The Beginning of Truth

Thursday, April 3, 2008
How it all started
I was stressed to the max; trying to inhale a sandwich between the morning training session and the upcoming afternoon sales meeting for the more experienced people. A young man asked to come into my office to speak with me. He was not sure he had entered the right business. He didn’t seem to have the drive or desire that it took. He started telling me about his relationship with God and his experience reading the Bible. I felt like the walls were closing in on me. My life was a mess. Could he see it? Was he trying to help me? the man with the new white, shiny Lincoln Continental in the parking lot, wearing a new expensive suit with all the trimmings and the diamond pinky ring to show that I have arrived financially? Our home was a beautiful custom condo with designer everything. I was only 27 years old; on the surface, it seemed that I had everything. I was overseeing 33 offices and had a great titled position.
The young man started to tell me that his father thought he was off his rocker reading the Bible and studying it. I was trying to be courteous and I remember saying to him, “If that works for you, that’s cool.” But when he said that he had been a hard drug user and was now free of it, which got my attention! Why? I was hooked on marijuana – at least mentally, in order to deal with the disaster that I had made of my life. I had just come back from Las Vegas with my tail between my legs, after trying to become the world’s greatest entertainer! I lost a small fortune in just six months. I was now in debt up to my eyeballs trying to keep the image that had been created. Did this young man know this somehow? Did God send him? Was he an Angel? To this day, I don’t know. I don’t remember anything about him other than that one day, and that one conversation. His face had a unique brightness that radiated with peace, a peace that I did not have and had lost all hope of ever finding.
As sales trainer and motivator for my own company and others that I wholesaled to, my job was to tell people they could become financially successful like me. What a joke. I did not feel successful even having had all the things that most people where trying to obtain here I was only 27. Having the knowledge on how to get everything back that was now missing financially, was easy, go back to the grind and work through it.
It all seemed to happen so fast, six and one half years in the trenches selling and then an opportunity with a new company to run my own business. Becoming the #1 distributor in the world in 1974 with many awards and income to match! Traveling and speaking on my favorite theme, “The Little Engine That Could.” You know, I think I can, I think I can! What happened to me? After my failure in Vegas, I could not get out of bed for one month. Now I was in an office working with someone who really did not want me there but knew he needed my help. To top everything off, he was jealous of my ability to get his sales up from 15 in a month to eventually hitting 135 in a month, within a 3 month period, for doing what I had been hired to do! That job brought to my life great stress and torment. Oh yes, I knew how to make this business work and make money, but the methods I had been taught were eating away at my soul. trapped in this world. I now had an image with high living expenses to maintain and needed to catch up from what seemed like overwhelming debt.
Being married to a wonderful woman whom at this time I was not sure I was in love with any longer, all while expecting our second child. Was added emotional stress. (Thank God, we are still together now over forty years later with four amazing sons and four and a half grandchildren; and still counting. She is the #1 most trusted and loved human in my life.) Why was I here? I wanted to go back to Las Vegas to finish what I started. I did not want to take that defeat and I certainly did not want to be in this business any longer. I truly went to Las Vegas to save the world (I am not kidding) and teach people about what I then thought I knew about success and love. In actuality, I did not even know what love was.
At the peak of my so-called success, while smoking pot, I read, “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran, receiving the illusion of finding some of the deep hidden secrets of life. What love and success I thought I found was totally lost in the deep depression and humiliation of failure. My fear was people knowing I was a fraud and no way near a together person. What about all the positive thinking and a drive to succeed? I Was now driven by the fear of failure.
Then this young man who had nothing I wanted materially, made a profound statement that changed my life sending me on a quest that continues for me to this day. He said, “What you’re looking for is The Truth.” Those words became alive and resonated deep within my entire being. The Truth, yes! That’s what I wanted to know. I wanted to know what this time between birth and death, that we called life, was all about!
I came from an environment of insecurity and inferiority, only to continue into a place where I thought I had found the answer to succeeding at anything. What I had learned from all the books, tapes, conferences and gurus of success was that developing a solid goal, maintaining a positive attitude and continued determination to complete whatever you started. That is what they were all selling and I lived it, and then was becoming a mini guru to others. People in the business could only see the outside glitter in my life. Yes, I had the expertise to get financially the things I wanted, but felt something was missing. I did not know what it was, but I knew there had to be more to this success thing.
I started to listen with more interest, As to what this young man was saying about how he was freed from the use of heavy drugs. Although dressed poorly, ( this young man I would later learn was richer then I had ever been.) He was what I would learn later, richer than I had ever been, he had something that I desperately needed – peace.
That is what I would like to share with you, where the quest for the truth has taken me and how I have finally found a place of peace, joy and love that I never believed possible for me. It did not happen overnight. As a matter of fact, it took me years to really begin enjoying it, but it does not have to be that long for you. It could take as little as a few months, or even weeks depending on ………….

copy right 2008
Posted by Alfred P. Licata Sr. at 1:52 PM