When Change Blows, Build Windmills not Walls
July 30, 2012 – 7:36 am
Discussing the early violent years of my childhood, many have expressed they too have felt trapped, persecuted and deprecated. Initially reluctant to share this story publicly, thanks to your support the following story served as a crucial catalyst for the free books and videos I share, such as last week’s www.BreathingGift.com. This coming week, I have another, much larger, book to share, with a library of videos to accompany it. If you’ll allow me, I’ll explain why I’m doing this, and then how you can get it for free.
When reintroduced into mainstream, the school administration was under strict confidentiality to not disclose I had been institutionalized in a children’s psychiatric hospital, committed due to mental “defects” that doctors at the time junk-piled as “severe dyslexia.” Within a a week, news had leaked to the student body.
Already ostracized, this magnified the violence visited upon me, though the emotional ridicule cut deeper than the knives.
One day, I was receiving my daily hazing from a group of seniors, laughing at my fumbling waddle of my obesity. They kicked the books out of my hands. When I bent over to retrieve my books, the cupped slap came to both my ears. Through chimes still ringing I heard, “Hey Freak, now you’re out of the rubber room, you gonna kill your mommy?” Enraged, I lunged at a senior, twice my height, and punched him as hard as I could in the balls. As he went down gasping, Grabbing my bookbag to run, his friends chided him, “Dude, that fat kid just kicked your ass!” I remember looking over my shoulder to see him standing veins bulging with embarrassment. He grabbed in a front headlock; pulled, running. I saw the concrete wall; then blackness.
When I awoke in the nurses office, the vice-principal was talking to my mother at my bed,”We don’t know how other students found out. Perhaps your family released the information.” He said she shouldn’t consider me her “fault” as some kids are just “bad eggs.” She helped me to my feet, the concussion still causing nauseating vertigo, and escorted me out of the violence of an indifferent and ignorant educational system. The “long walk of shame” from the nurses office to the exit held hundreds of eyes… Each student and teacher, glaring, giggling, pointing, snarling on up-turned noses. It was one of the slowest marches of my life.
For much of my childhood, I actually believed them; that I was “crazy.” How could one defective outcast be right, sane and worthwhile while teachers, doctors and therapists were wrong? These people weren’t “bad” - just ignorant. The system just threw abnormal kids in a waste-basket because they weren’t equipped to handle anything outside the norm. But a few key individuals quietly sparked a pinhole of hope within me that I could rise above my circumstances and become grateful for them. As strange as it sounds, without my early childhood pressure my gift would have remained a pile of inert sand, instead of the pearls it has strewn throughout my life.
Dyslexia makes conscious thinking an energy-sapping chore. Where most people take logic for granted, often I felt adrift on an ocean of random and disconnected ideas. I knew I had to design a strategy for thinking clearly. Changing how I moved would lift me up, and changing my words would give me access to more intelligent alternatives, options and ideas.
You can change your life, by simply changing your movement, speech and attitude. Each motion, every word, all of your thoughts are a choice and a chance. A choice and a chance are all you need, ever.
For me it began with very elementary exercises: Read a new word every day and use it three times. Practice one unused or newly learned movement which makes you feel like a “motor moron” daily. Set the glass down with no noise. Walk as silently as possible. Sit like royalty on a throne even when you’re on the toilet. Say something complementary to three people you don’t know today, and each day. Never say a bad word about anyone under any circumstance. Pray with gratitude for your blessings daily. Pretend you are on stage every moment, and move with the poise to inspire an audience. Be proud in each movement and each word.
If you feel trapped, haunted or terrorized by your circumstances, I sympathize. Heaven and hell both exist here, right now. Hell feels like you have no options, no allies, no chances, no alternatives. Heaven feels like no matter what you do, no matter how difficult your situation, how often you stumble, you growth and can never, ever fail.
With a change in movement, word or thought, you can return to your heaven right now; and to lift yourself out of hell, climb on each new word and each new movement you take. Make the hard choice to honor your gifts, instead of the easy one to ignore them, even if everyone around you says you’re crazy.
Please let me share with you how you can turn your situation around, and usher abundance and vitality into your life. If you grabbed one of my free copies of Recuper8.org or ResilienceBreathing.com, you know how and what I coach. If these interested you, in the next few days, I’m going to give away the largest collection of books and videos I’ve ever published. Please keep an eye out for the announcement… and thank you for helping me own my story, and restore flow in my life. I hope that you’ll allow me the honor of doing the same for you this week.
Very Respectfully,
Scott Sonnon
www.BreathingGift.com
