Urban Report

Personal Testimony

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Yvonne Lewis (Host), Tim Allston

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Series Code: UBR

Program Code: UBR000229A


00:01 Stay tuned to meet a man who's been fired 13 times,
00:05 never ever received a job promotion,
00:08 and 39 years of employment
00:10 and has been employed in most jobs
00:12 only for a total of 3 years.
00:14 You'll find out how his life has changed
00:17 and how you can change yours as well.
00:19 My name is Yvonne Lewis
00:21 and you're watching Urban Report.
00:46 Hello and welcome to Urban Report.
00:49 My guest today is Tim Allston, he's an author, speaker,
00:54 and he wrote Introduction to Ego Holistic Recovering.
00:59 Welcome again to Urban Report.
01:02 Thanks, Yvonne. Thank you.
01:03 I say again because you've been on Urban Report before.
01:07 I think you were on with Jason and he interviewed you at ASI.
01:11 And you interviewed me at ASI in 2012 in Cincinnati.
01:15 That's when I worked for Oakwood
01:17 before it fired me for the third time,
01:19 but I'm getting ahead of myself.
01:21 Well, see we can laugh about that now,
01:23 but I'm sure as it was happening,
01:25 it wasn't funny.
01:26 Let's talk about you for a minute, your journey.
01:32 You have been this remarkable PR person.
01:37 I mean, I met you years ago and I had heard about you
01:41 through my cousin Patti Conwell, who...
01:44 My mentor. Oh, was she? Oh, wow.
01:46 Is she your mentor? She is my mentor.
01:47 Yeah, she likes to say that I'm her mentor,
01:48 but she's really my mentor.
01:50 She's incredible. She's incredible.
01:52 She had told me about you years ago.
01:55 And then I met you for myself
01:57 and I just have been so impressed.
02:00 And I think this is probably not good
02:03 given the fact that you wrote a bit on the egotism,
02:08 but anyway, I just have to say the gifts that God
02:11 has given you have been enormous,
02:15 and yet, you call yourself a celebrated serial failure.
02:21 Yes. Explain why?
02:23 Surely.
02:24 Like you, Yvonne, I had everything.
02:28 I was raised in a Christian home,
02:30 loving Christian parents,
02:32 raised us in church school,
02:33 Seventh-day Adventist church school,
02:35 but I did not appreciate the wealth that I had
02:39 and so after going through years of church school,
02:41 going through all of that process,
02:44 at the end of ninth grade,
02:46 when I was in Greater Boston Academy,
02:47 I got tired of being good,
02:51 I got tired of being a good boy.
02:54 I wanted to go out and to see what the world had to offer
02:58 and I begged my parents
02:59 in that summer of 1969 at age 14,
03:02 "Please let me leave church school to go to see
03:06 if all of this background you've given me
03:09 can stand the test of time."
03:11 And so reluctantly,
03:12 Thursday morning, July 24, 1969,
03:16 my father and I were riding in the car
03:18 and he said, "Tim," he said,
03:19 "you've never really given us any real problems.
03:22 You want to go to public high school,
03:23 to a local public high school,
03:24 Everett High School, Everett, Massachusetts.
03:26 He said, "For this first year, we will, Mommy and I,
03:29 your mother and I will allow you
03:31 to go to public school."
03:32 I was stunned
03:34 because my parents believe in SDA education
03:36 and then there's nothing.
03:37 They believe in the three braided cord
03:39 and that is church at home,
03:41 church at school, church at church.
03:44 And so for them to have made that decision,
03:47 I was stunned and what I did was,
03:49 sitting in my car, in my parent's car,
03:52 in a 1961 Chevy Parkwood station wagon,
03:55 sitting in the passenger seat,
03:57 I looked down at the dashboard clock,
03:59 it was 11:38 in the morning.
04:01 And I said, "Remember this, is a red letter day."
04:03 I was stunned.
04:04 But then my father said something
04:05 that was very prophetic.
04:07 He said "Timmy," that's what they called me,
04:08 "we know what's going to happen,
04:11 but you need to experience it for yourself."
04:13 Looking back now,
04:15 it was arguably the worst decision
04:17 I had ever made.
04:19 There's nothing wrong with public school,
04:21 however, I had been in faith-based school
04:24 all that formal education.
04:26 In faith-based institutions, whether Seventh-day Adventist,
04:28 Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopal,
04:30 the focus is on Jesus.
04:33 Everything is measured up to Jesus.
04:36 So it is Christ centered or Christocentric.
04:39 When you leave a faith-based environment,
04:41 and for me, going to a public, even a private school,
04:44 the emphasis is about you, developing you,
04:48 be all that you can be, be the best,
04:49 so the focus is not Christ centered,
04:53 it's self centered, or egocentric,
04:56 and what began then was a slow imperceptible slide.
05:01 What I did was,
05:02 and it resembled the prodigal son story.
05:05 I said to my parents, "Give me my inheritance.
05:09 Give me my space."
05:10 So they gave me my S, my smarts,
05:13 they gave me my P, my principles,
05:15 they gave me my A, my sense of articulation,
05:18 they gave me my C, my charm and charisma,
05:21 and they gave me that E,
05:22 which to some say
05:23 I was probably easy on the eyes.
05:25 So I took that S-P-A-C-E and went out there,
05:28 but because I had no spiritual moorings,
05:30 I became the S-P-A-C-E, space cadet.
05:35 It's not funny.
05:36 Is it, is it,
05:37 looking back on it now is very funny.
05:39 I mean, I achieved all kinds things.
05:41 I was the state oratorical champion.
05:43 I lettered in sports, you know, I got scholarships
05:47 but little by little by little
05:49 my spiritual moorings began to slip away.
05:53 Went into college, the same kind of things,
05:55 became involved in my fraternity,
05:56 became student body president,
05:58 had job offers,
05:59 but I began to slip away little by little.
06:03 So that three-braided cord
06:04 first got broken by me leaving church school.
06:07 And then when I went away to college
06:08 and didn't go to a faith-based college,
06:10 that was another cord that broke,
06:12 and not being home,
06:14 so all three chords were broken up.
06:16 I was drifting,
06:18 but I was pimping off of the values and experiences
06:22 and exposures from a Christian home,
06:25 a Christian school, and a Christian church,
06:27 but little by little, it was eroding.
06:30 So you saw...
06:33 When you made that decision,
06:36 you had no idea
06:38 that your persona was going to change?
06:42 No. My parents knew.
06:44 That's why my father made that prophetic statement to me,
06:46 "Timmy, we know what's going to happen,
06:47 but you need to experience it for yourself."
06:49 No, I had no idea because I was living that life,
06:53 I was enjoying it, I was getting attention,
06:55 acclaim, awards, speaking engagements,
06:59 all types of different kinds of things
07:01 that meant a lot to me
07:03 as a young man, a young teenager, young adult,
07:06 but my spiritual underpinnings were slipping away.
07:10 And so as your parents saw this happening,
07:13 were they saying to you, like, "We see that you're changing,"
07:18 or did they just kind of let you
07:21 see for yourself that you were changing
07:23 and just kind of not sweep it under the rug
07:27 but they might not have brought it to your attention?
