Everyone asks me how I came to the profession I’m in. Listen, I certainly didn’t set out to become a globally recognized expert on personal change and self-development. I started out like anyone else with a traumatic past… depressed, hopeless, and failing.
I like to illustrate my journey with a little metaphor.
You see I had this car. And this car just didn’t seem to do what the other people’s cars did. My car never felt like it ran right. It sounded terrible. Always stuttering, stalling and generally wreaking havoc with my life. I looked around, it seemed to me that everyone else had the equivalent of Porsches, Ferrari’s and Rolls Royces. I thought to myself surely it was a mistake that I had such a car. It just didn’t feel right. Why was I given this car that was beat up, abused, and barely ran? A car that I was so ashamed of.
For the first part of my life I merely left the car in the garage. I never wanted anyone to see that beat up hunk of rust. I stayed away from other people with their shiny new cars. I resigned myself to walking. I stayed close to home and had few friends. Those times I did take the car out of the garage, we made it only a few miles before it would have some sort of malfunction. Limping back to the garage in my shame once again.
Then one day, a Wednesday, it struck me like a bolt of lightning. I was angry and I finally decided that I deserved to have a car that at least ran right. A car that looked OK. A car that I wasn’t too ashamed to even take out of the garage.
I went into the garage and I took the car apart. I gritted my teeth determined to fix everything on that car. When I stripped it down to its pieces. I realized with horror that I had absolutely no knowledge of how to put the car back together.
I found myself in a place even worse than before. The pieces of the car had so much damage I hadn’t the slightest inkling of how to fix them. No one had given me the owner’s manual!
My first shock wore away and I realized that I could probably hire someone to help me. So I tried and failed time and again to find an expert to help me put the car back together. To make it run again. At least to do something. Everyone I contacted had a little advice, but most said the car was too damaged to ever run again.
Being naïve and seeing no other option, I refused to believe these experts. I went to the library and started reading books on how to fix individual parts. As I read books, I bought tools that would help me clean the pieces, repair the damaged parts, and when necessary create new parts. Everyday I worked and studied. Piece by piece I worked on that car. Cleaning, repairing and making new designs, new parts.
Sometimes no one had the tool I needed. So I learned to combine multiple tools into one. Oftentimes, I invented new tools for issues no one seemed to have the answer to. I felt alone but determined.
This went on over several years. Eventually, I got that car back together. I was able to drive it a block before it quit. Then two blocks. Then a mile. Then several miles. And on and on. Every week, I was able to drive farther and faster. I learned exactly how that car worked, not from theory, but from experience.
At that point other people started to take notice of my car. And the strangest thing happened. At first a woman brought her own car by my garage and asked for help. The car looked fine to me but she said there was a problem with the interior. She was so ashamed of the problem she never let anyone get to close. She admitted she never let her friends or family ride with her in her car because of her shame.
I took one look inside her car and recognized the problem immediately. You see, I had fixed that same problem a few years back. I ran into my garage grabbed a tool, came back and had her on her way in an hour.
I never thought a thing about it. But then it happened again. This time a man came to me complaining his car had a dent that no one else could fix. I took a look, realized it was the same problem I had fixed on my car six months earlier. I told him it was no problem. I went to my garage grabbed a couple of tools and we fixed the dent in just a couple of hours.
Slowly more people began bringing me their cars. More and more. The problems with their cars became more complex. Some cars had major issues. Some were small. Some people just wanted more performance or a more comfortable ride. Some people wanted an entire overhaul.
As my experience grew I added more and more tools to my collection. When someone brought me an issue I had never experienced, I was able to use my prior knowledge and ability to again create new tools to fix the problem. Just like I did with my car.
And then a friend said to me. Ryan, you have so many tools in this garage. You’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars and years working with these tools. Why don’t you open a shop and fix other people’s cars full-time…
And the rest is history.
Obviously I don’t fix cars. I work with people. Everyday my mission is to help people just like you, to live their ideal life. To help them overcome whatever it is that stands in their way. Because as I learned working on my own “car” there is a tool and a technique for anything standing in your way. When you are ready, I will be here to help.
To your success,
Ryan Camana MNLP, MHt, MTT, BA
About Ryan:
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Ryan Camana MNLP, MHt, MTT, BA
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