Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life (3 page)

In 1978, Audrey’s daughter joined the police force, fell in love with a colleague, and married within a year. Just nineteen, the newlyweds found jobs and a home just a short drive away from the family, so they could visit easily. The youngest child joined the Royal Air Force. After finishing basic training, he took a position that allowed him to be home every weekend.

The middle son joined the Royal Navy College. Audrey was intensely proud because working-class children rarely qualified for the officer training. One day, she asked God for an extra favor. She had agreed to stay alive long enough to see her children fly the nest safely, which technically they had all done. Now she decided she wanted to see her son graduate as an officer.

In 1980 and 1981, Audrey needed several more courses of chemotherapy and two operations to repair her deteriorating bones. The pain medicine turned her physical features into those of an elderly woman, but her spirit and sense of humor were untouched.

Despite the discomfort of a 300-mile trip in a vehicle that was falling to bits, Harry and Audrey traveled to their son’s graduation. The Queen Mother was the guest of honor. With her legs invaded by cancer, Audrey still managed a perfect curtsey. Audrey knew now she could leave in peace, but she had one more task to complete.

The newly minted naval officer took compassionate leave to return home with his parents. Audrey was failing and needed weekly trips to the hospital for pain medicine and chemotherapy. He took his turn taking her for the treatments.

At the hospital, they were met by Audrey’s favorite nurse. The son watched as they greeted each other with bear hugs and exchanged jokes. For the son, it was love at first sight.

Audrey died before their wedding ceremony. She insisted on dying at home in the derelict farmhouse she had come to love. A bed was moved downstairs to the lounge, and the family took turns living in the one room during her last days.

Sitting next to her on the bed, the naval officer held her hand as she drifted in and out of consciousness. He felt her grip tighten. She opened her eyes, and seemed alert for the first time in days. She smiled and looked over to the window. The
age and pain washed away from her features, and she let out a small cry. It was not one of pain but more like that of a little girl in delight.

“Dad!” She shouted. Expecting to see his father entering the room, the son looked up. No one was there. Audrey gestured to the window. “Son, this is my father, your Granddad William. You have never met before, but he knows all about you. Say hello.” The son waved at the air. “He says I still owe him a fresh mug of tea.” They were her last words that she spoke to him.

The farmhouse was in a village of less than 100 residents, but more than 200 people attended Audrey’s funeral in May 1982. The twelfth-century church had never been as full. The family recognized the villagers and some of their friends, but more than half the congregation were strangers to them.

The attendees included some of Audrey’s childhood friends from Liverpool. As there had never been any mention of it in her letters, most were under the impression that her illness had been sudden. Several customers from the shop she worked at were there.

At the back of the church sat Mr. Garrad, a hard man who everyone in the village gave a wide berth. His wife had committed suicide many years before, and he raised his three boys on his own. An intensely private man, no one knew much about the family. Fighting to control his emotions, he confessed to Audrey’s family that for years she had secretly given him food and clothes for the boys, and had often sneaked down to his house to help with cooking or housework when he was forced to work late. Afterward, he placed fresh wildflowers on her grave every week.

A girl the same age as Audrey’s daughter was inconsolable. She explained how her mentally ill father had refused to allow “just a girl” to wear anything but rags to school. She was teased so mercilessly that she played truant. Audrey had secretly taken her
daughter’s spare set of clothes once a week to the delicatessen where she worked. There she had arranged for the girl to change from the rags before and after school. Now a grown woman, she added, “I owe your mother everything!”

Audrey’s body is buried on the brow of a hill at the edge of the graveyard, from where there is an unobstructed view across the fields to the farmhouse.

Although Audrey was never rich monetarily, she achieved something far more important in her life. In my personal and business life, I have met few people who so perfectly understood the power of controlling their mentality. If this kind of control can put off death for fourteen years, imagine what else it can do.

A
UDREY WAS MY MOTHER
, and I am the middle child. Thirty years later, I am still happily married to Audrey’s favorite chemotherapy nurse. How my mother reacted to her situation inspired me even at a young age. When I was growing up, she was always telling me to pause before I spoke “to give your reaction time to sort itself out.” It was sound advice, and I still try to follow it to this day.

