Well, hello, my friends, and welcome to Live Inspired Podcast with John O'Leary for this week's Monday moment.

We create these to help start your week on fire with a quick burst of inspiration.

Today I get the opportunity and have the honor of answering a question from one of our loyal listeners.

His name is Robert, and Robert asked the question, John, in your life, have you had to cross that bridge of acceptance?

Was there a moment, another event, a six-month or one-year or

multi-year turning point? Can you say what moved your mindset forward? Robert, I'll say this,

man, that journey and that bridge toward acceptance is one that I continue to cross each and every

single day. At the end of the day, maybe I should say at the start

of each day, I'm the one that has to stare into that mirror and see a broken, scarred up, beat down

body staring back at me. And for a long time, I allowed that image to break me, to remind me that

I'm not enough. And yet, over the course, not of a week or a single moment or six months or 12-month period,

but over the course of a lifetime, I've learned to not only accept that image,

not only accept the guy staring back at him, but also to accept the life that remains in front

of not only me, but in front of all of us,

Robert. At age nine, as you know, I was burned terribly on a fire and for a long, long,

long time I prayed that that event would not have happened. And yet, in looking back at that

experience today, I recognize that the very best of my life, including this podcast, including your

question, Robert, including the opportunity to impact millions of people through our platform,

is the direct result of the worst experience. I also recognize now that where I chose to go to

college, where I went for university, led directly not only to an

incredible wealth of friends and knowledge, but to a beautiful little brunette named Elizabeth Grace

that I asked out, and then she rejected me. So I asked her out again, and then she rejected me,

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