Step 4 - The Puzzle Pieces We DON'T Choose

Hello again, you absolutely amazing person, you. Do you realize how amazing you are? If you don't, I definitely do. So hang around with me until you figure that out for yourself. My name is Sandy Boucher. Mishko Pogganong no Dam. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon Clan, a proud member of Seine River First Nation in Treaty 3 Territory in Northern Ontario. And for this week, in the two two weeks after that, I'm sharing the 15 videos from my original seminar, A Day that Can Change Everything. It's now called the Day that Changed Everything. And it's been reworked for video content. And I'm sharing it with you free of charge because I believe these teachings, these lessons, these exercises can really help you to realize how strong, how valuable is, and how needed you are. Now, we've talked about the four thank yous and base teachings. Yesterday you saw the first time I mentioned puzzle pieces to an audience. I'm really surprised no one has called me out on this in all of the videos where I've mentioned puzzle pieces. Today we got to talk about the puzzle pieces we don't ask for. I think you know what I mean.

Talk about it. Bonjour, Mishko Pagna nkwe ni tishnika. Hi, everybody. I'm Sandy Boucher. Welcome back to my world. Yesterday, we were talking about puzzle pieces, and we're going to continue that discussion today because I want to focus on something else that we didn't really touch on to a great extent yesterday. But once again, before I jump into that, we're now on video four and you're still here. Like, seriously, you probably think that's no big deal. It is a huge deal. There are so many people out there that have challenges and have problems that are not willing to do anything about it. They are stuck there, and unfortunately, they're going to stay there. But look at you. You're committing this time and this energy and this effort and. And I truly believe that you're going to land in an absolutely beautiful place just because of your commitment to you and your learning. So, again, Chima Gwech, huge thank you. Kudos to you for committing to your journey with such amazing enthusiasm. I love it. I love your commitment. This is so awesome. So let's just run over it for a sec. In the first video I shared with you, the four thank yous. And I hope you remember that the thank you to Creator, to the event planners, or the makers of our phone, in this case, to those that came before, especially those people that said no to Us. And of course, a huge chimaquich to you. So the four thank yous. Then I introduce you to the base teachings, My mom's three base teachings and my dad's one that you can be whatever you want to be if and only if you're willing to put in the work to get it done. So that was amazing. And a huge puzzle piece. And that's what we talked about last time, the puzzle pieces that are in our life. Well, today I want to focus on the puzzle pieces we don't choose. If I had had a choice, I would have been way older than 17 years old. The day I had to say goodbye to my father. I wished I had had him for way more years than that. That was a huge puzzle piece that I had placed into my puzzle that I didn't choose. It doesn't mean it had to be a negative. It was definitely horrible at the time. But I chose to hang on to his teachings and his love even after his passing. I puzzle piece became a positive in my puzzle. But still, it was a puzzle piece I didn't choose. Now I went through two abusive relationships. I went through another serious relationship that definitely wasn't healthy when that relationship crumbled. And again, we don't choose that. We may choose a partner. We don't choose lousy relationships, not intentionally. I was hoping to make my relationships amazing. It takes two to tango, mind you. And I'm not saying I was perfect in any way. Please don't take it that way. But the relationship ended. That last relationship ended. And I decided, you know what? I need to get out of Dodge. I had lived in the same city through all of the three relationships. I wanted to go somewhere where no one knew who I was and what my past entailed. That the only thing they would know about me is what I chose to teach them or to share with them. And I know it sounds horribly cliche, but I was trying to remember who I was. And my friends laugh at me when I share this with them. But I had a question that I wanted to answer. And that question was, what would I watch on TV if some guy wasn't holding the remote? And I came up with that question because looking back over my relationship, I realized three different relationships. Three entire different versions of Sandy. I was amazing at becoming who my partner wanted me to be to the extent that I didn't even remember who I was anymore. So I packed up everything. I said goodbye to my children. They ended up joining me shortly thereafter. But I moved from my Northern Ontario city All the way to the big city of Toronto. Now, when I first got there, and I mean, seriously, I had a friend down there that was willing to help me, let me crash on their couch. And I gathered all my savings, sold off everything I didn't need through caution to the wind, and I went. I didn't have a job lined up. I didn't have an apartment lined up. I just. My life was that out of control that I truly didn't believe that was worse. I needed to start over. So that's what I was going to do. So I got there, and then my friend would go off to work, and while they were gone, I would be scanning the want ads and applying to different jobs. And one day I was bored. I'll admit it, I was bored and I was daydreaming. And I just had this image in my head of how awesome it would be to be standing in front of a room full of people on stage and just leading a seminar. And almost anyone who's a creative, whether you write music or you write poetry or whatever it is, you're going to understand what this means. It was almost like it was dictated to me. So normally I would grab a pen and paper, and this day I actually raced over to the computer and I wrote a seminar. I wrote down my introduction, what I would say. I wrote down every goofy joke I was going to tell them. I wrote down when I would be intermission time. I wrote down what exercises we would do. I wrote an entire seminar. And then I lined up some stuffed animals on the couch and I delivered the seminar over and over. And I was just. I had nothing else to do that day. So I was just enjoying living this crazy dream and not really thinking what that would mean or where it would lead. I was just enjoying that moment. And after it was done, I printed it off. I just tucked it away. I tucked it away in my private papers