Читать книгу The Social Capitalist - Josh Lannon - Страница 17

I was no stranger to the rehabilitation process. In my unusual youth, I was forced into youth behavioral and drug treatment programs twice. Even on my own, I had attempted a few times to quit partying, rarely with any long-lasting success. But before long, the cycle of nightclub work became too strong a force to confront sober. Once, as a preteen, and again at 13, I had even spent time in rehab, but I can see now I hadn’t fully committed to the process; my family’s business, my insecurity, and the resulting depression seemed to be good enough excuses to get off the wagon.

But there was something I had in late 2001 that I hadn’t had those times before: I had a marriage I very much wanted to save. As much as I thought I loved drinking, I loved Lisa more. Our future was at stake, and I knew that if I were to lose Lisa, I would go over the edge and likely never come back.

So it was with a new sense of strength, purpose, commitment, and a vision for the future that Lisa drove me to the Southern California rehabilitation center where I checked myself in at the end of November 2001.

Today, as I tell this story, I am amazed by the events that prompted me to escape the death I was surely facing. Many of my friends from that time in my life did not fare so well, and are now either dead, incarcerated, or still entangled in the web of addiction. I was fortunate to have found an incredibly supportive, loving wife, checked into the best possible rehab for my situation, and encountered the right teachers. The deck was stacked against me, and yet I got another chance, one I didn’t believe I deserved.

I am now a successful, prosperous business owner, mentor, husband, father, friend, and contributor to life. But even after all this time, I know that checking into rehab that day was the best investment I have ever made.

That 28 days taught me how to turn my problems – problems I had believed were insurmountable – into solutions that put me on a path of healing, forgiveness, and happiness. I began to get at the root of my addiction, tracing issues like my own feelings of inadequacy and fear of failure back to my childhood. I took an inventory of my life and my fears, grappling with each one of them in order to divest it of its power. In a difficult month’s time, I emerged a changed man, whole-heartedly committed to starting my life anew, clean and sober, and to continuing to shed the baggage that had landed me here in the first place. And I knew the process had only just begun.

Over the course of that month, I also developed a number of friendships. In a community so close-knit and reliant upon each other, so connected by troubles as we were, you couldn’t help but form friendships. One of mine was with the owner of the treatment center, Chris Spencer (whom I just called Spencer), a recovering alcoholic himself who had turned his life around and dedicated himself to serving other addicts.

Early on in my stay, as he and I got to talking, I shared with him a little about my story – about my “family business,” and what it was like running nightclubs in Vegas. Spencer said we had something in common; he, too, had worked for a number of years in the service industry. He had, in fact, owned a chain of restaurants. We compared experiences, discussing the fact that the service industry is a breeding ground for people like us.

“Back when I was drinking, all I wanted to do was open up restaurants,” Spencer said, rubbing his chin and chuckling as he recalled those days. Then he looked right at me. “Now that I’m sober, all I want to do is open up treatment centers.” Then he stood up, patted me on the back, and said, “Maybe you’ll want to do the same thing.” I chuckled too, and shook my head, dismissing the notion.

Lisa and I did a lot of healing work together through the program, and she had driven down for a weekend to attend sessions with me and my counselor. And we had been able to talk a lot on the phone about what I was going through.

When she arrived to pick me up on my last day, I felt a mixture of relief and joy over seeing her, sadness about leaving what had been a safe haven for the last month, and growing dread over returning to Las Vegas, the site of my destruction.

Before setting out on the five-hour drive home, we stopped at the Dana Point home of my stepbrother (and namesake of my workplace), Dylan, where a holiday party was in progress. While it was nice to be surrounded by family, it didn’t take long for an uncomfortable silence to settle over the party after our arrival. It seemed no one quite knew what to say. I was eager to share my rehab experience with the group, and reveal all the things I’d learned, but when I’d broach the subject, my family members seemed either to visibly squirm with discomfort or act altogether dismissive, as if to say, “Sure, Josh, that sounds great. But we’ll see.” Of course, they’d seen me go down this road a few times, so it was understandable that they would be cautious. After all, we had all made a living from selling alcohol and partying. It was awkward to challenge the very thing that was putting roofs over our heads and food on our tables.

SIDEBAR:

I was proud of Josh for taking this

on and he is correct that we did a

lot of healing work. I was surprised

how easy it was for me to forgive

and let go. I was so ready to

move forward and have this heavy

burden of addiction, this heavy

weight of anger, sadness, and pain

go away that when we processed

with his therapist, I was able to let

it go quickly. I hadn’t felt that good

in years and I knew that letting go

and not holding resentments on

the past would enable us to have

a brighter future. If just he healed

and I did nothing, our relationship

would still be unhealthy. Learning

from, forgiving and healing the past

is an important part of personal

development and being able to

move forward successfully in your

future. Sometimes we don’t know

what we have to let go of. If you

are stuck, take a good look at your

past to see what has to be cleared.

