Yessssss....!!!

It was quite a week for our nation, for athletes all over the world, and for me. Let’s recap:

I watched last Sunday and as America took the Gold in the Mens 4x100m Freestyle Relay. It was an amazing and fitting end after the Frenchies had been talking smack. I couldn’t help but just laugh. Then I continued to watch as Michael Phelps won gold after gold, setting new records all along the way and breaking his own records.

Wednesday, I watched as the US won the Men’s 4x200m Freestyle Relay – something like five seconds ahead of the next team and a new world record. Sitting in a restaurant Thursday evening, I watched as Phelps won his sixth gold medal for these games. The entire restaurant was riveted to the screen and proceeded to cheer and clap on the completion of the race.

Friday night, I stood in a crowded mall area and watched the big screen as Phelps won the 100-meter fly, by .01 of a second. Once again, everyone around me was clapping.

And last night, I fired up my Blackberry to see if he had made his eighth gold medal in the Mens 4x100m Medley Relay. Sure enough, he had done it.

Quoted from an NBC article by Alan Abrahamson:

"…Michael Phelps set out before the Beijing Games with the most audacious goal in the history of the modern Olympics, to win eight gold medals at a single Games."

"…I'm almost speechless," Peter Ueberroth, the chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee said Saturday after watching Phelps beat Cavic. "He's beginning to set a whole new standard for his sport and for America."

Way to go Michael Phelps!

And in another sport...

I sat in a restaurant and watched Nastia Liukin perform her beam routine during the US team prelims and I was stunned by the rhythmic and beautiful flow of it all. She is a testament to the fact that women’s gymnastics has always been, and hopefully always will be, an artistic sport and not just a technical one. She was a joy to watch with her graceful execution of routines in the all-around competition. I missed the end of the event and I was glad to hear later that she had won the Gold. Despite the ankle injuries last year and everything else, she made it, and it just rocked that she won.

Way to go Nastia Liukin!

I also enjoyed watching Shawn Johnson and I was really glad that she took Silver. And how about when the US Mens Gymnastics team took that Bronze when no one expected them to even medal?

It just makes me smile and laugh to think about it all. Yes sir, America rocks!

Of course, the Olympics are about people doing great things. They are about people doing better and better. They are about people doing the seemingly impossible.
_________

I summoned a little piece of my own history for myself this last week. I received a contract in the mail for the largest deal that I have ever closed. Over a quarter of a million dollars. Over one quarter of my gross sales last year, but in a single contract. Almost double any previous contract landed by me. I have worked on this deal for almost two years. It has moved between three general contractors, and somehow, our company stayed in the game.

Sure I’m a little nervous, because getting a contract doesn’t mean the job is done, but I am excited. And I’m grateful. I’ve had to take some time to sit and contemplate how I got here, and where I am going. I used to dream of closing a deal this big, and now here it is. I’m a deeply spiritual person, and I can’t help but be thankful to a higher source for this success. I just sit here in awe and I wonder what else might be in store for my life.

I told someone that I didn’t really start on this deal a year and a half ago. I started on it at least ten years ago, when I first started in sales as a 20-year-old. It was some of the hardest stuff I had ever done and definitely the most depressing. I have been privileged to have had some of the best teachers and mentors that a person could have asked for, and I want to say thank you to them. People like David Mathews & Ken Bolinder; and great writers like Og Mandino, Steven R Covey, Vash Young, Napolean Hill, and a host of others that I don’t have the space to write here.

Over the last couple of months, and especially the last couple of weeks, I’ve rediscovered the books, the materials, and the ideas that I have studied for years. And suddenly, I am seeing them with new eyes, and I am excited to see where it leads. I feel almost as though I have been in the doldrums and I am awakening. It is almost as though a new me is emerging. And yes, it feels very, very good.

I just smile at how it all happened this week, with the Olympics and all. At the 2002 Olympics, here in Salt Lake City, I had just gone bankrupt with my Golf Store. I had been forced to close it down because of insufficient funding and I owed thousands of dollars to various creditors. I was a smashed person and the night of the closing Olympic Ceremonies, I came home and sat in my room. I took an old book from the shelf that I had never read. It was a book from my Dad titled, A Fortune to Share, by Vash Young. I read it clear through that night and, it changed my life.

So here we are, at another Olympics. And yes, life is changing. And you know what? ...It's going to be okay.