Breakthrough: Stories of Resilience, Tragedy, and Triumph

By Charles Thomas Jr.

Breakthrough: Stories of Resilience, Tragedy, and Triumph captures the lived experiences and collective wisdom of individuals from varied walks of life. The trials, tribulations, and battle scars that we all don are not meant to be hidden. They should be embraced and shared with the world. Life is but a fleeting moment. Regardless of how long we live, it will not be long enough. As such, it is advisable to smile, have fun, live, learn, enjoy the life journey as much as possible, and break through whatever is holding us back from being the best version of ourselves.

Throughout Breakthrough, you will have the blessed fortune to learn about and incorporate the wisdom of some remarkable human beings who have experienced a variety of breakthroughs in their lives, are enjoying their journeys, and are successful, based on their own definitions. You will receive advice that will dramatically amend your perspectives on success, achievement, philosophies of life, love, and leadership, and many of the principles necessary for the full engagement and active participation in your life journey. You will learn the elemental importance of not allowing who you are to stop you from becoming who you want to be. The stories and themes of hard work, failure, resilience, learning from others, asking for help, leading from where you are, etc., are most inspirational. I am confident that the insights provided within these pages will offer you value and help you as you prepare or continue to offer useful service as a servant to many.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: May 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781512783513

Charles Thomas Jr.

Dr. Charles Thomas Jr. is the son of Mrs. Doris and Mr. Charles Thomas Sr. He is a member of the prestigious walk-on and Spartan trifecta tribes. Charles is the author of three additional works: Scars, Exile, and Vindication: My Life As An Experiment, the best-selling work Breakthrough: Stories of Resilience, Tragedy, and Triumph, and Leading Through Difficulty: The Darker Side of Workplace Behavior. He is from Flint, MI and lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and children. For more information, please visit charlesthomasjr.com.

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Copyright © 2017 Charles Thomas Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5127-8352-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-8353-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-8351-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017905945

WestBow Press rev. date: 05/11/2017

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 Make Your Own Decisions

Chapter 2 Be Thankful for Detours

Chapter 3 Resilience

Chapter 4 Failure

Chapter 5 Hard Work

Chapter 6 Believe That You Believe

Chapter 7 Release Your Grip

Chapter 8 Learn from Others

Chapter 9 Ask for Help

Chapter 10 Lead from Where You Are

Chapter 11 No Sometimes Means Not Yet or … Something Better Is on the Way

Chapter 12 What You Do and Where You Go > What You Say and What You Show

Chapter 13 Life Happens

Chapter 14 A Letter to the Twenty-Year-Old Me

Chapter 15 Life Maxims

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With sincerest gratitude and appreciation, I want to thank everyone who trusted me enough to share even a piece of his or her story with me, directly or indirectly. Their willingness to be vulnerable and to offer insights into their worlds is a testament to their character and illustrative of how their life-learned lessons have added value to others in ways that they might not ever know.

To the excellent staff at WestBow Press, thank you for your patience, counsel, insights, and willingness to help turn my dream into a reality.

To my wife, daughter, and son, thank you for your patience. Thank you for allowing me to learn from you. Thank you for being you and for allowing me to be me.

To my family, story sharers, and those who encouraged and challenged me along the way, I say thank you a trillion times. May the Lord continue to bless and keep all of you. May He continue to lift His countenance upon you and give you peace. Soli Deo Gloria. Namaste!

INTRODUCTION

I write this book as a concerned citizen. I have been fortunate to meet, interact with, and observe many people. My experiences have afforded me the opportunity to connect with people in ways that I once thought were unimaginable. Oftentimes, when people ask me how I am doing, I respond, I am living, learning, and enjoying the journey, so it only made sense to write a book about the life journey. Well, at least it made sense to me.

The trials, tribulations, and battle scars that we all don are not meant to be hidden. They should be embraced and shared with the world. Life is but a fleeting moment. Regardless of how long we live, it will never be long enough. As such, it is advisable to smile, have fun, live, learn, enjoy life’s journey as much as possible, and break through whatever is holding us back from being the best version of ourselves. Once our respective clocks expire and in the eloquent words of Porky Pig, Badeep, badeep, badeep … that’s all folks.

Oftentimes, illuminating the elements of our afflictions is all that we need to keep going. Sometimes, all we need to know is that we are not walking alone. At other times, having someone believe in us more than we believe in ourselves is the little nudge that we need to turn into superstars. We should view everyday experiences as blessings and opportunities for growth. The random occurrences of many events create opportunities to learn and teach us the importance of going with the flow.

We are not computers and should not engage as such. We should, as Ralph Waldo Emerson orated, adopt the pace of nature. Computers are linear, and the associated computational knowledge, inputs, and outputs are based on code. When random lines of incorrect code are introduced into a system, the computer cannot handle such variation and the associated outputs lack accuracy and precision.

Nature has no such problems. Nature has a built-in capacity for variance to account for the unexpected. Moreover, nature expects and welcomes randomness. When it happens, an almost alchemic transmutation process begins in which nature integrates random elements into a cohesive whole to create a natural masterpiece, which offers a high level of functionality and utility. If it does not, it purges the waste. Nature does not simply allow isolated elements to sit idle if they offer no value.

