2004 Ben Franklin Award Winner
Best New Voice (Nonfiction)

Named in honor of America's most cherished publisher and printer, the Ben Franklin Award recognizes excellence in independent publishing. Publications, grouped by genre, are judged by a panel of book industry experts including bookstore buyers, wholesalers and distributors, acquisition librarians, book critics, editors, design experts, and independent publishing consultants, Publishers large and small from across the nation, Canada, and Mexico, compete each year for the coveted awards.

- Table of Contents
- Read an Excerpt
- Click here to order your copy of "When Life Blows You Down"

Everything's fine. You're in control. Then something happens that blows you down. You're in the midst of a life challenge or some unpleasant change experience, upset and angry. You wish you could snap your fingers and make your situation go away. This book helps you be your best during difficult times and soar into a fulfilling future.

The foundation of this book is Bill Dyer's experience of being robbed and shot at an ATM on his way to work. You feel the terror of being robbed at gunpoint. You sense the disbelief and shock when a gunshot breaks the early morning silence and finds its victim. You understand a hopeless outlook when the end is near. You see Bill react to his challenge during his hospital stay and sabotage what he values most in life, without even realizing it. You look into a life full of anger and negativity, and see the ugly consequences.

As you read Bill's story and consider your life challenges, you become aware of your own reactions and how they often keep you from living a life you love. Bill then shares a gift he discovered in his apparent tragedy - 11 ½ Ways to rise above life challenges and get more of what you want in the process. When you see Bill's results, you begin seeing new possibilities for yourself and what you can create.

As you apply these insights to your situation, the burden of your Lifeblow is lifted. You experience less frustration and struggle, and enjoy more fulfillment and peace. You get back on track where you've been off Purpose. You build productive time into your day. You take lessons Bill learned the hard way, and easily apply them to get extraordinary results for yourself - at home, work, and in your relationships.

Table of Contents

Excerpt

Chapter 5
When the Truth Won't Set You Free

"I'm not so sure about what I've been so sure about."

Welcome to the second half of your Journey of "Getting Up When Life Blows You Down"! Before Mother Theresa died, she visited San Quentin Prison. While addressing the prisoners, she drew a circle, like the one below, on a board.

Pointing to the dot in the middle of the circle, Mother Theresa addressed the prisoners and said, “This dot represents your ‘smirchment’ against society.” Then she gestured to the space outside the dot and said, “And this space represents the infinite potential on the canvas called your life.”

Mother Theresa was talking about “becoming more” as a human being. Although the context is different, her diagram and message are one to take to heart and apply if we are going to rise above setbacks. Our reactive ways represent the dot in Mother Theresa’s circle. The dot represents who you have become, with your natural human reaction, as a result of your Lifeblow. George Eliot said, “It’s never too late to be who you might have been.” Progress outward from the dot and into the space in the circle representing “your infinite potential,” is a journey. It’s a journey of growth. It’s a journey of change. It’s a journey that asks you to “become more today than you were yesterday.” It’s a journey of a leader, a leader of one’s life and in one’s life to create a brighter tomorrow. Leaders don’t wake up after a Lifeblow, and look outside and groan, “How in the world am I going to make it through this day?” Leaders of their life, wake up and look out at the same day, and then lift their head and square their shoulders, and ask, “Who am I going to become today?”

Becoming more as a human being, can involve many things. For me, it means having an objective that you are growing toward. In this case, that objective is being fulfilled and creating desired outcomes when you have a Lifeblow.

Reaching that objective means making new choices about how we think and behave — purposeful choices that are designed to take us to a new and meaningful plateau. Becoming more means living life outside of your comfort zone; in other words, thinking and doing things that are new and that you weren’t thinking or doing yesterday, last week, or last month. Miguel De Cervantes said, “Get the better of yourself — this is the best kind of victory.” With your choice to stop your Lifeblow reaction, you have already become more as a person. By committing to the rest of the process, you’ve gotten the better of yourself.

The message in this book is one of becoming even more now. Its focus is on changing your life by exploring your belief system, noting the kind of life experience your beliefs bring you, and intentionally making shifts in those perspectives about your Lifeblow, that do nothing but keep you down and upset.

