How Hope Can Change Your Life
an ancient
greek philosopher named epictetus
said the words it is not what
happens to you but how you choose to
react to it
that matters in the year 2020
has brought us a truckload of it
we have all faced so many challenges
and business leaders in particular have
faced
overwhelming challenges trying not to
lay off their employees trying to keep
their
profit at least at break even it’s been
a difficult year
but i do believe the message
of that quote
isn’t so much what happens but how we
choose to respond or react to it
that really matters and i believe
in using a little magic to respond
with the power of hope
okay to unpack that for you i need to
first take you back to 1988 with me
the 1980s were a decade
of great music and really big hair
and i had the big hair i had it going on
big perm
you know the bangs that kind of reach
out and grab you
man i had some awesome hair and that is
about the only thing i had going for me
in 1988
i had plunked out of college i couldn’t
pass the remedial math class
that’s the math class you take before
you’re allowed to take the
actual math class where you get credit
hours and i flunked it not once
but twice so i decided
with my amazing math skills and all
that i would go to work as a teller
at a financial institution so i was
working
in 1995 for a credit union
in the federal building in downtown
oklahoma city
i still had the amazing hair even though
it was 1995.
now remember on the morning of april
19th 1995
it was a beautiful spring morning
everything
seems normal about it i remember seeing
my friends
that morning i remember seeing my best
work friend
sonya she had a bright yellow suit she
was getting ready to go to a supervisor
meeting
and back then they told us that we had
to wear um
you know colors that were like a power
suit or you know a pop of color to show
you were confident
so she had picked out a bright yellow
suit and then by the time she got to
work she said i think this
power suit just makes me look like a big
old yellow sunflower
and we all laughed and encouraged her
told her she looked great
she went to her meeting i went and sat
down at my desk
my desk was on the third floor front and
center
just a few feet from the front glass
windows
one of my co-workers who was seven
months pregnant walked in to talk to me
i turned to ask her what she needed and
i don’t know
if the words came out or not because
that’s when it happened
that’s when a bomb went off i remember
just hearing such an incredible roaring
in my head
and feeling this powerful rushing
sensation
like i was falling and
screaming all around me and i remember
hearing this
woman screaming in my ear
and then realizing that was me that was
my voice
i didn’t even recognize the sound of my
own voice
i found out later i actually fell three
floors
and i was upside down still in my chair
buried under about 10 feet of rubble
my right hand was sticking out of the
side of the rubble pile
the rest of me was completely covered
i remember thinking
that maybe i had died because everything
got quiet i couldn’t feel anything
i had no bearing about where i was i
would
try so hard to open my eyes really wide
but everything was still black
it was really hard to breathe
and then i heard a siren going off and i
thought okay i must still be alive i
hear this siren
and i kept screaming help me help me
over and over
but nobody replied
it was hard to breathe and when i did
breathe there was a smell that just
burned my lungs
i just laid there and prayed it was
about 45 minutes before i heard men’s
voices
and they said they were looking for the
daycare babies
and i thought daycare i worked on the
third floor
of the building the daycare was on the
second floor but i started screaming my
head off
i remember hearing this man yell i hear
you i hear you child how old are you
i remember thinking i really wanted to
say i’m too
you know i thought he wouldn’t come get
me if i told him i was 28.
and i said uh i’m sorry i’m 28.
and he said that’s okay and he starts
yelling we have a live one we have a
live one
he says you have to keep talking to me
we’ve got to follow the sound of your
voice
so i’m like okay so my hand is sticking
out the side of the rubble pile and i
feel them
hit my hand and i’m like it’s me you’ve
got me
and i feel hands grab mine and i’m
thinking they’re getting ready to one
two three pull me up and out
and about the time they found my hand
i hear men’s voices yelling in the
background
there’s another bomb there’s another
bomb everybody get out now
there’s another bomb let’s go let’s go
and i realized they couldn’t get me out
so they told me they said amy we just
need to get some more equipment we’re
going to be right back
we need to get more equipment but i had
heard
and i knew i told him my name
and then they were gone and i was laying
there
buried alive thinking to myself
i’m getting ready to die
and life started flashing before my eyes
and i started thinking about how
i had lived or rather how i had not
lived my life
and i was thinking i’m getting ready to
die and i’ve never even lived
i was filled with so much regret it was
overwhelming
i prayed and i just i begged god for a
second chance and
i was filled with so much
sorrow
and then i remember
of all the things to do
i started to sing and i began
singing a song that we had sung in
church years ago
and as i began to sing it took my mind
off of my situation
it was the only action that i could
really take
was my mind how i thought
to pray to sing but when i did that
even though my situation did not change
i felt peace
and of course there was not a second
bomb because i’m standing here today
and they came back and they started
working to get me out
and it wasn’t as easy as one two three
let me pull you up
it took them over six hours
these men risked their lives to get me
out the building was very unstable what
was remaining of it
and they had to stop about every 20
minutes
to decide if they needed to amputate to
get everybody out quickly
and safely but they kept saying well
let’s
give us 20 more minutes and finally they
said okay we’re going to count to three
