Front - AZ Teambuilding sro

PUSHING TO THE FRONT
from hurting. In our co-dependent relationship, I was the enabler—her
support system, her cuddle-machine, the one to bring her up whenever
she felt down.
Instead of being driven to self-destruct as a teenager, I became deeply
motivated to work on myself. I started reading motivational literature,
and at the age of twenty, I attended my first personal growth seminar
with Brian Tracy. I saw my dad occasionally, but I didn’t have a role
model, or a mentor. So I was always seeking to fill that void within me,
always looking for someone to show me the road to success.
Fast-forward to my mid-twenties, and I was experiencing an incredible
level of financial success. Traveling the country, tossing money to the
wind, I was living in an atmosphere of fame and glamour. But I was also
completely miserable. I was working seventy hours per week and my
health was deteriorating rapidly. One night, while driving cross-country
through Nebraska with my girlfriend, the car in front of us lost control
and started flipping end-over-end. We pulled over and ran to the car; its
two passengers had been killed instantly. Their ruined bodies hung from
the doors. We called 911, and waited for the ambulance to arrive.
In shock, we drove a little further, to a motel, and stopped for the night
to decompress. We turned on the TV to watch a movie and Frankie and
Johnny was playing on cable that night. Halfway through the movie, I
broke down and started bawling my eyes out. It freaked my girlfriend
out—it kind of flipped me out, too. But this was the first time I’d ever
seen people die, and it made me re-evaluate, instantly, what was important
to me. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “I’m miserable,” I answered.
I’d bought into the myth of money and fame, and what had it brought
me? This gig was a sure two to three million a year, and I’d be looking at
double that the next year. But I wasn’t enjoying my life. I was exhausted,
I had no friends, and I felt no joy. My greed-based mentality had led me
to a desolate place. And I realized: I’m just what Mom did to herself. Unconsciously,
I was sabotaging myself by duplicating her patterns.
In the days that followed, I quit my job. My lifestyle had come with
massive overhead expenses, and I was forced to claim bankruptcy. I
gave my BMW back to the bank and bought a Ford Fiesta for a couple
hundred bucks. Living at the financial bottom of the barrel, I felt an
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