All of us have a belief system, made up of what we think are truths about ourselves, other people, the world, and our circumstances. Since all of our reactions are driven by that belief system, “Getting Up When Life Blows You Down” requires challenging your belief system and changing it, where necessary, to transform your life.

Before we continue, let’s take a minute to better understand how we develop our belief system, or what I also call THE TRUTH we hold about ourselves, other people, and the world. A few years ago I remember standing in front of a big window, looking into the nursery at a hospital where friends of mine had just had their first baby. As I looked into that room at my friends’ newborn son, along with another dozen or so babies, the thought that occurred to me was, “At this very moment, all of these babies have the same chance to fulfill their God-given potential.”

In his book The Self-Talk Solution, Shad Helmstetter draws a wonderful analogy between our mind and a record. He says, “We are all born with a nice, clean, shiny record, on which nothing has ever been recorded. As soon as we’re born, the needle comes down on our record and starts cutting grooves in the record. With each passing day, every word we hear and every thought we think, about every experience we have, cuts a groove in the record. The words and thoughts that are repeated over and over again, cut grooves that become deeper and more permanent. The deeper, more permanent grooves represent our conditioned-in beliefs and attitudes, or truth about ourselves, other people, and the world.”

All of us have truths about everything and everybody. When older adults think of teenagers, there are many automatic truths that automatically arise in their thinking. They have a “teenage truth” — “They are loud, unruly, rebellious, clueless, listen to stupid music, and drive fast.” When teenagers think of older adults, the same thing happens. Teenagers have automatic “old folk truths” such as, “They are boring, demanding, listen to stupid music, and drive way to slow.”

Our truths dictate how we feel and act, and our actions dictate our life results — good or bad, positive or negative, constructive or destructive, and encouraging or discouraging, leaving us happy or unhappy and fulfilled or unfulfilled. Simply said, everything we create is a result of what we hold as our truth. If we create a disaster after a Lifeblow, it’s because we have a truth that automatically leads to a specific set of actions that cause disaster. If our truth were different, our actions would be different, and so would our outcome.

Let’s go back to my experience of looking into the nursery at the group of newborn babies. In the moment I was observing them, none of those miracles of God had any truths. They had no biases, beliefs, or prejudices. In the words of Shad Helmstetter, “They had no cluttered notions in their mind about what is right or what is wrong and what works or doesn’t work. They had no likes or dislikes, no political points of view, no conditioning whatsoever.” They had their lives in front of them, taking no attitudes or beliefs into their future. They were peaceful, trusting, joyful, unconditionally loving, and full of acceptance for all human beings. In a few days, upon leaving the hospital, they would willingly go home with anyone who would take them. However, the babies aren’t taken home by just anyone. My friends took their son home and the other babies presumably went home with their parents, natural or otherwise. It was from their “home” that all these babies would begin to experience life and begin to develop their truths about themselves, other people, and the world.

Said another way, they would begin to be conditioned. With each passing day, as they grew older, they would begin learning from their environment, experiences, and the people in their world. When a baby is taken home, they experience how people talk to and treat one another. They experience how people talk to and treat them. They begin learning about the world and the people in it, from their environment and observations. The world is their teacher. A young child learns to hate the exact same way he or she learns that 1 + 1 = 2. In either case, a thought gets planted and the child repeats it over and over until it becomes that child’s truth.

Young children are like sponges, absorbing all they can from any source. They are full of questions. Sometimes they ask them and sometimes they don’t, but they always have them, and they always find answers for themselves. Have you ever noticed how many questions, kids ask? They learn each and every time they receive answers to their questions. They get answers to their questions: what, when, where, why, how, and who, and start developing a belief system. They learn from and are taught by their parents, siblings, neighbors, and conversations they overhear the ice cream truck driver having on his cell phone while giving them their change.

