Celebrate Life

Celebrate Life By David Wygant

Today for those of you have have not read or heard about Randy Pausch he passed away today.

He wrote an amazing book called The Last Lecture…all of you need to read it.

So lets celebrate life today. Todays blog and especially todays video goes deep into the meaning of life.

So I’m sitting here with Khiem and Rey, and you’re about to learn a little bit more about Rey right now. It’s the end of July , and for those of you who missed my birthday on Tuesday, July 1st – I’m still waiting for your happy birthday emails.

Not that I really care, anyways, because a birthday to me is just another day.

But do you know what birthdays are really all about? And this is really important: birthdays are a celebration of life. That’s the way that I look at a birthday. It’s not the gifts that you get – even though Rey got me one of the nicest gifts in the world, a black Labrador mug with a nose that’s the pour handle – I’m about to have some tea out of it.

Birthdays to me are just a celebration of life. What did you do in your past year? How did you celebrate life? I tend to reflect a lot on my birthday. I tend to think a lot about a lot of different things. I listen to oldies music from the seventies and remember when I was kid. I remember going to summer camp and hanging out with a bunch of friends.

I just think a lot. I think a lot before my birthday – I think about the people that are in my life and celebrate them. I express gratitude for all of the things that are happening. It’s not about the dinner; it’s not about getting drunk – I wouldn’t touch booze if it were the last thing to drink in the world – I would die of dehydration before I would drink alcohol. I’m not a big drinker at all – some of you probably know just from many of the podcasts and blogs.

Birthdays are for appreciation. I really appreciate the people that are in my life. I appreciate my dog and I appreciate the people that work with me. A lot of you know Khiem who is a super coach (unfortunately I don’t think that there is a Superman t-shirt for that.)

But a lot of you don’t know Rey. I met Rey last December, and if you look on my site, Rey is the young Asian guy with the spikey hair in some of the pictures. So go look at the site, and find him.

The amazing thing about Rey is that four years ago, he didn’t speak any English at all. He came here from Taiwan and bounced around with his mother, and he found his way around here. I really want him to share his story about what it was like coming here – all of the self-development and the work he’s done for himself.

So, Rey, share a little bit of your background with everybody.

Rey: Okay, well, four years ago, I moved to the US and I spent my first year here moving around a lot. I started my first two months in Orange County, and I lived in New Jersey for another two months, and then I lived in Seattle for three months, and finally I moved back to Torrance, California – LA.

At first it was really hard, because I couldn’t even memorize the whole alphabet in order. I didn’t speak the language at all, and it took a long time for me to be able to communicate with other people – to communicate with other people my age, and to connect with people.

At first, I tried to make friends with the other Chinese kids, but then I realized that a lot of them had been in the US for, like, six years, and they still couldn’t speak English. I told myself, if I’m already living in the US, I’m not going to isolate myself. That’s ridiculous. I’m not going to spend six years of my life feeling shitty because I can’t communicate.

So I started hanging out with the white kids. It was tough at first, because I couldn’t understand anything they said. I got it from their body language, hand gestures, and all of that stuff. Kids would make fun of my here and there. They would say, “oh dude, you sound like a faggot when you say that,” and I’d say, “what’s a faggot?” “You’re a faggot!” It was pretty frustrating at first.

I learned that I just had to keep with it, and practice every day. It’s like everything you do in life: keep going with it, practice, and keep looping your mind around it.

Khiem: You know, you’ve actually grown a lot since December, and to me, that’s even more important than the transformation you had earlier. Not so much in terms of picking up girls or dating, but you’ve had so much growth as a person.

How are you different now than you were in December?

Rey: I’m a lot more comfortable around girls. I’ve always been able to make fun of people, or just joke around, but I’m more comfortable now. Another thing about me is that I didn’t hit puberty at all until like a year ago.

Before that, I was dealing with how to learn English, and acclimate, and everything else; all of a sudden I started having feelings for girls. I’d think, oh my god, that’s amazing. Look at this, look at that. Coming across David, I learned that women are just people, and that they have other attractive physical features.

