I wrote the book Get Back Up: From the Streets to Microsoft Suites because I honestly thought that my story of overcoming many obstacles before eventually achieving success would be an inspiration to others. While I did get quite a few comments from people who found the recount of my life to be motivational, there were also a number of readers who told me I was lucky.

Lucky? I didn’t feel lucky as a kid when I was born into a family of nine on welfare. I certainly didn’t feel lucky when years later I went crashing through a door closed by a drill sergeant, lacerating my wrist, necessitating a long stay in an army hospital and resulting in a subsequent discharge with a service-connected disability. Years later, despite the fact that the priest who saw me in the ER after I crashed my car into a tree said I was lucky to be alive, I didn’t feel very lucky. To me, luck would have been missing the tree entirely.

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