and pull
this is probably going to hurt of course
i didn’t care
they counted three and they pulled and i
came out from the rubble for the first
time
and i remember looking around
and just thinking this this is not real
i couldn’t believe my own eyes
it was like a war zone it was like
something i had seen in a movie
they put me on the back of a gurney and
they took me out of the back of what
used to be the federal building
and i remember that beautiful spring
morning had changed
and it was dark it was gray
it was cold and it was starting to
lightly rain
but as i lay on that gurney and i looked
up at that dark sky
i took my first breath of fresh air
and i filled my lungs and i
promised i would never live my life the
same
i didn’t know about my injuries i didn’t
know about my friends i just knew if i
had a second
chance i was going to take it
i was in the hospital for eight days
during those eight days i would find out
one by one
18 of my coworkers my friends
had died
168 people
were killed in the oklahoma city bombing
i remember the last day in the hospital
i found out that they had found the body
of my friend sonia
in her beautiful yellow suit
and i remember as i laid there in the
hospital bed
looking out down below
at the cars in the middle of the day
and they were driving with their
headlights on
and for you young people you used to
have to turn
on the headlights people had turned
their lights on manually driving around
oklahoma city to show
a symbol of hope and i remember seeing
those lights
and thinking somehow some way
we will get through this
the place where i worked the credit
union
we only had one location and it was in
that building
and we didn’t pay any rent it was free
space
our one location was destroyed
over half of our staff gone
we existed basically to serve the people
in that building
everything changed
the few of us that remained were
traumatized
but we were clear on what we wanted
and that was to survive it was very
important it was personal
we felt like if our credit union kept
going
that it somehow meant the memories and
the lives of those we lost
also kept going so we got really clear
on what needed to happen and over the
next few years we got really good at
setting goals
and action steps one after another
moving forward constantly
in oklahoma we call that pulling
yourself up by your bootstraps
i remember a few years after the bombing
our ceo lynette leonard
asked me a question that would change my
life
she asked me she said
if you had a magic wand what would you
change what would you make better what
would you what would you do if you had a
magic wand you could do whatever you
wanted
in our credit union what would you do
and i was thinking okay is this a trick
question you know this is a ceo
like is this the trick and she kept
encouraging me no there’s no wrong
answer
like you have a magic wand do whatever
you want i
thought about it and pretty soon i was
rambling away about how
we would grow and we would have a really
great culture
we had some negativity going on we had
managers that didn’t speak to each other
it was kind of a hot mess so that was a
pretty big stretch
i’ll never forget what she said though
she said okay
given your current situation and your
current limitations
what are the smallest steps that you can
take
to make that dream come true
i remember walking away thinking okay
what just happened
like how did this thing now become my
responsibility to what
but i was actually excited and the
reason that i was excited was because
she gave me hope
the authors and researchers of a book
called
hope rising how the science of hope can
change your life
casey gwen and chan hellman make this
statement
hope is the belief that your future
can be better and brighter and that
you actually play a role in making it
better
they go on to say hope is basically
having a goal
having the steps the pathway to get to
that goal and agency over that
that’s what she gave me she her magic
wand question gave me the clarity to
know what i wanted
and then with your current situation and
current limitations what’s that path
this not only transformed our
organization as we kept doing that
but i started applying the magic wand
exercise to my own life
and there was something i wanted and it
was to go back and get that degree
and it was very intimidating my grade
point average was a 0.50
like nothing in front of the decimal
point it was that bad
and i remember those action steps i
wrote
this first one was call the college get
the transcript find out what school will
even take you
like it was a big daunting thing
but when i graduated with that
leadership degree
my confidence was through the roof
and i took that power of hope and i kept
going
and i got my masters in business
administration
i changed so many things i went from
being a teller
to a ceo
i was a 355 pound couch potato
and i started riding a bicycle and
getting
active and losing weight and when i
turned 50
i became an iron man and what that means
is that means that
i did a 2.4 mile swim followed by a 112
mile bike ride
finished up with a 26.2 marathon all
within 17 hours
and i crossed that finish line and mike
riley the voice of iron man said
you are an iron man
i came in dead last but i don’t care i’m
an iron man
are you and i i tell you these things
not to brag well the iron man parts
bragging
but i want you to see and to understand
but if my credit union can literally
survive
being blown apart
if i can make the changes in my life
that i’ve made
using this simple framework
you can too there is always
action that you can take
instead of focusing on what you can’t do
focus on what you can
even when i was buried alive
and facing death there was something i
could do
i believe
that you can make it through whatever
challenge comes your way
with that simple exercise of just
asking yourself if i had a magic wand
what would i do not what somebody else
would do but what would you do given
your
current situation your current
limitations
what can you do to reach that picture
and i believe the best way to react and
respond
in this life is to respond with the
power of hope
thank you