Wounds Become Your Strengths

How your wounds, challenges and shortcomings can ultimately become your strengths and gifts to help you reach your full potential.

In this video coaching newsletter, I discuss an email success story from a male viewer who is a psychologist specializing in men’s psychology and addictions. He shares how his difficult childhood helped him develop his gifts, skills and talents into a very successful career and business helping people. He also discusses how my work has given him additional tools to help his clients and develop his coaching practice. He’s working on his own book now.

It’s a great example of how the pain and wounds you have experienced in your life do not need to define you, but instead can be turned into strengths to help yourself and others through your life’s work. My comments are in (bold parenthesis like this below) in the body of his email.

Coach Corey,

I wanted to thank you for your work. I have read your book several times, along with others, including “The Way of the Superior Man,” “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” “The System,” “The Way of Men,” Tony Robbins galore, and several others about self-improvement and a man’s journey. By trade, I am a psychologist specializing in men’s psychology and addictions, but work with many people with varying presenting difficulties.
I am 35, been with my wife for 13 years, have a two-year-old son, and brand new daughter. I love what I do and am always looking for ways to add to my practice and challenge to life.

My parents divorced when I was 3, after which my father moved on and started a new family. My father was around, but never gave the mentorship or guidance that I needed, and because of this, I have searched for answers and direction in many places. Helping people by giving back the things I lacked is a major contributor to the reward that I get from my career.(That’s the rub right there. When we have shitty things that happen to us, we can say, oh poor me, or we can say, this sucks, but I have the power to do something about it. I’m deciding to do something about it. I’m choosing to do something about it. And since I’ve decided, I’m going to take some action.

I remember one of the quotes I learned from Tony Robbins years ago, “Never leave the site of setting a goal without first taking some form of positive action toward its attainment.” In other words, he had shitty things that happened in his life, he experienced a lot of pain because of it, and he decided, I want to figure out how I can get myself out of this pain, I want to figure out how to solve this problem, and it made him hungry for answers. He started searching for those answers in much the same way I set out seeking answers in my own life. When I hit the wall, whether it was personally or financially, I started looking around for people I could learn from.

One of the reasons I’ve become a successful life coach is because of my early interest in motivational quotes. I started writing down success quotes when I was in the sixth grade. If you follow me on Instagram @CoachCoreyWayne, you can see the self help quotes I have literally been acquiring my whole life. It’s something that started out as a hobby, just to help myself, so I could personally be a better human being and feel better about my own personal situation in life.

That hobby, look what it turned into. Look at all the thousands of people I get to help every year, and all the tens of thousands of people I’ve gotten to help over my career. It really is a testament to the power of focusing on things you love and enjoy, your hobbies, things that are fun and exciting. Stan Lee of Marvel Comics said, “If you do things for money it feels like work. If you do what you really want to do, you feel like you’re playing. Do what you do best and enjoy, then you have a better chance.” When you’re playing at something, it’s fun. It doesn’t feel like work. When something is fun, you’ll do it just for the sheer enjoyment of it.

When I do life coaching with people, and they’re asking me questions about their purpose, their mission, or business questions, I take you through everything that influenced me in my life, the things I learned, the failures, the successes, the setbacks. It’s a way of thinking and being, a way of showing up in the world, that no matter what happens in life, you’ve just got to keep moving forward. You’ve got to keep grinding, even when you don’t feel like it.

When you overcome things that are really difficult and really hard, remember, there’s always somebody that has it worse off than you. The only way you’re going to get from where you are right now to where you want to be is, you’ve got to decide and you’ve got to take action. As Harry Truman said, “Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction.”

The bottom line is, I appreciate all that you do. I listen to other coaches, therapists, love doctors, and even have my own shrink. However, I connect mostly to you and your approach. The no nonsense, straightforward advice mixed with authenticity and caring is incredibly refreshing.

(Yeah, I get to be me. I know I’m not for everybody. Not everybody is going to like the way I talk. If me saying “fuck” pisses people off to the point where they don’t want to listen anymore, that’s fine. There are plenty of great clients that appreciate my realness and my authenticity. I’m not going to blow sunshine up anybody’s ass. Statistically, people that tend to curse a lot tend to be perceived and seen as more authentic, more honest and more trustworthy.

Who’s going to give it to you straight? Somebody who blows sunshine up your ass and makes you all warm and fuzzy, or somebody who’s going to tell you like it is? It doesn’t serve you or anyone else for me to sit here and bullshit you. A lot of the people I talk to are already bullshitting themselves, because when we’re emotionally attached to something, it blinds us to reality. We make decisions based upon emotion, and we use logic and reason to justify our decision. When it comes to dating and relationships, when we’re emotionally invested in somebody, or maybe it’s a business we’re emotionally attached to, or we’re in business with toxic people, it’s really hard to be honest with yourself and be objective.

That’s when somebody like me can come in and listen to it objectively, because I’ve been through it a million times on my own. I know exactly what you need to do, what you shouldn’t do and what you should do more of. It’s all about focusing on your outcome – what you want and why you want that particular outcome. Because without a compelling reason for wanting that outcome, you won’t take the action necessary to do it.

That’s why it’s so important that you love what you’re doing. That you’re passionate about it, that you’re engaged and excited. That’s what’s going to be the fuel that drives you to take action, even when it feels like, “I’m never going to get there.” Success is making progress, even if it’s little, tiny progress each day. By spending time being productive, instead of watching TV, by absorbing knowledge and skills, you’ll move yourself closer to where you want to be. Be productive, not just busy.)

Keep up the good work. I am in the process of putting my own material together as a coaching adjunct to my practice. You are a major inspiration for my new venture.

Thank you and keep doing what you do.

(I highly recommend you hire a ghost writer instead of having to write all of this yourself. It will definitely be worth your time. I recommend you find one at Guru.com.)

Best,

Bob

“Our difficulties, challenges, wounds and shortcomings are gifts from the Creator for us to transcend and overcome. It is in the process of overcoming our past and our burdens that we can learn how to do it, so we can help others who may not be as far along in their own journey of self-actualization. The events of our lives do not define us. We are defined by the meanings we give to the events and circumstances of our lives. Ask quality questions, and you will force your brain to come up with quality answers. Look for the good, utility and benefit in every experience. The quality of your life is proportional to the quality of the questions you ask yourself on a continual basis.” ~ Coach Corey Wayne

Click Anywhere on Today's Instagram Image Below & You'll Be Taken To My Instagram Page. When you get to my Instagram page, click the "Follow" Button so you can follow me on Instagram. I upload several new Instagram photos per week.

Photo by iStock.com/RossHelen