Take Heart! You're Stronger Than You Think

Take Heart!

You’re Stronger Than You Think

Misako Yoke

Copyright © 2020 Misako Yoke

All rights reserved.

Published by Author Academy Elite

PO Box 43, Powell, OH 43065 www.AuthorAcademyElite.com

All rights reserved. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the author.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020913726

ISBN: 978-1-64746-403-5 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-64746-404-2 (hardback)

ISBN: 978-1-64746-405-9 (ebook)

Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) printed in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Author Academy Elite, nor does Author Academy Elite vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

Dear friends,

This book is not for people who are casually seeking happiness. It’s for you, torn between giving up and clawing your way out. You and I both know that life can be cruel, quite cruel at times. The world sometimes pushes us around, presses us down, and just when we’ve gathered up the courage to get back up, delivers another blow. That’s the hardest. It could make us bitter. It could harden our hearts.

I can’t begin to imagine what you are going through, but I can relate to the bitterness itself. I can feel the lump in your throat, holding back your tears. I’ve been there many times, and honestly, I had no idea how to bounce back.

Along my journey, countless people have shared their insights and offered guidance to help me grind out my challenges. A little wisdom goes a long way—longer than most imagine. It made me realize that I was stronger than I thought. It gave me the energy to pick myself up. It made me say, Bring it on, again.

I didn’t always get it straight off; I took one wrong detour after another. I made one mistake after another. I don’t wish for a better past, but there are things I do wish I’d known back then. The time I wasted can’t be recreated.

That’s why I wrote this book. This is a book that reminds you that not only will you, too, bounce back, but you’ll also tell the world to bring it on. You’ll smile again. Take heart! You’re stronger than you think you are. Deep down, you know it.

You’ve got this,

Misako

Foreword

By Darren LaCroix

If you looked back at your life, what would you say your number one life lesson was? That’s a deep one. Did that lesson come as a result of a struggle through adversity? The best lessons usually do. When we take the wrong detours, we can turn them into the right path for our own journey.

Right after college, I went to the American dream. I invested in my own business, a popular franchise. It seemed to be the only way to acquire a loan, even with a business partner’s help. Why? Because I was right out of college and had no track record of success. The bank counted on the franchise’s record of success.

I dreamed of being a multi-unit franchise owner. I did everything right. The franchise was successful. I researched locations. I spoke to other owners. I hired a lawyer to review the franchise agreement. Paying someone $100 per hour when I had little money seemed like a stretch, but I knew it was the smart thing to do. I did more homework than I ever did in school.

Fast forward a year and a half later: the franchise opened another location four miles down the road from me. On the same road with easier-parking! Yikes! My small profits faded to nil.

I ended up working 90-100 hours per week at the store and five days a week at my day job, just to stay afloat. I was mad. It just wasn’t fair. The franchise should not have allowed it. Why would they do that to me? I’m a nice guy! It’s just not right, I said over and over again.

What would you do? How would you feel? I’ll bet you can relate to the feeling.

I was mad at everyone else, but I realized that I was the one who had created all of my circumstances. The lawyer whom I stretched myself to pay had told me that the franchise could do that. I paid him $100 an hour and chose not to listen! Though I had no business experience, I thought I knew better. Ego. Yikes. I chose the franchise. I chose the location. I made all the decisions. I created my circumstances. I am responsible. I decided to sell my franchise at a loss and was delighted to do so.

You may wonder what happened next. This is how people introduce me now :

After a failed business in 1992, Darren LaCroix took the stage in a Boston comedy club and bombed miserably. It was horrible. The headliner that night told him to keep his day job. Friends told him that his dream of making people laugh for a living was crazy and stupid. He didn’t listen.

He may have been born without a funny bone in his body, but Darren possessed the desire to learn and the willingness to fail. These were the essentials for achieving his dream. This self-proclaimed student of comedy is living proof that anything can be learned.

Less than nine years later, in 2001, Darren LaCroix out-spoke 25,000 contestants from 14 countries to become the World Champion of Public Speaking. He did it with a very funny speech. Some said it was one of the best speeches in the history of the contest.

