Watching Your Wages So You Can Watch the Road
APRIL 2018 Local 619.407.9902 Toll Free 888.855.8658 I Have a Confession: I ’ mReally a Failure
I was a normal kid growing up as far as I knew. Other than the fact that we moved around a lot. Because of my Dad’s work, we ended up moving every few years. I certainly didn’t feel any different than the other kids in my third grade class. I liked to collect baseball trading cards, play baseball and basketball.
figure out a way to fix it. To work harder. It’s true of reading and it’s true of life.
I was finally able to get past my stuttering problem. But it certainly wasn’t easy. I did it without any professional help. I practiced reading aloud at home with my mom and dad. I used to ride with my Dad, singing along together to songs on the radio. I don’t think my Dad liked to sing too much, but he was trying to help me. Today, I can walk into a courtroom now and literally take over the courtroom. What you’re going find is that some of the greatest stories come from people that were misunderstood, misconstrued, misjudged and/or simply underestimated by those that were evaluating their talents. No, it wasn’t the best start to being considered the best wage and hour lawyer in my field. But I didn’t let it stop me. And whatever thing you have that may be holding you back from your dreams doesn’t have to stop you either. Famous Failures STEVE JOBS
So here I am, the first week of school, in a new class, with kids I don’t know. When Mrs. Bauer starts to go around the room having each kid read a few paragraphs of the story aloud, I instantly break into a sweat. She’s going in alphabetical order, and it’s going to take awhile to get to the “T’s.” As it gets closer to my name, my knuckles are white from gripping the book. I want to get up and run out of the class. But I can’t.
When Mrs. Bauer calls my name and it’s my turn to read aloud, I know I can’t. My mouth moves, but I can’t get past the first word in the paragraph. I can’t get past “The...” I keep saying “The... the... the....” Of course, the other kids start laughing. I try again. “The... the... the,” is all I can manage. I tell myself I’m not going to cry. I want to cry. But nothing would be worse than crying in front of all the new kids. I look up from the book and pleadingly look at Mrs. Bauer, doing my best to blink back tears. In case you may have accidently glossed over that first paragraph, I’m in third grade. I’m 8 years old, unable to read aloud in class. Mrs. Bauer adds to my humiliation when she exclaims, “I can see we’re going to have to put Billy in remedial reading.” All I can hear is the other kids laughing, as I stare down at the book. Not exactly the best start to a legal career. What Mrs. Bauer hadn’t realized was that I actually could read, but that I stuttered so bad that I couldn’t read aloud if my life depended on it. And when I got nervous, forget it. But you know what? Right then and there I decided I was going to be the best reader in that class. And I did. I became a voracious reader. I could have quit right there, with all the other kids laughing and making fun of me. Sure, it would have been easy to quit.
This is the guy that started Apple in a garage. Yet he was fired from the very company that he started. “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Jobs said in 2005.
Have you lost your job? Don’t give up, and you can be like this dude.
ALBERT EINSTEIN Talk about a slow start. He couldn’t
speak until he was 4 years old and didn’t read until he was 7. Heck, he even got thrown out of school. And he was refused admission to college. None of this stopped him from winning the Nobel Prize in Physics and being considered one of, if not THE most brilliant man ever. And ever is a pretty long time. After all, Albert Einstein believed that “success is failure in progress.”
Mrs. Bauer putting me in remedial reading was the impetus I have held on to for the rest of my life. That when things really suck,
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