Dance Until it Rains: Accidental Author, #3

By Andrew Jobling

Every day is a lesson…

 

Remember the old school days when you were taught a lesson then given a test? The difference between then and now is instead of school teachers, we have life, which tests us in order to teach us a lesson.

 

Lessons exist each and every day in the life of every single person. They provide us with opportunities to learn, particularly for those who are open to the lessons and who would like to improve their lives. It often takes a major event that shakes us to the core in order to reawaken us to, 'wake up and learn the lessons or beware the consequences.'

 

Dance Until It Rains shares the life of a remarkable lady, and in so doing, highlights the amazing lessons that each of us can learn, not only from her life, but also from our own.

 

It is an inspirational story of love, hope, courage and overcoming the many obstacle's life throws our way. It will help you to find the motivation to create a better level of wellbeing and a happier life for yourself.

 

Dance Until It Rains helps those who are lacking in direction with inspiring words of wisdom to live fully and in the moment and to treat others with respect, kindness, love and dignity. It urges us to seek joy and stresses the importance of learning from the lessons life delivers us and changing our behaviour accordingly.

 

Dance Until It Rains is a simple book with simple messages. Through the author's narration of his mother's journey as an immigrant fleeing from a war torn country, to her final death from cancer, Dance Until It Rains delivers a treasure trove of universal life lessons with the most important lesson being - to live life to the fullest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew Jobling
• Release date: Aug 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393684176

Andrew Jobling

Andrew Jobling is the best-selling author of eight books, a speaker to teens and adults, a mentor to many and a blogger and podcast host. His mission is simple; to create a wave of wellness around the world and help people live a purposeful life of joyful longevity. Andrew says; "We create our destiny by dreaming bigger, believing in ourselves more and continuing to act beyond the point that most people would have given up."

Book preview

Introduction

‘T he difference between school and life? In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.’ — Tom Bodett

Each and every day in the life of every single person provides opportunities to learn, particularly for those who are open to the lessons and who would like to improve their lives. For the great majority of my life, I have let so many of these incredible people and lessons pass me by as I wandered through life with a ‘she’ll be right’ attitude, just expecting things would turn out the way I wanted.

It often takes a major event to shake us to the core, to slap us and say ‘wake up and learn the lessons or beware the consequences.’ For me, surprisingly enough, the wake-up call didn’t come when my Mum was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988, nor did it come when she was diagnosed with secondary cancer in her liver in 1991. Astonishingly, it didn’t even go as I witnessed her face the challenges of the disease for fifteen years. I never really understood (or even wanted to) what she went through. I had my head firmly buried in the sand, wishing it would all just go away. That was until September 2004 — just two months before she died.

We were spending some time together in Queensland and found ourselves talking about her life and her journey, the story that I will share with you in this book. For days we talked, we laughed, we cried, we loved, and then an amazing thing happened: I saw my Mum in a completely different light. She was no longer my Mum — the giver, the carer and the protector. Instead, I came to know her as a vulnerable child, an uncertain adolescent, a searching adult, a creative being and someone, like all of us, wanting to feel important, to love and be loved and just be happy.

Since that time, I have become a different person with a renewed perspective on life. Every day is a lesson and every day offers a precious gift that is mine to take if I choose. My goal in this book is to share with you the life of a remarkable lady, and in so doing, highlight the amazing lessons that each of us can learn not just from her life but also from our own. I would like to offer you the gift that my mother, Sue Jobling, gave to me and I hope that it impacts your life as profoundly as it has mine.

Chapter One - Heroes

‘R eal heroes are those who fall and fail and are flawed but win out in the end because they’ve stayed true to their ideals and beliefs and commitments.’ — Kevin Costner

The greatest people on this planet are just ordinary people with extraordinary dreams who are willing to ‘dance until it rains’; some are famous, others are people you may never have heard of.

We all know about the cyclist Lance Armstrong and how he not only overcame testicular cancer, but then went on to win an astonishing — and record-breaking — seven Tours de France. As impressive as his achievements are, the process for achieving them was actually quite simple. The key for Lance was to identify what would give him the strength and commitment to continue to do what he needed to do to enable him to achieve such extraordinary success. His courage was rewarded with an abundance of amazing experiences, fame and financial gain. Even though I don’t know him personally, I am sure that his greatest joy has come through his own personal growth, the richness of his personal relationships and the response of the people whom he has positively impacted along the way.

Everyone has heard of Colonel Sanders, but not many people know his story. While I am certainly not endorsing the regular consumption of KFC meals for those wanting a long and healthy life, what I do want to highlight is the incredible attitude of this inspiring man. At the age of sixty-five he was unemployed, broke, and alone but with qualities that most people in his position would never have recognised. He had a recipe for fried chicken, he had faith, but most of all he had the persistence and courage to dance until it rains.

