Not my own but amazing...

This did not come from me. It was written by a man I greatly respect. I had to share it! :)
* - * - * - *

Mental Vitamin - Daring Mighty Things

Why should a person joining AdvoCare bother to get excited about having the chance to change the lives of others? Aren't we really about nutritional and sports performance products, and what those products can do to help others lose weight, look better, perform better and capture a better sense of well-being?

To really know the answer to that, you have to have been part of AdvoCare over its first half-dozen years. If you had been there, you would have heard Charlie Ragus - the Founder of AdvoCare - say on more than a few occasions, "We are really not a nutritional product company; we are a company that changes the lives of large numbers of people for the better who just happens to market nutritional and sports performance products."

Now, to put what we really are and what we really do in perspective, let me quote something spoken by Theodore Roosevelt on April 10, 1899; "Far better it is to do mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take ranks with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory or defeat." Roosevelt titled that particular speech "The Strenuous Life."

Roosevelt imbedded some other moving comments in that speech; "In the last analysis, a healthy state can exist only when the men and women who make it up lead clean, vigorous, healthy lives; when the children are so trained that they shall endeavor, not to shirk difficulties, but to overcome them; not to seek ease, but to know how to wrest triumph from toil and risk."

The calling to which you and I have responded is what I would call a "magnificent obsession" - or at least I think it could be and perhaps should be. But those gathering among us cannot all see the real "calling behind the calling." While some embrace the duty and the responsibility for finding people who are in search of hope and a chance to show what they can really do by engaging as a business builder, the majority of those who join us do so because of the products alone; they want the discount they can get by registering as a Distributor, and sharing the products with a few close friends and relatives who also need and want the products. That choice does not in any manner make those who "embrace the products first" any less valuable than those who choose to become a business builder, but it is the efforts of the business builder that is mostly consistent with the vision and purpose of AdvoCare as designed by the Founder. And, I can say without reservation that it is that same vision of "people building" that is the vision held by Richard and Sherry Wright.

Finally, let me urge you today to "dare to do mighty things" so that you can enjoy more of the "glorious triumphs." Yes, you will encounter failure, yes you will have many moments of disappointment, and yes you will discover the pain of becoming a leader; but better we should find and confront challenges than to "shirk difficulties." We have a nation to change, and we have a world to change; to do that, may we surrender ourselves to the calling we have and submit ourselves to the personal change that is so necessary for all other changes.

Remember, personal change is the one change that makes all other changes possible.
- Ron Reynolds