07:30 In hindsight now, it grieved them,
07:33 it pained them, and I'll give you an example,
07:36 but they also understood that "He's an adult,
07:39 he's got to make his own adult decisions,
07:44 we can tell him what to do,
07:46 but he needs to experience it for himself."
07:48 But the other part
07:49 where they sit and sincerely believed,
07:52 train up a child in the way he should go
07:53 and when he gets old, he will not depart from it,
07:55 even though it took this person 40 years to get it.
07:58 Let me give you an example, when I was in college,
08:01 my grades started slipping, slipping, slipping, slipping,
08:04 yet the school was still sending me out
08:06 on speaking engagements to alumni, to this, that,
08:07 and the other until my mother who was an academic,
08:12 working at Oakwood College,
08:13 sent a letter to the school
08:14 and forbade them from sending me
08:16 on any more trips
08:17 because she said
08:19 I was not academically representing them, reluctantly,
08:22 they went along with it,
08:24 but they knew that I was representing them
08:27 on the surface of things.
08:30 So they in their own way
08:32 were allowing me a level of independence,
08:35 but they never stopped praying.
08:38 Any time I would call home which was few and far
08:40 between because I was living that life,
08:43 phone conversations were always punctuated with the statement,
08:45 "Timmy, we love you and we're praying for you."
08:49 And that is the...
08:51 That was the chewing gum and bailing wire
08:54 that held me together against my own wishes.
08:57 Did you continue to go to church
08:59 when you went away to college?
09:01 See that's an ugly question. That's an ugly question.
09:03 Especially since your mom is sitting
09:05 in the audience right here, right?
09:06 Yeah, that's an ugly question. Let me tell you what I did do.
09:09 If I knew I was going back home,
09:10 and by this time my parents and family had moved
09:12 from Greater Boston to Huntsville, Alabama,
09:14 where Mom and Dad accepted administrative
09:16 staff positions at Oakwood College,
09:17 which is my mother's alma mater.
09:19 Whenever I would go home to visit,
09:24 shame on me,
09:26 I would attend church the Sabbath
09:28 before so that I could at least be up
09:31 on whatever the issues were in the church.
09:33 So whenever I rolled home,
09:35 I would at least be somewhat conversant
09:36 if something came up.
09:38 I mean, I can remember...
09:39 You're really pulling a scab off now.
09:42 I mean, I can remember times when I would call home
09:45 and Mom would say,
09:47 she would wait till the end of the conversation
09:48 and she would say, "Have you been to church?"
09:50 And I would say, "Mom," I said,
09:52 "I was just too tired to go to church,
09:54 or if I go to church,
09:55 I'm gonna fall asleep and I know it,
09:57 in service you."
09:58 And so, she would say,
10:00 "Well, typically, you fall asleep on Sabbath
10:02 if you're too busy on Friday night."
10:04 Oh, Mom!
10:09 But she was the first one to bust me.
10:11 She was the one, when they had decided,
10:14 we're not paying any more tuition
10:16 to that good school
10:18 when we have a school that's training people
10:20 for the kingdom.
10:21 And I made a decision, "I'm not coming."
10:23 My mother said to me, she said, "Yeah,
10:24 we don't have all the things
10:26 that your alma mater has, all young ladies,
10:29 they were long skirts, they carry big Bibles,
10:30 they wear no make up.
10:32 We don't have all the allurements
10:33 of that at the school."
10:34 She said, "Hampton", which was my school, Hampton,
10:37 "This is not your problem, your ego is your problem.
10:39 You can't see yourself coming to little bitty Oakwood."
10:42 And I dismissed it,
10:44 but it came back to bite me some 32 years later.
10:48 So you never did go to Oakwood?
10:50 Never attended Oakwood.
10:51 Because you thought that Oakwood was not...
10:55 it didn't measure up for you.
10:56 Didn't have all the horns and whistles,
10:58 you know, I regret it now.
11:01 I mean, when I finally married,
11:02 ultimately married and my wife was an Oakwood grad,
11:05 we went back to her first alumni weekend
11:08 in 1995 as a husband and wife.
11:12 She introduced me to her friends
11:13 and my wife is very much unlike me.
11:15 She's very unpretentious, very, very unpretentious,
11:18 very much a wallflower,
11:19 very much in the shadows, unlike me.
11:22 But she would introduce me
11:24 to some of her best friends in school,
11:25 some people who were real close,
11:26 people who played softball with here,
11:28 people, you know.
11:29 As we're driving back,
11:30 I was working at Hampton during that time,
11:32 I began to think about recap the weekend.
11:35 And there was something that I noticed
11:38 about the majority of her friends.
11:40 The majority of her friends
11:42 had all had the same first name, Doctor.
11:47 Dr. Reggie Coupwood,
11:48 Dr. Dwayne Harrison, Dr. Kathy Arthur.
11:53 And I said to myself, I could have been like that,
11:58 but I went to school, went to college
12:01 not for the pursuit of happiness,
12:04 I went for the happiness of pursuit.
12:09 And when I look back on it now,
12:12 you know, I should have a granddaughter
12:16 or grandson in college if I had been focused,
12:21 but I was so busy trying to run away
12:23 from all of those basics
12:25 my parents instilled and embedded within me,
12:27 I was running in the opposite direction.
12:29 You know, I should have been more focused,
12:32 but I was trying my best not to be,
12:33 but God allowed me down this path
12:36 until I hit rock bottom and woke up.
12:39 And let's talk about that.
12:41 Before we get there though,
12:42 let's talk about
12:44 where God had taken you to hit rock bottom from?
12:48 God had allowed me to, upon graduation,
12:52 even though I graduated with a 2.2 average,
12:56 which was basically a C minor. C.
12:59 Yeah. I had seven job offers.
13:02 Why did I have seven job offers?
13:04 Because I was pimping that SDA culture,
13:08 from all of those years in Sabbath school,
13:12 learning memory versus,
13:14 reciting all of them for 13th Sabbath,
13:17 for whenever there was a Youth Day program,
13:19 being that speaker.
13:20 And from growing up in church and church school,
13:23 where everything boiled down to principles, as a result,
13:28 I went to college and I became an English major.
13:32 And I became an English literature major.
13:33 and the reason I became
13:34 that is because I would go into class,
13:38 had not read the literature,
13:40 could not answer who said what to whom,
13:42 but any question that was philosophic in nature,
13:47 because they're all boiled down to principles.
13:49 So I was pimping the culture of being an Adventist,
13:54 I was pimping that culture.
13:56 So as a result of that, I ended up working
13:58 for the world's largest public relations firm
14:00 in New York, Burson-Marsteller 1977,
14:03 received the top award,
14:04 the Silver Anvil Award part of my team
14:06 which is the Oscar.
14:07 The next month I got fired.
14:09 Why did you get fired?
14:11 You got the Oscar. Yes.
14:13 The Oscar, for public relations.
14:18 Why did you get fired?
14:19 As my mentor told me who recruited me,
14:22 "Tim, you are more of a personality
14:26 than a professional."
14:29 Unpack that for us.
14:31 I was the good times guy.
14:33 I mean, I was the one who was leading the parties
14:36 whenever we had parties.
