Monday Morning Motivator: THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT DAYS IN YOUR LIFE...

THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT DAYS IN YOUR LIFE...

Mark Twain wrote, “The two most important days in your life are - the day you are born - and the day you find out why.” Being born was relatively easy for most of us; discovering what we’re actually doing here...is a bit more difficult. Or maybe not. I’ve found with the people I work with - and even with myself - one’s raison d’etre can be so obvious that you miss it. In fact, it might be sitting right smack in front of you.

Since my “surprise double bi-pass surgery" six years ago I’ve spent a lot of time giving speeches and writing about how important it is for women to take control of their heart health, listen to that voice inside that tells them when something “isn’t right” and save their own beautiful lives...as I did mine. But it was only recently that I realized that a good part of the “why” of my being here...is to do just that. And that maybe it was no accident that I had that surgery, that maybe I was supposed to be someone who inspired women to follow their instincts, “listen” to their hearts” and live...

I had coffee a few months ago with a dear friend and told her about my “revelation.” She knocked me out with her response: “Of course, that’s why you’re here,” she said. “That’s why you do what you do. I thought you knew that!”

Of course, our raison d’etre doesn’t have to be the only thing we do, or the sum total of all our work, or what we’ve always known to be our overriding “purpose." It can be a moment. A moment when the fact that we were there made all the difference...and maybe enabled us to know who we are...at the core.

Antoinette Tuff is a perfect example. She’s the extraordinary young woman who talked the 20-year-old shooter, Michael Brandon Hill, armed with an assault rifle - and five hundred rounds of ammunition - out of killing possibly hundreds of people, including children, at the Ronald E McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Georgia. Ms. Tuff, an elementary school clerk and bookkeeper, showed amazing calm as she spoke soothingly and even affectionately to Hill who had invaded her office. “Baby, everything’s going to be okay,” she told the extremely agitated shooter.

Ms. Tuff told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Hill was a “hurting soul.” “We all go through something,” she said, “and I believe God gives us all a purpose in life, and I believe He has a purpose and destiny for that young man, also.” Ms. Tuff said she herself had “been through hell and back” (she'd actually attempted suicide on Dec. 31st) but that she had learned to “push past the pain” and that if God allowed her to live, 2013 would be “heaven” for her. “And so I know,” she told Cooper, “that all that I went through was actually for that one perfect day..."

As her interview with Anderson Cooper drew to a close, Antoinette granted a request from the host. Anderson had told her several times how impressed he’d been by how she’d consoled and sympathized with the distraught gunman, telling him several times that everything was "going to be okay." Anderson asked her to say it one more time...for him. The unflappable Ms. Tuff smiled and said, “Baby, everything’s going to be okay...And it is.” Maybe when President Obama called Antoinette to express his appreciation for her extraordinary courage, he asked her to tell him the same thing...

“One perfect day," August 20, 2013, was the day Antoinette Tuff discovered - at least in part - “why” she’d been born.

This day could be your day. But no matter what....Baby, everything's going to be okay.

To view the Anderson Cooper/Antoinette Tuff interview, click below:

Antoinette Tuff Amazing Cnn Interview With Anderson Cooper ...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-Fu4P-45mw

6 min - Aug 23, 2013 - Uploaded by Hansel Hansely

Antoinette Tuff anderson cooper interview. tuff and the stunning 911 call she made during the ...