Knock Out Your Limits

By Sari Ricciardella, Marcelle Della Faille, Tom Lassila and 3 more

If you feel alone and lost, this book is for you.

 

If you are stuck in your life and dream of a change, this book is for you.

 

If you need faith to keep on moving forward, this book is for you.

 

As sometimes life just sucks no matter what you do.

 

This book offers you 6 true stories of people who have managed to change their lives. Short stories that will prove you that you are not alone with your struggles and there is always hope.

 

You are not alone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sari Ricciardella
• Release date: Aug 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393882442

Book preview

Prewords

Dear You,

When my life turned around and I was suddenly carrying on my shoulders more insecurity, fears and shame that I had never thought could be possible, I honestly believed that I my life was over and no matter how hard I try, I didn’t see how I could still go on.

Social media kept bombarding me with posts and photos of other people still going on strong, beautiful and happy with their lives and I felt more alone than ever before.

When I saw old photos of myself, I didn’t recognize that smile nor happiness anymore. I hardly even recognized myself from the mirror. I lost my ability to concentrate as there were way too many thoughts in my head - I was worrying, trying to find solutions and, at the same time, focusing on staying as calm as possible and keeping on breathing.

I was eager to hear that someone had managed to bounce back up and to overcome their struggles. Or at least, had managed to stay alive.

And I was lucky, as I eventually found a punch of people that all had amazing stories of how they had managed to change their lives either after a poor start or after meeting serious struggles. All of them had managed to knock out their limits and to change their lives.

Those people and their stories gave me hope and faith when I was desperate and in need. And that is Why this book was written – to prove also to You that you’re not alone, to bring You hope and to inspire to take action.

The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.

- Arthur C. Clarke

We choose.

With all my heart,

Sari 

Copyright © Sari Ricciardella, 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form on by an electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

From Insults to Abundance

Bonus story by Hawwa A. H. Hanjara

Just a turn back of my life.

I was born and brought up in a poverty hit family where meeting our basic expenses were a big struggle. My dad, being the single breadwinner, put his heart and soul to get me educated.

When I passed my higher secondary my relatives demanded my marriage. But my dad was very stubborn that he will educate me, at least till my graduation. Seeing my dad's hardship, I never allowed others to question him, I always put my best and I won Best outstanding student award twice and state first in fine arts.

Still, I had to discontinue my college due to nonpayment of fees, when I was doing my MCom. I did the other 3 courses by correspondence by doing my job to support my family. There were days when two times meals were a celebration. My mom passed away and it shooked my life.

In 2009, May 25 I met with a terrible accident and was left in blood. All my relatives, even those who I thought were my best friends, left me. Only one person stood by my side and took care of me like a newborn child. I was paralyzed. Doctors declared that either I will be dead or if I survive, I will be bedridden. Only at that time, I realized the value of life. We often complain about what we don't have but forget to appreciate what we have.

I prayed to God to forgive me for taking life for granted and always complaining as Why this happens only with me.

Miraculously...Totally with God's supreme powers, I started recovering so fast and all the medical reports were made false. Now, I celebrate my life full of gratitude. As promised to God, I'm putting my one hundred percent involvement in whatever I do.

I learn, I explore, I enjoy, I started living my life on my own terms with full of passion. I'm doing business in Intraday share market, I'm a certified trainer in NLP, massage therapist for women, counselor for bringing out people from depression, a partner in a photography business, model, hypnotherapist, motivational speaker and the list will keep on growing.

I'm not a social activist. I do things out of passion, be it rescuing people at times of flood, creating awareness in child trafficking and donating hair for cancer patients (I'm a hair donor), creating libraries for poor kids, etc. I won the Empowered women award 2017. I was one of the representatives of India in an International Peace Summit where 106 countries participated in Malaysia.

Today I can walk, run, dance, and at times fly.

Alhamdulillah, I thank Jesus for being my guiding force in whatever I had achieved today!

Thanking You,

Yours Faithfully,

Hawwa. A. H. Hanjara

Hawwa is truly an amazing personality and making her dreams come true by installing positive thoughts.

She has completed 5 different degrees and is a leading woman entrepreneur having 7 businesses in different fields. She has won 4 national awards and two international awards for leadership. 