When they get to school age, they learn from teachers, classmates, and experiences they have on the playground. When they are five, they learn from the thirteen-year-old down the street. They learn from coaches, ministers, rabbis, mentors, and messages picked up from television, radio, video games, magazines, and newspapers. Helmstetter went on to say, “Collectively, every word they hear and every thought they think, about every experience they have, will lead to their truth about themselves, the world, and everyone in it.”

One of my favorite little stories that shows how we are conditioned, is the one about the little girl who used to ride to school with her dad every morning. This went on for weeks, until one day her father was out of town on business and her mom took her to school. On the way, after about fifteen minutes of driving, the little girl asked her mom, “Where are all the bastards today?”

Surprised at her daughter’s language and question, Mom asked, “What do you mean? Where did you hear that word?”

It all made sense when her daughter said, “Well, I’m just wondering where they all are. When I ride to school with Daddy, we’ve seen at least five or six of them by now.”

I saw a great example of our human conditioning while watching a special on TV with Peter Jennings. The program was aired to answer the questions children had about the terrorist attacks. There was a room full of children, ages five to fifteen, along with a few adults who would help answer questions and support the conversation as needed. During the program, one five-year-old little girl asked, “Why did it happen? I just don’t understand? Why would someone do this? How can people hate people they don’t know?”

Following her questions, Peter Jennings asked the other children, “Does anyone know why someone would do this?” A few hands were raised, and Jennings called on a boy who was about fourteen.

The boy proceeded to answer by saying, “Muslims worship a different God than us, and the Muslim Bible teaches that if you kill someone, you will go to heaven.”

After allowing a few more kids a chance to express their thoughts, Jennings directed his attention to a Muslim religious man, who was part of the audience, and asked him to comment. This man began sharing Muslim beliefs with the children, including the fact that Muslims worship the same God who is worshiped in the Christian and Jewish faiths. He helped the kids understand that Christians in the Middle East refer to God as Allah, NOT because the God is different. The name they give God is different because the language and culture are different. He informed these very impressionable minds that the Muslim religion and Koran (the Muslim “Bible”) promotes peace among fellow human beings and that nowhere, does it encourage killing or suggest that people can kill other people and go to heaven.

In that very brief exchange, we saw a great example of how we are all conditioned differently. The teenager, who thought that Muslims believed they could kill and go to heaven, had been conditioned. He somehow, somewhere along the line, developed that truth. His mom or dad may have told him. He may have picked it up from a news story or article or an overheard conversation among peers, neighbors, or perfect strangers at the bus stop. Who knows where or how he developed his false truth. Regardless of how he came to believe what he did, he arrived at his opinion, the same way we all do. Fortunately, on that particular day, he got a new teacher who had an opportunity to influence his thinking, show him the real truth, and hopefully “cut a new groove” about people of the Muslim faith. We are all like the fifteen-year-old boy; full of TRUTHS from the way we’ve been conditioned.

The way this relates to “Getting Up When Life Blows You Down” is that your automatic reactive thoughts, are your truth about your Lifeblow. As you remember, a few of my reactive thoughts about being robbed, included, “Poor me. Life’s not fair. I’ve been the victim of a random act of violence. What is the world coming to? No one can be trusted.” These reactive thoughts were my truth about being shot. They were part of my belief system about anyone getting shot on their way to work while stopping at an ATM. The actual experience of being shot awakened and reinforced all of my conditioned beliefs about that happening. In other words, I already had a deep groove developed about being victimized that said, “When such a thing happens, life’s not fair.” That truth about my Lifeblow would have been awakened the same way if I had heard that you were shot on your way to work.

Each reactive thought I had about being shot represented another one of my “getting-shot/hospital-stay truths.” A few of my reactive truths were, “I have wasted the last two years of my life” and “I’m going to lose my job.” I had been working at my job for two years before being robbed and shot. I had spent the first year in training and most of the second year developing my territory. I had poured myself into building the business and after getting shot, felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under me. My reactive conversation was “All my effort has gone down the tubes. The last two years of hard work, it’s all been a waste. I’m going to lose my job. If that happens, I’ll have to start over. What will I do then? I’m going to be married in a few months, and I really don’t need this right now!” I felt like everything I had accomplished was now lost and I felt devastated.

