The Sender: A Story About When Right Words Make All The Difference

by Kevin Elko

That’s where Charlie stumbled across a simple way to magnify his learning technique: if you really want something to stick in your mind, share it out loud twice in one day, consciously, purposefully, intentionally. He told that running back to share, twice a day, the importance of carrying the ball high. Tell anyone. Preach it, yell it, write it, tattoo it—twice a day to anyone for any reason. That way he’d never forget.

So I had a guy up front, an older gentlemen. He had a cane. And he was very curmudgeonly. He decided he was going to yell stuff at me. One time he yelled at me, “You don’t know anything!” And finally the crowd shushed him and he left. I was thinking maybe I dated his daughter a long time ago. But I did not go down and choke him; I didn’t even get the urge to. Look, I’m no superman. I’m human. I have an ego, unfortunately, I have to surrender every day to God. But why didn’t I have the urge to yell back? Then I figured out why it didn’t bother me: I didn’t come there for their approval. No, I came there to give them the best talk I knew how to give; a talk I felt they needed to hear. And that was even more important to me than their approval. It allowed me to rise above it, to take it higher.

Every morning he’d wake up and say, “God has a plan for me.”

I want you to spend time each day visualizing. I want you to have four different scripts. Write them out thoroughly. Like a dream. Coaching on the sideline. Healthy as can be. Running up and down the sideline. Hugging your ball players. Screaming at a ref because he made a bad call. Thrilled with what’s going on. High-fiving guys. Squeaking out the victory. I want you to write out another script. You and Eve in Florence, Italy. No kids. You and Eve in Naples. Drinking good wine. Healthy as can be. Just having a blast. Let’s do a third script. I want you to see yourself walking down the aisle with your daughter. She’s in a beautiful gown getting married. Emotional. Eve waiting down there for you. “Who gives this young lady?” Feel that emotion. Then I want you to see yourself dancing at the reception. Let’s do this last dereflection. I want you to see yourself winning the state high school championship. Getting that trophy. Hoisting it. Just screaming out to the crowd and the television cameras. Maybe yelling my name: “This one’s for you, friend! This one’s for you!” Yeah, baby. Charlie, there’s something to this. There’s been a lot of cancer research that says this visualization, dereflection stuff isn’t the whole ball of wax. But there’s something to it. And I want you to dereflect everyday. You’ve got time on your hands. The uncomfortableness you have right there inside you, go somewhere else. Use your eyes; see yourself as healthy. See yourself at the state championship ...

Hi, Charlie. I’m out here on the soccer field watching my boy and I thought of something. I’m going to let all the doctors and the nurses and all the professionals take care of your body and your cancer, but I want to talk to you about your eyes. Think about the car you drive right now. The day after you bought that car, did you not see that car everywhere? I bought a BMW. I didn’t know there were seven hundred BMWs on my block. I put a CB radio in mine though to make me different. What did they do, ship those cars in? What happened is, at the back of your brain, the back of your head, there’s something called the reticular activation system. You will see twenty-five thousand things today. Maybe not so many, since you are sitting in a hospital, but you will see a lot. You won’t remember seeing most of them. After you bought that car your reticular activation system changed. Now you start seeing your car everywhere. It’s the eyes. I want to talk to you about conditioning your eyes. When I spoke to the Packers the first time, I almost got beat up. I mentioned teeny-tiny Appalachian State beating the mighty Michigan in football. The Packers had a Heisman Trophy winner from Michigan. He jumped up and said, “I don’t like that story, boy.” I can only bench press a hoagie so that was an issue. The quarterback of Appalachian State was interviewed after the game. He said that they beat the favored Wolverines by watching them on film over and over and over until they saw opportunity...

We need to redirect our minds to see the things we want to see. So when I walk about saying, “Can I be a blessing, can I be a blessing?” I begin seeing a chance to be a blessing.

In Exodus 17:9–13, Moses needed to fight a great battle. He instructed Joshua to go down into the valley to fight the Amalekites, while he, Moses, went high up on a rock and held up the staff of God. And when his arms were up, the Israelites won, and when his arms dropped the Israelites lost. So when his arms got tired, Aaron and Hur came up on the rock and lifted Moses’s hands up. And the Israelites won the battle. That’s the whole thing, Dog! So let’s go over this again. You have to win on three dimensions or levels: Dimension #1: Spiritual. You have to win the spiritual plane. The lifting of the arms is the lifting of the spirit. Through prayer. Through pause of thought. Through focusing on what you want to achieve and believing. Dimension #2: Physical. You have to win on the physical plane. The fighting down in the valley with the sword is doing the process. Doing the right things. Doing the work. Focusing not on the battle, but on doing the work of winning the battle. Dimension #3: Relational. You have to win the relational plane. The lifting of the arms of one another is what to do when you get tired. We need people around us to lift us. I hope and pray that was one of the things I’ve done for you in your life. Lifting your arms when you couldn’t lift them yourself.

but people don’t understand that good always wins. Not initially, but eventually.

Keep this in mind when people criticize you. They’ve never erected a statue to a critic.

There was a guy name W. Clement Stone, who ran a really successful insurance company in Chicago. And he would get his top people together and they would chant over and over and over before they started the day, “Do it now! Do it now! Do it now!” They had great success. Most people don’t do it now.

This quote is on the tombstone of Brandon Lee, the famous Asian actor who is buried beside his famous father, Bruce Lee. It comes from a book called The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. “Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems endless.”

I want you to keep teaching yourself and I am going to keep teaching myself—others. In this self-absorbed, it’s-about-me world, we sometimes forget it’s about others. I want you to keep teaching your team. Others. Let’s keep teaching each other. Others. —The Sender

Like I told you, I ain’t where I want to be but, thank goodness, I ain’t where I used to be!

My wife, Karen, has a beautiful line, “Be where your feet are.” Just be where you are right now and forget everything else. Focus on now. Be where your feet are. Let it be. I bet right now you would love to get out of that hospital and be with the mighty Bucks. I don’t blame you. But be where your feet are. Just let it be.

Every day I want you to take time to see yourself in complete health. Vital. Strong. Keep on seeing it and I want you to chant this as you chant that God has a plan for you. Let’s add a second part. “Therefore, I will live in vision, not in circumstance.”

I’m going to say, simply, ‘I’m strong if you’re strong. Are you strong?’ and you are going to respond, ‘I’m strong.’”

When I say the name Thomas, Thomas from the Bible, what comes to mind? You probably instantly think “doubting.” You know what’s interesting? That’s not in the Bible one time. He was never called “doubting Thomas.” We labeled him. That’s what we do. We look at other people and we put labels on them. We label children. We label other people. We should not label people. Not Thomas, not anyone.