The Saint's Way: My Personal Journey to Discovery

By William St. George

The Saints Way: My Personal Journey to Discovery shares the inspirational story of William St. George and how he overcame personal struggles and relied on his lessons learned to become a whole person who eventually fulfilled his dreams, goals, and desires.

Through his entertaining anecdotes, Bill weaves in the kind of motivational life lessons that will encourage others to look into their own past while effectively questioning the present, ultimately bridging a gap to a happier life. At age eighteen, Bill began to question his life and knew he needed to make changes in order to have a life worth living. Eventually, he was able to unlock the mystery of who he was and what he was meant to do with his life. By providing insight into the hows, whats, and whys of life through his own perspective, Bill is able to inspire others to search for the truth while building self-esteem, perseverance, and an unwavering faith in God.

For those who have a strong desire to make positive changes in their own lives, Bills passion for sharing his personal experiences, successes, failures, and thoughts about how to live a complete life will hearten anyone to take the first steps toward achieving lifelong peace and joy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 30, 2009
• ISBN: 9780595911189

William St. George

William St. George earned a Bachelor of Science degree in physical education from Cal Poly Pomona, Ca. He is a graduate from Corporate Coach University and is the Sr. Vice President of Operations for Las Vegas Athletic Clubs. He has been married to his high school sweetheart for thirty-four years. Together, they have three children and live in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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The Saint’s Way

My Personal Journey to Discovery

William St. George

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

The Saint’s Way

My Personal Journey to Discovery

Copyright © 2009 William St. George

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-0-595-46828-7 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-51865-4 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-0-595-91118-9 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 4/22/2009

Contents

Dedication

A Personal Note to the Reader

PART ONE:

Lasting Impressions

Growing Up and Going Back

My First, My Last, My Everything

The Father’s Son

A Sport’s Highlight

The Wedding Event You Will Never Forget

Knocking on the Devil’s Door

Enough Is Enough

PART TWO:

Insights: The Hows, Whats, and Whys of Life

The Wonder of Why

Why Me and Not You?

Why Do Good People Die?

Why Do People Suffer?

What I Have Come to Know about the Experience of Failure

What I have Learned about Men and Women

Why Listen?

What It Takes to Be Your Best

What I Know about Fear

What Is It about Marriage?

How to Deal with Conflict

How to Build Self-Esteem and Break Bad Habits

How to Make This New Year’s Resolution Work

Learn to Be a More Powerful Communicator

A Time to Remember and a Time to Forget

PART THREE:

What Everyone Needs to Know!

One Man’s Mountain …

Go Take a Hike

Everyone Needs a Vacation

Recapitulating

Dream On

It Is Your Life, and Now Is the Time to Live It!

Today Is the Day for Tomorrow

PART FOUR:

Religion, Faith, and Belief

Whose Life Is It Anyway?

Something Occurred to Me

Introspection

A Fork in the Road

Soul Mate

Letting Go and Letting God

Death is Never Easy

The Lasting Temptation

Thy Kingdom Come

Mary, the Mother of God

PART FIVE:

Leadership

Defining Leadership

Developing Leadership in the Family

Parenting Is Not for Cowards

It Finally All Made Sense

The Other Side of Leading

A Jaded Perspective in Serving Self

PART SIX:

Wisdom of the Years

The Blueprints of Success

50 Good Thoughts to Learn and Grow By

Pearls of Wisdom

Never Give In and Never Give Up

Dedication

It takes only one person to believe in you, and when I was sixteen, that person entered my life forever. Victoria, my Queen, you have always believed in me, even when I had doubt. You said I could, and I did. You are my inspiration and the love of my life. Thank you!

I have read but few lives of great men because biographers do not, as rule, tell enough about the formative period of life. What I want to know is what a man did as a boy.

—Ulysses S. Grant

A Personal Note to the Reader

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED to every person who is searching for the truth about who he or she is and what he or she has learned in life. It has been my challenge to use my life, instead of a fictional character, to reveal the struggles we all encounter and how to use them in becoming a whole person. I know myself better than anyone does, yet the journey of creating this book has evoked suppressed thoughts and emotions that I did not permit myself to experience before. I understand why so many people avoid revisiting old memories, because some memories are painful and unproductive. This is probably why our brains obscure them. However, some memories are helpful to expose. I have found it useful to recall many of these past events, and I realize that some of them are just that, past events, and should not have power over how we live our life today.

In my attempt to draw upon my past, I have discovered stories with newer meanings and better endings. I found a new and improved viewpoint since the first time I experienced the pains of growing up and growing older. I discovered that my past was full of richer and deeper meanings than I could have understood at the time.

My newfound perspective of my journey allowed me to reconcile many experiences in my past. I am now grateful for the building and the stumbling blocks that those situations gave me. I realized that I have heard many people tell similar stories over the years, but I never related them to my own accounts. Yet, I have found, we all have similar encounters and are not much different from one another. The aches and pains of growing up and growing old are universal.

At the age of eighteen I started to question my life—how, why, when, what. I knew I needed to make changes to have a life worth living. After I got past the poor me, why me syndrome, I was able to pull the unraveling thread and unlock the mystery of who I was and what I was meant for.

For better or worse, it was the hand I was dealt, and it was up to me to play it for what it was worth. I found that the hardest subject I ever had to tackle was the subject of self. I learned to find ways to give new meanings to my experiences, past and present. I soon looked at my life as a giant puzzle with my obligation being to put the pieces together. It would be a lifetime of effort, and I knew that the sooner I got started, the more it would come together, regardless of the challenges and frustrations. I knew I had to frame my life with a great amount of concentration, with the hope the end result would be worth it, and in time, it was!

