Quixtar Yin and Yang - from site visitors

First off I would like to say that I do not in any way hold my parents (who I love deeply) in any way responsible for this. They have been incredibly wonderful people and I feel blessed to have them in my life. The only reason they got into Amway was to try and give all of us a better life, and for that I cannot fault them.

My dad has always been an extremely hard worker. Up until I was in the fourth grade he held down two jobs, one was a paper route delivering papers from his car, and the other was a mill job at Weyerhauser. He would get up at 4:30 in the morning to start delivering papers, come home and get a few hours sleep and then get up and head to the mill for swing shift.

When I was in 4th grade the person who was in charge of the Oregonian newspaper dealership in town was retiring so my dad was able to take over the dealership and quit his job at the mill. I remember him telling us that when he quit out at the mill, all of his so called friends laughed at him telling him he would never make it, and that he would be back out at the mill within a few months (fortunately for my dad that never happened because that mill no longer exists).

In 7th grade a couple my parents had met somewhere came to visit one night. A couple days later my parents sat my sister and myself down to tell us they were starting a new business, and that this business would allow them to make more money and maybe retire in a few years. It all sounded really exciting and as a 12-13 year old kid the idea of my parents having a lot of money was pretty cool.

At this point I have to explain a little bit about who I am as a person now that I am an adult and understand myself better. I am a very loyal and trusting person. And when I trust and believe in someone I do so unquestioningly. Also, when someone who I trust says something to me, I take what they say literally and do not question it.

Since my parents were now involved in Amway, so was I. The Amway dream, I swallowed it hook, line and sinker. When my parents went to functions, I went with them sometimes. The tapes………..I listened to them nightly. The books, I read more books on positive motivation and success by the time I was 15 than most people will read in a lifetime. More or less I was a child soldier in the Britt Army.

As a part of my training in this army I was conditioned to believe that:

• Jobs are a bad thing period.
• Bosses are your enemy.
• Your Alarm Clock is your enemy.
• If you are not independently wealthy you are a failure.
• If you work for anyone else you are a failure.

If you do any of the above you are in a rut, and you need to get out of the rut as soon as possible or you are a failure.

Over the next 5 years I continued to listen to the tapes, read the book and at times attend the rallies and functions with my parents. During this time, it always seemed like the vision of success was just around the corner for our family. No matter that people were not signing up, and my dad was having to work his newspaper dealership in addition to trying to get away for these functions in places like San Francisco and Seattle, it always felt like “it was gonna happen” if he just kept showing the plan and staying positive. Ain’t it Great became a standard phrase around our house.

When I graduated from high school (barely graduated…..after all why should I worry about it, I was going to be extremely rich in Amway someday, and the guys at the rallies and on the tapes said that you did not need education all you needed was a desire to be great) I went into the Navy. Even though I really wanted to be in the Navy, another part of me thought it was an extremely good thing to do because Jo Eggers spoke on a tape about her son, and how he had joined the Navy, and what a proud mother she was although she was scared for him, and also how he was looking forward to getting out and joining Amway.

After boot camp I came home on leave. When I left home to go to the ship I had been assigned I feel it is very interesting that the tapes and books went with me. See, I had a dream of what I wanted to accomplish when I was in the Navy, and even though it is still extremely personal to me, and I don't feel like talking about it here, at that time I knew that if I just followed those books and tapes it would help me achieve my dream. Unfortunately for me, my time in the Navy came and went, and I never even came close to accomplishing my dream.

Then when I got out and came home, I got hit with another shocker a few months after that. My parents were no longer actively involved in Amway, and the people who sponsored them, they were bailing out as well. Unfortunately for me, I was still a soldier in the Britt Army.

Even though at this time I did not have a desire to join Amway (and I have never had the desire since), I had the training and the years of listening to books and tapes under my belt I that enforced in my mind what I spoke about above. Jobs are bad, bosses are bad and if you are in a rut you need to get out.

As a result of this conditioning and the triggers that have formed in my mind, I have never held a job for two years. When I have had a job I have always felt like I was failing, and that I needed to get out of it because I was in a rut. If I was going to be successful I needed to be independently wealthy and I needed to be pursuing my own dreams. As a result of this my life has been one of constant chaos, I constantly follow the same pattern in my life, and when my family tries to help me out, I hear them but I cant act on the basic things that need to take place because of what I have been taught.

Recently situations have developed in my life that have brought all of this to a head so to speak. Once again I am back at ground zero in my life however this time it is not just myself and my parents and sister who are affected by all of this. Unfortunately my girlfriend and her little boy have been caught up in it. Over the past 3 months everyone in my family has been yelling, encouraging………begging me to get a job. But each time the words job………stability etc come up in conversation my mind starts yelling out……this is bad, and yet a part of me knows that I cannot go on like this. Even though the people in Amway made me feel like if you were not succeeding in Amway and if you were not living your dreams independent of a job you could not be happy, I look around me and I see people who are happy.

Up until 4-5 years ago, I believed that it would be better to broke and miserable because at least I was free, than to be working at a job making someone else's dreams come true. From what I can remember this is what they constantly harped on us about in Amway. I felt like being in a job meant I was going to be in a rut, and that being in a rut was wrong.

Even though I have been able to move beyond that point over the past 4-5 years, I still have a long way to go in getting rid of these triggers in my head. I know I want to, but it is something that I am going to need some help with.

In closing I have this to say. Even though no one is responsible for this, and I don't hold ill will against anyone for what has happened in my life as a result of what I was taught, I would suggest to you if you are reading this that you be very careful of what you put inside your head, because your eyes and ears are like mental mouths for your mind, and you are what you eat. And if you listen to it long enough it will influence your life more than you can ever imagine.

Dave

Added Note: If you experience extreme depression, feeling like you just want to lay down and go to sleep and never wake up etc etc after you leave Amway, just realize you are not alone. Every single human on this planet who has ever lived has been wounded by their experiences here on earth, even the people who succeed in this organization. Keep plugging you are worth it.  http://www.davescorner.org/