He had no money to start a business and he didn’t have any of the necessary skills or contacts. But what he did have was an idea and an unshakeable belief. He started approaching chicken fast-food stores. He offered them his recipe and asked only that they pay him a percentage of every piece of chicken they sold using his recipe.

Well, many people laughed in his face. They said, ‘Look, old man, get out of here. What are you wearing that stupid white suit for?’

Did Colonel Sanders give up? Absolutely not! Instead of feeling bad about the last restaurant that had rejected his idea, he immediately started focusing on how to tell his story more effectively and get better results from the next one.

Colonel Sanders was an ordinary man with an extraordinary desire to succeed, one that helped him to overcome 1009 no’s before he heard his first yes! He spent two years driving across America in his old, beat-up car, sleeping in the back seat in his crumpled white suit, getting up each day eager to share his idea with someone new. He just kept dancing! All he was focused on was the ‘yes’, and the Heroes rejections he got along the way were nothing more than an incentive to make him improve and fine-tune his next attempt. Who would have believed that these simple daily decisions and his focus on that one elusive ‘yes’ would have led to the incredible KFC empire that we know so well today?

And what about Nelson Mandela? In 1994, when he was finally elected president of South Africa, he said in his inaugural speech to the nation and the world:

We dedicate this day to all the heroes and heroines in this country and the rest of the world who sacrificed in many ways and surrendered their lives so that we could be free. Their dreams have become reality.

Mandela was born in 1918 and as a young child began to fight for the rights of others less fortunate. In 1948, however, the fight really began for him when the South African government introduced apartheid to totally segregate the different races in South Africa.

His vision was for the freedom of all people. His passion and conviction for his dream gave him the strength and courage to endure and overcome the harshest adversity, including an horrendous 27year stretch in prison. While incarcerated, Mandela constantly refused to give up his political beliefs in exchange for freedom and, in doing so, became a symbol of the struggle of black South Africans and the focus of world attention.

He was eventually released from prison in 1990 at the age of 71 and immediately continued his life work, as he still does today as I write this. This is a man who knew nothing else but to dance until it rains. With a single-minded focus on the freedom of people, he overcame overwhelming obstacles to change South Africa and the world.

There is story after story of well-known or famous people who have achieved great things by following the same process to succeed. However, for every person who is in the public eye there are hundreds who are not, but who are just as remarkable and courageous and who have done things just as inspirational as Lance Armstrong, Colonel Sanders and Nelson Mandela. My Mum, among many other incredible people who have been in her situation, battling cancer, is one of them. My mother never wrote a great classic, she didn’t climb a mountain or develop a great idea into a household product. Her passion was her family and friends; they were her reason for being. When she was threatened by the diagnosis of cancer, it was then that her inner strength came through. It was the love for her family and friends, and the fear that she might lose them, that sparked her attitude that she would dance until it rains.

Her goal was to live. It was a goal that she had to focus on every single day because to not achieve it would mean the end of her world. She had to wake up every day and face her mortality, knowing that at any time the fight could be lost. Her reasons for living far outweighed any fear, doubt, pain, suffering and discomfort she would experience on her journey.

The result was that she not only survived for the next fifteen years but thrived in many of the most important areas of her life. She transformed her illness into a life of significant wellbeing and turned what seemed to be a devastatingly negative scenario into a positive outcome for many people, most importantly herself.

The process that Mum went through to survive and thrive is the same process that Lance Armstrong, Colonel Sanders, and Nelson Mandela went through to achieve the things they did. She tapped into her inner power and found courage, resilience, inspiration, and an amazing strength that she was then able to harness to move her forward in her life. While her life was shorter than she, or we as a family, would have hoped, she continues to live on in our hearts and minds, inspiring us to believe that we have the power to achieve great things in our own lives.

My Mum is one of countless unsung heroes who touch the people close to them and many others along the way. They don’t do it for public attention and acknowledgement; they do it because of a burning desire to live and love.

Lesson from Chapter One

Why not me and why not now?

THE STEPS TO SUCCESS in wellbeing or any other area of life are really quite simple. The difference between those who achieve great things and those who don’t is nothing more than a decision that successful people make to start now and to finish what they started. Everyone can but not everyone will. We have the choice to stop right now and think about what it is that we really want and ask ourselves: ‘Why not me and why not now?’ Life is too short to let it just pass by, so let us decide today to start living it, let’s take control and live it by our own choices and dreams and not by the choices of others.

Chapter Two - One Year On

‘I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.’ — Marilyn Monroe

As I sit