Never Give Up

It doesn’t take much to stir up a vivid memory in this old head of mine. This time it was the memory of a conversation held in the dressing room for the hockey team at Wing Stadium, Kalamazoo, Michigan. I was one of the speakers at the Aim For Your Future Success Rally and several of our top motivational speakers in America were there. I was the new kid on the block and this was my first big rally. I revealed my inexperience and asked the group “I’m new to this. What is that audience expecting of me?” I think it was Denis Waitley that spoke up. Denis is the author of the best selling book, “The Psychology of Winning”. He smiled and said “Art, a lot of people in this audience have lost their jobs, some are facing bankruptcy, some have just gone through ugly divorces and others have just about given up hope. All they want is for you to say something so fantastic, so helpful that it will change their whole life.”  I laughed along with the others. “In other words this is sort of a rehab session. Perhaps we’ve got the wrong audience.  We should be teaching kids and their parents the secrets to happiness and success before they meet with all the problems we face now.”  It was sort of one of those “EUREKA!” moments. And do you know, most of us on that program went on home and started writing books and recording messages and such. Me? I went to Europe with two of my teenage children and as we wandered I wrote my first children’s book titled “The Three Robots”.  I called it a book for parents to read to their children while they hug them.  It was aimed at teaching kids the power of positive thinking. In a sort of sneaky way I wanted to teach the parents these lessons along with the kids and then parents could really teach by example. That meeting took place on April 24th, 1979, and here it is some  39 years later and I’m still chasing that dream. Sometimes that is how it is with dreams but the secret is to never give up. What’s that song lyric….”Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you if you’re young at heart…..”