How words can change a life

Photo Courtesy by WNIT TV

There is a nightly television program where I live that focuses on positive events in the community. Because I speak on positive attitude, I guest host the program from time to time.

By: Charlie Adams. Charlie Adams is a 1985 graduate of Ole Miss. He delivers motivational keynotes and seminars on the importance of positive attitude within organizations. He is the author of 4 books on attitude including 2013’s “How to Build a Positive Attitude and KEEP the Darn Thing!” He can be reached at charlieadamsmotivation.com

A young man named Kyle Akin was one of my guests when I hosted this past week. Kyle has joined me from time to time when I deliver How to Build a Positive Attitude and KEEP the Darn Thing in 2 hour or half day form.

Born with cerebral palsy, tv station camera people helped him out of his chair into the chair on set. There, Kyle settled in and shared his story. He said that when he was in middle school and even early in high school he did not think he was smart enough or capable of getting into college. “Often times I caught myself merely just sliding by in classes thinking it was ‘okay’ because in my mind I was doing the best I could,” he said. “Then in the summer before my eighth grade year something happened to me which sparked an entirely different thought process and would change my life forever!”

His parents got him tickets to hear motivational speaker Mike Singletary (photo below). In a room filled with men and women in business suits, Kyle and his Dad were seated in the back. After Singletary’s riveting talk, he started to exit.

“After he was walking off,” Kyle said, “he started to walk toward me and came over and shook my hand. He told me something I would never forget. He said ‘you can do whatever you want to do.’ He shook my Dad’s hand and walked out. I was in shock of what just happened and how an individual of that stature would come over to me and tell me something like that! He chose me off all people in that room! It was then that my mindset started to change and I started to believe I could overcome this adversity and achieve my goals in life.”

This is the life changing impact a professional speaker can have on someone. I was in a hotel one night to speak the next morning when I turned on CNN with Piers Morgan. He had comedian/actor George Lopez on, who shared that he had been abandoned by his mother growing up. He said the school brought in a motivational speaker who talked about dreams and goals and how you can do it! Lopez said he had never heard those things until that moment and that it changed his life forever.

Kyle said that helped give him the confidence to do weight training in high school. “I started taking Scott Bovenkerk’s class with two main ideas in mind,” he said. “I felt like I had to prove to others that, while I may be disabled, I was just like anyone else. I could do anything anyone else could do. The other reason being to try and impress the girls. And while I exceeded people’s expectations, including my own, my target audience did not act so impressed.”

Kyle took this weight lifting class all four years of high school.

“Mr. Bovenkerk acted as my assistant most days,” he said. “When you work with someone long enough you learn when they are and are not giving you 100 percent, or when you still have something left in the tank. It was these times he had the most effect on me. He yelled at me to ‘come on’ and ‘push’ so that everyone in the room would know I was struggling, This would have an effect on my life. The lesson I learned here is a simple but valuable one.

“It taught me how to push myself, how just when I’m thinking I can’t go any further, to know that I can, and if work hard enough, I can and I will. ‘If I can believe it, I can achieve that and more. For when I left Washington High I was stronger than I could ever have imagined. This was the most important thing I learned in all my high school years and it had nothing to do with academics. This is where I learned how to push myself, to be the best I can be, and then some.”

In the keynote Stoke the Fire Within that I have delivered for years, I talk about that inner fire we all have and how certain things can ignite it.

“In the summer before I enrolled at Holy Cross College (near Notre Dame),” he said, “an individual told me in his professional opinion that I would never be able to get more than a two year degree in a college setting. This angered me to the utmost extreme at first because I knew to be anything in this life I would need a college degree. But there was never any doubt in my mind that I would graduate someday, and so I set out from day one to prove him wrong.

“To this day that phrase is my main motivating factor and will remain to be for as long as I live, that there will always be someone out there who doesn’t believe in me. For there is something this individual left out of his professional opinion; he forgot to take into account my will to succeed!”

Kyle got his four year degree from Holy Cross College. He shared with me a motivational quote that he has always leaned on.
“Vince Lombardi said ‘the difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.’ That’s right, baby!!”

Kyle is doing great in the working world these days. He joins me for the seminar form of my positive attitude program from time to time. That rascal! One time I did a half day program on how attitude impacts customer service for Lafayette Savings Bank and had him end with a 15 minute motivational talk. Afterwards everybody was all ‘Kyle this’ and ‘Kyle that!’ I was like, “What about me?!? I just gave you 3 hours and 45 minutes!” They were like, ‘move aside so we can talk to Kyle.'”