Surprise Yourself!

Things don’t happen TO you they happen FOR you. This is one of those statements you have to believe to be true in order to make it true. Its not true before you believe it. Now, now, don’t judge me just yet. Allow me to paint some perspective on it. At 49 years old I laid in what was supposed to be my death bed. The doctor was at the foot of the bed, arms crossed and barking orders. A nurse on my left was administering an IV and feverishly shoving in drugs, the nurse on my right the same. My wife was standing behind the doctor and to his left, crying out of control. For me, everything was now in slow motion. My veins on fire from the medication and the heart monitor going flat for 15 second intervals which seemed like a lifetime, because it was a lifetime; mine. Without time to contemplate my accomplishments or failures, I was only thinking of the family I was soon leaving behind. My children not yet prepared for this world. My wife finally got through to the doctor, “what is happening?” she yelled. “He is either dying of having a stroke, not sure which”, he was unmoved by the emotion of the situation but he certainly got my attention. At this point I conceded I was certainly going to die and in the hands of God. Here lies David Penney, May 30, 1968 to December 17, 2017.

Within three days I was scheduled for open heart surgery and a heart valve replacement. A problem I did not cause and could not have prevented. Apparently, my original heart valve was a part that was picked from the shallow end of the gene pool. For those three days I was simply trying to live and for the 3 weeks after surgery I wondered if I still wanted to live. Seems crazy but the experts at Mayo Clinic informed me that the only recovery worse than open heart surgery is a lung transplant. Each morning I would wake up surprised I had survived the night before and I kept grasping to one very important thing: Things don’t happen TO me, they happen FOR me. Nah, I didn’t believe it. Not at all in fact. I wanted to believe it but I kept thinking it nonetheless. Eventually it was in these thoughts that I found a way to make it true.

Fast forward to Corona Virus 2020. I don’t know anybody that is thriving right now. We are just surviving. Fear begets fear, which leads to bad decisions and I cannot help to think the worse but I try to believe the best. I recall from so many bad business situations that I have faced that every crisis appears searching for a hero.

We have a choice to make right now. Are you going to be a lemming and follow the doom and gloom of our day, hidden in the masses of those hysterical, head hanging low, mumbling woe is me as you drudge through life, or are you searching for the good that can only be found by those searching?

Folks, this is so simple. You have to believe that things happen FOR you, before its true. This crises in your business, in your industry, in your country, in your home; it searches for a hero. It’s scouring your circle of influence looking for somebody to take a stand, lead the people around you, block out the noise, confusion and unknown and direct the people important to you to a full recovery.

Things don’t happen TO you, they happen FOR you. Think it, believe it, search for it and then you will realize it. Success is persnickety, it only reveals itself to those searching for it regardless of the circumstances. Your recovery? Yeah, it’s going to be pain filled as well, but the change you are looking for begins with your perspective. Keep searching for the good in the pain and you will wake up surprised as well.

Leave Nothing to Chance.

David