Troy's Times - March 2009


www.TroyEvans.com

Troy@TroyEvans.com

 

Hi Friend!


Welcome to Troy’s free monthly electronic newsletter, developed for people interested in overcoming adversity, adapting to change and pushing oneself to realize their full potential.

(Some ch^racters in th1s newsletter have been altered to keep it from being filtered out as spam)

IN THIS ISSUE


“It is not important How we come to the events in our lives, but how we Deal with those events”- Troy


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This Month's Featured Article:

Take the Key Away From the Guard

“You are what you are and where you are because of what has gone into your mind, and you can change what you are and where you are by changing what goes into your mind.”

Zig Ziglar

What goes around comes around, Divine Intervention, Karma, Fate—people have been naming forces behind the paths that we take for millennia. Like I said before, I am not here to argue religious dogma, but I do want to share some truths that I have gleaned from my life’s experiences. They are based in faith. The faith that every person has a purpose and a potential that is waiting to be fulfilled and we are rewarded or schooled based on the choices that we make along that path.
Think about all of the things that have happened in your life that make up who you are today. Have you ever had anything go so exactly right that you could only explain it as luck? Did you take advantage of the luck in the best way possible, or did you waste it? Have you ever had something devastating happen to you that has made you ask “Why me?” Did you find an answer to that question? Did you try?
There are some children’s books that are called “Choose Your Own Adventure.” They take the reader along a plot line and then, at a key point, ask them to make a crucial decision about what they would do. Once the reader makes the decision, they turn to the page corresponding to that decision and learn their fate. That is kind of how I feel about life. There are numerous outcomes that are already written, but it is up to us to make the right choices.
Let’s give it a shot.
You’re Troy Evans.
You move to a new town and have the choice of toughing it out until you can make new friends on the sports teams and in school, or you start doing bad things to make friends with the kids most available to you even though you know it is wrong. You chose the bad kids, turn to that page of the book and discover, oh bad luck, you will be an addict for most of your life.
You get married and have a kid. Do you choose to use your family’s interventions to clean up your act and be a good husband and father or do you choose drugs? Sorry, the drugs page says that your wife leaves you and takes your son with her.
Do you get sober or rob banks to feed a habit. You choose to rob several banks in the hopes of either getting another fix or getting killed. Bad luck again, you’re sent to jail to spend several years with yourself, thinking of every wrong that you’ve ever perpetrated against your family.
But here is where it gets interesting. The plot line can change as soon as you start making good decisions.
Once in jail, you choose sobriety over drugs, and gain clarity and a visit from your son who tells you that there is still hope.
You choose to fight to educate yourself rather than serving dead time, and a scholarship fund from the National Speakers Association that was never intended for a person like you is opened up to you.
You choose death over asking your family to smuggle drugs into the prison for you, and the guards come in at just the right moment.
When all of your hard work is snatched away from you, you choose to start over rather than return to drugs and the life you fought your way out of, and you are told that you get to go home.
And my favorite, you choose a life of speaking to make a difference in other people’s lives and you find that you are given the unfettered opportunity to grow with them.
There is just too much coincidence. The more I think about it and the more I talk to others about their experiences, the more I am convinced that when you are choosing the bad path, you can get only bad, when choosing the good path, good things are returned to you tenfold. How many sayings do we have about this exact same thing? You reap what you sew… What goes around comes around…
Of course, it is important that you keep your eyes open because the punishments do not always happen right away and the good things are not always delivered in the best packages, but once you start making the right decisions, even the past returning to haunt you can be turned into a blessing. I received one such lesson a relatively short time after being released from prison.

***

My first indication that something was wrong came as I opened up the front door upon returning home from the office. The contents of our hallway closet completely littered the walkway in front of me. Upon entering the other rooms in the house I discovered each room had every single drawer and cabinet pulled out and upturned. We had been burglarized. On that day, every single item of material value belonging to me and my wife of two months was taken. TV, VCR, stereo, computer, printer, fax, silver settings, and all of my wife’s jewelry, including things that were handed down from her grandparents and her parents. Things that could never be replaced. Every single thing of material value that we owned was gone. In addition to the monetary loss, every single room in our home was ransacked, and it would be days before our home resembled anything close to the home we knew. Was I angry? I was very angry. Did I want revenge? Of course I wanted revenge, I wanted more than anything to get my hands on those who violated me, who had entered my space, who had taken from me.
Two days later while sitting at my desk filling out insurance forms and compiling the list of what had been taken, I got to thinking about why it was that this happened to me. And it slowly became apparent to me. I had never been on this end. I had never been the one who had been violated, victimized or stolen from. You see it had always been me who had been the taker, me the thief, me the one who had victimized people. I never knew what it felt like to be the victim, to be violated and to feel taken advantage of. As I thought about this over the next several days I came to the conclusion that, like every other significant thing that had happened in my life, this too had a reason.
I needed to feel this end of the equation. There was a purpose in this final leg of my transition in which the robber became the victim. It emphasized the importance of my transformation. Slowly, I felt my anger dissipate and a peace replaced it. I had to feel that pain to know in my heart that I would never cause anyone that kind of suffering again.