Her nearby dream is to become a TEDx speaker and also to give her speech in United Nations council.  Her long-term dream is to create her own country full of abundant riches & resources!

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From Depression To Expansion

by Marcelle Della Faille

You are joy, looking for a way to express. It's not just that your purpose is joy, it is that you are joy.

-—Abraham Hicks

Part I. From 13 to 23 years old - DEPRESSION

Backs, that’s all I was seeing. Lost in my thoughts, the sudden insight I had been receiving blurred my inner vision. As a 13 years old student, I was calmly sitting on my chair, watching the scene in front of my eyes. The Teacher - the Authority -, my peers - the other actors – and myself – the Observer -, all totally convinced that we were ‘living reality’, while the excerpt we had just translated from Plato’s allegory of the Cave  had revealed to me a totally and less pleasant understanding of what was happening here.

In amazement, I stayed frozen, not knowing how to handle that ‘aha’.

Why this? Why now? Why me?

The teacher was helping a girlfriend translating part of a sentence, and my attention got back to the pleasure of changing a piece of wording mystery into light and meaning. Yes, I loved the Greeks course. Yes, I loved being like an explorer in translation, an adventurer trying and succeeding in transforming mysterious language into clear sense.

Fake! All this scene and scenery is illusionary! Suddenly it appeared to me so clearly that my teacher was an actor playing a part. And what part! Authority imposed on fragility. Assurance taking over on lack of confidence. Power over feebleness. Wow. What a blow in my face. How come I hadn’t known this from the beginning? Is this real? Is this how the world operates? Do my friends know about this scheme? Do they see that this world and classroom are illusions?

Probably not. I felt like a Queen, knowing something BIG that not so many people on Earth must have known before me. But the Queen had no empire. The empire was usurped by fake Kings, with fake realms and fake power.

How would I be able to handle this? Am I dreaming? Am I getting mad?

How can I believe in adults from now on? That was THE question I kept asking myself. In the light of what I had just understood from behind the veil of illusion, adults were unreasonable. As abusive deceivers, they acted without knowledge of who they really are. My parents, teachers, the director of the school, the priests, the government, all these people who believed they could DECIDE for me, and have power over me, where all unknowingly faking their part in the illusionary world.

I wanted to tell my classmates and the teacher about the real world. A sense of rebellion took over my whole body and I started to move on my chair. A sudden wave of anger awaked me and I looked around to see if anybody had noticed my sudden energy. No one had seen it. My inner earthquake was invisible to the outer world.

I became suicidal shortly after the awareness of my shallow part in ‘fake world’. Depression spread its root inside me, my shyness increased, and I started pondering over existential questions:

- Why live?

- What is the point of all this?

- Why have I agreed to embody here and play this role?

- How could I get out of this?

The wave of Truth created such a turmoil in my inner world that for long I couldn’t feel joyful and optimistic. Even with my rather optimistic character, I couldn’t climb the positive emotional ladder again. I was stuck at its foot, lying there, with no hope, no vision, no will. A shallow being not wanting to live, not wanting to love, not wanting to play the game. I had given my ‘resignation’. No more of this please: I want to go back to the True World. Should I kill myself then?

Writing my emotions on paper saved me. Pessimistic poems started to ‘spring’ out of my inner self. The world inside me came to my help, surging with ideas, visions, and dreams of the world I wanted to see. I started to flee my horrible despair into dreaming of living free, from my writing only, being able to spend the days as I wanted, and not as everybody around me - those ignorant adults - wanted me to be. I could see myself write my pain all day long. I practiced the vision of me writing poems about the world, about my feelings and about the blurry present I was experimenting. This lasted 7 to 10 more years.

The call to the void started slowly and faintly, then it amplified with the years. I remember being in Spain with a friend around my 20s, on a small island across the shore. The desert island was feeling so familiar to me, and I felt home. Watching at the continent from the cliffs of that big rocky island, I suddenly felt the urge to jump into the water down my feet. The rock would tear my body and ‘shatter’ its flesh. My corpse wouldn’t be pleasant to be seen floating in the red waters of my blood. The void was calling me, and I felt: nobody would even know that I’m here. Nobody would even miss me. My friend’s voice took me back to reality.

Not understanding the reason of the type of Universe I was living in – full of noise, full of false power, full of war and