27

Looking Forward, Not Behind

“Put ideas and your definiteness of purpose to work.”

—Napoleon Hill, “Develop Definiteness of Purpose”

And thus, we come to the present of my story.

I say the “present” and not the “end,” because I don’t believe the best years of my life are yet behind me, and I certainly don’t believe that we are at an “end” of anything. We are merely at a place where we have stopped for a time to acknowledge and reflect on what has come before. Five years ago, I could have never imagined that I was about to receive a letter from an old fan that would set into motion this book about my life, a reconciliation and renewed relationship with Vince McMahon Jr. and the WWE, and an induction into the WWE Hall of Fame. Before Rob reached out to me, I had pretty much given up hope on the idea that I would ever get to tell the story of my life—or even that there was anyone left out there who cared to hear it. Over the years since I first lost the belt in 1983, a number of sportswriters had contacted me asking me to do a book with them, but none of them fully understood me, what I was about, and why I made the choices I did. Rob says, in his introduction to the book, that he reached out to me at a time in his life when he needed his hero again. Well, the same can be said for me. Rob reached out to me at a time when I needed to be a hero to someone again—to be remembered. So this project has been a remarkable re-awakening for both of us.

I have much to be grateful for in my life. I owe much to my two greatest role models, Vince McMahon Sr., who was like a father to me and the most honorable man I ever met in the wrestling business; and to my wife Corki, who has provided the stability and support for our family for all of these years. But I also recognize that the remarkable experiences I have had, and the many things I have been taught and lessons that I have learned over the past fifty years or so have left some clues that I hope others might follow. So before I close this chapter of my life, I thought it might be valuable to sum up the major lessons I have learned on this remarkable roller-coaster ride that has taken me from the farm fields of Princeton, Minnesota, to the top of the world, and then all the way back again with a safe landing.

I think of these as my Eighteen Principles of Healthy Living. I hope some of these might resonate with you as well.

1. In each and every interaction you have with people, treat them the way you would want to be treated. Be kind to each other. The fact is, if everyone in the world just did that, most of the world’s problems would be solved. I have tried my best to do this every day—both inside and outside the wrestling business—and it has served me well.

2. Find a way to get your kids involved in athletics from a young age. Doing so will teach them discipline, responsibility, and how to be part of a team. It will give them strength and balance and build their concentration and their self-esteem. As this story has shown, although I did not get involved in athletics until I was ten years old, once I did, athletics saved my life.

3. Eat to fuel your body, not for emotional support. Quality going in means quality coming out. People have always asked me what I ate to maintain such a healthy body for so many years. For breakfast, I have either an emulsification of raw spinach, raw sweet potato, banana, yogurt, a scoop of low-sugar protein powder, and strawberries or blueberries or cantaloupe; or oatmeal with peanuts, raisins, and pumpkin seeds. I also take one multivitamin and a shot of Braggs Apple Cider vinegar, which I am convinced eliminated the rheumatism in my joints. Lunch is lots of veggies and some lean protein—I don’t eat bread anymore, and I never put man-made sugar into my body. Dinner is a wrap, or a salad with chicken or turkey on it, or we make homemade soup. Basically, the more green you eat and the less meat you eat the better off you are. Doing those things has helped me maintain a strong body, overcome a bout with Lyme Disease, and battle the aches and pains that invariably come from forty years of bodyslams and suplexes.

4. Get enough sleep. Getting enough rest at night is how your body heals itself and how your immune system gets restored. I go to bed at 9:30 or 10 p.m. every night and get up at 6:30 a.m. If you are ever short on sleep, lie down on the floor, put your hands by your side, get in a relaxed state, and try to lower your heart rate as much as you can and get into a meditative state for fifteen to thirty minutes. After that time, your body will be revived and you will be able to finish the day with energy and enthusiam, but not affect your sleep at night.

5. Maintain a positive mental attitude (PMA) no matter what happens to you. Search tirelessly for the silver lining that will allow you to turn a negative into a positive—as there is almost always a way through the toughest of times. If you ever find yourself feeling hopeless, just remind yourself that—before I became a world champion—I was homeless, starving, and living in the trunk of my car. Imagine how different my life would have been if I had abandoned my PMA and given up.

6. Apply mental focus. I have been physically and nutritionally fit for most of my life. But in 1984, when I got out of the wrestling business, I realized how important the intellectual part of life was, how lacking I was in that area, and how hard it was to change something that you had been ignoring for thirty-five years. When I got my mind set the right way, I realized that it was probably going to take me until the end of my life to get my mind where I want it. And I’m willing to accept that challenge. Remember that both the mind and the body have to be exercised, and that both will get better with age and use as long as you continue to use them. You can augment your intelligence at any age—it’s when you quit using it and get lazy that your mind deteriorates. There are two books I read that helped me get my mind in the right place after wrestling—Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, and his Seventeen Principles of Success. I recommend them both to you for your thought and reflection.

7. Cultivate a healthy self-esteem. Find little ways that you can “win” every day, whether that is simply by pushing hard through a daily workout or practice, solving a tough problem, or just by eating right all day. By accumulating these little victories, your self-esteem will grow from a seedling into an oak tree.

