So Who Motivates Who?

So, it’s like this, I was at the North Lincolnshire Business Network last night (@nlbn1) (29th August 2013) at the Forest Pines Hotel, doing my thing of a short presentation under my usual title of ‘I don’t know what I am going to talk about but it’s sure going to be interesting!’

I chose to do a motivational 20 minutes, about me, life and Roy Castle along with Play-Do and a Candle – don’t ask just invite me to speak to hear it!

So we have some laughs, I tell a story about my challenges in life and my experience of meeting and working with the great Roy Castle back in 1993, a few months before his death. It was well received I am pleased to say.

Afterwards, there I am getting a cup of tea and one gent from the audience comes over and starts to thank me for such a great and motivational speech, how I had uplifted and inspired him. Then he tells me his story…

…Some five years ago, happily married with three young children, one a babe in arms the other two are toddlers and his wife dies. He’s left with little decision other than to give up work and bring up his children.

Take a step back a few years and he tells me that he had a very challenging school period as he is dyslexic and this had held him back although he wanted to succeed.

So, after a couple of years of bringing up his children by himself he decides he wants to complete the one thing that he had not to date, a proper education. He takes himself back to adult education and completes a degree, fantastic.

He meets someone new and remarries and brings her children into his life too, and is also offered a funded scholarship to achieve his Masters but decides to decline this as he wants to set up his own business using his new found skills and knowledge plus his life experience; he decides to do it and then his new wife is diagnosed with MS.

He thinks about giving up on this dream and devoting his time to his family and his wife’s serious problem but they discuss this and agree that there never will be a good time, that he should go ahead and carry on with his dream and what will be will be.

He has launched his business.

Wow!

…And he wants to tell me that I am inspirational to him! Personally I have found yet another inspiration to me in someone else. To my friend who I met – thank you.

It just goes to my old saying that ‘failure is not the falling down it is the staying down’.

I wish them all every success and happiness.

Gary Payne, Director