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It's our character, growth, and strength that helps us endure the challenges we face when we nurture our lives with truth and honesty.

Be honest with yourself as you use these encouraging words, and be willing to grow where growth is needed and change where change is needed.

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Our Story of how Amy and I came together, and my personal journey of how LIFT was birthed from the struggles of my life experiences.

Amy walked into my heart but the timing wasn’t right!!

It was a regular late Wednesday afternoon when I stopped in my favorite pub after work watching the sports highlights at the bar. Sitting on the far side, I could look out the windows and relax. She walked in with her girlfriends after their tennis drills and I was floored. I became intrigued with her as I observed how she interacted with her friends. I asked the bartender if she could give me any insight about her and I was informed that they come in every Wednesday after tennis drills. I asked the bartender to allow me to buy her drinks but not to say anything to her. I found it amusing to watch her react every Wednesday when she didn’t have a tab.

This went on for a month and a half. In my heart I felt the timing just wasn’t right. We were both single and starting life over but just needed more time. One evening, the bartender was off work and sitting on the other side of the bar when she spilled the news to Amy that I was the one taking care of her bill. Amy’s best friend grabbed her and they came over to introduce themselves to me. It was amazing to finally meet her! Our conversation was simple and short but in a good way.

“The Takeaway Getaway”

Later that night, she had gone outside to talk with someone on her cell and as I was leaving I walked up, gave her a fist bump without saying anything, and walked away leaving her more curious and intrigued than ever. I was fun as I smiled ear to ear as I walked away, not looking back. This drove her crazy and more intrigued to meet me. We ran into each other that following Saturday night and began chatting. We clicked right away. She inspired me to write a new LIFT quote which I shared with her at a later time.

We chatted that Saturday night for quite a while about our passions, dreams, and goals and set a date to go hiking. We first agreed that we should do dinner at my place to get to know each other more and talk about where we wanted to go hiking.

The following Monday, I brought the pizza and she brought the drinks. Our conversation was very easy as we chatted throughout the night. The bond was amazing and incredible especially finding out that we were identical in so many areas of life.

“Quality Traffic”

Our next date we went hiking down at one of the Chattahoochee River trails. She came over to my house and I drove us down, taking the interstate. The traffic was horrible due to construction and we were crawling very slowly. I could tell she was getting irritated due to how slow we were going but it was fine. After voicing her frustration, I let her know that it didn’t matter where we were as long as we were spending quality time together. It blew her mind that I looked at it in such a positive way. In fact, we had one of our best conversations together that afternoon about quality patience.

“The Killer Hiking Experience”

This story will be updated soon…

Ha!!

My Personal Life journey of how LIFT became into existence.

It is easy for someone to write about the good experiences in their lives and expect the praises of others, as well as write about experiences of abuse, struggle and hard times expecting others to feel sorry for us and help provide something for us for a feeling of comfort.

What is hardest, is living the journey of both scenarios and making a conscious decision to becoming a better person from it.

At a young age, I experienced abuse that many others also go through when they are too young to defend themselves. I was fortunate to have people in my life, some family and few friends, who helped me get through those difficult times as I grew up, and I hope others who face the same pain have someone there for them as well. Growing up, I was a bit gullible and was often a pushover. I lacked confidence and didn’t believe I could achieve anything great in my personal life. I dreamed about bigger things and traveling the world, but deep down I felt unworthy of ever experiencing them. It was like I placed myself in a box and I didn't have the vision or the know how to get out. Even though I cared about people and tried to be friends with everyone, I was often picked on. I became the person others used as their punching bag so they could feel powerful and hide the struggles they were dealing with in their own lives. I always had a desire to dream of something greater for myself.

I imagined traveling the world and experiencing new things, but I often sabotaged myself and never took the steps needed to live the journey I truly desired. One day I was watching the travel channel at my Grandmother’s house and while I was laying on the floor I reached up in the air and she asked what I was doing, I responded that I was wanting a rope to fall from the sky and pull me into the world of excitement, experiences and adventure. That motivated her and other family to help me and I began a new journey that created a lot of changes and opportunities. I worked all through school and played sports which helped me understand to have a strong work ethic and work well with others, but I didn’t focus on my education.

During my Sr year of Highschool I started standing up for myself from being bullied but still didn’t have a direction on what I wanted to do with my life. Because I didn’t take my education seriously I was told I’d be working where I was and I should accept that. That bothered me and I made the decision to start getting proactive and not just reactive. It seems we have two sides within us, one, the good, where we desire to do good in our actions and how we treat ourselves and others around us. Then two, where we can be bad in many areas where we hurt others in forms of abuse, bullying and controlling in order to make ourselves feel better at someone else's expense. It took me a while to realize that we choose what grows in our lives by what we feed and give our attention to. With the help and love I received from all of the family and few friends I came to a decision to join the United States Marine Corps.

During boot camp I was average with the mindset to do what needed to be done to prevent drawing attention to myself and make it through to graduation. I was still lacking confidence to accomplish the hard tasks that was challenging to me and I did my best to avoid any confrontation to keep the peace. So many stories to share of my military experiences that has molded me into the man I have become and I share those stories of those experiences in my blogs and LIFTcasts and my sessions.

