Achieving Career Transition Success Through Paradigm Shifts and Excellence in Teaching

I would recommend The Champion Within to anybody seeking to be the best that they can be because it really provides the principles and the paradigm that everybody needs to embrace life, opportunities, and circumstances. My name is Justin Docherty. I live in Denver, Colorado, and I am a seventh and eighth grade ELA English school teacher. I've always had a, a real interest and a passion for reading about things from a theological and a philosophical perspective, but with a bare life application. I want things that I read to go into my heart. I want them to have an impact on my mind. So I came across, it was recommended, the book, and I thought I'd give it a go, and I was wonderfully surprised and felt very much enriched by my reading of the material. I was really been in the profession and ministry and nonprofit world for over thirty years, and I was really looking for a change in career and I transitioned into teaching. So just to equip me for that change in transition, I wanted to take on board some new ideas. And the reason why I chose that book is I felt like it might be applicable for this specific transition and change in my life. And so when reading the material, I found it to be hyper-relevant to have not just a shift in career, but a shift in paradigm. That was what I was really looking for. I was really pleased that The Champion Within, Within was able to really give me a new paradigm in a new season in my life. One of the great things about The Champion Within is the writing style. It takes some very deep and profound principles and makes them hyper-applicable and digestible. And so I did not feel like I was reading when I was reading it. I felt like I was listening to a friend or a mentor. The core lessons were absorbed just naturally. The language, the style, the pacing, the flow of the book, the way the chapters were constructed, the stories, the narrative combined with scriptural references, it was so natural. What The Champion Within did is it read two sentiments which can seem as contradictory. It combined the sentiment and the idea of grace and freedom and excellence. And what it did is it kind of sets you free to be your best. And I just think that's such a wonderful paradigm, allowing grace to unlock within us our true potential, and that's what the ideas contained in this book did for me. One of the major premises of the book is that the gifts that we have been given has really been given us to facilitate the success of others. I'm now a schoolteacher. What I'm finding is that with the spirit that I feel is contained in this book and which has been imparted through the reading of the book, I just feel like I can serve those kids really, really well, allowing myself to be ambitious, not just that I'm the best teacher that I can be, but that I can provide an incredible experience for these young people that will impact them for the rest of their lives, that I can be an example of excellence, that I can be an example of grace. I got a card from a parent a couple of weeks ago, and it just said, "Thank you so much for being a great example to my son." The word that... One of the words she used was the word excellence, and I just think that's just such a great way to serve that young man, and I just feel like that is the kind of ambition that is unlocked, encouraged in the reading of this book. I have changed my relationship that I have with circumstances. So I used to greet circumstance either as a friend or an enemy, but I actually really enjoy challenges now. I just enjoy the opportunity to grow from them because I just don't feel the same pressure to get the outcomes I'm looking for or I don't feel the same pressure to control the outcomes. One of the core principles in the book is surrender. So I don't really see challenges as an imposition, but really as an opportunity. I would absolutely recommend reading The Champion Within because of the profound impact that it will have on absolutely anybody that's seeking to be the best that they can be, that they're created to be, that they want to be. Anybody that wants to become equipped with the tools, principles needed to see challenges, to see difficulties, to see your past, to see your present circumstance, but also to see your future, but also to bring a little bit of healing to the past, to reconcile the past a little bit as well.