8. Resist peer pressure, and set the example you know is right for others to follow. After my experience at the Kitten Club in eighth grade, I learned never to do things because other people wanted me to, to make other people happy, or to try and make friends. Instead, I tried to be a role model for others to follow. It was not always easy.

9. Be respectful. Be more concerned about giving respect where it is deserved than getting respect, because the fact is, when you give respect, you get respect. Teach your children to respect themselves, their teachers, and their elders. It is an increasingly rare sentiment in the world that instantly makes the world a better place.

10. Be reliable. Be on time, trustworthy, and accountable. When you say, do, and when you promise, deliver. That is the stuff that champions are made of.

11. Be self-reliant. Be hard-working and industrious and take control of the things that matter in your own life. If you depend on yourself, you should never be disappointed.

12. Save money on a daily basis. Save to educate your children, and teach them, also, to put a little bit away every day. Pay yourself first with the money you make so that there is always something in the kitty. My wife and I play a little game each day where we each try to find the most money that other people have dropped or left lying around. It helps to keep us focused on the importance of every dime, and to remember the days when we didn’t have enough.

13. Don’t live above your means. Financial struggle is one of the biggest strains on marriages and families. Someone who doesn’t have the income to support it shouldn’t have three big-screen TVs and a Cadillac. For a long time, I was one of those people. I’ve eaten a lot of tuna fish out of a can, and Corki and I bought our first house with cash, not a mortgage. Try to have at least a year’s worth of money saved up so if things take a turn for the worse, or you are confronted with an unusual opportunity, you won’t be caught short. Remember that when Vince Sr. asked me if I had the $80,000 deposit for the world title, I had the money to give to him, even though he never actually made me produce it. Imagine how I would have felt if I hadn’t saved enough for the deposit, and had been passed over because of that?

14. Find something to do that you love doing, and then keep doing it. I know a lot of people who are over eighty, didn’t retire, are still active physically and mentally and spiritually, and are still going strong. I started an oil business when I was fifty-nine years old, sold it when I was sixty-five, and am now moving on to the next exciting phase of my life as an author and a motivational speaker.

15. Make your work life fun. You can find some way to do this no matter what your career is as long as you can get your mind focused on the right thing. When I was delivering oil to someone’s house, I focused on how I was keeping other people’s children warm, and that’s what got me up at 3:30 on a snowy and cold morning to deliver that oil.

16. If you are a parent—take the responsibility to raise your own children. Don’t leave that most important work for others to do. Set rules and guidelines with your children so that they understand their purpose, and then require your children to live by them. When our daughter Carrie was growing up and went out with her friends, the rule was that Carrie had to come home and give my wife a kiss when she got home. It was a simple rule, but it was one she agreed to. We didn’t have a lot of rules at our house, but that was one of them. My wife stayed home while Carrie was young until she went to school. They spent a lot of time together when I was away, and our daughter is a mature, responsible citizen of the world because of it.

17. There is joy to be found in every day. Seek it.

18. Look forward, not backward. The past is gone. Learn what you can from it, cherish your memories, and move on. Stay focused on the many great things that are going to happen for you in your future. After I lost the world title, I thought that my best days were behind me, and that there would be no way to recapture that kind of happiness again. I was wrong.

Although the outcomes of my professional matches may have been predetermined, the story of my life, and the relentless pursuit of my dreams, is real. My American Dream was to use my athletic gifts to become professional wrestling’s world champion, and to then use that stature make a difference in people’s lives. The first part of that dream—the wrestling part—may now be in my past, but the second part—the making a difference part—is still very much a part of my present.

Rob’s American Dream is to use his substantial gifts as a writer to tell stories that inspire people, to be a great husband and father, and to be a positive influence and a force for good in his community and his world. He found me—his childhood hero, and believed in me enough to want to work for five years to bring my story to life in a way that no one else in the world could have. His story and mine will now be forever intertwined, and while I was once his hero from afar, we are now close friends, and I am very grateful for that. Having met his family and friends, and having become a part of their lives and their community over the past few years, it looks like he’s well on his way to realizing the rest of his American Dream as well.

So now it’s your turn.

First, to all of you who have ever shaken my hand, given me a high five, or cheered for me from a seat in an arena or a seat in your living room, thank you.

Thanks for believing in me, and what I stood for.

Thanks for remembering the times that we shared together.

And thanks for caring enough about that part of your past to buy this book, and to want to remember those days.

But now, my challenge to each of you is the same one I now face—to look ahead, not behind.

This part of my story is now told. By the time you read this, I will already be working on what the rest of this story is going to be. And I hope that each of you will join me in that journey as well.

Realizing the American Dream is possible for each one of us. All you have to do is get focused on what your dream is, and stay relentlessly committed to it. It is what our country was built on, it is what has carried us through in the darkest of times, and it is precisely what each of us needs to do, right now, to help our country become strong again.

We can do it together, each and every one of us.

So let’s get busy.

When times get tough, you can recall the stories in your own mind of our days together when we were both younger, battling the forces of evil in a wrestling ring, and you can draw strength from those happy memories. Or, if you prefer, you can recall the story you now know, about how, before I was champion, I was homeless, eating tuna out of a can, and sleeping in the trunk of my car in Louisiana.

If I could make it, you can too.

PMA. Always and forever.

See you out on the road!