This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s Fountain of Youth Summit, which can be found at http://fountainofyouthworldsummit.com. In this excerpt, Donna Krech shares her story of going from broke and depressed to fit and successful.
The Fountain of Youth World Summit with Donna Krech writer, speaker and “belief builder.”
Kevin: This is going to be a lot of fun and I don’t like to waste any time, so let us get right into it. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your story and why you are here on the phone now.
Donna: Here’s the situation. I have always been a pretty motivated person, as far as, if I saw something I wanted, I would have the inspiration or at least the aspiration to go after it, and I would get involved in success seminars or company training programs or, who knows, new fitness programs, weight loss programs, budgeting plans, whatever! And would be completely motivated about it and then would look up a few days later only to find that I wasn’t working on it anymore. Well, some time would pass, I would find the next thing and I would be totally jazzed and this time this is going to be it, this was going to be my wealth building planner, this was going to be the one that got my body ripped or whatever the case was, and I would look up a few days later and guess what? I wasn’t motivated again. I had just stopped and what we will talk about a little bit later on the call is I figured out how to figure out what was going on, what was zapping my motivation.
First of all, that the motivation was getting zapped and then what was zapping it and, more importantly, how to make it ongoing and never ending, but as far as the overall story goes, I was raised in a family with seven children. My father was an alcoholic. My mom was the breadwinner and she was in sales. Shocker! And I found myself in 1982 pushing a baby stroller in Midland, Texas. They weren’t paved roads, they were bumpy gravel and I am pushing my baby in the stroller and I am walking to a carryout to buy her milk and I can hear the change jingling in my pocket and I am sobbing, just sobbing out loud as I am pushing her because I know it’s the last money I have on earth, and I am wondering how I am going to feed her the next time she is hungry. That is probably the worst feeling anybody can ever have, and now the blessing of that feeling though is that it changed me. As I am sobbing not knowing what I am going to do, somewhere in the back of my mind, because I will tell you I don’t remember identifying it at that moment, but somewhere in the back of my mind I said, “This is not going to happen anymore.”
I will tell you that I wasn’t just penniless, I was also married, unfortunately, to someone who had a lot of addictions and those addictions went all the way to extremes. When I was depressed, when I put her to bed at 7:30 at night, I would go to bed at 7:30 at night and I know what that is like to be overweight. I was overweight, I was depressed, I had no money and as time moved on and I came back to Ohio and started with a part-time job, went to a fulltime job, went into management, went into sales, went into business ownership. With every level that I moved up, I found how to maintain motivation better, the sizes were dropping and I was making more and more money and I am still humbled and I do not know how many times I have said this to people, but I still find it all-inspiring when I can say to you out loud that by the age of 33, I was an American millionaire and today, I own multiple companies. We have about eight thriving companies.
Kevin: Wow! That’s fantastic. And, you know, I think a lot of the people who are listening can identify with the depression, some of the feelings of hopelessness that you had, and I think that even in terms of, not even in terms of just wealth, but in terms of their health, and what can you say to some of these people who are in that situation right now that maybe what…maybe give some examples of what you used to get yourself out of that.
Donna: Oh, boy! You know what, the very first step I took is I got around some people who are going to speak some life into me, and I got around some people, now certainly this call and the series of calls is a great place to start. Also, just getting around people who will speak life into you and that means going to where they are, so you and I both know that could mean a fitness club, it could be joining a personal development group, getting around family who is positive, maybe you’ve gotten away from them and kind of getting away from the negative forces in your life, that’s the first thing that I did and from there, we began to go through how to build motivation by defeating what I love to call the motivation assassinators because they’re out there and we’re not aware that they’re out there, but once we’re aware that they’re out there, Kevin, it’s literally magical because that’s how I changed everything. I began to build on the storehouses that keep motivation going and growing; and therefore, I never have to go get re-motivated again.
Kevin: OK.
