RUN 11%er ©

RUN 11%er ©
How often do you hear this quote, “When the student is ready, the Master shall appear,” and truly understood what it mean’s? To paraphrase John Cougar, I was raised in a small town, in a small school, yeah that’s me! About 300 students enrolled in the entire high school during my attendance there, so that the football team remained small and the head coach at the time would use audio tapes to inspire us before games. This seems my first conscious recollection of exposure to motivational speakers, in this instance, Zig Ziglar’s “See You At The Top,” yet at that time the student did not appear ready, but a seed became implanted in my mind.
In my youth plans for the rest of my life remained relatively nonexistent, so that wasting away the moments that make up a dull day became my existence, either the student did not appear ready or the master did not appear. My attempt at military life did not work out at the time so began my return home, but as the days passed a realization began of wanting to finish my military duty and so began the process of reenlisting again, holding out the promise of allowing me to “Be all that you can be.”
Growing up in a small town, going to a small school, learning from small books makes most of us believe that truth, justice and the American Way seems real and even though inklings colored my mind that what most people parroted remained mostly bovine fecal matter, my youth made me naïve to the true workings of our culture. My legal troubles began in 1985 and due to the educational propaganda of my schooling and the fact of my innocence; my family hired an attorney to go to jury trial, where due to the attorney’s lack of competence, witness histrionics and theatrics, and my deficiency in worldly wisdom allowed the judge to banish me to a monastic existence that took up a quarter century of my Life.
Of my last 25 years, 18 of them became spent in a monastic setting interrupted here and there by conditional freedom, yet as of 2011 the debt that the state of Texas set as a burden upon my body, no longer exists. At the beginning of 2003 the state again imposed a monastic existence again in a warehouse deep in the heart of Texas, actually about 150 miles from the exact geographic center of the state. The particular unit that my physical body inhabited made it mandatory that we take a class called Cognitive Intervention, a fancy way of saying “stop and think,” trying to prevent something stupid, antisocial or just plain criminal.
The class material basically consisted of Stephen Coveys 7 Habits of Highly Effective People reworded, reworked and renamed probably to avoid any legal entanglements with copyright laws, along with material from other motivational speakers, life coaches and inspirational people. The teacher brought in the Zig Ziglar video “See You At The Top,” and as Zig gave his spiel the seed that became planted a quarter of a century before, that Lifes’ experiences watered, began to understand the Circle of Life. It awoke something inside of me that quietly grew without my intent, even though my mind possessed no conscious idea that a seed remained from those brief encounters years ago in the football locker rooms of my formative years. My inspiration led me to ask the teacher to give me permission to review the tape alone and this allowed me to encounter Stephen Covey, Tony Robbins, and others; giving me time to take notes, because of my imminent release.
Returning to the small town of my youth to live in for the first time in about 18 years allowing me to use the inspirational material to affect a change in my Life, and due to the nature of my circumstances it let me focus on my growth for the first time in my Life. My father struggled with terminal cancer, my conditional release status made it hard to find employment, and the perception of my past all worked together to isolate me, but it also helped me because it gave me time to read, study and learn more. A feeling of empowerment grew more than any time in the past because my Life experiences could relate to the need for inspiration, motivation and growth and yet something appeared lacking, it felt more like a thought experiment than actual practice of the tools gathered over time. A social network of people to share my ideas with seemed the needed component, people to help and someone who could help me this prompted my move to the city to find a job. My father passed away not long after that and a few months later my wife and me met through a mutual friend of over 25 years, but the everyday existence and grind possess a way of leading us away from what we know best for us.
In 2006 my conditional freedom once again became curtailed and after finishing up with that time out, my wife suggested that we move out of state to some property she owned and if you can’t go home again, neither can you get a new start while under the thumb of a government just because you change your physical location. In 2008 due to a conflict of personalities with the out-of-state government agency who as a courtesy oversaw my conditional release the out-of-state agency remanded me back to the state of Texas. While awaiting the outcome of this Kafkaesque, Byzantine, Orwellian game that resulted out of the clash of personalities, a motivational speaker on public access gave me the basis for RUN 11%er.
As stated earlier, my lack of a social network in 2003 kept me from sharing many of the skills learned so while awaiting the outcome of the remand to the state of Texas a man by the name of Dr. Wayne Dyer appeared on PBS. He claimed that most people donot get help for the simple reason they donot ask, this got me to thinking because he made it sound so simple, yet my life experiences seemed to negate this simple philosophy. The more this idea bounced around in my mind the more a new understanding began to grow prompting me to actually try the ask for help idea in the real world and found that in most cases 1 out of 10 people usually would agree to help. My experience with people in general demonstrates that we live in a society that teaches that we must look out for ourselves, unless you belong to a gang of some sort, and by this means any group of people with a common interest, not necessarily a criminal enterprise. Life seems to show that most people act endogamic by nature, if you do not belong to the tribe, if you donot share common interest, if you donot adhere to common perceptions, the tribe will shun you.
And yet 1 out of 10 people did seem willing, ready and able to help others, not for gain but because they generally desired to help others so even though not everyone might help if you asked at least 10% of the population will. Supposedly about 6 billion people exist on Earth at this time and about half of those remain children, so realistically we can discount children because as adults we know children for the most part cannot help us. That leaves 3 billion people on this planet that could potentially help someone else, but as stated earlier only 10% seemed willing to truly help and that leaves us with 300 million people available worldwide willing to help us out at any time, the population of the U.S. 300 million people even if worldwide, willing to help us becomes a large number, now if you take 10% and add yourself, no this is not correct math, but for our purposes we will do this math and come out with 11%. Now the question becomes are(R) you(U) an(N) 11%er, I realized that if only 1 out of 10 people help each other, then how much can we do, so the lack of social network that seemed lacking in 2003 now becomes possible. Even if not everyone becomes willing to help if we just ask, 10% remains substantial, even drops can fill a bucket. We live in an age when we can communicate almost instantly with anyone on the planet who given access to wires, glass and electrons and so I invite you to my network and feel certain that you RUN 11%er.