Powerful Inspirations: Eight Lessons That Will Change Your Life - Hardcover

Ireland, Kathy; Morton, Laura

 
9780385503075: Powerful Inspirations: Eight Lessons That Will Change Your Life
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0385503075 ISBN 13: 9780385503075
Verlag: Doubleday, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

Describing her journey from supermodel to successful businesswoman, wife, and mother, the author shares eight inspirational lessons that can help change one's life and promote a deeper sense of fulfillment and emphasizes the power of spirituality and the role of compassion in her own life.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

<b>Kathy Ireland</b> is one of America's most accomplished entrepreneurial CEOs. She is the recipient of the Businesswoman of the Year Award from the National Association of Women Business Owners and will receive an Outstanding Mother of the Year Award for 2002 from the National Mother’s Day Committee. Her brand recently garnered the legendary Good Housekeeping Seal for consumer excellence. She lives in California with her husband, Greg, and their two children, Erik and Lily.

Aus dem Klappentext

Kathy Ireland first gained recognition as a supermodel, but today she is respected for her design talents and business acumen as CEO and Chief Designer of Kathy Ireland Worldwide. Ireland, independent and strong-minded, has an entrepreneurial drive coupled with the desire to break free of the skewed standards of the modeling business, that gave her the impetus she needed to start her own company. Her billion-dollar business began with a line of socks, then apparel, and today it extends into home furnishings, flooring, and accessories designed for women like herself — busy moms whose top priority is taking care of their families. She also dedicates her energy to a wide range of nonprofit organizations, many of them dedicated to improving the lives of women and children. <br><i><br>Powerful Inspirations </i>reveals the sources of Kathy’s strengths and enthusiasm, through insightful lessons that form a life-changing plan for her readers. In sharing her plan, Ireland also tells stories from her life, describing her close-knit family, the work ethic her parents taught her, and the sense of compassion they instilled in her. She offers an intimate portrait of her inner life and her spiritual growth, writing movingly of the support and comfort she has found in the Bible and other Christian teachings. She writes movingly of her failures and the lessons she’s learned while triumphing over them. Kathy’s account of her journey from the beaches of Santa Barbara to the boardroom, from supermodel to successful businesswoman provides readers the inspiration and encouragement to create a rich and rewarding life for themselves.

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Chapter One

Ins p ira t i o n
a l l t h i n g s a r e p o s s i b l e with god.
Mark 10:27

I don't remember a time in my life when I didn'believe in God. My faith came in stages. As a young child, there were a few years when my family went to church. Ironically, the church we attended didn't have Bibles. There were some books that had excerpts from the Bible, but I always had questions. Who put those selected passages together? Where were the rest of the scriptures? The message was delivered in an angry tone with a very thick accent. I never quite understood anything that was being said, but I remember feeling guilty, scared, and like I could never measure up. The whole experience felt kind of cold.

I never felt any love in that particular congregation. I am sure that same feeling can be found in any place of worship for any faith. My earliest recollection of church was that it didn’t feel like a happy place--it was just something that I had to do.

The God I knew from that church seemed unkind to me. I didn’t really like Him. I was scared of God when I was a child. Maybe it was the way in which the message was delivered, but something about that whole experience really frightened me. I was a little confused about the experience. I think my family may have felt the same way because eventually we all stopped going to church. Nobody ever seemed to have the answers for my questions. When it came time for me to go to church, I didn't want to go. I didn't understand why I couldn’t talk directly to the Big Guy myself instead of through a middleman. I didn’t get it. My mom told me some people believe that religious leaders are on a different level than regular humans.
Hmmm. They're closer to God, and we need them to translate for us. Mom and I had a hard time understanding that belief.

As I grew older, I still believed in God, but He wasn’t a big part of my life. I always felt like there were two Gods--the God I knew in my head who I loved and the God from church who I didn’t much care for. I continued to pray on my own, if only in my head. That God was great. I had some prayers answered the way I wanted them answered, and that made me so happy. The God I prayed to was like a friend--like my buddy. He was always there when I needed Him. I wish I could say that I was always there for Him, but I know I wasn’t. I found out that God is not this big killjoy. It took me a long time to understand that God wants to keep us from pain, not pleasure. When I became a teenager, I really began to put my faith and God on the back shelf. I was totally self-absorbed, and the idea of making time for God seemed like a waste to me.