Towards the end of boot camp we had the opportunity to have family join us for a dinner and my cousin flew over and joined us. While we were eating our Drill Instructor’s would make the rounds and talk to our guests, which were mainly family. When our Sr Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant Slaughter was chatting with my cousin that made the trip out he explained to him, because of my lack of confidence that I could not finish some tasks like climbing the rope, I was at risk of being dropped back causing me to graduate at a later date. That hurt and motivated me all at the same time. After that night I turned the burners on and started attacking the tasks of the mission and not just try to cruise through them. I then realized we go through the most impactful change when something in our lives hurts.

When I graduated Bootcamp I was strong in body, mind and spirit. In fact to much spirit, I was on a mission to put any and all in their place that hurt others. I became the bully to bullies and fell in love of the challenge of rough housing and picking fights. Yes, I know it was wrong but I was unleashed with action. I used the excuse of all the built up pressure being bullied and being told that my self worth was nothing while I was hurting others. I justified myself in all the wrong ways.

I had the honor to travel while I served and my last deployment was the one that became my last deployment. I was deployed to Cuba where we fortified ships on the way to Cuba into small floating prisons so the Cuban Haitians that were defecting that processed with Visa’s was transported back to the USA. At this time Cuba had a lot of immigrants fleeing to Florida. The people fleeing Cuba mainly wanted to get picked up by the Coast Guard in the security lanes off the coast of Cuba and start the process of getting Visas to enter the United States. My overconfident self ended up getting injured being stupid which placed me on bed rest for a few days, then I moved to being on crutches. Being injured my status was changed to light duty, I was tasked with a clipboard and forms to document the testimonials of why they were fleeing. This day changed my life forever, and put me on a course to start helping people and stop hurting them. A young girl that was defecting began to tell her story that her and her toddler set out on a home built raft and desired to get picked up in the Coast Guard security lanes but instead was taken out in the opposite direction. After a bit of time she dozed off and was suddenly awakened by her toddler falling into the water. She quickly grabbed her child and started pulling the child back up but a shark latched on and pulled the child away from her. I was hurt, broken and came face to face with someone willing to sacrifice so much just to come live in America. My body might have been broken but my heart was crushed. She ended her story with conviction that she still wanted to complete her journey and create something better for herself even though her child was not going to be with her. This caused me to begin a different journey, a battle from within to change the way I thought and reacted to different situations and circumstances in my own journey.

I decided to discharge from the Marine Corps and start life over. I moved to Georgia not knowing anyone or much of anything and started a new journey of struggles and challenges. I was attending IT school in the evenings after turning down a demolitions position the Corps had lined up for me. About two years into the program, a new instructor came in who had just been let go from IBM. Instead of encouraging us, he filled the room with negativity. You could feel the energy shift as students who once had hope for their future started to doubt themselves. The evening classes we full of adults working toward making a career path change while they worked their day jobs. I stepped up and excused the individual from the classroom and started speaking motivation and praising everyone for wanting to better themselves and take the challenge on of doing a career change. About a week after that incident I was called to the office. I went in thinking I was in trouble but was praised for doing what I did. The school asked me to start speaking at their career day classes on motivation, goal setting and enduring life's challenges which lead to speaking at their graduation classes because I was able to take a position at IBM before I even graduated. One day the school asked me to speak at a daytime career class so I had to get permission from my department manager at IBM to take off for it. My department Mgr asked what I was doing so I invited him and he was pleased what he witnessed and asked me to speak at a few department meetings on occasion.

At this time I started journaling and writing material on a consistent basis and I began to discover a pattern to where I came up with LIFT. At first it was Leadership, Integrity, Foundation and Teamwork but over time Integrity became Influence. My content seemed to always come back to Influence and how powerful it is in every area of life. That is just a few of the many details I wanted to share with you of how LIFT was created.

“A Change In Journey”

I decided to discharge from the Marine Corps and start over.

I was attending an IT School in the evenings since I turned down a position in demolitions the Corps lined up for me. One evening about two years into school we had an instructor that was just let go at IBM come in and was completely negative and upset to the point he was crushing the hearts of the students.

I stepped up and excused the individual from the classroom and started speaking motivation and praising everyone for wanting to better themselves and take the challenge on of doing a career change.

About a week after that incident I was called to the office. I went in thinking I was in trouble but was praised for doing what I did.

The school asked me to start speaking at their career day classes on motivation which lead to speaking at their graduation classes because I was able to take a position at IBM before I even graduated.

One day the school asked me to speak at a daytime career class so I had to get permission from my department manager to take off for it.

My Mgr asked what I was doing so I invited him and he was pleased what he witnessed and asked me to speak at a few department meetings on occasion.

At this time I started journaling and writing material on a consistent basis and saw a pattern develop to where I came up with LIFT. At first it was Leadership Integrity Foundation and Teamwork but over time Integrity became Influence.

That is a few of the many details I wanted to share with you of how LIFT was created.