14:37 I was the socialite at the receptions.
14:40 You know, I had just enough writing skills to get by.
14:43 I was in media relations.
14:45 I was one who would book Media for different clients,
14:48 book different shows like Good Morning America.
14:50 So I knew how to sell.
14:52 But in terms of being a marathon runner,
14:56 a long-distance person,
14:58 I was so busy skimming off of the top.
15:01 After a while in 1978,
15:03 when we had an economic recession,
15:06 the economy swung down.
15:08 I was not necessary. I got swung out.
15:12 That happened again some six years later
15:15 when I went to work for Hill and Knowlton,
15:18 which was then the world's largest
15:19 public relations firm headquartered in Chicago.
15:23 I had just, in 1986, won the John Hill Award,
15:26 the top award for the company.
15:28 Five months later, I was fired, the same thing.
15:32 And what I learned was the fact I was good enough to get in,
15:38 but not excellent enough to move up.
15:40 But how did you get those awards
15:42 if you weren't performing adequately?
15:45 How did you get awards for performance
15:48 and then get fired?
15:50 My belief is this, I'm glad you asked,
15:53 God always had a plan for me
15:57 whether I could see it or not.
16:00 I had an experience in 1977 with my college fraternity,
16:03 Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity.
16:04 I was a national officer,
16:06 I was on the board of directors,
16:07 I was speaking around the country,
16:09 and I watched the final banquet that your new president came in
16:11 and he gave an award to the director of conventions
16:14 who had been director
16:16 of commission for 30 years or so.
16:17 I think much around, I was 22, hotshot kid.
16:20 I'm sitting next to my mentor
16:21 who was the legal counsel for the fraternity.
16:23 He said, "This is interesting, Tim,
16:24 I said, "Why?"
16:25 He says, "Typically,
16:27 when you get an award for doing your job,
16:29 it's the way the corporations learn
16:31 how to get rid of you."
16:34 I said, "Whoa, I didn't think a lot of it then."
16:37 But as I began to watch the trajectory of my life,
16:41 whenever I would get an award,
16:43 as I look back on it now in hindsight,
16:46 that was the way to move me out.
16:49 It was God's way to say,
16:51 "You've gotten as much as you can get from here.
16:53 I'm moving you out to get you ultimately
16:56 to where I want you to be for my glory."
16:58 This message that I've been able to put together,
17:00 this book that I've been able to write is God's gift to me
17:05 and my gift back to God to be able to tell people
17:08 about a problem that affects all of us.
17:10 And as I look at the trajectory of my life,
17:12 I go back to John 9 when Jesus of the disciples,
17:16 I'm a walking down the road and they run into a blind man.
17:20 And the disciples say, "Jesus, who sinned?
17:22 Was it this man
17:23 or was it his parents the caused him to be blind."
17:26 Jesus said "Neither."
17:28 He said "But he is blind averse they neither,
17:30 but that the works of God could be displayed in him."
17:33 And then God healed him.
17:35 I believe sincerely, Yvonne,
17:37 God has allowed this ego-holism,
17:41 which is an addiction to self in me
17:44 to be exposed to people
17:46 to be that first mouthpiece to be the poster child for it
17:50 in an effort to help to heal other people.
17:53 It is my blindness
17:54 that God has healed or is healing.
17:56 So the question I asked people is,
17:58 "What is the blindness in you
18:00 that God has put in you that allowed in you
18:04 so that once you give yourself and get broken down
18:07 and get humble before God,
18:09 he can reveal it
18:10 and you can help to save mankind."
18:12 That's my story about all the firings.
18:14 Yes, yes, yes.
18:16 The book...
18:17 And we have the cover
18:18 so that people can take a look at it.
18:21 Tell us a bit about the book.
18:23 What led you to write this book?
18:26 And by the way, when you see your name,
18:29 you want your name in all lower caps,
18:31 you don't want it in uppercase, you want it all lowercase.
18:35 That's right, that's right.
18:36 What led you to write this book?
18:41 I left Oakwood.
18:42 Well, Oakwood fired me for the first time,
18:44 first of three firings.
18:45 Okay.
18:46 Let's unpack that a minute and then go to the book.
18:49 Okay.
18:51 Because of my experience in higher education,
18:55 technically, chronologically, I had more experience,
18:59 more exposure than the president,
19:01 and I let him know that on a regular basis.
19:06 I did not learn the first rule of thumb
19:08 in terms of power,
19:09 which is you never out shine your master.
19:13 And so that was a bitter pill for me to swallow.
19:16 But it led me into entrepreneurship
19:20 because I learned from a mentor of mine
19:21 that entrepreneurship
19:23 is one of the closest ways to get to God
19:25 because when you're an entrepreneur,
19:27 you have no safety net.
19:28 That's right.
19:29 You have no institutional budget,
19:31 you have no staff, it's just you alone.
19:32 And in that alone time that wilderness,
19:36 that's when God speaks to us many times,
19:38 it's not for everybody but for those of us
19:41 who can and do,
19:42 that's where God works through us.
19:43 So I went on grabbed my first contract,
19:46 I had never seen that much money before
19:47 and I said,
19:49 "Finally someone's gonna appreciate
19:50 my worth and value."
19:51 I lost the contract in six weeks.
19:53 Oh. Ouch. Yeah.
19:56 At the Dear John meeting, the client said to me,
20:01 "Tim, you needed help and you wouldn't ask for any."
20:07 Firing you was one of the best things
20:08 that could happen to you as a first time,
20:10 early stage entrepreneur.
20:12 He said because talent is not your problem.
20:16 Some say, "Well, if talent ain't problem,
20:18 then what is my problem?
20:21 At the same time,
20:22 I had gotten a letter in the mail
20:23 "Dear servant leader."
20:25 That caught my attention because,
20:26 you know, as I said
20:27 I was in a servant leader reading group.
20:29 The woman wrote about,
20:30 she was a professional speech coach
20:32 and my thing was to become a professional speaker.
20:35 And in reading the letter and getting in touch with her,
20:38 I decided to go meet with her.
20:41 And in meeting with her, we began to talk out things.
20:45 She her name is Vanalti out of Dallas, Texas.
20:47 She wrote the book on Zig Ziglar,
20:50 who was probably the most phenomenal
20:53 public speaker, motivational speaker
20:55 of the 20th century.
20:57 In meeting with her and talking with her,
20:59 she's a Christian business counselor.
21:02 We were talking about different kinds of things,
21:04 different kinds of experiences, and she said something to me.
21:08 She said,
21:10 "Tim, you are so articulate,
21:15 you are so charismatic.
21:16 When you walked in the room, your presence fills the room."
21:21 And I stopped her, I said "Yes,"
21:23 I said "I am articulate,
21:25 I am charismatic, I do have a persona that fills the room,
21:29 I've gotten away
21:30 with that all of my life until I got married
21:34 and my wife lets me get away with nothing."
21:37 And then God sent this word through me.
21:41 I said "I guess I am an egoholic
21:45 who needs to recover."
21:47 And she stopped me,
21:48 she said "Tim, let me tell you something."
21:51 She said, "I've heard every kind of speech
21:55 there is to hear,
21:57 nobody is addressing that topic,
22:01 that's in your spiritual DNA, run with it."
