All great heroes have been broken, but rather than blaming 27 years in imprisonment, in the case of Nelson Mandela, rather than blaming his naysayers and his detractors in the case of Mahatma Gandhi, rather than saying “life is hard, why isn’t greatness easy?” in the case of Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King Jr. These great ones, all had one thing in common, they leveraged their pain into power and they turned their tragedies into victories, and I’m not going to suggest to you that’s an easy process, but if simply start asking yourself, where am I blaming my current external conditions for my lack of prosperity, my lack of energy, my lack of mastery, my lack of joyfulness and soulfulness?
You actually start assuming something that is very powerful and I’ve written about it in my books and it’s called APR, Absolute Personal Responsibility. And the day I grew up was the day I looked into the mirror and said, you know what? I’m responsible for my life and I took absolute personal responsibility. It wasn’t because of the energy vampires and it wasn’t because of the external conditions. And it wasn’t because of my past, it was because of me, and start saying to yourself, how can I turn my stumbling blocks into stepping stones? How can I turn my hard times into monuments of the strength of character and great virtues?