Every man has the potential to influence his generation
Welcome to the Make a Difference Series, where I challenge you with real life stories of achievers and communities that are presently changing the world. Reading these stories will make you realize that you are an inspiration. Spread the message to others and light their candle.
Ever thought of life as horror and don’t want to have anything to do with it anymore. All your treasured memories are how much you have failed all your life.
Nothing you have ever done has turned ever turned out good. It as if you were born a loser; a sample to everyone who dislikes failure.
You have tried everything to be intentional and all you ever experienced is failure upon failure. All this pain has got to end.
Such was the thought of John Craig as he swam into the South China Sea. He was never going to swim back.
John Criag was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Elizabeth and John Venter. He never took his education seriously and was termed a C and D grader as he was terrible in his studies. He however graduated from Mills High School in Millbrae, California.
During the Tiet offensive in 1968, against his ordeals, he was enlisted in the United States Navy where he worked in the intensive-care ward of a field hospital. He had watched as men had lost their lives in the Vietnam war but what was most frustrating was that no matter how hard he tried, he could not save the lives of hundreds of men.
So frustrated with life and the horrors of the war, John began his journey to the South Ocean Sea to end his life and to live this scary world but as he got closer to the deep blue sea and was approaching the circling of a shark, he began to remember the pathetic condition of the injured and dying marines.
Suddenly, John realized that he couldn’t just allow the shark to end his life this way, there was so much that needed to be done. So he swam back being a champion swimmer.
It was at that moment that John realized that he wanted his life to mean something; he wanted to make a difference.
With purity and great energy and bearing in mind the experience of the wounded, maimed, and dying, John studied medicine and went to a Community College (College of San Mateo’ in California).
He later transferred to the University of California, San Diego, where he studied under a biochemist and received his BS in biochemistry in 1972 with a Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology in 1975 from the very same University.
John Criag would become the very first to sequence the human genome and to transfect a cell with a synthetic genome. He also founded Celera Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research and the J. Craig Venter Institute which was created to create synthetic biological organisms.
John was later listed on Time magazine’s 2007 and 2008 Time as one of the 100 lists of the most influential people in the world. In 2010, the British magazine New Statesman listed John Craig as the 14th in the list of “The World’s 50 Most Influential Figures 2010”.
He is presently a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival’s Advisory Board.
Your Worst Times Can Become Your Best Times
“Even your worst times have value and can become, in retrospect, your best times.”– Andy Andrews, The Noticer
You might be in pain and hurting; wanting to rupture your heart because your life is at the lowest. No one understands what you face each day and you have to give up your connections and relationships just to ease the thorn in your life.
So how then can your worst times become your best times?
John shows that the journey to such a goal might be difficult and the process very daunting but it starts with a commitment and a dogged mindset. You can’t control the circumstances and problems in your life but you can decide to control the outcome.
MUST READ: A Guide To Overcome The Fear of Not Being Good Enough
Turn Your Worst Times into Better Opportunities
John saw the circumstances that caused him pain and stress with a different lens. The moment he saw things differently about what had happened in his life, the transformation that occurred changed his life forever and he went to extraordinary heights.
You can turn your worst times into opportunities. You can make a difference in your life. You can change your sad stories into an inspiration. You only have to see your worst times with a different lens
When you do you will discover that you are an inspiration who has an amazing set of unique gifts and is an amazing creation that can make a difference in this world.
What About You
What did you learn from John’s Story, Please share the Comments below