22:06 So I was writing on this topic
22:09 for some 14 years, 17 drafts,
22:14 4 different editors, trying to get this message out,
22:18 they couldn't figure out why I couldn't.
22:19 You know, through all different findings I'm saying,
22:21 surely the Lord is calling me now
22:23 to go out of here to get this book out of here,
22:25 to write this book, to save the world.
22:28 When I got fired from DIRECTV in 2010,
22:31 I just knew that was the moment.
22:33 But I tried to get it designed, I tried, you know, I couldn't.
22:35 I went to my pastor at my church,
22:37 Pastor Benjamin Jone.
22:39 I said "What?"
22:40 He said "Tim, God always prepares
22:43 the minister before the ministry."
22:47 I said "Whoa!"
22:49 That's when I just backed up, backed up.
22:54 Then I was asked to come back to Oakwood to work.
22:57 Then new president come on Board Dr. Leslie Pollard
23:00 had worked very well,
23:01 famously well for good two years or so.
23:04 And then got canned.
23:08 He called me to into the office,
23:09 I will never forget i.,
23:11 It was on Monday, December 16, 2013.
23:15 A few hours after that,
23:16 we getting ready to have the annual Christmas,
23:18 people give us bonuses, so this ego said,
23:21 "Well, he must be calling me in to reward me
23:23 because we just won the home depot campaign.
23:25 I was the architect of that.
23:27 You know, I've out distanced any other PR person here
23:29 which was Tim Allston before that.
23:31 You know, he called me in to fire me.
23:35 He said to me, he says "Tim, on my campus,
23:38 I've got two geniuses with problems,
23:41 you're one of them.
23:43 Get help now."
23:47 I'm like whoa!
23:49 His body of work I've been working on stuff
23:51 I've been writing for all this years,
23:52 I said, "That's probably the signal from God."
23:57 So I went to see professional counseling to deal
23:59 with the issue that he had suggested.
24:01 He said, "Tim, I'm not a medical doctor.
24:03 He said but you may want to look at the issue
24:05 of the narcissistic personality disorder.
24:09 I was like, that sounds severe.
24:10 So I met with the counselor,
24:12 we worked through some things and I begin to then write,
24:14 and write, and write, and write, and write.
24:17 As it turned out,
24:19 the Presidential Campaign of 2016 rolled around,
24:23 and a mentor of mine, a friend of ours,
24:26 attorney Shirma Rogers said to me.
24:27 Oh, yeah.
24:28 Said to me October 1, he said,
24:30 "Tim, you've been writing this book for 14 years.
24:36 Writing it, writing it."
24:38 He says, "I'm giving you an ultimatum.
24:41 October 31st, this books needs to be out.
24:44 It's need to be out before the election
24:46 for the obvious reasons."
24:48 I said, "Okay, yes sir.
24:52 Right on way, counselor."
24:53 And so with the run for the presidency,
24:58 and ultimate election of the Donald Trump,
25:01 I began to see the perfect timing of God.
25:07 And I say that because to the casual observer,
25:11 they say, "Oh, Donald Trump has a big ego."
25:14 But upon closer observation, he's got a very thin frail ego.
25:19 The question that I pose,
25:21 I'm about to write a piece now entitled
25:22 "The American ego has landed."
25:26 And then my subtitle is going to be,
25:27 But the disciples asked, "Lord, is it I?"
25:30 About the last supper, Jesus said,
25:32 "One of you all will betray me."
25:34 Eleven of the disciples were startled,
25:37 "Lord, is it I?"
25:38 Although, initially Jesus was talking about Judas,
25:42 ultimately, all the other 11 did betray Him.
25:46 So the question that I will pose to my readers is
25:48 "For the all the things
25:50 you dislike about this man, Lord, is it I?
25:54 Are you guilty of being brash?
25:56 Are you guilty of being nationalistic?
25:59 Are you guilty of being chauvinistic?
26:01 Are you guilty of saying things that you can't back up?"
26:05 As a recovering ego-holic,
26:07 I was asked myself "Lord, is it I?"
26:09 And unfortunately, Yvonne,
26:11 I am guilty of all of those crimes.
26:14 Now earlier this year,
26:16 I teach a Bible study class at my church,
26:17 first SDA in Huntsville, Alabama.
26:19 And we were studying the life of Peter.
26:21 So I asked my class,
26:23 I said "What do you know about Peter?"
26:24 They said, he was brash, nationalistic, hot tempered,
26:29 running of with the mouth, I said "Hmm."
26:32 Who does that remind you of?
26:34 And someone said "Trump." I said, "Okay."
26:36 I said, "Nationalistic, chauvinistic, brash,
26:39 making promises he couldn't keep."
26:40 I said, "What is the difference
26:42 between Peter and Donald Trump?"
26:47 And he said, "He humbled us." I said "Yes."
26:49 I said "Could all of this be God's effort
26:53 to humble this man."
26:55 I said "Have you been brash?
26:58 Have you been nationalistic?
27:00 Have you been chauvinistic whether by word or by deed?
27:04 Does Peter speak to you?
27:06 Did you see what God did with the Peter?"
27:08 Peter developed the spirit of humility
27:10 and teach-ability.
27:11 So as I understand Peter
27:13 and as I understand our new President Donald Trump,
27:16 God has also helped me to understand Tim Allston.
27:18 And I asked the question every day painfully,
27:21 "Lord, is it I?"
27:22 The answer is not a comfortable one.
27:27 At what point did you realize that,
27:30 I need to...
27:32 I know you've been working on this book for 14 years,
27:34 but at what point did you realize
27:37 that I have got to give
27:41 God total control of my life?
27:44 What was the precipitating event
27:47 that made you decide to turn over your life to Lord?
27:52 I don't think it was any single event,
27:54 like the hymn that we sang as children
27:56 each victory will help you some other to win.
27:59 I believe it's been a series of events in every single way
28:02 I watch God impact in terms of my marriage,
28:05 in terms of our daughter, in terms of our upbringing,
28:08 in terms of everything I was doing.
28:09 I begin to see
28:11 how my egoholism was draining them.
28:16 That they were not being all that they could be
28:19 and that I was an impediment to them.
28:22 And so, I reached the point now,
28:25 I don't trust Tim Allston.
28:30 I don't trust him. I know that rascal.
28:34 I know what he will and what he won't do.
28:36 So therefore, I've gotten very deliberate,
28:39 almost mechanical.
28:41 I pray about everything.
28:44 I pray when I get up in the morning
28:45 to wake our daughter up.
28:46 I pray when I fix family breakfast,
28:49 I pray before I have family worship.
28:51 You know, all the time,
28:52 because I know that I'm exceedingly evil.
28:55 the Apostle Paul says in Romans 7:15,
28:59 you know, "I'm full of sin,
29:02 I know what I can do,
29:03 I want to do right but I can't do right.
29:05 When I try to do right, I do wrong.
29:07 And when I want to do wrong, He pushing me to try to do it."
29:09 I'm in a world to trouble and I understand this.
29:12 One of things about being egoholic was not caring,
29:16 was thinking that I was all that.
