Did you all enjoy the holidays?  I’m now back home after spending a week at my brother’s on the East Coast, having returned yesterday after a safe, thankfully uneventful six-hour drive.   (Photo:  Shelly)

With the end of the year only 2 days away, I thought it would be appropriate to include in this week’s gratitude post a couple of highlights in 2007 for which I am very grateful. 

• Called Stephen Hopson Interviews, I’ve created a new program at Adversity University, the purpose of which is to not only to continue expanding my brand name but also attract a potpourri of people of different economic, political, social, professional and personal backgrounds.  It is part of my overall plan to make this blog the premier place where you can be inspired to overcome adversity and achieve virtually impossible dreams by learning from others from around the blogosphere. 

Last Friday night (11/2/07), a something extraordinary happened, briefly mentioned in a post the following day:       

………..I suddenly felt a strange compulsion to walk over to the bookcase…retrieve two green booklets on the very bottom shelf….turned out to be…personal diaries….not read since 1995….the year I made enormous amounts of money on Wall Street, was in better physical shape in my mid-thirties….not to mention countless of exciting bedroom escapades….But something else was happening….I was shocked to see a darker, more sinister side of me appear…. there were names of people who I have no recollection of ever meeting but they were supposedly my dearest, closest friends…….

Oh my sweet Mama! 

(Note to everyone: Here it is, the sequel to Part I but if you are pressed for time, please come back to this post later to relax with your favorite beverage because this is an exceedingly long one - probably the longest I’ve ever written to date but hopefully it will be an enjoyable read for you).

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It was a good thing I departed Michigan on the 24th because Mother Nature threw a hissy fit and dumped several inches of snow in New York the following day, giving us the first white Christmas in a long time. This was followed by a low pressure system covering the entire Northeast, which meant I might be stuck for a few days longer than I anticipated.

In the winter of 2002, I was working part-time as a line service specialist at Berz Macomb airport to supplement my income in between speaking engagements. It was a fun job towing planes, refueling them and providing customer service for pilots and their passengers. They also had a very generous 50% aircraft rental discount available for the few employees who had a pilot’s license.

Rather than booking a commercial flight to fly home for the holidays, I decided to take advantage of the discount and rent myself a plane instead. My choice airplane was a small four-seat Piper Cherokee similar to this one.

I’ll never forget a most embarrassing moment that was caused by my unwillingness to ask people to repeat after themselves, especially if I wasn’t sure of what they were saying. As a young man, my ego had me think I was something of a “lip-reading expert.”

Sometime during the late eighties, I was at a midnight birthday party in New York City. I could tell the music was at full blast because each of the four strategically-placed stereo speakers appeared to be alive with a giant pulsating heart. The party was just starting to warm up, thanks to a few people who had the nerve to herk and jerk their hips like Elaine from Seinfeld:

First, an update on the status of the “If I Tell You My Secrets in Dealing With Adversity, Will You Tell Me Yours?” tagging project. It is quickly building momentum and has already afforded me a fascinating peek into the lives of several people whose careers and ambitions are totally different from mine.

One of the participants is a single mom who is a screenwriter with a project now being considered by an A-list actress (Nicole Kidman) for a major motion picture. Imagine that! She wrote a wonderful story about overcoming adversity on the long road to success. Reading it lifted my spirits and confirmed that we are all in on this together. Of course, she will be among 500 people listed on a future post here at Adversity University and you will have an opportunity to be uplifted by her story too.

A subscriber from the Netherlands recently sent me an email asking me where I get my motivation. I thought that was a good question but my first inclination was to say that “I was born with this inner desire to do great things.”

But then the more I thought about it, the more I realized it could be traced back to my parents but not in the way you might think.

Wow, what a week.

Isn’t it interesting how sometimes everything is flowing easily and effortlessly where you feel nothing could go wrong and then BAM! WHAM! you are hit with a most unexpected jolt, literally turning your world upside down?

Remember the miraculous encounter I had with a local woman (Katina) who was in the audience at one of my speaking engagements earlier this year? She unexpectedly volunteered to help me whip my book proposal in shape for her literary agent’s review and consideration. Her thinking throughout my presentation that night was: Hey, Stephen where’s your book?

Click here to read more about that fateful evening.

Have you ever wondered about the mysteries of divine intervention? Can you think of a series of events in your life where you had “near misses?” Ever why mysterious things happen?

Here are eight life changing events that could have turned out differently for me:

Incident #1: As a young boy of 9 or 10, we had an above-ground swimming pool with a slide in our backyard. One day, a friend challenged me to slide down on my stomach with my hands clasped behind my back. Not wanting to be “chicken,” I said, “WATCH ME!” For some reason, the slide was more slippery than usual that day and I ended up slamming my head at the bottom of the pool, momentarily disorienting me. I came up gasping for air, but was otherwise unhurt. This act of foolishness could have resulted in a broken neck, either killing or paralyzing me. Divine intervention?

A few months ago, I wrote a post entitled “Ask and You Shall Receive Miracles” which can be found by clicking here. I am a firm believer that if you have just enough faith and believe that the world is conspiring to shower you with blessings, then that’s exactly what will happen to you.

When you walk around believing this, adversity is much easier to deal with. You still have to face it but it doesn’t become a long, drawn out painful process. It’s all about perception - how you see adversity that determines the outcome in your life.

There are no mistakes, only experiences.

In reality, there is no such thing as a mistake because we have free will and we are free to do what we want, when we want and in any way we choose. Man coined the word “mistakes” because he created an elaborate list of do’s and don’ts. If you did what you weren’t supposed to do, then according to the man-made set of rules, you made a mistake in the eyes of society.

I disagree.

Everything you do is simply an experience. It is the accumulation of experiences that have made you to be the person you are today. If you hadn’t stumbled and fallen flat on your face, you wouldn’t have learned how to face and overcome adversity, for example.

This story happened a few years after quitting Wall Street in 1996. I was starting over to follow my dreams of becoming a motivational speaker and author.

The decision to switch gears led me to one of the most challenging times of my life. Because of this life altering change, there was a heavy price to pay. While making the transition, I was struggling to pay the rent. But one has to eat, right?

One morning, the refrigerator and cupboards told me it was time to restock them. Making an ATM withdrawal of $40, the amount I had budgeted for groceries, I headed for the nearest supermarket, eight city blocks away.

This is a short story of something that happened to me many years ago. The incident taught me a valuable lesson in self acceptance. It has never been told before.  (Photo:  KSA Girl in Swiss)

The incident I’m about to share with you was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life but I can laugh about it now. Looking back, it was God’s way of saying, “Hey, get over yourself! You are who you are for a reason, just accept it!”

In 1995, I was riding high as a Wall Street stockbroker. I had lost 20 pounds and was looking quite healthy. My clients were enjoying double-digit growths and I was making a handsome six-figure income. On top of that, I was winning sales trips to exotic places like Mexico and Bermuda, interviewed on national television and accumulating one sales award after another.

Little did I know all hell was about to break loose. The problem was I had no clue it was coming. What’s more, it caused me a lot of unnecessary worry.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I promised I would share the story of what happened with the “bank boss” during the late eighties, early nineties. The story you’re about to read was a time of tremendous adversity for me.

Every single person that appears on the stage of our lives has something to contribute, regardless of the outcome. They all take on the role of a teacher with a lesson plan or two.

David, the Bully, was one central character. If he hadn’t approached me on the playground that day, I wouldn’t have a unique story to share with my audiences. I would also not have known how much courage I really had to stand up for myself on that fateful day.