoned. Being brutalized, being unloved, unseen, invisible to her and to everyone else in the world.

And my turning point came with this next question: “Sammy, have you ever hurt anyone the way your mother has hurt you?” Since then my life has been one long apology. To my victims. To my siblings. To my children who I had abandoned at this point. Including my enemies that I felt had deserved whatever I did to them. And as you can see, getting to this point is still very difficult to talk about. I didn’t want to mess up my final point, so if you bear with me I’d like to read it to you to make sure that it comes across clear. I feel that this is the most important part of this message:

What I have learned is although the details of our lives may be different. The underlying process of getting stuck or suffering in our parts of life is the same for all of us. We do not have to be victims of our experiences or in the way that we tell our stories. But interestingly enough, stories are the only way out. And it is us who create those stories. We hold the power to change our stories and what they represent. I invite all of you to consider if it would serve you well to create a new story and a new path. And to please remember that the things that held you down will one day hold you up. Thank you.

The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.

If you have ever listened to an inspirational video on YouTube, there’s a good chance either Eric Thomas or Les Brown was the speaker. Occasionally, you’ll get lucky and both will feature on the same clip. If I had to summarize the focus of their talks with one word, that word would be adversity. Eric Thomas and Les Brown are no stranger to adversity. Thomas was a high school drop-out who spent two years on the streets of Detroit. Brown was given up for adoption at an early age and declared “educable mentally retarded” in grade school. I’ve transcribed a raw clip entitled “Through Hell” in which the two mega motivators talk about overcoming adversity and achieving one’s dreams.

Transcript:

Brown: It’s not easy. It’s hard changing your life.

Thomas: I’m talking about a problem in my life. For you I don’t know what it is, but that problem, you cannot ignore it. Why? It will not go away. It will not go away on its own. It will not. You won’t just wake up one day and it won’t be there anymore. It’s going to be there, and it will haunt you for the rest of your life. So I’m telling you from personal experience, deal with it. Deal with it.

And the sooner you deal with it, and the sooner you overcome it, the sooner you get your rewards, baby. The sooner you get on the other side of it, the sooner you begin to feel fulfillment. The sooner you get on the other side is self-actualization–your dreams become a reality. The sooner you get on the other side of the problem is a wealth of success. The sooner you deal with the fact that you have test anxiety–deal with it. It’s not the end of the world. Deal with it because when you deal with it you can create a solution for it and you can get over it. Deal with it. That you and your children don’t have the best relationship–deal with it.

Deal with the fact that you’re a procrastinator. Deal with the fact that it’s hard for you to execute. Deal with the fact that every time something happens you’re worried about it. Deal with the fact that you have this anxiety that every time you’re about to reach another level of success. Every time you’re about to go to another level, you feel overwhelmed. Deal with the fact that you’re struggling with your success, that you feel like why me? Or why not my sister? Why me? Why not other people? Deal with the fact that you feel guilty that you’re successful. Deal with it.

Brown: Ladies and gentlemen, I started working on my dream. And most people don’t work on their dreams, why? For many years I didn’t. One is because of fear. The fear of failure. What if things don’t work out? And the fear of success. What if they do work and I can’t handle it? The other thing is that most people, ladies and gentlemen, they get comfortable. They stop growing, they stop working on themselves, they stop stretching, they stop pushing themselves. And they end up becoming very cynical about life, and they throw in the towel on themselves, on their families, and on their dreams.

And the other thing is that most people don’t feel worthy. What I’m doing now I could have been doing years ago. But because I did not have a college education. Because I didn’t believe in myself. Because I allowed other people’s opinion of me to control my destiny I didn’t act on my ideas. And not only is it important for you to know it’s possible for you to choose your future, but it’s necessary that you work on yourself, that you develop yourself.

It’s necessary that you get the energy drainers out of your life–people who don’t want anything. People who are not striving. People who are not challenging themselves. People who aren’t growing. People who’ve stopped dreaming. It’s necessary that you align yourself with people and attract people into your business who are hungry. People who are unstoppable and unreasonable, people who are refusing to leave life just as it is. And who want more. My mother used to say “birds of a feather flock together.” If you run around with losers, you will end up a loser. It’s necessary that you get the losers out of your life if you want to live your dream.

The next step is that it’s you. That it’s you. That no one can do it for you but you. And even though you’ve faced disappointment. Even though you will experience some setbacks, it goes with the territory. You must understand that. What if all of us took that attitude after we’ve faced a rejection or a no? We have a meeting and no one shows up. Or somebody says “You can count on me,” and they don’t come through. What if we have that kind of attitude. The car’s repossessed. Nobody believes in you. You’ve lost again and again and again. The lights are cut off, but you’re still looking at your dream, reviewing it every day and saying to yourself, “It’s not over until I win.”

You are going to incur a lot of disappointment. A lot of failure. A lot of pain. A lot of setbacks. A lot of defeats. But in the process of doing that, you will discover some things about yourself that you don’t know right now. What you will realize is that you have greatness within you. What you will realize is that you’re more powerful than you can ever begin to imagine. What you will realize is that you are greater than your circumstances. That you don’t have to go through life being a victim.

What I like for you to do right now–I want you to think about your dream because I’m in a room full of dreamers. Think about your dream right now. I want you to think about it and envision it. Now ladies and gentlemen, let me share something with you. I do not believe that any of us has dreams that were not given to us for the purpose of accomplishing those particular dreams. And I want to share something with you that has changed my life. That dream that you’re holding in your mind, that it’s possible. See sometimes we can’t say “I can do that.” But what we can say is that it’s possible that I can have my dream as we run toward it.

As we work on it, day-in and day-out. It’s necessary to know that everybody won’t see it. That everybody won’t join you. That everybody won’t have the vision. It’s necessary to know that. That a lot of people like to complain but they don’t want to do anything about their situation. But you’re an uncommon breed. You know–you have to know within yourself that I can do this even if no one else sees it for me, I’m going to see it for myself. That’s necessary.

It’s also necessary, ladies and gentlemen, that you be creative when you’re working on your ideas. That you understand the importance of changing up. I can live my dream. It’s necessary. I’ll work on myself. Surround myself with winners. Become creative. It’s me. I got to make it happen. It’s not over until I win.

The Fire Must Never Go Out

Ships don’t sink because of the water around them. Ships sink because of the water that gets inside them. Moral of the story, don’t let what is happening around you get inside you and weigh you down.