The Day my Life Began

I rarely tell this story, because honestly, it makes me look crazy.

But, here you go ...

It was a wonderful, sunny day on the Caribbean Island of St. Martin. I was alone, standing on the powder white sand of the beach, watching the waves break on the reef.

Taking a deep sigh, I tried to relax for the first time in hours.

I'd been working since 5 a.m. when the sun rose and hadn't stopped until now. It was 1:30 in the afternoon.

Hungry and tired, I needed to eat so I walked back to my tiny studio to get money and clothes and saw my phone buzzing.

Answering, it was the board chair, back in the states, making more demands of me.

He had already proven to be one of my life's major irritants. Regardless of what I did, he thought it wrong and said so. The only language he speaks is "criticism" and boy had he given me lots!

Professionally I was on top of the world, an internationally sought after expert, author, popular speaker and award winning business man.

Personally, I was recently divorced, lived alone with my dog and hated the smell of my plush office because it just made me tired. That's why I was in St. Martin, trying to get away from the sad things in my life.

"You should quit," he said when I answered the phone.

"I resign," I replied and hung up.

And my life started over that day.

Strolling back to the beach with a beer in my hand, I made a promise to myself.

"I will be happy. And I will help others be happy too. I'll do what I want. And I'll help others do what they really want too."

Let me tell you what's happened since then.

I'm married to the love of my life! Our work is helping people enjoys theirs too! We worked hard helping others to build happy lives, doing what they want and ENJOYING what they have.

It works!

Thousands of people follow the stories and are remaking their lives too!

I'm not telling you this to make you think I'm awesome or great but I want you to realize the steps I took from being a very unhappy survivor of life to make it crank now!

If you're ready to have the happy life you want, I am here, willing to pull back the curtain and show you exactly how to get there!

We've turned it into a system that gets you from where you are to where you really want to be in a very short period of time!

But there are some ground rules.

1. I'll be completely honest with you about my shit and expect you to be honest about yours. Honestly saying where you're at and honestly knowing where you want to be is the first steps to happiness. I'm here with you for each step. You got anybody else pledging you honesty?

2. I worked hard to get here. You will have to work hard too. You know the saying "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." It's the same here. I'm ready to work with you, be your partner and get you there but you have to want it AND in the end YOU HAVE TO DO IT!

Ready to get started?

Let's pull the curtain back and this journey begins! I'll show you how to get where you really want to be at www.meellc.com/onlineclass

Baggage

Waiting for the luggage, Sarah and the girls are excited to be home. Talking at once ... well except for Maddie who is texting, utterly oblivious they've landed, walked half-a-mile and is now standing among a crowd of people... they're exclaiming the things they did in New York City.

The carousal spits out bags one at a time as travelers jostle into a mini-mob waiting to snatch a giant suitcase or golf bag the instant it rolls down the belt.

We're standing with the more patient people as Laurel and Cassidy argue over who's rolling the bag to the car.

Arms intertwined, Sarah and I are happy to be together again in the "suddenly compact universe of skin and breath and hair."

Cass grabs my UGA tee-shirt pleading because she just turned 7 she's perfectly capable of rolling the big bag by herself.

In the same instant, Laurel machine guns words, immediately overloading me with information which mostly seems aimed at Cassidy's inability to roll luggage without supervision.

Glancing up over her little blond head I spy Fran, staring stoically with folded arms, waiting on bags, standing beside us.

For the first time, I realize I've had two Fran's in my life.

I loved one of them.

She's dead.

"Hello Fran," I say to the other with the confidence of a Congressman telling another lie, "remember Sarah?"

Pauses really can be pregnant and this one was going to be volcanic when it blew!

"Micheal," she says without a smile, arms folded, a morticians face ... and then, "Of course, Sarah," with breath from Antarctica.

Sometimes history occurs in a second.

Sarah holds me tighter, grinning beatifically, and confidently says, "Of course. Fran!" with the slightest hint of "I don't give a shit!"

Fran had been a board member of the organization where we'd both worked. After 30 years in the business I begged for a sabbatical and the board said "No" so the weight of homelessness, AIDS, poverty, despair, really bad Government and hunger did me in.

Such graveyards are full of emotions.

Two large purple and white stripped bags roll passed on the belt and Fran jerks to grab them, as though a Zombie scratching the dirt off a grave and then she's instantly gone.

Cass tackles me ... "See! I can do this!"

And she does.

Well, it tips over four times before we get to the car, but dammit, she did it.

Unlike others I've known and choose to forget.
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Looking Back Gets You Nowhere

"Tried to go back as if I could," sings the Major Prophet James Taylor, "all spec house and plywood ... tore up ... tore up good."

And that's the truth about the past.

It's not what it was.

We haven't learned the lesson of Lot's wife in (Genesis 19), who looking back lost everything she has and everything that could have been. God was giving her a chance to start again and she didn't take it ... because she looked backwards instead of where she was going."

Too many lives are lost because too many spend too much time looking over their shoulder.

They miss old homes, the dead, good times and things that might have been. It's like a never ending old movie that replays endlessly in our head.

The trick is to keep growing to become more the person God created us to be. So we change. God likes creation and is always tinkering trying to make things better, meaning you and me.

If we aren't embracing different things, growing into them, being reborn and reincarnated, then we're missing the present, spending our time looking backwards which never gets you anywhere.

The fact is we hold on to the past because we're too damn scared of the present. We're either where we want to be or we're not. If we're not it's just agony!

If we are, then life is sweet!

The bitch about enjoying now is forgetting then. They're nothing but good or bad stories to tell. You may laugh or cry when you tell them but they're just old stories.

They were then.

They aren't now.

Too many people still think I'm a homeless guru, a social problem genius and the Go-to guy when life's curve ball hits someone smack in the face. They still think I have something to do with Union Mission, hospitals or politics. Hardly a day goes by that someone doesn't communicate with me as if I were still that person.

I'm not anymore. My life has moved on.

It's true that I have talents in those other areas, but today I'm a writer, a teacher and a coach. Sarah and I partners in this work. It's all we think about. It consumes us and there's no time left for Union Mission or hospitals or politics. And we love it!

Because I'm damn certain the life I have left is taking me to new heights, better things and excellent adventures.  I'm not looking backwards and risk my life settling to be little more than a pillar of salt blowing away.
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