The longer I held these thoughts, the further down I sank in my spirits. I was absolutely certain that my past had been wasted and my future was doomed and ruined. There’s not much that makes us feel worse and more depressed than when we really believe our past has been a waste, and there really is no hope for the future. My outlook created a miserable existence at my personal ground zero.

Although there was nothing wrong with any of my reactive, conditioned truths, they made it impossible for me to experience any fulfillment. My truth imprisoned me and kept me in my miserable darkness. My truth didn’t serve me because it led to unproductive actions of beating the robber in my mind and blowing off family and friends. My truth didn’t enable me to operate in my life at my highest potential.

The following story provides an excellent example of how we can develop truths that limit us in life.

Lou Tice shared the extraordinary story of a man named Cliff Young, an Australian farmer. Every year in Australia, there is a long-distance footrace from Melbourne to Sidney, a distance of 600 kilometers. This race’s participants are world-class runners from around the globe.

“One particular year in the early 1990s, Cliff Young decided he would run the race. He had never run this race before and knew nothing about any of the logistics. His training consisted of chasing his cows around on the farm and performing the manual labor, required to maintain a working farm. On the day the race began, Cliff Young showed up in his ‘running gear,’ which consisted of a pair of overalls and galoshes. Needless to say, Cliff looked more like a man who had lost his mind and escaped from a mental institution than one who was about to compete in a 600 K race with world-class experts.”

The race began with everyone holding the same opinion of Cliff Young: Here was a man who hadn’t escaped from a mental facility, but ought to be in one. Making it through one day of the race would be a great showing. Completing half the race before quitting would be a phenomenal feat. Finishing the race? Well, that would be miraculous. No one could have predicted how the race actually went for Cliff the farmer.

Not only did he last more than a day, Cliff Young finished the race. Not only did he finish the race — he won the race. Not only did he win the race, he won the race by a day and a half! Everyone was shocked and left walking around shaking their heads in disbelief. How was this possible? Cliff certainly must have cheated somehow or misread the rules. He must have gotten off course and taken a shorter route. Upon reviewing his path, it was found that Cliff had indeed completed the race fairly, covering the entire course the same way the other runners had.

Cliff’s incredible accomplishment was explained shortly thereafter when he was interviewed along with other participants. The world-class runners, when asked how to run a 600k race, all answered that you run eighteen hours and sleep six hours, then get up and do the same thing. When Cliff was interviewed about how he ran the race and won, he simply said, ‘When everyone else stopped to sleep, I kept running.’ When the world-class runners were told of his strategy, they thought it was nonsense. It wasn’t possible for the human body to perform at optimum levels without stopping after eighteen hours and sleeping. They were the experts. They were the world-class runners. How could this guy know anything? It was difficult for them to accept that Cliff Young had kept running and won the race, simply because he “didn’t know any better.”

The world-class runners had their truth for the best way to run a 600k race. Cliff Young had another truth for the best way to run a 600k race. The world-class runners had a truth, which obviously was not the only truth or the best truth. The above story gives much insight into how we often live our lives, including in the aftermath of our Lifeblow.

Sometimes like the world-class runners, we operate in our life based on our truth, which is not necessarily at our highest potential. Sometimes our reactive truth doesn’t serve us. Sometimes, because of the truth we hold, we aren’t free to be our best in life. That’s what I learned about my reactive truth when I was in the hospital. I learned that if I was going to be uplifted, something had to change. I would have to break out of my current belief system and find or create some new truth about life after being shot at an ATM. Like Cliff Young, I would have to operate out of some new truth in order to win my own race — a race called “Getting Up When Life Blows You Down.” Operating out of new truth, requires seeing new truth, and that can be very challenging. Take a look at the sentence in the circle below.

1. What does the sentence say?

2. Now look at the above circle and sentence one more time. Once again, what does the sentence say?

3. If your answer is still A BIRD IN THE HAND, read the sentence again because that is not what it says. As you read this time, point at each word in the sentence.

