(This is the story of when I did a special talk at Saving Grace, a drug rehab home for women in Robertson, Alabama, as told by my friend Amber Hewitt.)

Stepping into Saving Grace Rehabilitation Center I had no clue what to expect.

Billy Brown

My good friend Billy Brown invited me to see how people’s lives could be changed by changing their thinking. I didn’t know what he meant by that, but I was interested to find out.

I walked in the room, it had a comfortable feel to it. There were couches lined in a circle, clearly where the meetings were conducted. The kitchen was to my right and a beautiful big backyard straight ahead of me through French double doors.

I sat down next to my friend Billy. I looked around and saw the women who lived at this home for the period of nine weeks.  They looked drained and sad and seemed like they needed a change or I would say a wakeup call.

Doug Allen, one of Billy’s friends, was introducing himself.  He then had everyone introduce themselves and tell the story of how they came to be there in that place.  The women all looked nervous mainly I believe of being judged.  Most of the women were in there for pain pills that numbed them from the hardships of life, and gave them energy to get through the day.

One woman stood out from the rest, her name was Lisa and she was a stay at home mother of two children, and a wife that always tried to be the best. Doug seemed interested in her the most, I believe because she didn’t really want to participate.  She gave me the impression that she didn’t believe much, or understand what Doug was saying about living in the stories of our lives that we tell ourselves.  He talked about how almost every person in this world has stories that dictate their lives, good stories and bad stories.

We have facts in our lives that cannot be changed, but we choose the stories around those facts and that’s what creates the life and world around us.  We have to choose to be aware of what a story is and what a fact is.

Once you get that awareness everything will change, your whole life will change.

You must first grasp the awareness.

Doug talked about the steps of awareness to the ladies and I got it.

I was awakened to all the stories I have told myself in the past and the ones I was telling myself right there in the present.  The fact was I was at Saving Grace, the story was, “this doesn’t apply to me, I am not an addict, and  this only applies to these women here”.

Once I grasped the awareness that this applies to everyone there and everyone I know the more interested I became in learning how to apply this to my everyday life.

Lisa on the other hand did not understand.  

Doug asked her about her past, her childhood mainly.  She spoke of having good parents that always praised her and awarded her for doing so well in school and in afterschool activities, like cheerleading.  She made good grades and won trophies in her cheerleading.  Her parents would always tell her little sister, “you should try to be more like Lisa”.

This I believed put a lot of pressure on Lisa to always be the best, and if she did anything wrong her parents would not punish her, making her think she could do no wrong and she was perfect and she should always try to strive to be nothing less.  As you could see this will put a lot of pressure on a teen girl, making her grow up with the mentality that she could do no wrong and she shouldn’t make mistakes.

In Lisa’s adult life she had a lot more pressure on her than a teenager, having to be a perfect mother, in her mind, as well as a perfect wife.  She started taking pills to get more energy during the day to accomplish all her daily tasks.  One pill a day for energy became two, then three then it got to the point that Lisa couldn’t get out of bed without taking a pill or two to just wake her up.

Now that was a story she told herself.

The fact was she was taking pills, the story however was the reason she told herself she needed them.

Doug broke the facts of her life down to her. She was a mother, she was a wife, and she was in rehab.

The stories however, Lisa told herself.

She said the reason she was in rehab was she needed the pills to get through the day, she felt that she needed to be perfect and to keep up with that image, she needed narcotics to keep her body up with her mind.

Doug finally got to the core of her stories she was telling herself.

Come to find out she didn’t want to upset her father by making him think anything less than perfect of his daughter.  She was trying to be the same young girl that her father always knew her as.  Doug pointed out to her that her father, no matter what, will always love her, she just has to let him know, “hey dad I am not perfect and I do make mistakes and I know this and I know you still love me”.

Hearing this, Lisa burst into tears. She realized that she had been doing the same to her own daughter.

Lisa would always praise her daughter and never disciplining her when she made a mistake and thus putting pressure on her to be perfect.

Doug told her that those are just the stories of her past that she cannot live in forever. He told her she has to let go of those stories to move on and create better stories, positive stories and to let her daughter know that she is not perfect and she doesn’t have to try to be. No matter what mistakes she will make in her life that Lisa should always remind her daughter that she loves her very much and is proud of her.

Lisa became aware of her stories.

That is the breakthrough, once we realize what the stories are and what the facts are we can change our whole way of thinking and we will not get caught up in excuses of the past and stay living in our stories.

When the session was over Lisa was a completely different women, she was excited about how the future will be with this new awareness.

I was so amazed that grasping this concept could completely change someone’s thinking, not only Lisa’s but mine as well.

by Amber Hewitt

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Note from Doug:

I really appreciate Amber and Billy arranging for this talk at Saving Grace!

There’s one thing I’d like to point out about the intervention with Lisa that pretty much applies to everybody when they make  significant change.  Lisa only changed when she focused on her daughter, and the pain she was causing her.  This is what Tony Robbins calls “leverage.”

What makes it simple to help people change is getting them to focus on how NOT changing was going to bring them more pain than changing.  To do this you need to figure out what causes people pain.

It was easy to see that Lisa was in very deep emotional pain when she thought about hurting her daughter.  The one moment where she changed was when I directed her focus with a simple question:  ”If you don’t change now, how much more will it hurt your daughter?”

This event started at 4:00 am on a cold, rainy, dark, foggy morning on the St. Lawrence River.

In retrospect, it’s lucky I lived through it.  My friend Richard and I entered into a two-person rubber life raft two miles downstream from Watch Island.

Two hours later, we stormed the beach and took the mansion.  And that was just the beginning of the story.

The story ended in the CBC television studios on the set of Dragon’s Den, where Destiny Partners Emile Studham and Kaela Bree put everything the learned over the weekend into action in a real, change-your-life-forever setting.

Read more about our eSpeakers and Influence Bootcamp here.