Rembrandts In The Attic

Foreign. Rembrandts in the Attic. Okay, this might be the strangest title I've had for this entire podcast series, but here's what it's all about. It's a real estate metaphor. Imagine that you are out shopping for a farmhouse and. And there's a beautiful farmhouse. It has a nice barn, it's really gorgeous. It's a little old, it's run down and they want $200,000 for it. You're thinking it might be worth $200,000, but I'm probably going to put in a low ball offer, aren't I? Now I walk in there and I'm touring around. I look through the living room and it's an all in sale. It's an estate sale. When you buy it, you get everything in it. And then I make my way up to the attic, and in the attic, you know what I find? I find boxes of old junk. And. And then there's this one against the wall, leaned up, there's this one pile of paintings. And I'm just looking at them out of weird curiosity. I don't care about the paintings. But wait a second, isn't that a Rembrandt? Am I willing to pay 200,000 for the house now? Maybe half a million. Maybe I'm willing to pay a million for this house now. But you see, the people who owned it, they had lost track of that Rembrandt. They had lost track of its value. And I want to suggest to you that right now, right in this moment in you, there are stories, life experiences, observations, perspectives, strategies that you have locked away in there. And they're Rembrandts because to you, you already have them. You don't know the value of them because they already solved the problem for you. You don't think of them as the gold that they really are. And so one of the things I want you to think about is when you look at your life experience, and when I say life experience, I mean any experience that made you feel. If it made you feel bad, it made you feel good, if it made you excited. And the more intense the feeling was, the more valuable that story probably is to the right person. I want you to start to think to yourself, who might benefit from this. Years and years ago, I was working at a gas station. I was filling up a car with gas and the gas sprayed out of the tank all over my uniform. I walked inside and one of my co workers flicked a lighter at me in a bit of a joke, a bad joke to be sure, but I caught on fire. And luckily for me, if you can think of any luck in that situation, all that caught on fire was my arm. I spent the next six weeks in the hospital. I was told that I'd probably not regain the use of my right hand. Luckily, I did. Now the question is, is that story valuable to anyone? It really is. You want to know who it's valuable to? The kids that are just now starting to think about experimenting with fire. I was walking down the street in the UK one day. I was just outside London, and it was near Guy Fawkes Day when everybody's letting off fireworks. These kids had fireworks in the streets. They were lighting them, and at one point, they lit one of them upside down, and they sent these, like, sparks flying all over the street. And one just missed me. One hit another car, and everybody kind of freaked out. I walked over to the kids and I said, hey, guys, something you need to know about burning is that it is truly one of the most painful experiences a human being can ever have. And I pulled up my sleeve and I showed them the scarring on my hand. And I explained to them that they had to take the skin off both of my legs to rebuild my arm. The kids walked away and left their fireworks on the street. Now, I don't know what I saved them or what I saved somebody else that day, but every life experience that you've had that has caused an emotional response for you is valuable to somebody. And so you have Rembrandts in the attic. Your job is to find them and share them. It's your responsibility and it's your privilege, Sam.