09 Aug The Fun Guy
As long as I can remember I’ve been the fun guy. My mom used to call me Mr. Happy, and I was quoted in a magazine at 12 years old saying, “Why would anyone think negative when they can choose to think positive.”
If I go far enough back, I had a rough go. My parents were divorced from the time I was 2 years old. I only got to see my Dad every other weekend and my Mom worked as hard as she could to pay the bills and keep food on the table.
It could have been easy to be the sad guy. Take emotional pain, an undeveloped brain and emotional core toss in a handful of stress and stir it all together with lots of instability and you have a recipe for every cliche in the book for a rage -a-holic high school drop out.
BUT, that wasn’t my story.
Instead, I listened.
My Mom started to get into motivational speakers and we had every Zig Ziglar tape you could find. She would play them in the car over and over again. Dale Carnegie, Brian Tracy, Jim Rohn, Napoleon Hill, Stephen Covey (He came later), and an unknown to most Robert J. Sterner were my mentors.
Every seminar, and tape and quote that my Mom shared with me I took it in. I thought about it, and processed it. And at 10-14 I believed them. I didn’t understand that it was a struggle for adults to think the way they told us to think.
If they said happiness was a choice, then I decided to be happy.
I had tons of friends my entire life. I was friends with everyone. It’s probably no surprise that I read, “How to win friends and influence people” at 11 years old.
I learned the art of perspective, and what it means to frame life in away that’s worth living.
When I was 17 I saw a book, “How to Be Rich” by J Paul Getty and thought… “That sounds like a good thing to know.” So I read it and applied it to my life.
The amazing thing is that I’m just now realizing that I have a super power that many people don’t think is possible.
I can take ANYTHING, no matter how bad it is, and make it good.
I know it’s not really fair, but I actually just discovered that I have been doing this my entire life.
I lost my job… AWESOME! Now I can start my own business with NO EXCUSES!
My Fiancé dumped me… Ok this one hurt for awhile but once I was able to clear the fog I prayed and told God that now he would have to bring me someone ten times as good… AND HE DID!
I know it sounds like there is no way this guy has the kind of life that he’s describing but I really do.
My Philosophy
Here is the philosophy that has brought me to where I’m at right now.
You get 1 shot at life. That’s it!
You’re only 16 ONCE.
You’re only 22 ONCE
You’re only 30, 35, 43, 50, 62 ONCE!!!!
You only have today, there’s no yesterday, and there’s no tomorrow. You only own RIGHT NOW, so what are you going to do with it!?
If you’re not enjoying your life then why the heck not?
I have discovered the secret to being happy with little and with much and it’s the ALL same thing.
Your disposition is your choice, perspective, mindset, identity, and training.
If you don’t like where you’re life is going then take a right turn, it’s never too late to start being happy and having happy people around you. Your life is your own and NO PAST can predict your future unless you let it.
Don’t lose me here. I know that was a lot to take in but I really believe it and live that way.
I get upset, sad, hurt, thrown off and even have dealt with depression for parts of my life, but my default is to choose happiness.
The DAY I found my SECRET WEAPON
I was living in Hawaii with my smokin’ hot amazingly powerful waaaaaayyyyy out of my league wife and our 3 kids (1 more came later). I owned my own business, we owned a rental property near San Diego and I was the worship pastor of my church. BUT I WAS MISERABLE….
I was working out of Starbucks for a quiet place to work (3 kids remember) and it hit me all at once. I called my wife and said, “Honey, I’m not happy.” She didn’t know what to say, I’m sure she was thinking that there was a bomb coming after that statement but there wasn’t.
I said, “Can you pray for me? You are amazing, the kids are great, and I love our life but for some reason at this moment I’m just not happy and I can’t figure out why.”
I was in full blown depression. There was seemingly no reason for it. I mean, I’m Mr. Happy for goodness sakes. As the weeks went on, I slipped further and further to this place.
One day it hit me like a TON OF BRICKS.
I was praying and seeking God through the process and I heard him say, “Ryan, happiness comes from the inside not the outside.”
And just like that all my training came flooding back to me. I mean, I had been brainwashed from the time I was a kid to believe that life is what you make it. Of course!
No kidding, within an hour I was singing to the radio with the windows down. Someone from church caught me dancing in the car to the music.
It wasn’t that day the I developed the SECRET WEAPON, it was that day that I found out that I already had one and started using it.
From that moment on, I have been growing and learning and changing my life to make it awesome. Some of the ways that make my life awesome is to get my wife to be crazy in love with her life, and my kids to learn how to develop their own secret weapons.
I live every day as though it were my last but I plan for 1000.
When people ask me why did you decide to race Ironman, it’s more like why not?
When people ask me why I would abandon a perfectly good business making me money… well, it wasn’t fun anymore. If I’m not enjoying it, then it’s time to either change my perspective so I can or find something else.
For me, change, adventure, and the unknown make me over the moon excited about life.
Whatever you find in your heart to do, do it with all your might!
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