4. Now, what does the sentence say?

This simple exercise is a wonderful example of how we operate after a Lifeblow. Do you notice the sentence reads “a bird in the the hand”? Our relationship with our Lifeblow can be like our relationship with the above sentence. We have an automatic truth about it. We are conditioned that a sentence having words put together in this particular order, says “a bird in the hand.” We instantly recognize the saying and automatically, instantly, and confidently know that it says “a bird in the hand.” That’s our truth and we are so right about it, without ever realizing what we are missing. Every day of our lives, our automatic truths are running rampant. Some serve us and some don’t. For those that don’t, we can either unconsciously stick with them or look closer to see what we are missing.

Consider how unchecked truth impacted what happened on June 25, 1876. On that day, General George Armstrong Custer received information that a significant number of Indians were gathering at Little Big Horn. Without questioning his truth that he and his men could handle it, he mounted his steed and confidently rode out with two hundred fifty men to surround three thousand Indians. As the history books reflect, this was a serious mistake. General Custer’s inaccurate truth proved disastrous for him and his men. Sometimes, like General Custer and the world-class runners, we run into our future, living as if our truth is the only truth. When you do that after a Lifeblow, you may not finish as a winner in the race called “Getting Up When Life Blows You Down.”

Consider some more missed truths once held by people in our history.

As ridiculous as these truths sound now, at the time they were spoken, they were spoken with certainty. Each of us has truths like that. After all, we are the experts on our Lifeblow. We must be careful, however, about our expert status. Like the experts who ran the 600k race, we could miss a truth or truths that make a significant and positive difference in what we get out of life. Mark Twain said, “It’s not what I don’t know that limits me. It’s what I know that ain’t so.” Those words of wisdom are at the very heart of the matter of “Getting Up When Life Blows You Down.”

It matters not whether our experience is one of reading a sentence that says “a bird in the the hand” or being hit with a Lifeblow. Our reactive thoughts contain our truth, but not necessarily the only truth. The ten-million-dollar question is, “If we miss the second “the” in the exercise, what else are we missing?” What are we missing in our after-Lifeblow experience that would make a significant and positive difference in how we feel and the quality of our life? What if we started to see some things we’ve been missing? What impact would that have on our life? Would we get more or less out of life? Would we create more or fewer possibilities for our life? The answers are all obvious. If we called into question, all of our harmful reactive truths about our Lifeblow, then discovered other positive and significant aspects to our Lifeblow, we could create NEW and better TRUTHS that enable us to “Get Up When Life Blows Us Down.”

Remember my reactive truths that I had wasted the last two years of my life and was going to lose my job? After calling some of my customers to let them know what had happened, and explain why they weren’t going to see me for a while, my customers were very complimentary and supportive, and assured me that they were going to continue doing business with us. Granted, some momentum would be lost while I was recovering, but everyone I spoke to was very understanding and told me not to worry. My Lifeblow hadn’t devastated my business. I hadn’t wasted the last two years of my life, but I was living into my future as if it were absolutely TRUE!

When my boss arrived at the hospital, my fears about losing my job disappeared instantly when he put his hand on my shoulder and told me the company family was behind me and not to worry about my job. He told me to take the necessary time to get well because my job would surely be waiting for me after my recovery. I’ll never forget how comforting those words were. “I’ve wasted the last two years of my life” and “I’m going to lose my job” were simply a part of my conditioned belief system about lengthy hospital stays and recovery processes, even though they were far from true.

My conversations with my customers and boss were like seeing the second “the” when reading the sentence “a bird in the the hand.” This information was refreshing and represented new truth to replace my reactionary old truth. The anxiety, stress, fear, and disappointment associated with my old truths, completely disappeared and I felt relieved and uplifted. The remainder of this book represents what I learned about discovering and creating new truths about Lifeblows that have the power to uplift and are therefore a springboard for “Getting Up When Life Blows You Down.”

Order Online

Purchase your copy securely online!

When Life Blows You Down Bill Dyer Quantum Leap Resources Price: $15.95 Shipping: $4.00 Per Copy *North Carolina residents add sales tax* 240 pages, soft cover, ISBN: 0972781706