I stumbled into a former employee of mine recently. When I hired her, despite some objections from my staff back in 2003 - she was waitressing in a Coney Island. I don't even think she bought a resume to the interview. I hired her anyway because she was working 10 hours per day for almost nothing and her work ethic and her cheerfulness even in that tough job impressed me. She turned out to be a good hiring decision. Quick learner and hard worker. Fast to think and react to any crises that came our way.
Once in a while we ended up sharing a meal together on the road and although it served me no purpose, I told her that she should really consider going back to school. She just looked at me and laughed. She was 33, with two kids, about to get married again and the mere thought of going back to school with a full life and not too much money in the bank sounded ridiculous to her.
We ended up parting company sometime later and I forgot all about her until recently. Turns out she did remember our conversations. Got married. Kids got a little older and she dusted her brains off, got a nighttime job and went back to school at 37. She will become a nurse in two and half years. She gave me credit for ignition. I told her that she has nobody to give credit to but herself.
In the blink of an eye, she is going to go from working for minimum wage to a respectable profession with good income, benefits and a future. There is no luck at play here. There is no talent at play here. Just determination, a plan and action to take out what is not to her liking in her life anymore and put in place a future that she knows she wants in her life. Change, manufactured by her.
During my first year in USA, I met a professor from Bangladesh, who was working in the local Meijer in Ypsilanti at that time. I used to go there, late at night to pick up groceries. The buses ran till midnight so I could leave work at 11 sometimes, run to Meijer and take the bus home before they shut down the route for the night. We talked sometimes and he was an angry little man. He had a useless PhD that was unable to get him a decent job. Somebody told him that doctors get paid well in Michigan.
At the age of 56, he applied for Medical school. Failed to get into Wayne State. Applied to the medical school in the Caribbean who has a more relaxed admissions policy. Got in and moved to the Bahamas for a couple of years. Finished school, came back and did his residency here and by the time it was all said and done, at the tender age of 61, he was making $110,000 per year as a M.D. Just did not like what he was doing and how his life was looking standing eight hours on his feet at the Meijer on Carpenter Road in Ypsilanti. So he decided to make a change.
Once again, he did not wait for the auto sector to stage a comeback, for Jenny to figure out Economics 101, for Obama's stimulus package to launch, for the bailout funds to reach him - he just manufactured change in his life. Investigated his options, made a plan, and got started doing things (moving to Bahamas, going to school) that would bring the change in his and his family's life that he wanted to see.
Change, made in America, manufactured by him and her alone. Very very few things in this amazing country are out of your reach. Despite of what you might hear or made to believe. As long as you know that you are the founder, architect and executor of all the change in your life. You can have whatever you want. Believe what you may. Those are the lies. This is the truth.