As we walk down our chosen roads, it is advisable that we employ nature’s wisdom when solving problems and when faced with disparate situations of varied intensity, complexity, and magnitude. The adaptability, flexibility, versatility, and evolutionary capability of nature should be mimicked. Otherwise, we are destined for extinction.

As conscious and thoughtful humans, we have to engage in a new paradigm. Traditionalist ways of thinking and engagement in various problem-solving activities are score and grade driven. As educators, scientists, engineers, economists, physicists, public servants, etc., we are programmed to give a solution.

Not only do we function under the paradigm of providing a solution and being assigned a grade or ranking to solidify our mastery of the problem, but we are also judged on how we reach issue resolution. You remember all of the homework assignments that came with the mandate to show your work prior to solving the problem.

Our new paradigm must defer to nature’s wisdom. We must be comfortable with the fact that we do not know all of the answers and that natural approaches to issue resolution (if applicable) may be far superior to our propositions for diagnosis and subsequent issue resolution tactics.

As complex creatures, we are often unreceptive and sometimes adamantly resistant to nature’s wisdom. We choose to rely on human cleverness, which is often soiled by our unknown ignorance, to solve some of the most complex challenges in varied personal and professional situations. We have to resist this level of hubris and heed the counsel of the natural world. The life journey is not a mountain that we quickly climb. We should not consider the paths that we walk to be a means to an end. Everything that we do should be consciously and thoughtfully executed. The journey is much more important than the ultimate destination, if there even is such a thing. With this knowledge, I challenge you to live, learn, enjoy the journey, and prepare for your breakthrough.

CHAPTER 1

MAKE YOUR OWN DECISIONS

Let me be great.

—Charles Thomas Jr.

(Can I quote myself in my own book? I just did. 37516.png )

What is success? How do you quantify it? How do you measure the intangible? Isn’t the journey more important? In our society, we have digressed to a point in which hyper-materialism, hyper-consumerism, individualism, hedonism, and an almost insatiable desire to be that dude or that chick in virtually all social settings reign supreme. The need to be successful has caused a level of deterioration in societal norms and such a degradation of thought that no matter how good you are, it is never good enough. Civility of communication, plurality of expression, diversity of thought, and higher-order cognitive and reflective engagement seem to be remnants of a world that will likely never again exist or be experienced by the masses.

In a world where success is often synonymous with monetary acquisition and fame, how do we keep people interested in their own progress? How do we challenge people to continually be the best version of themselves? How do we reinforce that keeping up with the Joneses is an exercise in futility? How do we accentuate the notion that comparing ourselves to others will cause us to be either vain or bitter? How do we meet people where they are and offer sage counsel that will prove valuable in helping them get to where they want to be? How do we help people practice intellectual humility? How do we reach mental maturity?

These questions are complex. Because life is multifaceted and multidimensional, we should expect complexity. There is no panacea to the ills that plague our society and no universal answer to the aforementioned queries. As such, it is important that you understand your personal value system, define success for yourself, and proceed accordingly.

Success, akin to beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Our individual journeys to success are also unique. My path is not your path, and your path is not my path. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.

As a younger and much more inexperienced man, I also incorrectly and naively equated success with monetary and material acquisition. That perspective transformed when I talked to a young man whose view on life made me appreciate the journey and everything it has to offer instead of concerning myself with such an amorphous term like success.

During one of our regular phone conversations, I suggested that he was the most successful of all the fellas I knew because he had the money to buy and do whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted, and whenever he wanted.

His response was simply, You are always smiling and sharing experiences about things that you have seen and/or done on your journey. Moreover, you are the one with the wife and kids. How am I the most successful? Until that moment, I had not entertained the thought that someone, whom I thought had everything, might feel like he did not have anything. This revelation immediately and forever altered my thought processes.

Success, however you define it, is great. Do not be confused, however, by the attainment of success. The final destination is never truly final. As an achievement-oriented individual, I sometimes neglect my obligations to remain in the moment, reflect, and consider alternative perspectives. I sometimes focus so intently on achieving whatever goal I have in my mind, I lose sight of the myriad learning opportunities along the way. The sad part is that even after I have climbed a mountain, I do not take the time to celebrate the ascent and ultimate summit. As an achiever, the mantra, On to the next one, rings true.

For high achievers, the euphoria associated with goal achievement is fleeting. Sometimes, it is even anticlimactic as they are already locked in on the next adventure. The law of impermanence of things, which posits, Nothing stays the same, as the matriarch of my family likes to say, is a sobering, humbling, scary reality for those who want to be at the top of the food chain in their respective ecosystems.

We often hear that goal achievement is powerful and serves as a psychological motivator. While that is true, experiential and anecdotal evidence indicate that the journey is even more important. It is not about what we do, but about who we become during the process. It is not about the ultimate degree that we earn, but about what we learn en route to that degree. It is not about the trophies that we win, but the skill development necessary to be crowned number one. It is not about the title that we ultimately don, but the knowledge, skills, proficiency, and expertise acquired on the way. It is not about the awards that we receive, but about the people we encourage, motivate, and inspire as we walk beside them on the winding road of life.

Throughout this book, you