Still I was anxious to get going. After dinner and opening our gifts, Lisa and I packed up and readied ourselves to make a quick exit. We said our goodbyes, exchanged a few hugs, and headed out into the night.

“Wait! Josh! Hold up!” called my dad, who was running down the front steps with a box in his hand. “I forgot this! I wanted to give you both something.” He reached us and stretched his arm out to hand me the brown cardboard shipping box. I looked quizzically at my dad, then ripped off the tab to open the box, revealing a purple and gold box entitled You Can Choose to Be Rich. A slick, salesy photo of the author, Robert T. Kiyosaki, smiled at me from the cover of this set of audiobook CDs.

With a half-hearted smile, I said, “Thanks, Dad,” and handed the box to Lisa with a subtle eye roll. My dad had a habit of buying his kids things he’d seen on infomercials – useless and overly complex exercise gear, motivational programs, gadgets that didn’t work. He’d get caught up in the excitement of the ad and want to share it with us, but it always seemed to miss the mark. This gift, I thought, would be no different.

My dad read all that in my expression. As if reading my mind, he said, “This guy is different, Josh. You’ll like him. I promise.” Then, after waiting a beat to see if I would come around, he added, “He’s from Hawaii,” as if that tiny connection would seal my interest.

“Okay, Dad, thanks,” I said.

Then, in his deepest, most authoritative voice – the boss voice – he said, “Son, promise me you’ll listen to these, okay?”

I gave him my word that I would, tossed the CD set into the back seat of the car, and we were on our way.

I initially resented the gift and had no intention of listening to it. I fidgeted in my seat for a few minutes, sighing, until Lisa finally broke the stalemate. “Oh, let’s just listen to them already. I know it’s going to bug you until you do.”

So for the entire drive home to Las Vegas, rather than worrying about what lay ahead for me here after my month of clearing my head and beginning to rebuild our marriage, our heads filled instead with thoughts of hope and inspiration, ideas about having better, more fulfilling, more prosperous lives that were in no way connected to drinking, bars, violence, or nightclubs.

Thus began our journey, literally and figuratively. On the drive back to Las Vegas, as we listened to Robert and Kim Kiyosaki share their philosophies about money, life, and learning, we realized that this program was nothing like we’d expected. We assumed that the CDs were just about how we could get rich by buying something from them, or repeating some mantra garbage we’d heard dozens of times before. But, as we began to understand, the Rich Dad message was completely different. It was a life shift, or, as Robert says, a ”context shift.”

Normally, when we traveled, we listened to audiobooks by people like Steven King and Tom Clancy. It was a great way to keep us entertained and make the time pass quickly. But the idea of learning and improving our lives while traveling had never crossed our minds. Continuing education was, in our minds, a concept reserved for people in school, studying for exams. But here we were, in our car, learning far more than either of us had ever learned in a classroom. Entertaining and distracting our minds was a goal we no longer aspired to – we’d had enough of that.

We pulled into our driveway before the program had finished, but instead of turning it off and getting out of the car, we sat there for nearly 25 minutes in the darkened car until it had finished. And afterward, we remained silent, much like that afternoon in 1999, after seeing The Matrix. After watching the movie on that day two years prior, we had both been thinking the same thing – that our lifestyle was unsustainable and unfulfilling. That much we knew. But we hadn’t had the motivation or understanding to make a change.

SIDEBAR:

Life is a journey of learning;

look at the books, shows

and activities that you do.

Are they supporting you

in continuous growth or

hindering you? Is there

something you can add or

change to your daily routine

to keep learning? All the

successful people I know are

always learning something

new that adds value to their

life and those around them.

Now here we were in late 2001, and once again we were both thinking the same thing. Only this time, instead of the painful realization that we were stuck in a matrix of our own making, our realization was one of hope. We actually did have a choice, one that Robert Kiyosaki had just revealed to us.

Our choice was this: We could keep doing what we’d been doing, or we could take a leap of faith. We could embark on a new path, one of personal development and transformation. We had already begun that path while I was in rehab, and had no interest in going back to where we’d started. Returning to our old lives seemed impossible from this new vantage point.

We were squarely at an intersection of two paths that day, and we chose to be rich, like Robert Kiyosaki, and not just in a way that implied money. We wanted to live rich, thoroughly rich, in health, wealth, and happiness. We wanted to do work that mattered, that filled us with satisfaction and joy, one that would bring us together and enable us to continue learning every single day so that we would always feel like we did at that moment in our driveway.

By the time we stepped into our house that night, I had resolved that I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, work in my father’s nightclub business anymore. We would create a new life for ourselves, one that would mean assisting others to get through and overcome the painful experience of addiction.

That was the very beginning of Journey Healing Centers. At that moment, we committed to becoming Social Capitalists.

Chapter Thought

If you were to take a leap of faith, to follow your heart, your passion, and your intuition, what could happen? What would the results of this be five years from now? And if you did nothing, what would those results be in five years?