Michael Stevenson

I distinctly remember feeling as if my life was completely out of control by the time I was seven years old. At that point in my life, I often felt like I was the adult in my family, as my mother was just 14 years old when I was born and suffered a viscious personality disorder:
Borderline Personality Disorder.

My childhood was a timultuous mixture of coming home from kindergarten alone as a "latchkey kid," routine Child Protective Services visits, and church members bringing us groceries when we couldn't afford them. Then, in December 1982, our little town suffered a catastrophic flood that destroyed our tiny single-wide trailer, everything that we owned, and the entire town of Times Beach, MO.

After the flood and my parents' divorce, I spent my teenage years switching Jr. High Schools twice and High Schools four times as my mother's personality disorder became more and more destructive.

I was withdrawn, awkward, anti-social and angry. Through a series of bad judgements and regretable mistakes, my life was spiraling out of control. I ultimately ended up homeless, sleeping on a picnic bench in Tustin Meadows Park in Tustin, CA for nearly six months.

While on the streets, I began to realize that it was my mind (my negative mindset and low self-esteem) that put me on the streets.

That was a turning point in my life. When I got off the streets, I began focusing on improving my mindset. I began studying psychological means to run my mind, so my mind no longer ran me.

Little by little, my life began to improve. I had a never-before-felt self-esteem. I started taking positive actions. The "curse" I believed I had was lifted, and I created success as a computer programmer in the IT industry. While I was "successful" on paper as a computer programmer I was not happy. Something was missing from my life: my purpose.

In 1998, I went with some friends to the Orange County Fair. One of our favorite things to do is see the stage hypnotist, Mark Yuzuik. He's got a phenomenal show that I could watch a thousand times. On the way out of the show, I noticed something I had never seen before – Mark's product table.

The first thing that caught my eye was his "Stop Smoking" hypnosis cassette tape. So, I bought the tape and went home and listened to it. I woke up the next morning and never touched another cigarette again. I had been struggling to quit for nearly five years and suddenly after listening to this tape, a three-pack-a-day smoking habit simply vanished out of my life on September 6th, 1998.

This sparked an unquenchable desire to discover the power of the subconscious mind. I had a voracious appetite for reading and gobbled up three to five books per week on the subjects of hypnosis and Nuero-Linguistic Programming.