"Part 7: Read the Transcript of Willie Crawford's In Search of Heroes Interview" by Ralph Zuranski
Willie Crawford: Its extremely important. It’s everything. Its you have to believe that you can achieve that dream, but if you don’t have that dream you’ll settle for where you are, you’ll settle for where you are.
And that’s very sad, because I deal with people on line everyday who are stuck in jobs they hate. Who are… whose family situation is not where they’d like it to be. And they are willing to settle for it. I’m not willing to settle.
But not only that… I traveled to over 40 countries in the military, and I saw what was possible.
I went to Panama for example, there were multi-million dollar condo’s and right next to them were tin sheds of homeless people who just pitched a shed next to the side of the building. So I saw extreme wealth and extreme poverty. So I knew what was possible. I know what’s possible.
And then it’s a matter of knowing that you can… can achieve you know the high end of that spectrum. And it was just… I set a goal for myself, I set many goals for myself, but and I take action on those goals. But I refuse to believe that I can do anything other than the high end of that spectrum.
And a part of that is also a philosophy of that’s ok to achieve a lot of things, to have wealth. My grandmother who I grew up in this Southern Baptist church she had fifteen brothers and sisters. Her father built the church and I grew up thinking money was bad. She would say to us as youth money is the root of all evil.
Which is not what the Bible says, it says the love of money is the root of all evil, because if you put that ahead of caring about others and things like that, that is bad.
Having money is not bad. I had to relearn that. I had to learn that it was ok to have money. That money lets you do things that you couldn’t otherwise do. You can spend money on things that you care about.
But only if you have it. So money is not bad. And I had to relearn that though. And now I have learned that… you know I clearly envision myself someday making ten, twenty, thirty million dollars a year.
But I’ll spend it on things that I care about. Cancer research, whatever, but money itself is not evil. You know it’s just a tool, it’s just a tool.
Ralph Zuranski: Well you know it’s important to have a positive view of setbacks of misfortunes and mistakes. And it sounds like you’ve derived at that position where that is your belief. How important has that been in your life of taking a positive view of setbacks, misfortunes and mistakes?
Willie Crawford: It’s extremely important. It’s I was stepped through a process of forgiving myself for the mistakes I made. I’ve made many mistakes in my life. Done wrong to other people. I was taught that you cannot undo those mistakes you can go back and apologize for those mistakes and people may or may not forgive you and that’s ok either way. You have to let go of it.
I’m only in control of myself and even then only to a certain extent. I learned a long time ago I’m not even in control of myself. And so I can only control what I do at a given moment in time.
My belief system is that I can do anything and I… there is this saying that we call it the serenity prayer. Which is like God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, change the things that I cannot find, I actually lost that.
Ralph Zuranski: Change the things that I can, and know the difference between the two.
Willie Crawford: There you go, there you go. So if I look at something and I can change it and it needs to be changed I’ll do it. But if I look at something and I have two beautiful daughters. My wife is from the Philippines and I’m African American. So my daughters have this jet-black hair, its straight, they are the ideal of many cultures.
I mean you as a white person you want to get a tan or whatever sometime. Well they’ve got the tan, they’ve got the straight hair that I wanted and they are in the middle.
And I as they were growing up I looked at all the young suitors they had and wanted to chase them off but couldn’t and I learned some things are out of your control you know.
Ralph Zuranski: Yeah. Yeah.
Willie Crawford: You just go with the flow and if you can’t change it you don’t worry about it. So I’m at peace with myself and with the world right now and that is a very good place to be.
Ralph Zuranski: Well I guess so, well how important is optimism in achieving that peace?
Willie Crawford: Apart of me is all so about energy management and not allowing myself to be influenced too much be negative people and negative things. And so I’m a very optimistic person.
Again I see myself as making millions of dollars not just to have it because money is just an instrument, it’s just a piece of paper well actually 94% of the worlds money is zero’s and one’s in a computer system.
But to go from welfare, to go from being on government assistance so poor that I woke up one point in my life and I’m ready to school and my school’s the bottom is falling off and my grandmother says well here honey wear my shoes to school.
And I’m like I can’t wear my grandmother’s shoes to school. And she is like you can, so I put on my grandmother’s shoes. These shoes were like nurse’s shoes with thick bottoms because she was a diabetic and she had to have her feet comfortable.
And I wore those shoes to school and the only people who mentioned it and gave me a hard time were cousins, because they were embarrassed that I was wearing as a teenager, a grandmother’s shoes. But I had no choice.
And so I could have missed school until the next check arrived, the next welfare check and we could have gone to the local department store and bought another pair of shoes but I didn’t, I just wore them to school.
And so that was such a lesson for me in life, and just… and not letting what others say or do or think impact you too much. When I was in college I studied sociology.