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| Joachim De Posada |
By Joachim De Posada
Website • Follow Me on Twitter • Follow on Facebook
Persistence
and a “can do” attitude are key factors to succeed.
Next week I
will be speaking at a NASA innovation conference. What I will talk about is the
fact that all of us are one applied idea away from a big success in our lives,
a success that might not only change our lives but also change the lives of our
loved ones, our community, country or even the world.
Since I was
invited to speak at the Rotary Club of Santurce, I decided to try out most of
my NASA speech in that forum. Since I wasn’t getting paid, I could try out new
material and if worked great, if it didn’t, I would not have to return their
money because I wasn’t charging anything. That is the beauty of speaking to
non-profits for free, you can try out new material and if it works, you use it
with paying clients, if it doesn’t, you take it out.
I told the
story of Jean Dominique Bauby, former editor of Elle magazine in Paris who was
doing great in his wonderful job and he decided to buy a brand new BMW. The
car, with a chauffeur delivered to his office and he told the driver to take
him to his home so that he could show the car to his two children. They got
there and the little girl wasn’t home but the boy was. He told the chauffeur to
stay put and he took his little kid for a ride. Thirty seconds into the ride,
he felt a sharp pain and passed out. When he opened his eyes a month later, he
was in a hospital, totally paralyzed. He had had a stroke, the kind they call
“the locked in syndrome”, totally paralyzed with the ability to move only one
part of his body, in his particular case, the left eyelid. No need to tell you
what this man went through, it is difficult to put into words. While he was in
bed, he had a big idea. Write a book! Can you imagine, writing a book when all
you can move is an eyelid? It is a crazy idea! But he wanted it done and to be
able to do so, he teamed with a young lady and every morning she would go to
his bedside and with the French alphabet in a board, he would blink every time
she mentioned a letter he needed to form a word, then a sentence, a paragraph
and a full page. With great effort, he wrote a magnificent book,” The Diving
Bell and the Butterfly”. There is even a movie about it. When he finished the
book, it was taken to him and he died a few days later. It seems his mission in
life was to write that book and to teach us that there is nothing more powerful
than the human spirit.
I also told
the story of Hirotada Ototake who wrote a book with no arms and no legs and he
even graduated from college. When I was writing my first book “How to Survive
Among Piranhas”, I had to do a speech at the Rotary Club building in Rio
Piedras for some members of the University of Puerto Rico faculty. In order to
be able to leave quickly, I had the brilliant idea of leaving my car on the
outside of the club’s parking and when I came out, I found my car vandalized
and my planner with my book’s manuscript gone, a devastating blow that demotivated me
and made me stop writing books.
When I met
Hirotada, I stood in front of the mirror and felt ashamed that just because
someone had stolen my almost finished manuscript, I had stopped writing while a
guy with no legs and no arms completed a whole book. I started writing again
and a year and a half later I had the book done.
I then
presented three very special Puerto Rican writers that have made me very proud.
The first
one was Frances Rios, a young lady that called me five years ago and invited me
to coffee in Starbucks and told me she wanted to be a professional speaker. A
very important part of being a professional speaker is to write a book. She did
everything that I suggested she do to a tee and now, five years later, she is
an accomplished speaker, a member of the National Speakers Association and the
author of “The Glue Factor” a very successful book.
The other
young lady I introduced was Arleen Muniz, a very young writer, a cashier in a
supermarket in Ponce who with great persistence and effort wrote a book about
poetry that has sold extremely well. She sells it when people go through the
check- out lane and in any place that allows her to speak about her book.
My third
“case” was Anita Paniagua, a very nice business woman that I met while she was a sales consultant
for WOSO when I was doing some consulting work for them. She was also teaching
a night class at the university and married with children, with a full plate,
she found the time to write her book, “Emprendeser” and with great
perseverance, completed it. Today she is conducting seminars and webinars and
selling her book very successfully.
You can’t
imagine the amount of people that approach me to tell me that “someday” they
want to write a book and become a motivational speaker. You know what? “Someday” means never! Unless
you take it very seriously and you write down in your planner the steps you
have to take to write the book or become a speaker, and then take action, it
will never happen.
Anything in
life you want, you must take it from your original idea to reality, to the real
world, and with a very positive attitude ready to tackle every obstacle that
will come before you; you will persist until you achieve it.
How proud I
felt today with those three young ladies that said they would do it and they
did. They are a great role model in our society.
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