David: And how else did you change? Think about your lifestyle: what about the people you’ve met, and the way you’ve grown, your contacts. Go deeper into your life. You were a scared kid when I met you, and now you’re meeting people who are powerful. How has your life changed in that way, besides what you’re feeling with girls?

Rey: Well, I’ve always read a lot and thought a lot, but my friends and I were just cool surfing buddies who would go to parties together. But nothing was going anywhere, because that was all we would do.

I always wanted to get more out of life and to be the best person I can be. Learning from David has just been amazing; I’ve been able to meet all different sorts of people from places all over the world. With all of these people with different character traits, I can learn something different from each one of them.

I keep in touch with every client of David’s that I’ve met. I’ve become more confident in my own skin and I understand myself better. I don’t blame other people for the things that happen to me. I know that whatever happens, no matter how bad it is, I can use it to teach myself a lesson.

I don’t resist the things that happen to me – of course, when something happens, I get upset and bitch about it for five to ten minutes, but I realize that I still have to move on. No matter what, life moves on – whether you move on with it or not. Time still goes by.

David: Pretty cool, isn’t it? You’re appreciating things now. I remember some key thing that you said when you were asked at a bootcamp, “how has your life changed? Did it change in a day?” And you responded something about being in it for the long haul.

Rey: Yeah. I think so many people come to this and they hope to drastically change their lives over a span of one weekend – the weekend will change your life, but it really comes back to you working on yourself, day after day. You have to put your own personality on the line, question yourself, and progress to the next step.

You have to progress a little bit every day, and before you know it, three to six months will have passed and you’ll be a completely different person.

David: How do you feel now compared to the way you felt in December?

Rey: I feel better. I’m more comfortable about people that I perceive that I’ll have respect for, and people that have a lot going on in their lives. I understand people’s work better – I don’t just think, oh, he’s so lucky, he has all of this, and all of that – I know that everything that people have in their lives is from hard work. If you want it for yourself, it is possible; you just have to work towards it.

David: Yeah, hard work is everything, isn’t it? It’s amazing how so many people want this part of their life to excel, and so quickly. I want you to really listen to Rey. We’ve never put Rey out in a podcast or blog yet, and you can tell he kind of struggled in the beginning – he was self-conscious about talking into a recorder. But if you noticed him in the middle and the end, he started relaxing a lot more.

Life is a really cool journey. Rey is 18 years old, and he’s learning things that 40-year-olds don’t know. He’s learning about patience in life – he really has this quality of patience in him. He had to learn an entire language – and he doesn’t really have much of an accent. You can tell when he speaks slowly that he is thinking his words through, but can you imagine going out there and speaking fluent Chinese after four years? Rey also didn’t want to talk like the other Chinese students. He didn’t want to have an accent or anything.

So, think about it: he has learned an entire language, and he’s been able to flirt – flirting probably doesn’t even translate! If you think about escalating sexual tension and attraction, how do you translate that? He’s learned this stuff from a lot of people: myself, and all of the clients I work with. Rey’s at every single bootcamp, and he’ll continue to be at every bootcamp.

You learn so many things about yourself through this journey. In summation, don’t judge yourself! You can learn something from every single person that you engage.

Today we were out to lunch, and I was on the phone with this woman, and Rey just started chatting up the guy we were sitting next to – and he learned a bunch of things from that guy.

When in doubt, always say who, what, when, where, and why? Those are the important things. I’ll write a blog about that soon.

Todays video goes way beyond meeting and picking up the opposite sex. Lets talk about life and the amazing gift that it is.

I go much deeper into this in my mens and womens mastery series as well.

Enjoy the video its one of my favorites. A little more background….this video was shot last week at my bootcamp when we all sat around at dinner and really broke through barriers and fears!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 10:27 am and is filed under Attract and Approach Women, Divorce, How To Be A Better Communicator, Masturbation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.