I can easily remember the three words that a person gave me, not long after I graduated from high school and it was rather harsh and the three words were “You are ignorant!”.
During this time of my life, before I transitioned to becoming a college student, I was still young and a teenager who wanted to party and have fun.
I have to admit that I was in a transitional time of my life where part of me yearned to do better in my life, while there was another side of me that wanted to party and go out on dates. Your typical late teenager lifestyle.
But the reason why I was bothered by it all, was because I personally believed that I can aspire to be what I want. I have the ability to have high grades, the ability to do really do well, but the problem was that I lived a life of having too much fun.
And I remember meeting a new family friend, an intelligent person who I have talked about on my blog before… Angelo Delos Reyes. Who would become my mentor and a good friend.
We were different. Angelo was a Filipino guy who spoke like no Filipino person I knew because he thrived on knowledge and his passion for technology.
And when I first met Angelo, we weren’t exactly getting a long. Again, I was the party guy. He was the scientific guy who spoke like Data from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”.
But when he called me “ignorant”, that pissed me off.
And surprisingly, it was also a wake up call because I knew that I was done with this lifestyle of partying and it was time to prepare for my future and what future that was…I don’t know.
Part of the reason why I feel I partied a lot because I wanted to escape the life that people knew me for. The guy who was always studying in the library. The guy who got good grades.
To put in bluntly, I was a nerd. I was raised on comic books and reading, I never really had a social life but when I moved to Los Angeles, it changed my life. I discovered a different side of me that wanted to look cool, date girls and have fun. I played football, I wrestled and it introduced me to a different life that I often thought about.
And so after graduation and then hearing those words from Angelo, those three words may have not mean much to others but for me it rocked me to the core because, I already knew that the person I was, I strayed so far from it. And after graduating, I desperately wanted to return back and be the guy who can figure out what I wanted to do for a living.
I was lost.
Should I go to college? Should I just work? Do I want to be like some guys who stay at their hometown working an 8 to 5 job that they dislike?
I didn’t want that. And Angelo’s words stung me to the core because I was being dumb and instead of getting angry at him, I decided to talk about my life and learn about his life and we both had something in common, how I felt, is how he felt.
You see, we both had rough times growing up. Our relationship with our fathers while we were teenagers were not the greatest and for Angelo, he took upon himself to change his life and he would eventually become a photographer for celebrities in the Philippines and work in the music industry.
Through the troubles in the Philippines, he survived. He survived major demonstrations in the Philippines and while taking photos, he was shot and lived, but had to work with an injury that could have left him dwelling in the darkness, but he didn’t.
And a book that helped him was “Unlimited Power” by Anthony Robbins. But Angelo gave me a gift of Anthony Robbins second book titled “Awaken the Giant Within”.
While the book was no doubt part of the ’90s and the Anthony Robbins then, is a different from the Anthony Robbins today, the fact was that Anthony Robbins had to grow from a being a person hungry and having to live on his own after leaving an abusive family life.
And it took some pain to realize that he couldn’t live this life any longer, he needed to make the decisions for a much better outcome.
And while many things are logical in the book, its the presentation and the ability to think, is what I found Anthony Robbins so successful as an author, coach, speaker and philanthropist.
It was a book that I needed in my life before I went to college and it would eventually set me onto a path of refocusing on what I want in life and changing my life for the better.
There is more to the story but I’ll share that for another blog someday.
