Page 24 - connectwiththeworldCH1

HOW TO CONNECT WITH THE WORLD AROUND YOU
I traded in my cameras for a laptop, and for the next twenty-five years, my wife Wendy and I studied how humans connect, communicate and reinvent themselves. We consulted with psychologists on resilience, motivation and coping strategies; sociologists on social and cultural factors that affect people's decisions to start anew; career counselors on career paths and job opportunities; life coaches on personal strategies; financial advisors on financial planning; psychiatrists on physical and mental health; and teachers on educational opportunities and resources.
Wendy's vast knowledge on the topic comes—among other things—from opening and running a successful model agency at age eighteen, serving an eight-year term as a university governor, and from a series of televised events in the nineties called "The Secrets of Talented Women," where, in each episode, four super successful women from all walks of life shared their secrets and answered questions from the audience. Throughout all this, one thing stood out: the number of people who credited their change in life to epiphanies. And this was confirmed yet again by the almost four thousand people who, over the course of 10 years, attended my "How to Write A Saleable Book" programs in Las Vegas and Austin, Texas, where almost all of them wrote about the epiphanies that changed their lives and inspired them to share their experiences.
All of this sounds wonderful, but the more we waded into our new project, the more we heard from people who said
24