29:18 But one of the things about being a recovering egoholic
29:21 is I become exceedingly aware of how sinful I am
29:26 and how small I am to God.
29:28 That's why when you see my name written,
29:31 it's written in all lowercase letters.
29:33 I don't feel worthy to be capital about anything.
29:39 So what would say
29:41 are the symptoms of egoholism?
29:45 How do you know?
29:46 How does one know that one is an egoholic?
29:49 Okay, well, first of all,
29:52 there is nothing wrong with having an ego.
29:55 Every dictionary defines an ego as a sense of self.
30:00 So therefore, every person, every organization,
30:04 every event, every activity has a sense of self.
30:09 Where the egoholism comes in
30:11 is when we put too much of our self in.
30:13 For example, when God made us, He made us perfect.
30:18 But in that perfection, our perfection was tied to Him.
30:24 When we sinned, we broke that,
30:28 and so everything we do,
30:30 everything you do, everything I do,
30:32 there's always a sense of incompleteness.
30:36 What happens is we are incomplete
30:40 and the completion can only come
30:43 when we team
30:44 with the undefeated partner, God.
30:47 Our problem comes in
30:48 when we come into any situation,
30:50 we try to fill our self with what has to happen.
30:55 We need to partner with God.
30:57 But only God knows the exact divine calibrations
31:01 of what to put in more of Him or less of us,
31:04 only God know that.
31:06 Egoholism comes about
31:07 when either we put too much of our self in,
31:10 which is big ego,
31:11 or to put little of us, which is little ego.
31:14 We try to do that.
31:15 And God dispenses Himself to us
31:18 in a measure proportion to our faith.
31:21 So what God has shown me,
31:23 you know, first of all, through the Bible.
31:26 The Bible is that mirror,
31:27 actually, it's a two-way mirror.
31:29 It really shows me my exuding sinfulness,
31:32 and what the Bible is showing Tim Allston
31:34 is my major egoholisms
31:36 are the acronym spaides, S-P-A-I-D-E-S,
31:41 selfishness, procrastination,
31:46 arrogance,
31:48 I is called impression mismanagement,
31:52 I'll come back to that.
31:53 D' is disorganization. E is poor eye contact.
31:57 And S is selfishness.
31:58 I am "bracketed" by selfishness.
32:00 When I talk about impression mismanagement,
32:01 for example.
32:03 I once saw a sign on a teacher's wall
32:04 when I was in college.
32:05 And it said prosperity,
32:07 spending money you don't have
32:09 to buy things you don't need to impress people
32:11 you don't even like.
32:15 I like that.
32:16 That clearly a sign of low esteem,
32:18 low or no esteem.
32:20 So when I read my Bible to answer your question.
32:25 It points me to,
32:27 it pulls the cover off of Bible characters
32:31 which force me to say, "Lord, is it I?"
32:34 I got little Judas Iscariot in me.
32:36 I have a little Saul of Tarsus in me.
32:39 I have little Saul, King Saul in me,
32:41 I have a little Adam and Eve, I have a little Moses in me.
32:44 You begin to see yourself in Bible characters.
32:47 And thank God that He has given us the Bible,
32:50 which is His love letter to the human race
32:53 to point out those.
32:54 That's the first truth teller I talk about book number one,
32:57 but the other truth tellers are people, events,
33:00 and activities that reveal us to us,
33:02 typically in a painful way.
33:04 You know, the decisions that we make,
33:06 they reveal us to us.
33:08 Our job is to make the corrections.
33:11 Our job is to look at our history,
33:13 to glance at our history,
33:14 there's nothing you can do about what's in the past
33:16 other than to look at it,
33:17 either decide to repeat it or to repulse it.
33:21 And that's the beauty of history.
33:22 So step one of my book says, "To change lanes effectively,
33:25 glance back quickly before driving forward.
33:28 Don't leer, don't spend all your time
33:29 looking backwards,
33:30 living in the past is like living with the dead."
33:32 And that's the essence of step one of the recovering process.
33:34 And in fact that was going to be my next question.
33:37 What are the steps in recovery?
33:42 Okay, well. Step one, you just gave us.
33:44 I'm still recovering,
33:45 so those steps I call the Tim Commandments.
33:49 The Tim Commandments.
33:50 Okay. All right.
33:51 There are 7 steps,
33:53 but there are 3 that precede that,
33:54 it's called T-O-P, top, take it to the top.
33:57 "T" target the problem.
33:59 It's not a problem until you are willing to admit
34:01 that it is the problem.
34:02 The example I use
34:04 is of the retired veteran anchor
34:06 for Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer.
34:09 In 2003, he was diagnosed with having cancer
34:11 and he said the toughest part of having cancer
34:13 was being able to say to him by himself, "I have cancer."
34:17 We've got to learn as Ellen White says
34:19 to call sin by its right name.
34:21 So we got to call it out.
34:23 James Baldwin says,
34:24 "You can't fix what you won't face."
34:26 So we have to call it what it is.
34:28 So "T", target that, put a bull's eye on it.
34:31 You know, "Selfishness is a problem for me.
34:33 So I'm very, very aware of it. Procrastination is the problem.
34:37 I'm very, very well aware of it.
34:39 Arrogance that, that over sense of self,
34:41 I'm aware of that.
34:42 Impression mismanagement, you know, being disorganized,
34:45 my wife can talk about that.
34:47 Poor eye contact and selfishness again.
34:49 I'm aware and so therefore,
34:51 God has been able to show those to me."
34:54 That's step one.
34:55 Step two talks about...
35:00 Uncover buried,
35:02 hidden treasures in your life
35:03 by digging deeper below the surface.
35:05 I use the example here of Michelangelo
35:08 the Italian sculptor.
35:09 And someone once asked him,
35:10 "How did you create
35:12 this magnificent structured sculptor of David
35:15 out of this large piece f marble?"
35:17 Michelangelo said,
35:18 "David was always in that piece of marble,
35:21 my job was to chip away the excess rock."
35:24 I like that.
35:25 When we allow God to chip away the excess rock in our life,
35:29 we will find
35:30 the beauty within it and also some of the ugliness.
35:33 Step three says that we will fast forward
35:36 our success by homework listening."
35:38 In this, I point out the fact that,
35:40 listening is something that we learn.
35:41 None of us were born...
35:43 Most of us are poor listeners.
35:44 And the reason for that is very, very simple.
35:46 In school, we had to take courses
35:48 in reading, writing,
35:51 speaking, but never once...
35:52 I don't if a school in the country, college,
35:55 or university, high school,
35:56 anywhere that teaches listening.
36:01 It is the foundation of what we do.
36:03 We learn nothing by talking.
36:05 We learn everything by listening.
36:07 My roommates told me in my freshman year in college.
36:09 They said "Tim, you're a good speaker,
36:11 but you're a poor listener."
36:12 When you become a better listener,
36:14 you'll become a better speaker."
36:16 It took me 30 years to learn, listening requires humility.
36:21 You have to know
36:23 that you don't know something and ask.
36:26 And therefore,
36:27 people then can give that to you,
36:28 that's step three.
36:30 Step four...
36:31 Before you go there. Go ahead.
36:32 It's interesting that you would say that
36:34 because there is active listening
36:37 and passive listening.
