By now I’m sure you’ve heard the story of Ted Williams, the 53 year old homeless man who within 72 hours went from panhandling and living on the streets of Ohio to becoming a media sensation.
 
A former radio announcer who had lost everything to a drug and alcohol addiction – but now clean and with a new-found faith in God – he had been praying relentlessly that his 90 year old mother would live to see his comeback.
 
And just the other day, while wandering the streets of Ohio begging for spare change, he was discovered by a reporter. This reporter shot a video of “the Man with the Golden Voice”, a video that soon went viral online and catapulted Ted into the spotlight.
 
Ted has now been reunited with his mother, whom he hadn’t seen in 20 years (!)…and the job offers are pouring in.
 
It’s an amazing story… I haven’t been able to get it off my mind since I first heard it earlier this week.
 
It’s a story that gives you hope. And that’s why I wanted to briefly comment on it here on my blog.
 
Three things I take away from it:
 
1. Anything can happen when you just choose to stay positive, prayerful and continue to believe…yes, even in the worst of circumstances.
 
2. God is a God of second chances: You can never mess up too bad.
 
3. The Internet is an incredible tool…a youtube video that goes viral can change a person’s life. As a online marketer, you need never doubt that you are in the right place at the right time.
 
Let 2011 be the year that you make an impact on someone, and use your business as the vehicle to accomplish it…
 
 
Here is the famous video.
 
 
 
 

Successfully,
 
 

 
 
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The other day my car was towed. I’d parked it on a street with restricted parking and completely forgot I was supposed to move it before I went to bed that night.
 
The next morning, hubby – who had just walked out the door to go Christmas shopping – came bursting back in, exclaiming that the car was gone: “Where did you park?”
 
I thought about it for about half a second, and remembered… On the street with the restricted parking. Ouch. The car had been towed!
 
To make a long story short, within a few hours we had the car back.
 
Sam went to go get it, and it cost us a hefty $420. (Ouch again.)
 
However…and this is my whole point of sharing this with you.
 
I could have spent the rest of the day (or week) kicking myself over all this…I could have blamed my husband even, (and causing a fight,) however unreasonable that would have been…I could have allowed it to bring me down….to make me angry, bitter, mad at the city of Los Angeles for incorporating such stupid street regulations.
 
But I chose not to.
 
I chose to look at it as something good instead. Namely a lesson in gratitude.
 
First of all, instead of just getting towed, the car COULD HAVE BEEN stolen, and that of course would have been a whole different ball game.
 
Secondly, I didn’t have to lift a finger to get it back: Sam took care of everything while I got to stay home. Which reminded me how blessed I am to have a husband like him —
 
It COULD HAVE BEEN me that had to go get the car – after all it was my fault. But Sam’s choice to take care of things for me gave me yet another thing to be thankful for.
 
Thirdly, IF THIS HAD HAPPENED just 3 years ago, $420 would have been about 25% of our monthly income, and this unforeseen expense would have had much more significant repercussions – such as likely not being able to buy Christmas presents for everyone on our list.
 
Thankfully, it happened now, not back then.
 
Those were only three reasons that immediately came to mind as to why I had reason to be thankful in the midst of the calamity.
 
I think you get the point.
 
The point is that you choose how you react to everything that transpires around you, in your life.
 
Our circumstances are just that… Circumstances. We decide how to read them, and react to them.
 
I believe you can take any “bad” incident and turn it into something good. Yes, I firmly believe that all of us have the ability to do so.
 
When you lose your hard-earned money or an investment due to an unwise business decision…when your house has been on the market for over a year and absolutely no offers are coming in…when the biggest team builder in your organization jumps ships, taking half your downline with them…when your computer crashes, causing you to lose weeks worth of work.
 
Those are the types of things I’m talking about.
 
Am I saying it’s easy? No.
 
But one thing I know, and I know this from personal experience: We CAN train ourselves to interpret, and react to, our circumstances positively rather than succumb to our natural tendency to do otherwise.
 
Until, after a while, this new way of thinking and reacting actually becomes our default mechanism.
 
Recouping a towed car can go from being a nuisance and an unwelcome unnecessary expense to becoming a lesson in gratitude.
 
If that’s how you choose to look at it.
 
 
 

Successfully,
 
 

 
 
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 PS: If you enjoyed this post, feel free to re-tweet it and/or to leave me a comment below!
 
 
 
 

It truly is amazing how “lucky” one can be sometimes.
 
This weekend, while in New York City for a business meeting, I had a string of small miracles happen.
 
First I lost my camera. Then I lost my wallet. Finally, I lost my necklace pendant. Incredibly, my belongings have all since been found and returned to me. Or, as in the case with the camera, my old one was miraculously replaced with a brand new model the same day I lost it.
 
But let me start from the beginning. And, by the way, all this really happened – every detail of the story.
 
 

 
It was Saturday night, and I was heading out to meet a friend briefly before getting together with a group of people for dinner.
 
