To Succeed

I attended Utah's Crime Victim's Conference this year and the concluding speaker was Richard Paul Evans. He is an amazing author, and I was surprised to find out he is an amazing public speaker as well. He had many in the audience crying by the end of his talk, and if you've ever been around victim advocates, they do not cry easily (except me, I'm special!). Anyway, he spoke on the five things he thinks people need to know in order to find success, I thought I'd share it with you:

1. You are divine. Your life is divine. And there is divine communication. Make time to listen to that small voice. He told us story after story of times he listened to that voice, and it brought him to opportunities he would have never encountered had he ignored that voice.

2. Take big risks. We are afraid to look for something better for ourselves because we are afraid of failure. Speaking of Christopher Columbus' risk to sail across the ocean, when others thought he was sailing to his death because of course the earth is flat, Richard Paul Evans stated, "People don't sail because they are afraid of falling off the earth." He told us he was sure Tiger Woods did not sink his first putt, but today he is a successful golfer. Success is found as we move from failure to another. If you are afraid to fail, you will end up doing nothing and in doing so, failing.

3. If you want to evolve, you must learn to forgive. You are profiting nothing by unforgiving. Your anger consumes you. Instead, recognize your own blessings, and recognize that you are not perfect, that you have let others down, and that forgiveness can set you and others free. By forgiving, you become truly divine. You allow your ship to sail.

4. We cannot succeed or advance without adversity. We do not succeed in spite of our adversity, we succeed because of it. He told us this story of the grapes in Italy. He discovered that the soil in Italy is poor, but if the grapes were given good soil, they would become wimpy and would not fight for survival. Because Italy's grapes are grown in poor soil, they learn to work hard to grow into the best grapes available, becoming the grapes used in the most expensive of wines, while grapes grown in good soil are used for raisins and such. Adversity makes us strong grapes. Those who bear their affirmities well become divine and royal.

5. In the end, the most important thing is love. Love is not a feeling, it is a choice. It is a service, and an action. After a humanitarian project in South America, Richard Paul Evans' daughter stated, "I know what I learned from the experience. We love those that we serve."

After this presentation by this author, he became a personal hero of mine. I was so moved by what he said, and I hung on every word. Afterwards, he was selling his books and I bought two that I don't currently have and he signed them for me. I acted like I was star-struck, I just thanked him and walked away, but more than anything I wanted to let him know that his words really do change lives. Isn't that amazing?