36:39 You know, you can just like, even in this situation...
36:43 Mm-hm.
36:44 We have to listen to each other.
36:46 I have to listen to what you're saying,
36:47 you have to listen to what I am saying
36:49 so that you can respond and vice versa.
36:51 And yet people can go through a day
36:55 and not really hear each other.
36:57 Family members can go through life
37:00 not really listening to each other.
37:02 I'm guilty.
37:03 So it's, it's a critical thing that we listen
37:06 and that we listen actively to what someone is saying.
37:10 And as you just said, if your ego was involved,
37:14 you're not gonna really listen
37:15 to what somebody else has to say
37:17 because you don't really see the value
37:18 in what somebody else has to say.
37:20 Not you, but I'm talking in general.
37:21 No, no, no, you're right. It is me, it's me.
37:23 I'm just saying, you know, in general,
37:25 if you don't see the value in what someone else has to say
37:29 and you feel that you have
37:31 the most important thing to contribute,
37:34 you're not going to really listen,
37:36 and that's a huge mistake that people make.
37:37 It's huge.
37:40 I remember an example that happened back in 1988
37:42 when George H. W. Bush was running for President.
37:45 Barbara Bush was on the road
37:47 and she helped him to walk here to speak to group of educators,
37:49 but for some strange reason, her speech didn't go with her.
37:54 She didn't have speech to give
37:56 and so she was able to pivot on her own,
37:59 as she turned to these educators
38:00 'cause she was talking about
38:01 an educational initiative of her husband,
38:03 and she turned to them and said,
38:04 "What are the educational issues here
38:07 in the state of Wisconsin?"
38:10 And they were more than happy to feed her information
38:12 that ultimately became a part of the platform
38:14 because a small thing that I've learned,
38:17 when you talk, you immobilize yourself.
38:22 What do you mean?
38:23 When you talk, you're giving out.
38:25 We learn nothing by talking.
38:28 We learn everything by listening.
38:29 So while I'm talking to you right now,
38:31 I'm immobilizing myself
38:33 and you're mobilizing yourself against me.
38:37 I mean, you're coming up with questions
38:38 based on what I've said,
38:39 what kind of cues I may have given.
38:41 And so the more we listen,
38:46 the more we learn.
38:48 You know, we think we learn a lot
38:49 but we learn nothing by talking.
38:51 When Ruth Simmons became
38:52 the President of Brown University,
38:54 the first African American President
38:55 of an Ivy League school.
38:57 Story says that she spent the first six months
38:59 just walking around
39:00 office to office to office just listening.
39:04 And then she put together her program
39:07 for leading the school
39:08 because she listened to the people,
39:10 listened to the little people
39:12 who were more than happy
39:13 because they've never been listened to before.
39:16 And she listened actively
39:18 and put that information together.
39:20 And so I am recovering
39:23 because I'm a speaker
39:25 and speakers have a bad habit of speaking and not listening.
39:30 And we need to learn
39:31 to develop greater listening skills.
39:34 Last point, the same letters that make up the word "Listen"
39:39 are the same letters that make up the word "Silent."
39:42 Um, interesting, yeah.
39:45 Yeah.
39:47 And see the joy, but here is the joy,
39:50 we learned how to listen
39:53 and we learned how to be poor listeners.
39:56 We can learn now how to become better listeners.
39:59 Right, right.
40:00 Step number four says
40:01 that we need to restart our engines
40:04 for better mileage.
40:05 And here I talk about
40:07 we all need to grow up to be children.
40:10 Okay, explain that. Okay.
40:13 There is an honesty and an innocence
40:15 in a transparency about children.
40:17 They will let you know when they're hurt,
40:19 they'll let you know when you've got bad breath,
40:22 they'll let you know when someone
40:24 is not treating them right.
40:25 You know, they have little to no pretence about them.
40:30 We will develop and we will grow
40:33 when we can get rid of all the pretence that we have.
40:36 And we've got lots of it.
40:37 I've got it, we all have it.
40:38 But if we can ever learn to start over again,
40:42 be willing to start over again, it's not easy.
40:46 But here is the key.
40:47 We don't have to do it alone.
40:50 That's the key to egoholism recovering.
40:54 You can't cure it, you can solve it,
40:55 you can't eliminate it, but with God's help,
40:57 God will help you to manage it.
40:59 I talk about management just like
41:01 when I came here to 3ABN building,
41:02 the grass was very well manicured.
41:05 It didn't just get like that.
41:08 And just because it got cut maybe earlier this week,
41:10 it's not going to be like that the next week this time.
41:14 It has to be cut or managed.
41:17 You know, your hair looks very pretty.
41:18 I love the flow of it and everything.
41:20 Thank you.
41:21 You didn't just wake up this morning with it,
41:23 boom, like that.
41:24 No.
41:26 You had to work with that.
41:27 You know, unlike mine, you had to work with it.
41:30 That's management.
41:32 Well, God works with us.
41:35 I will always, Yvonne, be selfish.
41:39 I will always be a procrastinator.
41:42 I will always, because it's in my DNA.
41:45 And it's like, Paul with the thorn in his flesh.
41:48 God said, "No, you need to keep that
41:49 so that you will stay humble."
41:51 I will always have that those problems, that spaides.
41:55 But through recovering,
41:57 God is shown me how to manage it.
41:59 It's the way I talk about the common cold,
42:01 the way I talk about cancer.
42:04 We hear people in church, saying I'm cancer free,
42:06 well, Hallelujah.
42:07 Reality is all of us have cancer cells in us,
42:12 all of us.
42:13 "So all of us have cancer."
42:15 When it gets to an excessive level,
42:17 that's it's says, "We've got cancer."
42:19 And then we go to hospital,
42:20 get treatment and get things down
42:22 to bring it down to a certain level
42:24 so that we're not in a danger zone.
42:27 It's same with the common cold.
42:28 We hear someone talk about some pharmaceutical company
42:30 that's invented something to cure the common cold.
42:32 No.
42:34 The common cold is gonna be here,
42:35 but we learned to do is manage it,
42:37 'cause it's gonna come back next year.
42:38 Weeds in your garden,
42:40 they're gonna come back next year.
42:41 We learned to manage it the same with the ego.
42:43 God will help us to manage it.
42:46 Step five talks about...
42:48 I love step 5.
42:50 It says turn your lemons into lemonade.
42:54 In this, I talk about.
42:56 I have a piece of it entitled
42:58 "How he went from Barack bottom to the White House?"
43:02 You know, when he lost the congressional race
43:04 to the Bobby Rush back in 2000, I think 2000.
43:08 The seeds of that loss became the foundation for his win.
43:14 When he looked through that race,
43:16 he begin to notice the fundraising acumen
43:22 of little black churches in Chicago,
43:24 how older women
43:26 and people would just give small donations
43:28 on a regular basis.
43:29 We at Seventh-day Adventist call that
43:31 systematic benevolence,
43:32 and he learned that and he became
43:34 the greatest fundraiser in political history,
43:36 and the rest is history.
43:37 So we've got learn to turn our lemons into lemonade.
43:41 One example I love to use is what I call
43:42 "Your Mount Moriah moments."
