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Carolyn Smagalski
Adversity
Founder - Editor - Host
"The successful man is the average man, focused," fully
describes the tenacity of the spirit with a targeted goal.
When a human being focuses his thoughts, energies, and
emotions on a goal so intensely that he sees nothing else, the
earth begins to move. I speak from experience.
A few years ago, my "full-of-energy" teenage son jumped on his
friend's bicycle for an early evening ride on a warm summer
day. This was to be the beginning of a lifetime of challenge
for him.
He was totally unaware that, in a scant fifteen minutes, he
would be flying on a helicopter to Childrens' Hospital in
Philadelphia, the victim of a collision with a pick-up truck.
The impact was bad. Remember those movies of the crash
dummies you saw in Driver Education Class? Human bodies do
the same thing.
The truck's speed was 44 m.p.h. My son was airborne for 22.3
feet, hit the ground, slid 17 feet, slammed headlong into a
curb, then slid an additional 20 feet. The truck stopped 3
feet from his body.
When I saw him a few minutes later, his face was a hoary
white, framed by the blackness of the street's macadam
coating. He gasped for air.
He was not expected to live. If he did, he was not expected
to be functional. As they prepared him for surgery that
night, I spoke passionately to him, "Tyler, remember what we
always said. We never give up! We never,
never, ever give up! Work hard to live! I will
never leave you. Don't you even think
of leaving me!"
The next few weeks were like a roller coaster ride, as he
clung to life by a thread. We never stopped our focus on "the
goal": To recover to a life of quality.
I lived at the hospital. The people I worked with gifted me
with 475 of their vacation hours, so that I could be where I
was most needed. The rest of our life was put on hold, in
order to totally concentrate on our mission.
Anthony Robbins said, "Most people have no idea of the giant
capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our
resources on mastering a single area of our lives." These are
astounding words of wisdom!
In the ensuing months, we mastered a monumental quantity of
tasks. It was like watching a baby develop in fast-forward.
Teaching him to sit, to hold his head up, to stand, to walk,
to swim, to run, to swallow, to eat, and to talk again.
My "vision of him playing video games again" never went away.
You see, he loved video games more than anything else, and I
could not imagine him without that skill.
I put pictures all over the walls - pictures of him as a
fisherman, at "Great Adventure", playing spy with his friends
- happy moments!
As I write this, he is playing video games. He had a friend
visit for the weekend. He plays chess, goes to school, plays
basketball, and knows all the baseball stats.
He still hasn't developed the balance necessary to ride a bike
again. He is still working on developing consistency in some
of his mental capacities; however, he is the picture of "the
miracle child," the "one-in-one-thousand" that recovers.
The power of focus on a definite goal, with the mindset that
you will not stop until that goal is realized, is greater than
most people ever imagine. Adversity may be the fuel that
causes your energy to focus to that level. When you do, your
life has no choice but to surrender to your passions!
Paul J. Meyer, master of personal development theory, said,
"Determine what specific goal you want to achieve. Then
dedicate yourself to its attainment with unswerving singleness
of purpose, the trenchant zeal of a crusader."
Content copyright © 2003-2008 by Carolyn Smagalski. All rights
reserved. This content was written by Carolyn Smagalski.
If you wish to use this content in any manner, you need
written permission.
Contact Carolyn Smagalski
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