Donna: Too often, we have to go get re-motivated, so when you understand how to build motivation on an ongoing basis, then the moment the motivation starts to dwindle, you can instantly identify what is going on and you can defeat the motivation assassinators and go right back into building again. So, I would say the overall answer, what I personally did was I started with my surroundings and I started with what was being spoken into me, that it might be building and improving your focus. What do you want? Why do you want it? It might mean learning how to change your belief, which we will talk about a little bit later, but it may be identifying that you’ve got some habits that need some altering or emotional reactions that need to be turned into emotional responses. Mine was surroundings. It could be time management. It could just be in this world we live in. We’re so doggone busy that we don’t realize that what you talked about was like depression. You don’t realize that you’re so doggone busy, it’s feeding the depression. These things are so intricately tied together that when you begin to build never-ending motivation and defeat the motivation assassinators, you start overcoming all kinds of other obstacles because things are so intricately “tied together,” so whether it’s weight loss, whether it’s fitness, which is the industry that I’ve been in and all our brick and mortar locations since 1982, it could also be success, making money, building relationships, which is the speaking and writing that I do. The stuff, the secret stuff that works is the same stuff no matter what the category.
Kevin: Yeah, that’s fantastic! Now, isn’t it hard to change your environment?
Donna: You know, it is one step at a time. We can be tied to people that…or the attitudes of those people because we think there’s a sense of security there. Somebody who has really applied the never-ending motivation concept, as a matter of fact, was involved in a relationship that was very unhealthy and, I mean, she had become completely unfit, she was making no money and she was in a company that had just unending income potential for the position that she was in. I mean, she just found herself so down and when she started studying never-ending motivation, she realized that her surroundings were the real thing that was bringing everything else down, and she just started taking a step and I’ll tell you quite frankly, she didn’t shift it all overnight. She identified it first, and then she took one little step of starting to add some more positives in her life. She did not just get rid of that negative overnight. She just began to add a piece of positives and she got involved in a personal development program. She got headed back to the gym again. She started pouring some good stuff in her mind for her sales position with work and started hanging around people that were already being successful and it just kind of began to happen, it began to build. She didn’t do it all at one time, so I think the hard part is not adding the good stuff, I think the hard part is letting go of the bad stuff.
Kevin: OK.
Donna: And so, we need to add something good realizing that you really don’t get rid of habits, you replace them, and so you replace the ones that aren’t so good with good ones. Well, the same thing is true with surroundings, as you begin to add more good into your life. There just isn’t room for the not so good anymore.
Kevin: Right. And in your opinion, how strong is the relationship between your health and the relationships and your interactions with people and other things around you?
Donna: Crucial. It’s crucial. I think that if you want to be ultimately fit and at at-a- goal weight and, you know, live until 120 years old of age, I think that you…law of attraction, you know, you want to talk about where you are as if you’re already there, and in that where-you-are statement is everything that you want including your health. Well, you need to be hanging around people who get that, who talk that way as well. You needn’t think about your goal everyday. The thing that is so inspiring to me and this is why I do what I do, you know, people have said, “Gosh, you’re on weight loss, you’re in fitness and there aren’t a lot of people that are in both,” and “Oh my Gosh! You’re in personal development too, Donna, you know, isn’t that complicated?” You know what, Kevin? To me, it’s a no-brainer. Those three match so intricately that whether you want my help with building your business, growing an empire, making more money or getting down to a size 4 if you’re a woman, I can do that because they’re all tied together so much. They just match. If I’m hanging around the people who get again, for example, law of attraction or if I am speaking that way, if I am focused on my goals, people who achieve fitness goals and who achieve money goals or success goals, think about it. They are of a disciplined mindset. If you have a disciplined mindset to achieve one goal, it just became about 300% easier to achieve another goal. So it’s just, it’s really a matter of which direction you put your attention at, but the character traits are the same no matter what the goal is. So, when you find somebody who has achieved a goal, I can take that person and literally help him achieve any goal they ever, ever wanted to achieve in their life because the disciplines and the attitudes and the beliefs, they are all foundational.
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