43:44 Taken out of the story of Abraham and Isaac,
43:47 bottom line, everything is a test.
43:50 Everything is a test.
43:51 The beauty of the test is that God is the test maker,
43:56 God is the test giver, God administers the test.
44:00 And when you and I fail, as we often do,
44:03 God gives us a make-up exam.
44:06 And God surrounds us
44:07 with people become that study group.
44:10 And He is such a good test maker
44:12 that He gives us the answers in advance.
44:16 That's the beauty. Nice, nice.
44:18 Step six says our healing is in our revealing.
44:22 In this I talk about Hilary Clinton for example
44:24 and how in her first autobiography,
44:28 everybody wanted to reads about Monica Lewinsky.
44:30 The biggest part of the book was in pager 764 when she said,
44:35 "I insist that Bill
44:36 and I go to counseling to save our marriage."
44:41 She became a heroine to about 700,000 couples a year
44:45 in America that go to counseling.
44:47 So in her revealing, she began to heal people.
44:49 And I say in the book,
44:50 you begin to heal people when you tell your story.
44:54 And step seven...
44:55 Wait before you go there.
44:57 It's important to tell your story
45:01 not just to heal people but it also heals you.
45:05 Oh, yes.
45:06 Because you become, when you're transparent
45:10 and you tell what God has done for you,
45:12 it all goes back to what has God done for you.
45:15 So it's not even you per se, but it's what God has done,
45:19 it's how in this situation,
45:22 how He has shined a light on areas
45:26 that you need work in, areas that I need work on.
45:28 That's what He does.
45:30 That's the Holy Spirit's job to convict us of sin.
45:33 And so what is sin? It's self.
45:38 And so we all are egoholics. Yes, we are.
45:41 That's the bottom line, we're all ego-holics,
45:44 we're all sinners in need of the Savior.
45:47 So He has enabled you to write
45:52 these books with these steps
45:54 to help to get victory over self.
45:57 Yes.
45:58 And the first victory is right here
46:01 because as I become transparent,
46:03 as God shines through me, I can't help but share.
46:08 It's not pretty, it's not easy.
46:11 It's very, very self condemning,
46:13 but it will help to heal people.
46:15 And the comments that I get from the people,
46:17 you know, but you're right.
46:19 And step seven, the final step says,
46:21 now that you know, go elevate and grow.
46:25 Write your story, write your story,
46:28 thoughts disentangle themselves
46:29 when they pass through your fingertips.
46:31 You have a story to tell.
46:33 And I throw a bonus in there, it's a eight book series,
46:35 book number seven is entitled
46:37 "What happened to Dr. Tim Allston."
46:41 I was working on my doctorate.
46:43 I had just got my dissertation topic approved.
46:46 I had 99 average in my class.
46:48 I had one more class to go, I was rolling.
46:51 You had one class left? And one class left.
46:54 I had just gotten the dissertation approved,
46:57 had a 99 average in the class.
46:58 I was on the fast track.
47:01 And on Tuesday, February 24, 2015,
47:05 Oakwood fired me for third and final time.
47:09 And my wife said, I told my wife,
47:12 she said, "Well,
47:13 since that money is not coming in,
47:15 would you consider sitting out a semester from school?"
47:19 I mean, I'm right at the end of the line,
47:20 I don't want to hear that,
47:21 but I said "Let me pray about it,"
47:23 'cause I stopped,
47:24 I began to stop trusting myself.
47:26 That was on Tuesday, February 24.
47:28 On Wednesday,
47:30 we had a snowstorm in Huntsville.
47:31 Not like snowstorms here in Downstate Illinois.
47:34 I mean, we had an inch and that shutdown Huntsville.
47:37 Yeah, yeah. So that was Wednesday.
47:39 Thursday morning, I get up to shovel out our driveway.
47:42 You know, my wife and I are from Maryland in Virginia.
47:44 So we had the only shovel
47:46 on the whole block in Huntsville.
47:48 So there's a couple,
47:49 there's a lady and her daughter across the street
47:51 and they don't have an adult male,
47:52 so I shovel out my driveway, I shovel theirs out.
47:55 So I'm having this conversation with God, I'm going like,
47:57 "What's up?
47:58 You know, I'm at the end of this doctoral program
48:00 and all of a sudden you just yank the carpet."
48:02 God said, "Why were you in the doctoral program
48:04 in the first place?"
48:05 I was like, "What?"
48:07 I said, "I'm in higher education,
48:09 in a higher education, the doctorate is a union card."
48:12 He said "Mm-hm."
48:13 He said, "What are you gonna do your dissertation on?"
48:15 I said, "I thought about initially doing
48:16 on this egoholism."
48:18 He said, "But you changed." "Yes, I see, I changed."
48:19 He said, "Why?"
48:20 I said, "I didn't want a dissertation committee
48:24 of atheist chopping, slicing, and dicing on your word."
48:27 He said, "You're smart."
48:29 He said, "What did you then choose to do it on?"
48:30 I said, "I want to do it on how to market adult education
48:33 to faith-based historically black college and universities,
48:36 which are the most financially starved schools
48:38 in the country."
48:39 He said, "And what were you gonna do
48:40 with that dissertation?"
48:42 I said, "I was gonna roll that into a book
48:44 and then use that as a marketing tool to consult
48:47 with all these different schools."
48:49 He said, "Mm-hm."
48:50 He said, "I see."
48:52 He said, "Let me ask you a question, Tim.
48:54 If you had done all of those things
48:57 and put that book out and condemn this consulting,
49:00 who would have gotten the credit?
49:01 The doctorate or Me?"
49:03 I said, "Whoa!"
49:06 I said, "But wait a minute, Lord," I said, "you got me in.
49:09 You allowed me to get into this doctoral program."
49:11 And I said, "And..."
49:13 I'm getting mad with the Lord now.
49:15 I said, "I'm shoveling and mad."
49:17 I said, "I've just kicked out $26,460
49:21 in this doctoral program.
49:23 Don't you want me to be a good steward, Lord?"
49:25 You know, and the God said "Let me ask you a question,
49:29 what was your work experience at the institution?"
49:32 I said "It was terrible."
49:33 I said "I would do proposals I wouldn't get answer to,
49:36 this, that, and the other."
49:37 He said "Was it frustrating?" I said "Yes."
49:40 He said "People that get as frustrated as you,
49:42 what do they do?"
49:44 I said "They smoke, they drink, they get high, they gamble,
49:47 they have affairs."
49:48 He said "Did you?" I said "No."
49:50 He said "What did you do?
49:51 I said, "I talked about that institution
49:53 like a dog on those papers
49:55 that I was writing because I knew
49:56 they'd never see them."
49:58 He said, you know, "How did you do?"
49:59 I said, "I got As on those papers."
50:01 He said, "Okay."
50:03 I said, "But, God, you took away
50:06 the research site,
50:10 which is the gas station, you took away the vehicle,
50:14 the car and you've taken away the gas."
50:16 He said Mm-hm.
50:18 He said "The purpose of you doing
50:20 that doctorate was not for you to get a doctorate.
50:23 It was for you to amicably work out
50:25 your frustrations."
50:28 And now that the frustration is gone,
50:30 you don't need the doctorate anymore.
