Perhaps you are at a point where you wonder if you can change. Maybe you are in such a low place that you think it’s impossible or too late to make something of your life. Maybe you have made bad choices that have led you to a very unhappy, dark, and even desperate situation.
Your dark nights of the soul are continuing night after night. You question your sanity. You question your ability to face your problems. Each day runs into the next. “Hell on earth,” you say to yourself. When will I find the strength to change, face my fears, and take the necessary actions?” you wonder.
“This isn’t life, I am not living,” you tell yourself. “How did I get here? What happened? Where did I go wrong?” you think.
I’ve been there a few times. It’s an excruciatingly lonely and terrifying place.
The good news is that you can pull yourself out of it and make your life what you want it to be.
Here’s my story.
It was my first day on the job at a well-known international corporation. I was hired as a management trainee. I was in my mid-20s. Within a couple of years, I was the top-performing district manager in the region. Then I became the youngest regional division head in the United States. A few years later, I became a national marketing manager responsible for 400 million dollars in annual product sales to 900 retail outlets throughout the United States.
Completely unknown to anyone at this company, I lived in a dingy apartment building in a bad part of town during my interviews, my first day of work, and several weeks afterward. This apartment house was full of men who had lost everything due to job loss, divorce, bankruptcy, alcohol, and/or drugs. While living in this apartment building and working at this company, I feared someone would discover where I was living and how I got there.
I was the only person who left the apartment building in the morning with a tie on. I was also one of the few who had a car! And to my knowledge, I was the only one who worked for a highly successful Fortune 500 company.
At a celebration for the grand opening of our new headquarters, a few months after I started, the boss, who was highly respected in the industry and later became head of a well-known competing company, said to me, “We pulled you out of the gutter, didn’t we, kid?” Then he added, “I know because I was in the same situation myself when I was about your age.” His question startled me. I was immediately consumed with the fear that he and everyone else at the company had discovered my secret! I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts. Then with a smile, I said, “Yep!”
The way I responded neither confirmed nor denied it, but I always felt he knew the truth. No one at the company ever said anything about it, so I always felt it was a private conversation between him and me—until now (with the publication of this article).
Finding the Strength to Change
It was 3:00 in the morning, and I woke up sweaty and consumed with fear and anxiety. My girlfriend had recently ended our relationship. I was living in a shabby apartment, unemployed, and broke. Although I had graduated from college with honors just over a year earlier, too much partying, lack of direction, and an unwillingness to accept responsibility were the causes for all these outcomes.
The apartment house was both depressing and inspiring. It was depressing to know I was living in such a place, but it was inspiring to see firsthand what I did not want to become, especially at my age (being the youngest).
A large community room and adjoining makeshift restaurant on the first floor were a popular gathering place that allowed residents to get to know each other. Many of the men I became acquainted with were especially kind to me. They were supportive, helpful, and encouraging. They came from many social and economic backgrounds. There was a “former” firefighter, lawyer, surgeon, carpenter, oil rig roughneck, dockworker, and writer. They all had heartbreaking stories about how they had ended up in such a place.
The outfit I wore to my interviews at this Fortune 500 company was a conglomeration of clothing contributions made by current and former residents. It was clean and perfectly ironed, but a strange hodgepodge of color, fabric, and style.
Living in that apartment building was a fantastic learning experience. I never felt such despair, hope, and determination all at once. Much of my inspiration to build this website came from the stories I heard and my personal growth experiences while living in that apartment house.
The Breakthrough
Here I was living in a dingy apartment, jobless and penniless, with rent due in three weeks.
Several men in the apartment house occasionally shared leads for low-paying, unskilled jobs. I landed two assignments, which turned out to be short-term. I took down temporary fencing at public events and construction sites for one company. In my other job, I removed recording tape from audio cassettes in a warehouse filled to the ceiling with thousands of them. It was the most boring and humiliating job of my life. My job as a janitor during high school was prestigious in comparison.
I had to find a job that I was proud of and that would provide a future. But I was afraid and had little confidence.
Then one day, as I looked around where I lived, I said to myself, “Enough!” I will walk through my fears! I will do whatever it takes to change my life right now!” From that moment, I began digging deep into my soul for the strength, inspiration, and determination I’d need to change my life. I had to go very deep to unearth these resources. I was delighted to find they were indeed there and probably had been all along. I just never dug deep enough. I may have only been a few inches away and didn’t realize it at several points.
Within a couple of days, I was ready. “Tomorrow I will take whatever action is required to change my life, and I will not allow any fear or second-guessing to stop me.” I declared to myself.
The next morning, I recommitted to this quest by saying, “Today I will do it!” What I needed first was a job that I was proud of.
On that day, I got three jobs! I was on fire. Nothing could stop me. I went after each job I had always wanted, but was afraid to go after. I got a job as a salesperson at an automobile dealership, an account representative at an employment agency (ironically), and an interview for the following week at a Fortune 500 company. I got the interview through an employment agency that I walked into at the end of the day. After I was hired, this Fortune 500 company paid the employment agency several thousand dollars for finding me, a guy living in a dingy, rundown apartment in a seedy part of town.
It was truly that quick. It boiled down to being completely fed up and determined to change at any cost. The starting point was a decision and a commitment to move forward no matter what.
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From the day I started at that Fortune 500 company, I never forgot where I came from. This provided me with an extraordinary amount of motivation and determination. Had I not had the experience I did just before starting, I do not believe I would have risen through the ranks as quickly as I did.