Tag Archives: memories

July 14, 2014 · 6:37 pm

First Crisis, Then Recovery

Man sitting on a bench looking at the water“When crossing marshes, your only concern should be to get over them quickly, without delay”.                                 (Sonshi/Sun Tzu)

I was cheated out of a great deal of money in business by people I had trusted.

I had worked hard an entire year on a handshake, and now I had nothing to show for it. I had a wife and four children to support, and now there was no money with which to pay the bills. Devastated, I quickly fell into a depression; it was almost impossible for me to get up in the morning and I couldn’t sleep at night. I had not only lost the money, I had lost my faith in mankind. Is man’s greed so complete and is he so hopelessly selfish and that he will take the food out of another man’s mouth? I could not fathom such cruelty.

In that dark mood those dreary days, I could not make myself spend time with the family I love so much, didn’t feel like seeing friends, didn’t feel like leaving the house at all, didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to walk my dear dog, didn’t want to water my plants, didn’t  feel like getting dressed.

I am a reader, so one day I left the house and went searching for a book that would help me resurrect my damaged spirit and get me back on my feet and fully functioning again. All my life I have had what I call my “Research Angel”–some unknown factor that I trust to guide me to the solutions to my problems. When I need something, my Research Angel takes me to it.

I went downtown to a book store where I had once been a sales clerk and walked around from floor to floor, looking at book covers, reading titles, and thumbing through book after book until I found one that seemed almost to glow with a bright light there on the shelf. I picked it up and it seems to me now that simply holding it was the start of a new energy, a new focus, a new purpose.

I bought it, took it home, went upstairs to my office, turned on the desk light, and read it. Immediately I knew that book would lead me to writing the book I had been dreaming of writing for some time but could not clearly conceptualize in my mind–and it was.

I have written about how my sister Sharon’s death fueled my purpose and made me indefatigable until I had achieved it.

I wrote my book–Fighting to Win–and it changed everything about my life. After its success a major publisher told me, “We will give you a contract to write your next book.”

I asked, “What do you want me to write about?” and I heard the words every author dreams of hearing: “Write about anything you want to write about.”

And so I wrote another book that became popular: Waging Business Warfare.

That led to public speaking engagements in North America and Europe–and the realization that standing at a podium speaking to a thousand people or two or three thousand or five had been my destiny–shinjin in Japanese–the real me, the true person.

So you see, if I hadn’t been cheated by unscrupulous men I might never have gotten on the path that I was designed to follow all along.

The Research Angel

I think many people have discovered during their lives—particularly when going through tough, discouraging times–that they too have a Research Angel, whatever they call it.  A Research Angel is, I think, a powerful and undeniable intuition, a kind of unshakable knowing what’s best for you–most healthy for you–that comes from within, and an internal compass leading you over, around, or through obstacles, and out of difficulty. All that’s necessary is to relax and free your mind and have trust in your Research Angel. And to follow where it leads.

Two Questions for You

Do you have some kind of what I call a Research Angel that helps you out of crises? What difficulties has it led you out of? I would love to hear your story.

© 2014 David J. Rogers

 

Please follow this “Starting Your Life Fresh” blog. It will feature topics I think will be of value to you.

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click on the following link:

www.mentorcoach.com/rogershttp://www.mentorcoach.com/positive-psychology-coaching/interviews/interview-david-j-rogers/

 

How to Get The Books

Order Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life eBook by David J. Rogers

Fighting to win Amazon

Click on book image to order from Amazon.com

or

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fighting-to-win-samurai-techniques-for-your-work-and-life-david-rogers/1119303640?ean=2940149174379

 

Order Waging Business Warfare: Lessons From the Military Masters in Achieving Competitive Superiority

Waging Business Warfare812sCY9edLL._SL1500_

Click on book image to order from Amazon.com

or

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/waging-business-warfare-lessons-from-the-military-masters-in-achieving-competetive-superiority-revised-edition-david-rogers/1119079991?ean=2940149284030

 

or

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/waging-business-warfare-lessons-from-the-military-masters-in-achieving-competetive-superiority-revised-edition-david-rogers/1119079991?ean=2940149284030

 

 

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July 11, 2014 · 5:25 pm

Origins of My Growing Up Stories

 

The Decision to Plumb My Childhood

David in a leather jacket_copy2We set the dead aside as if we have no use for them. But I wanted to pluck my people out of time, to borrow them from eternity for a little while, to explore their worlds and to finally understand them. I had lived among them, knew their every gesture, had heard them speak so many times, and wondered greatly about them. But I didn’t know who they really were.

I longed to walk through the house in which I grew up and to look out on the street and see the wealth of familiar things that were before me every day in my youth, no sights as dear to me as what I saw from the kingdom of my porch.

I hoped to find as they had been, the people who had populated my world–to be among them again, to feel for them tenderness and pity and regret. I knew that time hadn’t disappeared, but had remained inside me. I realized that if I wanted to be with them, though most had died, I would have to discover them in myself where they still lived.

I wanted to see things as they were before my memories faded, or I died; to recapture the enchanted past; to walk the streets and beaches of my youth whose minutest detail I knew I would find waiting for me. I wanted to hold my father’s hand again, to look into his kind eyes. I wanted to revel in everything–the sounds of familiar voices, the smells of night air, the traces of my mother’s dinner in my mouth, the sight of her trying on a hat; my dead sister Sharon coming up the stairs–all from a time that was so happy.

I wanted to reconstruct my life by traveling backwards in time. I hoped to find there the origins of my mistakes, some indications of why I was now a person alone in a house by a field. I wanted my memory to rescue me from this house; to reveal lessons I had forgotten and must learn again that would help sustain me.

And so hour after hour, again and again, I remembered the days and nights of childhood. I remembered what I had experienced myself and what had been told to me. When I came upon something that didn’t make sense to me, and I couldn’t explain, or didn’t remember clearly, or couldn’t possibly know I used my imagination.

At first my remembering was over in a few minutes and was very general. But then I slowed down and remembered in finer and finer detail. Detail is the secret I discovered– details and details of details. Over and over, hour after hour, moving in ever closer, backing up and rethinking until I was satisfied and could say, “Yes, that is how it was when I was young. I have gotten it right.”

I wanted to do this very carefully; to take my time and not be in a hurry. My whole life had been a battle with time, but time doesn’t die absolutely, but remains in memory. The recreation by memory of impressions which later must be transformed is the essence of every work of art.

When my mind was free in time I had the impression that I had entered eternity.

© 2014 David J. Rogers

 

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