50:33 He said, "When I send the message through you
50:35 and that message is not that doctoral dissertation,
50:38 it's the egoholism recovering message,
50:41 I don't want anything or anybody getting credit
50:44 for you but Me, not a doctorate,
50:47 not an institution not 100 black men of America,
50:52 not Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity,
50:53 not Hampton, not Oakwood, I only want the credit."
50:56 I said, "Oh."
50:58 And God said,
51:00 "One last question for you, Tim."
51:01 He said "If you had smoked, if you had drunk,
51:03 if you had gotten high, if you had gamble,
51:05 if you had had an affair,
51:07 how much money would you have spent?"
51:09 And I said,
51:10 "Oh, my word,
51:12 26,460 bucks."
51:16 I said "I get it."
51:18 I finished shoveling, went in,
51:20 and withdrew from Capella University
51:21 and never looked back.
51:24 So that book is entitled,
51:27 "Whatever Happened to Dr. Tim Allston."
51:29 And God showed me I am a jealous God,
51:33 mine is the divine jealousy,
51:34 and only I will get credit for your recovery.
51:38 Wow.
51:40 And so after you had had that dialogue with the Lord,
51:44 were you at total peace about it
51:46 or were you still feeling like,
51:48 "Well, could we just revisit this?"
51:54 Shoveling snow that day was a wilderness experience,
51:57 just Him, the snow, and me.
52:00 And I've learned about the wilderness experience
52:02 of Dr. John Maxwell that in the wilderness
52:04 is where your backbone gets solidified,
52:07 your calling gets clarified, and your motives get purified.
52:11 In that short two-hour wilderness experience
52:16 when God dropped that on me,
52:17 and it was almost as audible an conversation,
52:21 I had never had a second thought.
52:24 It was like boom,
52:26 never regretted not having that doctorate
52:29 because I understood that that doctorate,
52:32 for some that's fine.
52:33 You know, I'm glad that you've got a doctorate
52:35 in natural therapy,
52:37 but for me, it would have been a distraction
52:42 from doing expressly
52:44 God wanted me to be totally stripped down
52:48 so that all I could do was look at Him,
52:51 not a doctorate, not an organization,
52:53 not a guaranteed check,
52:54 He wanted me to be His broker at Ten Commandments
52:57 and simply serve Him.
53:00 I get it. Wow, wow.
53:03 So where are you now in your journey?
53:08 What does God have you doing at this point?
53:11 Right now I have produced the book, self published,
53:16 and I have launched it as a free book.
53:18 How can people get it?
53:20 They simply go to my website which is,
53:22 www.GetEgoHelpNow.org.
53:27 And there they're able to download
53:29 their free copy of the book.
53:32 www.GetEgoHelpNow.org, and it's free.
53:35 It's free, it's free.
53:36 You can't get any better than free.
53:38 You really can't. You really, really can't.
53:40 And the reason it's free, Yvonne,
53:42 is that I'm dealing with a brand new concept.
53:46 See if you were to write a book
53:47 from your background as a vocalist, as a teacher,
53:50 you know, as a hostess of a show,
53:53 as a manager of this network,
53:55 your book would be written about success
53:57 and people would buy your book because you're successful.
54:01 I'm a serial failure,
54:04 no-one wants to buy a book about a failure,
54:08 so therefore because
54:09 we don't value failures in the society,
54:13 but it is a concept that is very, very applicable
54:17 and intimate to everybody,
54:19 I give it to people free because I want them to...
54:23 It's my seed sowing.
54:25 I want them to chew on and let the idea,
54:28 the concept, marinate with them,
54:30 and I don't want a cost to be a prohibition
54:35 or to be an impediment.
54:37 Now the eight book series
54:39 that is coming after that will not be free.
54:42 And as I said I'll move people from free to shining fee.
54:48 From free...
54:49 From free to shining fee. Shining fee.
54:52 Okay, but this initial book is free.
54:54 It is free, it is totally free. And it's an e-book.
54:56 It's an e-book.
54:57 So...
54:58 And it's a one-sitting read.
55:00 You can read the book in 30 minutes.
55:01 Yes. It's a 27-page book.
55:03 Now let me just throw this in.
55:05 Because most people are gonna read it on
55:07 a mobile device or an electronic device,
55:09 I have taking this 27-page book and I have stretched it.
55:12 Some pages only have one paragraph on it,
55:14 you know,
55:16 but I want people to be able to read it,
55:18 to pray on it,
55:19 to see if it relates them for them
55:20 to ask themselves some penetrating,
55:22 some searing questions, and to go from there.
55:25 And I knew, I knew that I needed to remove
55:30 and get past the gatekeeper
55:32 and the gatekeeper
55:33 was my biggest competitor is tradition.
55:37 How so?
55:39 Well, first of all,
55:41 people don't believe they have ego problems,
55:43 first of all.
55:44 Number two, people think
55:46 that if you talk about a ego problem,
55:49 if it's gonna be discussed, it's got to be with a doctor,
55:53 a clinical therapist, an academic professor,
55:57 an ordained minister, even possibly a lawyer.
55:59 As I say in the book, I'm not a doctor,
56:02 I'm the patient, I'm not an ordained pastor,
56:05 I'm the sinner in the pew.
56:07 I'm not a clinical therapist, I'm the client.
56:11 You know, I'm not the professor,
56:13 I'm the student who need advisement.
56:15 I'm not the lawyer, I'm the victim.
56:17 And unfortunately,
56:18 I also have been the perpetrator.
56:21 So this book is about Tim Allston
56:23 without deodorant,
56:26 Tim Allston without mouthwash.
56:29 It is raw honesty.
56:33 And it is unique because it's told
56:35 from the other side of the desk.
56:39 So many people...
56:40 I mean, everybody has experienced
56:43 on some level, some kind of failure.
56:46 That's how you learn,
56:47 but we're so thankful with you, Tim,
56:50 that you've taken these areas of life
56:53 that have been challenges for you
56:55 and God has given you this desire
56:58 to share with others the places in which you failed
57:03 and yet it just brings inspiration and hope.
57:07 I read the book
57:09 and I was blessed by it and appreciate your journey.
57:12 Thank you. So we appreciate.
57:13 What is it...
57:16 Well, I can't believe our time is up.
57:19 I just looked at the clock, and it's like...
57:20 Let me say this quickly.
57:22 Thank you. Thank you.
57:23 My wife Elaine will tell you that I'm not recovered.
57:26 Okay, you're on the road. I am on the road.
57:29 You're on the road though.
57:30 And my daughter will tell you that I'm not out the woods,
57:32 but thanks be to God,
57:34 I am escaping
57:35 and I ask everybody to join me in my getaway.
57:37 All right.
57:38 Well, thank you so much for joining us.
57:40 Thank you.
57:41 And make sure you order that book go to...
57:44 www.GetEgoHelpNow.org.
57:49 It's been a blessing. And thank you for joining us.
57:53 Make sure that you order this book.
57:54 It's going to be a blessing for you and inspirational too.
57:59 I can't believe
58:00 that we've reached the end of another program.
58:02 Join us next time
58:03 because it just wouldn't be the same without you.


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Revised 2017-06-08