But as I sat down for dinner, I noticed that my camera was missing. And although I searched high and low for it, it was nowhere to be found. And none of the others had seen it.
 
I was now starting to doubt whether I had even brought it with me. I knew I intended to…but perhaps, in the rush of getting ready, I had left it behind. I wasn’t sure.
 
I hoped I would find the camera in my hotel room when I returned, but I was disappointed: It was not there.
 
Sadly, I concluded that I must have left it in the cab that I took down to the restaurant earlier that evening.
 
Fast forward to the next morning: I didn’t receive the wake-up call that I ordered, and so I overslept. And once again I was in a big hurry as I tossed my things into the suitcase and checked out of the hotel to grab a ride to the airport.
 
 

When I got to Newark airport and reached for my wallet to pay the taxi driver, the wallet was not in my purse.
 
I could feel the hair stand up on the back of my neck: I had seen it in there the night before, and I knew I hadn’t removed it. But I also didn’t think it could have been stolen as I had not let my purse out of sight even for a minute.
 
Fortunately, I found one of my credit cards loose in my purse, which I used to pay the driver.
 
Once inside the terminal, I turned my luggage inside out, but the wallet was nowhere to be seen.
 
I could have screamed! My Green Card was in that wallet, and losing your Green Card, well, that’s no small matter.
 
It’s like losing your passport… Getting a new one is not easy. Or cheap. And of course, the fact that I didn’t know whose hands it had fallen into and whether I would soon find myself being a victim of identity theft, was disturbing.
 
 

I prayed silently for favor as I called the hotel in NYC where I had been staying. Perhaps, by some small miracle, I had left my wallet in the hotel room during the hustle and bustle of packing and checking out that morning.
 
But no – there was no wallet there, the hotel staff announced after inspecting the room.
 
However, they did find something else! They found a gold necklace pendant! From their description of it, I instantly recognized it to be the very piece of jewelry that my husband had gotten for me as a very special gift just a few weeks prior.
 
And by sheer accident it was found. I shook my head in disbelief — both at my own recklessness and my good fortune.
 
I continued my prayers as I headed for security. Without my Green Card I had no form of picture ID, and whether I’d be able to get on the plane and get back home to LA, well, it stood and fell on the good will of the officer at the gate.
 
After I’d explained to her what happened, after some deliberation, the officer finally – reluctantly – let me through the gate on my credit card that I had in my possession, which had my photo on it. She made sure I understood that, “this is not an official government ID.”
 
 

 
Needless to say, my agony over losing both my camera, my wallet, and my necklace pendant in the time span of a just few hours, was great.
 
And I still could not for the life of me fathom what could have happened to my wallet. Could a pickpocket have snatched it? I strongly doubted it. I’d held my purse tight against my body all night.
 
Fortunately though, this story has a happy ending.
 
The first incredible thing that happened was that several hours later, the moment I walked in the door at home in LA, I noticed a small package sitting on the kitchen table. And in the package, as it turned out, was a camera, almost identical to the one I had lost – only this one was brand new.
 
The camera was part of a bigger prize I had won in a sales contest conducted by my company the month before. A prize I had forgotten about completely…until now.
 
I was amazed.
 
And the story gets even better.
 
My husband and I had just hung up the phone after calling each and every one of our credit card companies, asking them to block our accounts…it can’t have been more than five minutes later…when my cell phone rang.
 
 

 
The call was from a young woman in New York City who had – get this – happened upon my wallet in a New York taxi cab in Manhattan the night before! In the wallet she had found the number for my friend in NYC who I’d spent some time with that night.
 
And when the girl called my friend in an attempt to track me down, my friend gave her my contact information.
 
And so it happened that I received that very unexpected phone call from a complete stranger on the other side of the country who, incredibly, had my treasured wallet in her possession.
 
“I’ll send it to you,” she said, jotting down my address. “And how can I best reimburse you?”, I asked, as I tried to pick up my jaw from the floor.
 
“Well, um, my friend and I were kind of drunk last night and we charged our cab fare on your card…$18…so let’s just say we’re even…”
 
And that, of course, I couldn’t really object to.
 
 

 
So what’s the moral of the story here?
 
Pay attention to what you’re doing? Don’t be in a rush?
 
Never cease praying?
 
What goes around comes around? When you yourself make it a point to do the right thing, good things have a way of finding their way back to you?
 
I think, all of the above.
 
But more than anything, I think the moral of the story is this: Never give up hope. Never accept defeat. Be an optimist. At all times, keep a smile on your face and a glow in your eyes. Because truly anything can happen.
 
Miracles still happen.
 
If you can lose your camera, your wallet and your necklace in three completely different locations within the time span of just a few hours, and get them all back by “accident”…then, miracles do happen.
 
Okay, I know, I didn’t actually get my camera back – it was a different one. But what are the odds…I mean the timing of it? The new camera sitting there, waiting for me, as I walked in the door? The same look, same size, same pixels? Think about it…
 
Choose to believe. Choose to hope. Much of the time it is all you need to keep moving forward.