I remember regularly sitting in my Spanish class, being really mad at God. I should have been studying, but instead I was pouting. I was upset with God for making me so dorky. I was in a very awkward phase. I was tall and skinny so my pants were always too short. I wore pigtails, and when I cut them off my hair poufed up big. My family didn't know about conditioner-- something I would discover later.

I couldn't understand why I didn’t fit in and why I didn't have any friends. The girl who had the locker next to mine would kick me on my way to class. Kids made fun of me all the time. I didn’t like being different, and I wallowed in teenage angst and self-pity. I would have done anything to fit in with the other kids. I was so tired of feeling alone and lonely. I would have hung out with the most troubled kids just to do whatever it took to have a sense of belonging and acceptance. I remember thinking that I would have slept with boys or taken drugs if it meant someone would like me.

In retrospect, I am very thankful that God made me geeky so that doing those things was never really an option. Even the kids who were troublemakers didn’t want to be my friends! As I sat there in Spanish class one day, staring out at the clouds, I was pretty desperate. I made a decision to take a leap. It was time to trust and believe that God loved me. He made me, and he doesn’t make mistakes. I realized that being different was a good thing. Suddenly, making fun of me became like making fun of Him, and that didn’t seem right. Physically, I still looked the same, but losing my desperation for acceptance made me more attractive to others, and soon I made my first friend, Jenny, who is still one of my best friends. To this day, the knowledge that God loves me is the greatest source of my self-esteem. It’s not from any of my accomplishments--it’s from God.

I was "discovered" at Betty Mazetti's LaBelles's Modeling School by an agent from the Elite modeling agency. I didn't want to pursue modeling, but I knew in my heart that I had to check it out. I didn't want to wonder about what might have been the rest of my life. I spent a summer in New York trying to get work and, immediately after graduating from high school, while my friends headed off to enjoy their Disneyland graduation trip, I was on a plane to Rome for my first international job. Instead of being excited about the adventure, I was drowning in self-pity because I couldn’t spend the summer on the beach now that I finally had friends.

Becoming a model was such a surprise career, and it was a very confusing time for me. I decided I'd try it out for six months, take the money, and run. I traveled to countries where I didn't speak the language, I didn't know anyone, and it was a really crazy time in the fashion business. There were lots of activities around me like drugs, casual sex, and all kinds of manipulation. It was a world I simply wasn't used to, and it was terribly lonely.

My next international trip was to Paris. I was eighteen years old. I stayed at the apartment of someone I worked with. I had a room that was at the end of a long hallway, which later on other girls told me they referred to as the dungeon. Someone who lived in the house was less than discreet with his sexual overtures, and I never felt very safe. My memories of Paris are of going straight to my room and locking my door.

Before I left home, my mother had packed a Bible in my suitcase, and it was out of sheer boredom and loneliness that I picked it up and started reading. As I began to read the Bible, I started with the Gospels, and I found that I couldn't put it down. I was riveted as I read all about Jesus. I thought, Wow, He's really cool. He’s not anything like I thought. I became a Christian when I was eighteen years old. Reading about Jesus was incredible. He was nothing like I imagined. He wasn't out there judging everyone and condemning everyone. He was loving and leading. What I learned that day of His unconditional love forever changed my life and my perspective on everything.

I knew that if He was with me, who could be against me?

My friendship with Jesus prepared me and gave me the strength to never compromise my character to achieve any goal. Shortly after arriving in Paris, I was doing a photo shoot, and the photographer asked me to take my shirt off. I told him that I wouldn't do that because I didn’t feel comfortable. I don't judge other women who make that choice. A lot of the women I worked with grew up in Europe, where nudity is more common and no big deal. I grew up in Southern California, where you can get arrested for such things. I'm a bit of a prude. He tried everything to convince me to take my top off. He showed me stacks of magazines of women who were successful who had. I told him to get one of them to do the photo. It wasn't for me. He became very pushy and crossed the line, actually physically pushing me. I'm not a violent person, but I had to physically push him back, and I walked off the job.

My newfound strength knowing that God was with me and that it didn't matter what anyone else...

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Verlag
Doubleday
Erscheinungsdatum
2002
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0385503075
ISBN 13 
9780385503075
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
184
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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