Sometimes in life, we give up without realizing
how close to success we are. We stop trying in a relationship, and then
realize too late that we’ve lost something wonderful. We let go of our dreams, when the one thing
we needed to make them happen was just around the corner. Let’s start by focusing on being thankful
for the things you have. You don’t want to end up with a heart full
of regret, like this man who left his wife because he thought he wanted to be with another
woman who was younger and more beautiful. He believed that his wife had become boring,
and was no longer physically attractive. He didn’t feel like he was getting what
he wanted from her anymore, and so he traded her in for somebody who he considered to be
prettier and more exciting. In just one year, he came to regret it deeply. So deeply, in fact, that he wrote an open
letter to the internet, to serve as a warning to others who might make the same mistake
he did. The words of his letter are tender and heartfelt,
and tell the story about what happened over the twelve months since he left his wife. He describes meeting her again, almost a year
to the day since they split, at a time when he was alone. His relationship with the new, younger woman
didn’t last, and he had nobody. By contrast, his wife had become the same
beautiful woman he’d first fallen in love with. She’d lost weight, bought new clothes, and
started paying attention to her hair and makeup again. At that point, he realized what he’d done
wrong. He’d failed to understand that she’d gained
weight because of the recent birth of their third child. He didn’t realize that she didn’t have
time to focus on beauty products and grooming because she was busy raising young children. Now, with the children a little older, and
with more time to spend on herself, she was radiant once more. Her true beauty had never been lost; she’d
just had more important things to focus on at the time. Someone else had noticed her beauty, too,
and she was in a new relationship. The foolish man had lost his wife forever. Like Joni Mitchell once sang, you don’t
know what you’ve got til it’s gone. Age is just a number. So long as you have the mind, body and soul
to chase a dream, you can still achieve it. Ruth Flowers embodied that message perhaps
better than anyone else. Ruth, under her stage name of Mamy Rock, was
a British grandmother who became one of the most celebrated and in-demand DJs in the entire
world. She lost her husband when she was already
in retirement age, and for a time she seemed content to spend her remaining years living
in a coastal region of Portugal, with great weather and beach views. Then, looking for something to do with her
spare time, she got involved in planning her grandson’s 21st birthday party. She found the process brought her a great
deal of joy, and decided to turn up to the event in a nightclub. A rude bouncer, who suggested that she was
too old to enter the venue, was the final push she needed to set about proving that
anything is possible if you put your mind to it. Ruth was going to show that bouncer that not
only did she belong in a nightclub, she could be the DJ if she wanted to! Ruth had no DJing experience at all, and her
only previous experience of performing was providing lectures on the works of classical
author Charles Dickens. Despite that, she started taking lessons in
how to mix, and as her skills developed, her quirky tastes made her unique. The press became interested in her story,
and her first ever booking was in front of a celebrity audience at Cannes film festival,
in 2009, at the age of 68. Just four years later, aged 72, she was routinely
flown around the world to perform in Ibiza, Ayia Napa and every other iconic clubbing
city, where crowds couldn’t get enough of her. Mamy Rock was a sensation. Nobody cared about her age, they just loved
her talent. Life is a learning experience for as long
as we want it to be. We don’t have to stop learning new things
on the day we leave school, college or university. Many of us will go back to take courses in
our spare time, or learn work-specific qualifications as and when our professional lives require
us of it. But why stop there? If you have a thirst for knowledge, why not
indulge it for your whole life? That’s exactly what an elderly student called
Rose did, and she inspired everybody around her by doing so. As the old lady explained, she’d never received
a college education, and had spent her life feeling like she’d missed out. So, at the age of 87, she finally decided
to challenge herself and enroll to achieve a diploma. The student and Rose became close friends
quickly, and the younger woman found that Rose had a great deal to teach her about life,
and how a positive attitude can create great changes. Popular among many of her fellow students,
Rose was invited to speak at the college football banquet. Standing up nervously at first, she explained
that there were only four lessons in life that everyone needed to learn. Firstly, you must always have a dream. Without a dream, we are simply living with
nothing to aim for. That’s the difference between growing old
and growing up. Secondly, you have to find humor even in the
darkest times, and laugh every day. Thirdly, we do not stop playing because we
grow old. We grow old because we stop playing. Fourth, the elderly learn to never regret
anything that they did; only the things that they did not do. So take chances. Eliminate the regrets. Do the things that inspire you. Everybody who was there listened and learned. Rose got her diploma. She achieved her dream. Everybody knows what Colonel Sanders looks
like. He’s the cartoon face of Kentucky Fried
Chicken, the founder of the brand, and the man who brought one of our favorite fast food
restaurants to us. But that cartoon was based on a real man. It might be easy to believe that the Colonel
was a rich, successful man. How could he not be? There are thousands of KFC restaurants all
over the world, and he’s the man who opened the very first, so all the money must have
gone to him when the company became successful. That might be true, but that success didn’t
come overnight. It didn’t come easily, either. In the seventh grade, Sanders dropped out
of school completely and left home to go and work as a farm hand. He may have been poor, but he was driven. That’s a very young age to try to strike
your own path. Normal jobs just didn’t seem to hold any
appeal for him. He joined the army, but was discharged a year
later. He worked as a laborer on the railways, but
was fired. He tried to study law, but was kicked out
of law school, too. Eventually he was forced to move back in with
his mother, and found a job selling insurance, but couldn’t keep hold of that either. In 1920, he tried to get into the ferry boat
business, and did OK for a while, but sold his firm to try his hand manufacturing lamps
instead, only to find someone else was doing it cheaper and better than him. He just couldn’t catch a break, but he always
believed there was a route to success open to him somewhere if he could just find it. By the time he decided that selling fried
chicken might be the way to do it, he was already forty years old. But even then, with his chicken recipe, life
threw obstacles at him. His first restaurant burned down. He started again from scratch, only to be
forced to abandon the restaurant due to the events of 1939 to 1946. Eventually, he decided that selling his recipe
and operating a franchise model was the way forward. His recipe, which today is worth billions
of dollars, was rejected by food manufacturers one thousand and nine times. It was the one thousand and tenth attempt
that got him over the line. No matter how many times life told him “no”,
Sanders was simply never willing to accept that answer. In his own words, he said “I made a resolve
then that I was going to amount to something if I could. And no hours, nor amount of labor, nor amount
of money would deter me from giving the best that there was in me.” Every time life tells you “no”, remember
Colonel Sanders. Remember the value in never giving up. Love always finds a way. If you are truly supposed to be with one person,
they will find their way to you if you keep your eyes open. There’s no better example of that then Amy
Giberson and Justin Pounders, who live in St. Petersburg, Florida. They found each other, like so many people
do these days, on an online dating website. They hit it off immediately and started a
relationship, but it would be a chance conversation a year later that made them realize that they’d
both attended the same preschool. Wondering if they’d ever met, or ever talked,
they both went and spoke to their parents, to see if they had any photographs of the
time, which neither of them could remember. To everybody’s amazement, not only had they
known each other, they were childhood sweethearts. They sat together at lunch. They chased each other around the playground. They were inseparable. When preschool ended, they’d both been sent
to different primary schools, and as time went on memories of those early years faded,
as they always do, and they slowly forgot about each other. And yet here they were, thirty years later,
still feeling that same connection and affection for each other that had been apparent on the
very first day they ever laid eyes on each other. Their lives had gone in different directions. They both very nearly ended up with different
partners, and would have lived their lives never knowing or remembering the connection
they had when they were young. But now they’re married, and have a child
of their own. Sometimes, puppy love truly can last a lifetime.