I’m no sage, but I am wiser in the time I devote to my efforts, through which I grew and learned. I never lost my sense of wonder or childlike behavior. I explored life’s potential and the opportunities that lay before me. Yet, I found many blind alleys and many dead ends, which I had to find a way to contend with and eventually master.

My wife has been my mate since I was sixteen years old and is the best person who ever came into my life. We both have concluded that we’ve forged a new path for our family and ourselves and for a better life filled with hopes and possibilities. We both identify with the pioneers who blazed the trails in Western civilizations and who met the challenges head on. We both knew we had to exceed the expectations from our family, friends, and community that surrounded us. I lay no blame to anyone because my life offered me all the chances to find and discover life’s meaning. Because life is hard, I found that the challenge is worth the price of admission.

This book is a gift from me to you because of my gratitude of living and discovering what I learned in the process. History has taught me that the greatest gift is leaving something behind. It also taught me to be brave enough to have others follow behind and give them a better chance than I started with. Knowledge was not meant to be selfishly contained, but to be shared to make the world better for the next generation.

In my struggles I have gained a greater sense of joy and appreciation for what I have found in my wife, children, family, friends, and many others whose names I have forgotten but who have inspired me to become the best possible me. Yet, the greatest gift is from up above, God the Almighty. I discovered my faith at an early age, and the hands of God have been on me ever since. I often hear the gentle, little voice whispering in my heart, encouraging me to continue despite the trials and struggles. I learned to know I was loved, no matter how over my head I was at times and how insecure I was feeling. I learned to see the face of God in my wife, my mom, my children, and, in time, all of those in and around my life; I’m indeed a very blessed man.

This book is a labor of love and a gift. I offer to anyone who wants to grow and learn. It is my highest hope that I can inspire and motivate anyone who is searching for a better understanding of who they really are … God’s greatest gift!

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PART ONE:

Lasting Impressions

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

—George Bernard Shaw

Growing Up and Going Back

IN THE EARLY SIXTIES kids could be kids. We had forts to build, trees to climb, ropes to swing on, fish to catch, rivers to swim, and boats to navigate. Every season brought special activities. I learned a lot about life through my years of play. We made the rules as we went, and when that didn’t work so well, we simply figured things out.

My brother Joe and I always did everything together, and the wooded outdoors was our playground. Joe was like a monkey when climbing trees. He would climb the tallest trees to tie our Tarzan ropes, and we would swing treacherously between the trees. We would swing high into the air and jump into the soft marsh soil below. We would imagine ourselves as fighter pilots shooting at our enemies, soldiers parachuting behind enemy lines or, simply Tarzan dropping into a river to wrestle a crocodile.

We loved climbing, especially young birch trees. They bent easily and could catapult you high into the air. It sometimes would take three of us to make a tree bow, but the thrill was worth the effort. What a sight it must have been to watch such daredevils sail through the air, hoping to find a soft spot on the ground below.

One time my older brother Denny went with Joe and I to climb and fly. We selected a Birch tree that was little older than what we would normally select. We had to climb higher up for this one to work. As we approached the top, the tree suddenly snapped under our weight, and we came crashing down. I was a little dazed, but Dennis and Joe were out cold. It was funny to me until Dennis came to his senses and gave me a taste of what he experienced. Yet, to this day, I would gladly take a punch just to experience that rush again.

Today I live in Las Vegas, which at one time had a water park called Wet and Wild. It had a stream called the Lazy River running through it where people could sit in inner tubes and float through the park. As a kid, we had the real thing. The Little Wolf River was the ultimate lazy river. We never owned a boat, but a neighbor was always glad to share, knowingly or not. We would float until we decided to get off and explore the surroundings. We would run through cornfields and play hide-and-seek. Sometimes when we were feeling extra brave, we would sneak in to a farmer’s barn and play in the haylofts. The cows were always a fascination, and the smell is what I remember most. It has always made me wonder why anyone would want to be a farmer. Yet without farmers and cows, how would you have cowpatty fights? Yes, that’s what kids do when they grow up near farms.

My very good friend Gerry Lowney lived on a farm. Coincidentally, it was the same farm my mom grew up on. I visited the farm often, and Gerry and I would play and wrestle in the barn. I still remember the smell of the hay, the horses, and the manure. You might think I would rather forget the manure, but though not a good smell, it reminds me that at one point in life I didn’t care about crap.

The farm was on twenty acres on one side of the road and another forty on the other. The wooded area lay just past the cornfields, and still a little further up, was a stream. The property had a natural spring that produced the best tasting water ever. The water was cool and refreshing and conveniently located at the midpoint between the woods and home.

My dad grew up in this area of the countryside and would tell us stories from his childhood. Of course, he would remind us of how lucky we had it because when he was growing up, he had to walk a mile or more in snowdrifts higher than his head just for the privilege of going to school. I would think to myself, That’s a stretch of a story, but when I tell my children how I delivered newspapers on my bike in twenty-degrees-below-zero weather, they give me that same look and say, "Come on, Dad, twenty degrees below zero?"

The forts we made in the woods were our home away from home. Our hidden forts were a haven for our imaginations. We could make it anyplace we wanted it to be. It was the wilderness outpost from the Indians, a hunting lodge, a Wild West saloon, an American hideout from German soldiers, or just a place to get away from the torment of our older brothers. It was where the wilderness and a child’s imagination came together. It was also where I smoked my first cigarette, drank my first beer, and used language that my parents would have had a fit about.

The