A speaker shares how a difficult childhood Thanksgiving became a turning point when strangers showed up with food and kindness. At 17, he started helping other families every holiday, a practice he's scaled each year into a life-changing ritual.
I think everything happens for a reason. I think there's a higher purpose. I think it's my job to find it. I'll give you an example. When I was 11 years old, we had a really, really tough Thanksgiving where there was no money and no food. And my mom and dad at the time were fighting like cats and dogs. My mom was screaming at father about how he couldn't even take care of his own family. And then a miracle happened. Bang on the door. And I answer the door, and standing there is this giant man. It was this little boy, and he's holding this huge box of food. And beside him on the ground was a black pot with an uncooked turkey in it. And my father did not get happy. He looked at this man, and he raised his voice to him, and he said, look, we don't take charity. Sir. Sir, this is not charity. Everybody has tough times. Somebody knows you're having a tough time. And then the guy said something that I'll never forget. He's holding this thing, and he looked at me, and then he looked at my dad, and he said, don't make your family suffer because of your ego. So he took the food, slammed it on our table, and slammed the door in the man's face and never even thanked him. I decided that day that what this means is that strangers care. And if strangers care about me and my family, I decided what I was going to do is I was going to care about strangers. And that completely changed my life. I promised myself someday I'd do well enough to do this for other families like it was done for me. And I didn't wait till I was, you know, wealthy to do it. I did my first one when I was 17. I decided I was going to go shop for two families for Thanksgiving, and I was going to go do for families what was done for me so many years before. It was the most euphoric experience. The next year, I fed four. I want to double it. Next year I did eight, which was a lot of work. So I got my friends together and said, you know what? Instead of just going to have in Turkey, let's give thanks. Let's go build baskets with food and great stuff. Let's deliver it to people. Then we'll come in, have a big dinner, and we'll talk about we're grateful for and have our dinner. If you go do a few of these things, you'll get hooked, and you'll make it a ritual, and it'll change your life. Whatever things you do in your life, this is what it's really about. Happy Thanksgiving.
Tony Robbins Helps Her Use the Power of Her Own Mind to Manifest A Better Life
