If you’re a reader of Conquer Your Adversity Newsletter, then you should be familiar with this principle from my article Achievement & Happiness The 80/20 Way – www.rasheedali.com/8020.htm

In past what I’ve found is that most people don’t hesitate to point fingers at whom or what they think is responsible for their failures or lack of success in life. The problem is that they never look in mirror and see that main problem is them! At that time I believed that there were two groups of people, successful and unsuccessful.

Recently however I came across another group of people who all want to be successful and realize that they must change. When they ask me how they can achieve success, I give them all same answer. I’ll get to that in a minute, because first I want to tell you why.

When I was a baby about two months old, my parents sent me from New York to island of Trinidad to live with my Grandparents. During those early years, I was given love, attention and I was taught importance of hard work. You see, my Grandfather and all of his brothers for that matter were entrepreneurs. My Grandpa was a poultry farmer. He raised chickens! Not just any chickens, but best tasting, natural chickens around. Not just a few chickens, but anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 at a time. Not only that but, he still worked at his job as Pay Master at Texaco oil refinery.

To little me, Grandpa was strongest man in world and he knew more than anyone!

Over course of years I would be taken away from my Grandparents many times by my parents, only to be sent back again. Each time I would learn something new. I learned how to run a poultry farm and business, how to handle money, how to deal with customers, how to give a quality product, importance of learning by doing and most of all what I tell my clients and people wanting success.

No, I’m not going to tell you yet! ;-P

Fast forward to 1990-91 and I’m homeless on streets of New York. Of course my Grandparents had no control over these events. It was my parents that left me no choice.

There I was a skinny 15 year old with big glasses, no money and nowhere to live. I had lived in fear for so long in past that I looked like an owl on crack!

I had no clue what to do and I had already been on streets a couple of weeks. I was hungry, cold (it was winter) and tired.

As events unfolded a severe beating by four 22 year olds, put me in hospital near death and I would later end back up on streets. This time I had learned of other options by listening to other peoples’ conversations. I had heard about a place called Covenant House in Manhattan. It took another week or two before I ended up there because I didn’t trust that anyone would help me.