***

Have you ever noticed that some people are super lucky and others can’t seem to catch a break. How much of that is perception. There are a lot of people who would have looked at the robbery as being terrible luck. That was my first reaction as well, but it goes back to that saying:
“It is not important how we come to the events in our life. What is important is how we deal with those events.”
I assert that there is no such thing as luck, but rather the opportunities that are presented to you in life are a direct result of the way in which you walk through it. If for example, you love yourself and are confident, people will see you as the type of person that they want to be around. On the contrary, if you are constantly negative and complaining, you will only attract other negative people. Who wants to spend the day with someone who will bring them down?
The same is true in the work place. If you bring a spirit of hard work and commitment with you to work, you will be rewarded. Who cares if you hate your job? Find a new one, but in the meantime, do it to the best of your ability. Who knows, maybe your attitude will be noticed and a new job will find you.
I actually give a talk on this very issue to Human Resources professionals all of the time. I talk about how dead time is the greatest thief of productivity in the workforce today.
People will complain about their jobs, bring their personal problems to work, spend work hours entertaining their own boredom in life and doing just about anything else besides actually getting the work done. Then they will turn around and complain because they have a career that is going nowhere. Honestly what do they expect?
Then, when someone does come in with a go-getter attitude, the entire office will turn on that person for being a tall poppy. How dare they come in and interrupt the status quo. When that person gets promoted over them, they will say that it’s because they’re a suck up and it isn’t fair.
Can you possibly dig yourself any deeper into the world of the victim?
My point is this, if you are not actively living your life to make positive choices for yourself, you have no one to blame but yourself. Everything you do, from the way that you approach your job, to the way that you operate in a relationship, to how you treat yourself on a daily basis, and how you react to the things that happen to you, affects the results you will get out of life. The problem is that most people don’t necessarily see the correlation.
If you don’t like where your life is headed, try changing the little things first and maybe the big things will follow. If you have something unfortunate happen, look for the lesson to be learned so that you can avoid having to learn it over and over again.
It is as simple as this. Good works produce rewards. If you put good out to the universe, good works, good choices, good vibes, whatever you want to call it, it will be returned to you. Have faith in that and you will not get lost.

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Featured product for this issue!

NEW HARDBACK BOOK -

"FROM DESPERATION TO DEDICATION:
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Other Products:

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If you live in or near one of the following cit1es where Troy will be speaking over the next few months, please contact The Ev^ns Groups for details on an opportunity that does not come around often- see Troy present for free!
  • Los Angeles, CA
  • Sitka, AK
  • Bloomington, IL
  • San Francisco, CA
  • Philadelphia, PA
  • Grand Forks, ND
  • San Diego, CA
  • Greenville, SC
  • Turtle Lake, WI
  • Spartanburg, TN
  • Lake Elkhart, WI
  • Tucson, AZ
  • Shreveport, LA
  • Scottsdale, AZ
  • Oklahoma City, OK
  • Bethesda, MD,
  • Hilton Head, SC
  • Miami, FL
  • Baltimore, MD
  • Appleton, WI
  • Portland, OR
  • Buffalo, NY
  • Denver, CO
  • Cincinnati, OH
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  • Baton Rouge, LA
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  • Lake Geneva, WI
  • New York City, NY
  • Newark, NJ
  • Dallas, TX
  • Salt Lake City, UT
  • Columbia, MO
  • Green Bay, WI
  • Indianapolis, IN
  • Las Vegas, NV
  • Cleveland, OH
  • Nashville, TN
  • Phoenix, AZ
  • Columbus, OH
  • Mesa, AZ
  • Chicago, IL
  • Salem, OR

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About the Author- Troy Evans is a profess1onal speaker and author who resides in Phoenix, AZ with his dog Archibald. Troy travels the country delivering keynote presentations, and since his release from prison has taken the corporate and association pl^tforms by storm. Overcoming adversity, adapting to change and pushing yourself to realize your full potential- other speaker’s talk about these issues, Troy has walked them.


For information on booking Troy or for a listing of available products, please contact:

The Evans Group
3104 E. Camelback Road, #436
Phoenix, AZ 85016
602-265-6855
Fax: 602-285-1474
Troy@troyevans.com
http://www.troyevans.com