It may sound trite, but you really can become anything you want to – even if it seems impossible. I know this because I’ve watched my father become the successful tycoon he is today from the most unlikely of beginnings. After all, one of our family’s core values is “Maintain A ‘Nothing Is Impossible’ Spirit.”
The importance of this value stems from my father’s rise from an orphan to a business tycoon. The man who spent childhood nights facing down two giant hogs which were eyeing him up for their dinner was never going to be fazed by a company like Coca-Cola that offered him a two billion dollar for a majority stake, to which he walked away.
My father was raised in a harsh orphanage environment where nuns incorporated a variety of severe punishments like, dumping him in a pen wearing just a pair of shorts, a sleeveless T-shirt, and a pair of slippers. The slippers did not last long, as the pigs gobbled them up before he had a chance to climb onto a small platform that divided one pen from the next.
Despite these circumstances, my father’s troubles at the orphanage made him resilient and taught him to overcome obstacles, including how to make the best of a bad situation. He was only ten years old when he arrived there in 1963. He soon had to toughen up. Many of the other children had turned into thugs after being tormented by the nuns, and bullying was rife. For a large percentage of those boys were not just orphans but were also the discarded mixed-race offspring of American GIs: abandoned, rootless, and disparaged cultural anomalies.
He made the best of it and forged his own path to a successful future. Leveraging his experiences, he identified his strengths and found a way to use them to his advantage. Many of the values he learned and applied along his journey are an integral part of THP and its success.
No matter your circumstance, you can leverage your experiences to become anything you want to be. Consider the following mantras that we, at THP, live by as you seek to overcome your own challenges:
- Have a positive and can-do attitude. Always focus on results. Never give up until the desired results have been achieved.
- Dare to think differently, and approach problems with a willing spirit to conquer challenging goals.
- Take responsibility and create opportunities to maximize your strengths capabilities. In addition, always help others to realize the power of positivity, help them believe they can make positive changes in any situation.
- Believe that success and failure is thanks to your own efforts; do not blame external factors.
- Learn from success and failure, whether your own or that of others.
- Understand and encourage the spirit of learning, sharing, and innovative thinking.
- Stay positive and dedicated to the task in hand; do not repeat previous failures or feel ashamed of them; stay true to your word.
Always remember, nothing is impossible.
