The past is gone forever.  Now since whatever we focus on expands, do we want to spend one minute focusing on the problems of the past, everybody?  No because your past will recur it will repeat itself if you focus on it.  So the past is gone forever.  It is never, ever coming back.  How many of you have not heard me speak before?  Could we see the hands?  Oh my, gosh, I thought I was popular here.  You know what, I am really glad that you came out today.  At think sometimes, there is a tendency to look at people that do what I do and say, these people they’re in the limelight and they fly first class and they go to beautiful resorts.  What would they know about problems?  They have tons of money and people adore them.  What would they know about my challenges?  Well, I don’t know about speaking gurus but I’m not one.  I’m going to take just a minute so that you know I’ve walked the same path as some of you.  I was a kid in an alcoholic home, who had a father who was drunk almost every day, who ranted and raved, and screamed and yelled and never let up on his oldest son, which was me.  My dear mother, Rita Hunter, never left him.  She never left him so we had to endure all of that.  I don’t blame her.  I had a miserable childhood.  Anybody here raised in an alcoholic home.  I don’t have to go into detail, you know the stress and the problems and the scars.  Okay.  I did not get a lot of love as a kid.  The priests and nuns saw everything that was wrong with me, everything that was wrong with me the priests and nuns noted.  I won’t mention the school. I won’t mention any names, we’ll just say that.  I had a very difficult life. 

When I was 28, 30 years-old I was almost suicidal.  I was depressed.  I was fired from several jobs.  Couldn’t get anybody to go out on a date with me.  My therapist says I am doing better.  When I was a senior in high school, Sister Rose DeLordes, a well meaning IHM nun, told the whole senior class, “Michael Wickett you’re a lazy bum and you will ever amount to anything,”  because I got lousy grades.  Well, I couldn’t sleep at night.  We had ranting and raving, and screaming and yelling and drunken accidents and fires in the house and threats against my mother.  Michael Wickett you’re a lazy bum and you will never amount to anything.  Now I’ve got a new book coming out about 6 months I would like to share the title with you.  The title is ‘Sister Rose DeLordes Was Wrong’.  You can applaud.  We have time.  My beautiful friend the past is gone forever.  The divorce that you wish to God had never happened, the things you wish you could do differently with your kids, the mistakes you made and I say to you, that if you are going to become an empowered person you make peace with the past and you leave it back there.  Nod your head if you get that.  Because I promise you whatever you focus on expands.  Whatever you focus on you create more of.  So we can’t live in the past and really be empowered.  If you are willing to leave the past behind and move forward and understand this principle, everybody together, what does it say at the bottom, everybody, what you see and feel causes your outcomes.  I want you to write that in your brain.  In fact, a simple way to do that is my feelings cause my results.  Now that may be heavy duty and I don’t mean it to be heavy duty but it is the way life works and the single most powerful thing in the world are feelings.  And you shape your feelings by what you focus on and what you choose to feel.  And even though things aren’t great, you can still choose to be happy and positive and upbeat and enthusiastic.  In fact the best way out of difficult circumstances, is to have a vision of where you would like to go and to feel really great about getting there.  Are you with me?  To really, really expect it, I mean that is the best way in the world to create whole new future for you.