Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given - Duane Dog Chapman [45]
Josh was shaking in his shoes. He didn’t know karate or any other kung fu stuff and he definitely didn’t know how to put a death touch on someone. Even so, I looked back at Josh in my rearview mirror so he would catch a glimpse of my eyes. He knew I wanted him to get it together and not make a liar out of me, so he did the only thing he could do; he sat straight up in his seat, leaned forward, turned toward the fugitive, and let out a little growl. At that move, Merrill was more scared than Josh. I looked back in the mirror one last time before we got to the county jail. I gave Josh a wink to let him know I was proud of him, real proud.
CHAPTER 9
(credit: Chaz)
My life has been filled with trying moments when my faith has been tested over and over again. Tony Robbins used to say that there was great power in positive thinking and positive confession. The words you speak are crucial to how you live. Your mind believes whatever you tell it. If you constantly tell yourself, “I’m so fat,” or “I’m lazy,” eventually that is how everyone will see you because that’s how you’ll act. If I move through the world like a leader, people will see me as one.
All those years studying with Tony Robbins helped me realize that every challenge is an opportunity to strengthen my faith, to make it stronger and to use that situation to learn and grow. Even knowing this, calling Tony after the National Enquirer broke the story was a lot harder than I’d expected it to be. I was certain he’d heard the news by the time I phoned. What I wasn’t sure of was how he would react. Back in the days when I first started working with Tony, his wife Becky used to tell me that I needed to improve the language I used. She said I didn’t speak with enough sophistication. She even gave me a dictionary to study so I could find ways of saying things that weren’t so blunt or abrupt. I thought about that as I listened to the phone ring, waiting for Tony to answer on the other end. If I had taken Becky’s advice back then, perhaps I wouldn’t have found myself in the jam I was in. I guess it didn’t matter much now.
“I don’t know the answer, Duane, but you do.” Those were the words Tony spoke when I asked him what he thought I should do. He said I could come to his home in Fiji and hide out for a while if I thought that was the best solution. He told me and Beth to fly on down for a couple of weeks. He was there doing a seminar, but he’d be able to spend some time talking it through if we wanted to. I gave his generous offer a lot of consideration. Two weeks halfway around the world on a private island sounded pretty appealing. I could hide from the world if I wanted to. But in the end, after a lot of deliberation, the answer was still no.
For the same reasons I didn’t choose to go the “rehab” route, I didn’t want anyone to judge me for seeking the advice of a guy so many view as a “guru” rather than as the good friend Tony Robbins has been to me. The more I thought about how Tony had answered, the more I realized that, once again, he was absolutely right. I didn’t need two weeks in isolation to find out that the correct choices lived inside me. All I had to do was find the right words, let them flow from within, and hope I wouldn’t make things worse.
It wasn’t until I reached my fifties that I realized education wins out over stupidity every time. For years my manager warned me that educated men don’t use the “N” word. Alan accompanied me to a speaking engagement in Canada a few months prior to the Enquirer story. We were driving to the event when I referred to a white girl as a “n***er.”
Confused, Alan asked, “Why did you use that term on a white girl?”
“I’ve never used that word to describe the color of someone’s skin. It’s about who they are, how they operate. It