We live in a society that promotes non-responsibility. If you ever watch daytime TV, the commercial ads are targeted towards the uneducated, unemployed, down on their luck or just plain lazy audience. Ambulance chasing lawyers inform us on how easy it is to sue for any self-perceived wrong “done” to us, pharmaceutical ads advise us that we should never feel pain or sadness or helplessness, but if we do they have just the right drug for us. Reality television shows glamorize inappropriate behavior, it’s cool and funny to be “in-your-face” rude, selfish and foul because it’s “all about me, why should I care about what anyone else thinks or feels, it’s their problem, not mine.”

Fortunately, for most people when they have reached the bottom of despair, this is the time when they start to really look within and reflect on their beliefs and faith. When we believe that we have “hit bottom” and cannot travel any deeper into despair, our minds and our emotions force us to open new doors and be creative in our problem solving thought processes. Our outlook and expectations on life is now completely different than our outlook and expectations were when everything was going well. It forces us to examine and determine what are the most essential qualities or parts of our life that we need to maintain in order to survive. Once we have our list it can become the foundation on which to rebuild or start a new. For when each adversity strikes, we need to embrace it as an opportunity to learn from it and allow what we have learned to transform us from within. Let it open up a whole new world of possibilities and goals.

One book that comes to mind that addressing adversity and the power that is contained within each of us when facing it is The Traveller’s Gift by Andy Andrews. This was one of the first self-improvement books I read when starting my home business. By implementing the 7 decisions defined in this great book, in less than six months I went from earning less the $100K per year in my life sucking job to earning more than that in a single month working from home.

When my partner first entered into the network marketing industry and started his home business, the company he joined was involved in selling personal development products. Never being a true believer of the self-help, self-awareness genre, I tended to dismiss the whole self-improvement mindset. So when my partner bought two copies of Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich,” one for me and one for him, I was a little put off by the fact that he expected me to read it. Now don’t get me wrong, I am an avid reader, but I love to read literary fiction, some history, biography and an occasional fanatasy. Reading books like “Think and Grow Rich” just wasn’t my cup of tea. But my partner’s enthusiasm about the book made me feel that I should at least give it a try. And try I did, it felt like torture, like being back in college having to read those long boring required reading material. I made it through the first 3 chapters but was unable to focus and comprehend on what it was exactly that I was reading and how any of it pertained to my current life. I put the book aside and promptly proceeded to forget about it. That is until eighteen months later when I’m sitting there in that restaurant scouring my memory of that book and wondering why in the world there would be a chapter on sex in a book about wealth creation and personal achievement.

When I returned home from Dallas, I went to my bookshelf and dusted off my copy of “Think and Grow Rich!.” I scanned the content index and found that chapter eleven was entitled “The Mystery of Sex Transmutation: The Tenth Step Towards Riches.” I promptly started to read that chapter and you know what? I was hooked. That chapter was genuis. I now wanted to read the whole book from the beginning and proceeded to do so over the course of two days. What truly amazed me the most was the realization of just how far I had come on my journey of personal growth and wealth creation. During the past eighteen months of working with my partner in our home business, we had been, unknown to me, following and implementing the thirteen steps towards riches as outlined in Napoleon Hill’s book. Concepts I had originally thought had no relevance to me, turned out to be concepts that I believed in and had actually been living.