Today I’m going to share with you what I found to be a profound lesson. It comes from a true story told by Jack Zufelt, a seminar leader and author (his website is www.dnaofsuccess.com). Jack told about saying to the 400 or so people in his seminar that if they identified their core values, they would “unleash the conquering force within” and could do anything they wanted. One man–I’ll call him Bill–raised his hand to say that he didn’t think that was true.
It turned out that Bill was in a wheelchair. Jack asked Bill to interact with him, so he was lifted by four men, wheelchair and all, onto the stage.
When Jack asked Bill what he wanted to do most, Bill responded that he wanted to play professional football, but that he would never be able to do that. When asked why he wanted to do that, Bill started to get choked up. He told about being a star quarterback in high school who broke all the school records. He told about getting written up in the local newspaper. He told about being popular with girls. He said that he had been offered several scholarships to college, had chosen one, had broken the previous records as a quarterback there and had gotten even more media attention. He told Jack and the other participants how good and special he felt from all that attention. Not surprisingly, he was scouted by the pros, and was on the path to a very successful career in professional football. Then one awful day, he was in an accident that left him a paraplegic, and the path suddenly reached a dead end.
Jack then asked Bill something Bill didn’t expect. His question was, “what if I could show you how to experience all of those feelings again, only this time without a football?” Bill had never thought about that before. It was clear that the idea made a light bulb go off inside his head, and he left the seminar a changed person.
About six months later, Jack saw Bill’s picture on the cover of Parade magazine (Parade is a supplement to the Sunday edition of newspapers around the country). He was rappelling down a cliff with four healthy people!
In spite of his devastating accident, Bill had found a way to have the special feelings he had gotten from being a football star. Now, you probably weren’t a football star before you became ill, but I’m sure there were things you could and did do that had you feeling really, really good. In light of Bill’s story, my question to you is, what can you do today and and going forward to recreate those feelings?
