The 1st Principle of RELENTLESS: Relentless HEART
“When you are going through hell, keep on going. Never, never, never give up.”
—Winston Churchill
I don’t have to look far for my perfect model of RELENTLESS. Let me tell you a remarkable, magical, extraordinary story that literally defines relentless—the story of the last hours of Stella Root’s story is the perfect illustration of Relentless Principle #1: Relentless HEART.
All success, all progress, all the miracles in this world are based on heart, on spirit, on will, on never giving up or giving in—on being RELENTLESS in pursuit of what you love.
My mother and father, Stella and David Root, died of cancer twenty-eight days apart in 1992, the toughest year of my life. I spoke at my father’s funeral in New York and flew back to my home in Malibu, California, only to get a call a few days later from my sister telling me that our mom had gone into a tailspin after the funeral. Only days later, she was gone. But it was the remarkable last hours of Stella Root’s life that I will remember and cherish forever. They drive me to new levels of RELENTLESS in every aspect of my life.
I’ll never forget the call I got from my mother’s doctor. “Wayne, I’m sorry to tell you this, but your mom is gone. Her brain no longer has activity, so we’re disconnecting life support. Please don’t rush home. She’s gone. You’ve had enough tragedy in your family for one month. You have a wife and new baby on the way that depends on you. So please listen carefully to me . . . be careful, take care of yourself, breathe deep, and don’t rush home. She’s gone. So there’s no reason to rush home. Doctor’s orders. Got it?”
That was the phone message I received from my mother’s doctor on the last day of her life. Then he handed the phone to my sister (who whispered because she was afraid the doctor would hear what she had to say and she’d sound foolish), “Wayne . . . ignore the doctor. Rush home. You and I both know Mom won’t die until you get here. Rush home!”
I rushed to the airport and caught the red-eye flight that night out of Los Angeles to New York. The flight left late. It taxied on the runway forever. I ordered a car to pick me up at JFK airport to rush me to the hospital in Westchester County. But the car was caught in traffic and arrived late. Everything that could go wrong, did. By the time I walked into my mother’s hospital room it had been twelve hours since I got that terrible phone call; twelve hours since life support had been disconnected; twelve hours since that doctor had said, “Don’t rush home, your mom is gone.”
Yet when I ran through the door to her room, I heard the most beautiful sound:
Beep . . . beep . . . beep . . . beep . . .
It was her heart monitor beeping. Despite being disconnected from life support, her heart was still beating. My sister had sat by her bedside all night saying, “Mom, hang on, Wayne is on the way. Don’t die, Wayne is on the way.” Medical science may have determined that her brain was dead, but that beeping heart monitor told another story. She had lived through the night on sheer willpower.
Some might call it a miracle. I simply call it The Power of RELENTLESS.
I hugged my mom and grabbed her hand. I kissed her cheek. I couldn’t stop crying. I said, “Mom, I love you. Thank you for waiting for me. I know how hard that was. But I made it . . . and you made it. I’ll always remember what you did for me. You sure showed those doctors. With all their fancy degrees, they didn’t know you like my sister, Lori, and I know you. We knew you’d hang on to say goodbye. I love you . . . but now it’s time to go. You deserve a rest. Heaven is waiting. It’s time to go. Your children, both of them, give you permission to let go.”
And within seconds, her heart monitor went beep . . . beeeep . . . beeeeeeep . . . beeeeeeeeeeep . . . flatline. And she was gone.
Medical science may have considered her brain dead, but somehow, some way, my mother had understood what was being said. She had heard my sister’s pleas to hang on all night long. If her brain was dead, how did she know to hang on all night long? How did she will herself to live all the way until the next morning? How did she know that her son Wayne was on the way? If her brain was dead, how did she hear me say that it was time to let go? Why did her heart monitor stop within seconds of my giving her permission to let go?
My mother may not have had any brainpower left, but she had willpower. She had heart. And that’s the most important thing in the world—no matter what your goal.
My mother defined RELENTLESS. She beat cancer for six long years, coming back a dozen times, unwilling to leave my father alone. She beat the odds because she had a huge heart. She had spirit and relentless willpower. In those last hours of life, she refused to lose faith, to give up, to give in—even though medical science and the best cancer doctors had declared her “brain dead.”
Stella Root defined relentless in those last hours of her life. She wasn’t going to die without saying goodbye to her only son, her baby boy Wayne.
WILLPOWER TRUMPS BRAINPOWER
Stella Root proved that heart is what matters in life. Heart is more important than the diagnosis of experts, or doctors, or scientists, or science itself. Hard facts don’t matter when heart is involved. Heart is what makes miracles happen. Heart makes the impossible, possible. My mom’s story proves that if your heart is big enough, it doesn’t even matter if your brain is dead. That’s The Power of RELENTLESS.
Being smart is a good thing in business. Being educated is a good thing. Connections are a good thing. But they are not the most important things. Willpower trumps brainpower. Heart is the intangible that’s impossible to replace. Heart is the game-changer. Heart is that special ingredient that brings it all together to win Super Bowls, and World Series, and political elections . . . and the biggest business deals of your life. Heart is what determines champions. Heart is the thing that separates winners from losers on life’s battlefield. Heart separates the doer from the follower, the business owner from the employee. Heart, as the younger generation might say, is the bomb.
My mother, Stella Root, showed me the real secret is about testing the limits of the human heart. That’s how you define “winning.” That’s how you define “success.” That’s how you define The Power of RELENTLESS. By testing the limits of your heart, that’s how you define you.
When I look back on my success against all odds in so many diverse fields, I realize I had one heck of a “model” for success. I inherited amazing levels of spirit, will, and a tenacious, passionate, never-say-die attitude from my mother, Stella Root. I inherited the willingness to test the limits of my heart. With a model like that to follow, it’s impossible to lose faith, impossible to give up or give in, impossible to admit defeat, impossible to see any goal as impossible. That’s The Power of RELENTLESS.
Think. Think hard. Once you have harnessed that kind of power, spirit, will, tenacity, mindset, HEART, you can make all your dreams come true. You can make the impossible, possible. You can become all you want to be.
Read on. I’m going to show you how. Welcome to my world. Wayne’s World!
“If your heart is big enough, it doesn’t even matter if your brain is dead.”