Since that victory, Darren travels the world, demystifying the process of creating a powerful presentation. His story has inspired audiences in 45 International cities, including faraway places like Australia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, China, Oman, Malaysia, and Taiwan, with his inspirational journey from Chump to Champ. He is passionate about showing people that if you are a sponge and have the right mentors, anything is possible.

Now, it’s what I get to do for a living and teach others to do the same.

That costly lesson and experience would be exactly what I needed to prepare me for a bigger and better dream. Overcoming that adversity and taking 100% responsibility was exactly what this quiet, shy kid needed to pursue his ridiculous dream of making people laugh.

If I had not been at the lowest point of my life, I would never have tried standup, which then led me to the life I love. If my dream had worked out, I might be owning more retail franchises and maybe doing well by now, but would never have found my passion. Thank God for unanswered prayers!

So you see, failures can be our biggest assets. Can you imagine what if I kept blaming others, though? No one really wants to hear about your problems, unless they are waiting their turn to tell you how they have it worse. They’ll say, That’s nothing . . . , etc.

Blaming others is an easy way out. Sometimes circumstances are out of our control, but other times we put ourselves in those circumstances.

Are you confident enough to look for the role you played in creating your circumstance? You can be blaming or filling in the hole you dug. It’s like texting and driving: you are doing one or the other or going back and forth between the two. If we waste time blaming others, we are robbing ourselves of the very energy we need to get ourselves out of a challenge. Put all that energy on the solution.

I met Misako Yoke in 2016 when she joined my online Stage Time University. We help good presenters tell their stories and be unforgettable. Her courage, energy, and enthusiasm are infectious. I encourage many people, not all of them follow through. Misako did over and over again. When a student inspires a teacher, that gets your attention!

Misako lives a life worth watching. That’s what inspires me. It’s not the buff guy at the gym who motivates me to work harder; it’s the person who is there for their second week still working those five-pound weights. As my mentor, Mark Brown, says, Your life tells a story, and someone needs to hear it. You’ve got to live it first. The best stories come from the harshest adversity.

Let this book and the lessons from Misako’s journey inspire you to keep clawing, clawing, and finding your own unique path. She’ll help you turn your wrong detours into the exact path you needed to take on your journey.

Darren LaCroix

World Champion of Public Speaking

Prologue

I am a piece of bad luck.

From grade schoolteachers to corporate bosses, my ex-husband to television producers, that’s what they told me back in Japan. As a woman, I was born as the worst Zodiac combination: a Fire-Horse, which only occurs once every sixty years.¹ A Fire-Horse woman can deplete her family’s finances, drive her parents to an early grave, and ruin her marriage. There are some other varieties to this superstition, but the bad luck part is the same. You’d think this myth was put to rest in the 18th century, but it still holds its power. The birthrate in the last Fire-Horse year plummeted almost twenty-five percent from the previous year, and it jumped right back up the year after that.² I can think of two reasons. One, when I came into the world in the 20th century, the modern age hadn’t yet arrived in Japan. Two, people were worried their Fire-Horse daughter would be treated differently—even be discriminated against. I came to realize the latter was the real reason. The society holds the Fire-Horse curse seriously.

Oh, you, bad-luck Fire-Horse girls! I can still hear the screaming. My seventh-grade teacher was often upset about something and blamed it on our cursed zodiac sign.

You are such a typical Fire-Horse. You and your family will suffer! She screamed at me when I failed to behave the way I was supposed to. She may have been a fortune-teller. Shortly after, my father’s business went bust, and we fell into poverty when I was in eighth grade. My mother passed away the same year. My father broke my nose. The president of the company at my first job was murdered in front of TV cameras. It was a week after I started, and I learned it from the TV news—the company was a scam. A hoodlum almost strangled me to death on the street and stole my purse. I took a waitress job to survive, gobbled down customers’ leftovers in front of the garbage bins, pretending I was tossing the food. Sometimes it was the only meal of the day. I got married, but the man left me for another woman. The first hotel I stayed overseas caught on fire. I was in American Samoa when the 2009 Tsunami hit. All my family left the earth earlier than their time. The list goes on.

Oh, the Fire-Horse curse, some said. Some still would.

The truth is, although each unwelcome event was