Because she was in control of what she allowed into her mind and then managed her thoughts quietly, she always chose her reaction to anything carefully. I remember being beside her hospital bed when some doctors whispered her prognosis amongst themselves but loud enough for us all to hear. I watched her eyes as she computed what they were saying, and then how she took her time to compose herself before speaking. The way she thought was not as important as the way she reacted to her thoughts. Her reaction changed the outcome for herself and all those with whom she interacted. She gave strength to everyone around the hospital bed and, in so doing, gained some herself.

My abiding memories of my teenage years are not of her chronic pain but of all the laughter in our home, her great cooking, and our stumbling walks in the country. That is because she refused to let things inside and outside her mind dictate how she was supposed to react. She wanted family life to be normal and to complete her duties as mother.

When it comes to battling disease, there is mixed evidence for the power of mind over matter. It is also unfair to give the impression, as some writers do, that because a person chooses not to fight their illness that it makes them weak or wrong. The connection between the body, mind, and spirit is too complex for anyone living currently to comprehend. People have a right to choose their reaction, whether it is to fight or accept. I have, however, worked with cancer patients for more than twenty years. I have seen many of what the doctors described as “walking miracles,” and the only difference I was able to detect between them and their fellow patients in almost identical situations was their control of mentality.

My mother used her situation to teach me many things, and she always had a philosophical phrase to throw at me. She told me to take nothing at face value, to seek my own truth, not someone else’s version of it. She told me over and over again to look the world in the eye and then I could be anything I wanted to be. Most of all, she taught me that my thoughts and reactions are my own responsibility, and that only I can decide how to feel about anything. “No one can make you
feel
sad or angry,” she would admonish. “That is a choice you make for yourself as a reaction to the situation you perceive. You can just as easily choose to ignore or laugh about it.”

Even now, I do not have her sense of mentality control, and I often let my emotions rule my head. Every now and then though, I remember her advice, pause a moment, and choose a different reaction. Just those small changes in behavior have completely changed the outcome of my life.

Over the years, I have read dozens of autobiographies of famous men and women who could be considered self-made. At first, I approached their life stories with cynicism. I expected to find a key advantage that they had and that I did not, such as a family connection or a financial helping hand. What I found, however, were mostly disadvantaged people who developed an unshakeable belief in their ability to control their lives. They didn’t conform to what the world expected of them. They stood out from the crowd, and when presented with the same challenges as others, chose a different and individual reaction. With their evidence and my mother’s coaching I began to change my life.

As a child, I suffered from sectarian bullying, and at one time felt the weight of the world on me. One of the first biographies to inspire me was that of a woman known as Madame C. J. Walker, who was born in 1867 to parents who had been slaves. She started life with almost every disadvantage you could imagine: born on a plantation, orphaned, married at fourteen, then a single mother when her husband abandoned her. She had every excuse needed to talk herself out of her potential for success, and I felt a similar predilection for a life of mediocrity.

For a black female entrepreneur today, the barriers to success are many; back then, they must have seemed insurmountable. In 1865 and 1866, state governments in the South enacted laws designed to regulate the lives of the former slaves. These measures, differing from state to state, were actually revisions of the earlier slave codes that had regulated that institution. Some common elements appeared in many of the codes:

    
   Race was defined by blood; the presence of any amount of black blood made one black.

    
   Employment was required of all freedmen/women; violators faced vagrancy charges.

    
   Freedmen could not assemble without the presence of a white person.

    
   Freedmen were assumed to be agricultural workers and their duties and hours were tightly regulated.

    
   Freedmen were not to be taught to read or write.

    
   Public facilities were segregated.

    
   Owning of guns, and in some states a knife or fork, was forbidden for freedmen.

    
   Violators of these laws were subject to being whipped or branded.

From this background, however, an uneducated, persecuted, female daughter of slaves became, according to
The Guinness Book of World Records
, the first female self-made millionaire in America.

I was struck by her unshakeable belief. Just like my mother, she refused to let the outside world determine how she was supposed to think and react to any circumstance. I realized that my perceived hardships were nothing when compared to Madame Walker’s.

As a child, I used to play cowboys and Indians, mimicking the atrocious Hollywood twist on history in mock gunfights around our farmhouse with an imitation Colt .45. Many years later, I read Samuel Colt’s story. His mother died when he was eleven, and his father’s business failed soon after, sending him into despair and the family into poverty. His situation was not so different from mine at a similar age, and I was struck by how he refused to use it as an excuse.