and went back to looking for a job. Now, that day is going to play into my puzzle later on, but we'll get to that later. Now, the next thing that happened because of my age and at the time, I think it was just coming up on my 40th birthday. But I had. When I was back home, I had younger women in my social circle that would reach out to me for guidance or support, especially when it came to parenting, when they started to feel like they were doing something wrong or they definitely didn't know if they were doing it right, they would reach out to me. And they knew I had been a single mom for a Lot of years. And no matter what they had done, I always seemed to have a story of something that I had done that was even worse or had even more hilarious results. So we would have these conversations sitting at my kitchen table over tea. The problem was I was now in Toronto and they were still back in my northern Ontario city. So we turned on MSN back then. I'm showing my age here, so the equivalent of Skype, I guess, or Zoom, kind of sorta. And we would have a conversation over the computer using the webcam. So on this day, one of those young women reached out to me and we turned on the webcams and we had an amazing conversation. By the end, we were laughing and everything was great, just like it always was. And at the end, Jessie is her name, said, you know, you really should become a motivational speaker now. At the time I worked in employment and training. I had for almost 20 years. I wasn't looking for a new career path, so I kind of laughed and just dismissed it like, thank you so much, that's really sweet. And. And she wasn't going to let me do that. She said, no, no, no, you know what, I'm serious. You're really good at this. You always make me believe I can do this and I really appreciate that you're good at this. You should seriously do this. So that was the end of the conversation. We shut off MSN and went back to life again. That puzzle piece was going to play into my puzzle later on. I now work as a motivational speaker, so I think you can see where that puzzle piece comes in. So what else happened while I was down in Toronto? Well, puzzle pieces, we don't choose. September 28, 2005, a day where my entire puzzle changed. That's the day my mom passed away. That's the day my mentor and best friend went on to spirit world. My mom didn't survive heart surgery, so she went from joking around with the nurses to gone. And honestly, that began 18 months of grieving. It took me out at my knees that someone so full of life could be gone like that. I understood aging. I even understood people that, God forbid, get sick and slowly, over time, you see them withering away. That wasn't the case. My mom was joking around and goofy and being her silly self and then gone. And this rocked me to my core. This was something. Suddenly I realized how short life could be and that I wasn't guaranteed tomorrow. That is seriously a puzzle piece where everything changed. So I was working in the Employment and Training Agency. I had Reached the top of that food chain. I was the executive director. I was running a 4 million dollar company at that point. I was a little young to have achieved all my dreams. So I reached out to my kids and I said, you know what? I want to do it. I want to run my own company. I'm going to do this. I want to be a motivational speaker. So the first thing I did was I sat down and I wrote my first book. The book that shares mom's stories, that shares the things that I would share with those young women, even over the webcam as we had tea. All of those teachings as told through the days of my life. And then because mom didn't fit in one book, my second book came out. And then when reconciliation became a big topic in Canada, my third book came out. All of a sudden my career as a motivational speaker was taking off. And I promised you there was a puzzle piece that we were gonna have to discuss. Well, we're discussing it now. That puzzle piece, that seminar that I wrote so long ago in that living room, talking to those stuffed animals, is this seminar. So if you're finding value from it, know that it's because those stuffed animals thought it was pretty valuable too. And I hope you are enjoying it. The reality is that all of those puzzle pieces, even the ones I didn't choose, came together to create this life. Even to the extent of the amazing condo I now live in. I was living in a tiny, modest apartment that picturing myself as a struggling entrepreneur, even though I had already been in business for like six, seven years at that point, a friend of mine who's a land developer and works in the real estate area, had built all these condos. I knew he was having trouble marketing them. Marketing I really enjoy. I reached out to him, crazy idea, sent him a text. You know what? I can help you with the marketing. If you give me a great deal on a condo, I will never forget it. I got a one word answer. Deal. When you start believing it's possible, crazy things can happen. My publisher Back to my books found me on Facebook. That's a whole other story. You never know when the simplest of puzzle pieces can add up to be your amazing life. And the reality is, I now have a life better than I ever imagined. I tell everyone I passed my dreams about four years ago and it just keeps getting better. So that's my story. Now it's your turn. What days of your life or events in your life changed your life? What were those moments that changed your thinking or changed your path or you know, you lost a job, or you got a job, you met a partner, you lost a partner. What were those days or events that changed your life and what changed as a result? Did your career path change? Did your outlook on human beings change? Did you outlook on yourself change? We got to identify this thing. And while you're at it, when you identify what changed, you should probably identify whether it changed for the better or the worst. Did it get worse? Did it get better? We need to know that. And this is the challenge part, because we can always flip the coin. If something happened in your past and it changed your life for the worse, could you make it better now? Could you change the way you look at that? Could you choose to take the teachings from it and leave the rest? As my mom would say, we don't need to hang on to the negative. My mom would say, take the lessons, leave the rest. So what can you take from it that would benefit you? Can you leave the rest? The choice is yours. We have another video for you and I can't wait to share it with you. Until then, remember, I believe in you and I hope you're starting to believe in you too. I love you. Talk to you soon. Bye. Bye.