Behold The Power In The Mirror... It Is The Source Of ALL Achievement!

I believe to my core that you, my reader friend, are an amazincredible force of nature, a source of outstandynamite power!

Why do I believe that? Simply because you are a human being, a human thinking, and a human doing. As my speaker-friend Michelle Neujahr would say, “You are awesome!” Let’s look at the definition of the word awesome: inspiring awe. Ok, what exactly is awe? According to Oxford, it’s reverential wonder, amazement, and the Thesaurus says it’s admiration, astonishment, esteem, regard, respect, wonderment. Yes, as I was just saying, you ARE awesome! What makes me say that? Well, just look at ALL that you men and women have done!

With only three primary colors, you’ve painted Sunflowers (van Gogh), Au Moulin de la Galette (Renoir), The Sistine Chapel (Michelangelo). And look around you. Look at the colorful world that surrounds you; cars, clothing, home furnishings, book covers, even your office supplies, everything … With just three primary colors!

With a very small number of notes, you’ve composed an incredibly wide range of music, so varied in complexity, intensity, moods and feelings; classical, jazz, blues, reggae, country, rock, disco, rap.

With only 26 little characters (in the English alphabet), you’ve written Macbeth, The Grapes of Wrath, Atlas Shrugged, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Winnie the Pooh, and The Gettysburg Address. And often, you’ve combined words born from these little characters with some of those musical notes and produced beautiful, enjoyable, memorable, at times mood-altering songs; Yesterday, Candle in the Wind, My Heart Will Go On, Someone to Watch Over Me, Sitting on the Dock of the Bay …

You’ve used your incredible imagination and talents to create spectacles that enchant and transport, such as Cirque Du Soleil’s ”O”, the Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas Spectacular, La Scala’s Le Nozze di Figaro. And plays that delight and mesmerize: Les Misérables, Cats, 42nd Street and A Chorus Line, with all the dancing … I take great pleasure in watching you dance, be it on the center floor at a popular disco, or center stage performances of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, or Michael Flatley’s Feet of Flames. And do you remember Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers? So much grace and beauty! And let’s not forget the tango, the waltzes, the jitter-bug, and all those sensuous Latino dances (remember La Lambada?).

Indeed, you have done incredible things with your body, so much agility, flexibility, and elegance (just close your eyes and think of Nadia Comaneci, Mikhail Barishnikov, Mary Lou Retton or Michelle Kwan). But you’ve also used your strength, speed, and stamina to do amazing things; you’ve run the 100 meters in under ten seconds, pole-vaulted nearly 20 feet, picked up and lifted 575 lbs over your head. Wow!

You’ve swam across the English Channel, been to both Poles, toured around the world in a wheelchair, and with the adventurous spirit of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart to inspire you, you’ve circumnavigated the globe in a hot air balloon. You’ve climbed to the top of the highest peaks, visited the remains of the Titanic two miles deep in the ocean, built a space station miles above the earth, and even hit golf balls on the surface of the moon!

You’ve dug tunnels under mountains and under the sea. You’ve constructed buildings so tall they appear to touch the sky, mile-long suspension bridges, and a stadium that can hold 240,000 spectators! You’ve built structures as gigantic as the grand Coulee dam, and more recently, tools as minuscule as an on-off switch that is thinner than a human hair! You’ve designed and built Ferrari automobiles, Boeing airplanes, Sea Ray power boats, and Harley Davidson motorcycles.

It was Orison Swett Marden who observed:
“Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers;
powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing;
forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.”

Seems to me these powers and forces HAVE been awakened and put into action! Aren’t you stunnincredibly awesome?

You have extracted essential oils from flowers and turned them into Passion, Eternity, and Chanel #5. You’ve concocted Fajitas, Moussaka, Fettucine Alfredo, General Tao’s Chicken, Chocolate Mousse, Apple pie à la mode, Sushi, and Chicken McNuggets (ok, you’re not perfect). You’ve made Mouton Rothschild and Château Lafite from grapes, Frappuccinos from coffee beans, Godiva’s chocolates from the cacao pods, beer from hops, Camembert and Brie from milk, and you found a way to extract a divine syrup from the maple tree. Mmmm, I’m gaining weight just writing about all this!

And I won’t even go into the advances and discoveries you’ve made in medicine, biology, physics, astronomy, anthropology, chemistry, psychology, etc., as it would fill this whole book! Mind-boggling!

I am SO happy and grateful to be sharing the planet, heck, the Universe, with you, my friends. So honored, really! But what makes me so proud, SO PROUD to be part of the human race, is not those big sensational accomplishments worthy of making the Guinness Book of World Records. No! No! No! It’s the little things you do, day in, day out, patiently, lovingly, secretly, often without acknowledgment or external rewards.

It’s the crossing guard on duty in the sweltering heat in June and on the cold, miserable, windy winter days in January. It’s the Special Education teacher staying after class to help little Suzie or Bobby with a math or a grammar problem. It’s the heroic fireman entering the Twin Towers to lead people to safety. It’s the single mom doing her utmost, and the single dad doing his very best. It’s friends helping friends in need.

And it’s specially the nurse caring, really caring for the patients and doing all she can to make life for them more bearable (like Byrne, my brother-in-law … who has spent nearly thirty years in a palliative care unit, calming, consoling, looking after, and holding the hands of cancer-stricken people in the terminal phase).

It’s the swimming, ice-skating, and little league coach. It’s the volunteer in the soup kitchens, the shelters, and all those great organizations you have founded, like Boy Scouts, Red Cross, YMCA, The Salvation Army, and thousands of others. Someone once said that volunteers are the oil that makes the whole big machine known as “society” work. Remove the volunteers and the whole thing would come to a grinding halt. It’s everybody and anybody who is using up any amount of their most irreplaceable of resources, their time, to make life a little, or a lot more enjoyable for others. And YOU are one of them: I know that.

So, please, when you’re finished reading this page go to the nearest mirror. Look in there. Look at you. Don’t pay attention to your physical attributes, specially those you don’t particularly like—wrinkles, double chin, gray hair, skin blemishes, etc. Look beyond the tangible. Look at YOU, the being who thinks, designs, dreams, invents, searches, asks, plans, works, endures, fails but starts again, trips and falls but gets up right away and keeps on keeping on, who discovers, contributes, imagines, conceives, DOES … And if at all possible, give yourself a standing ovation (hey, you’re standing already), while saying out loud to yourself, “I am awesome. I am a-w-e-s-o-m-e!"

I believe, like Ralph Waldo Emerson said, that “What lies behind you and what lies before you are tiny matters compared to what lies within you.”

My friend, success, as you know, comes through achievement. Achievement comes from doing. And doing is possible only when you believe you can do it. And whatever it is you are planning to DO, to accomplish, I, for one, believe you CAN do it. And I have 7,000 years of recorded history to back me up.

BE the very best you can be,
DO all you can possibly do,
GET everything you want to have,
GIVE as much of it as you can give.

Daniel G. St-Jean
Aka The Sparkplug of Personal Development
Author of 7 Simple Keys To Spark Change In Your Life Now!
Co-author of 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life – volume 2