Yesterday, Oprah sat under the oaks with spiritual teacher, life coach and author Tim Storey. Throughout the telecast, Oprah quoted from Tim’s book, Comebacks & Beyond: How to Turn Your Setbacks Into Comebacks.
For the first ten years of Tim’s life, there was joy and a definite rhythm to life in the Storey household, but all that changed when his father died. Tim watched as his siblings medicated themselves to deal with their loss. Even at an young age, Tim sensed that setbacks could be transformed.
At age seventeen, he received the calling to become a pastor and decided to devote his life to helping others find meaning in life. In 1992, Tim started a Bible Study at the home of actress Dyan Cannon. Seven people attended that first meeting and today the group known as “The Study” attracts more than 1000 attendees. In the past three decades, Tim has shared his inspiring message in seventy different countries.
When asked about a common denominator to setbacks, Tim pointed out that some people tend to live in the shame and guilt of their experiences. Frustrated by their inability to go back and “fix” the situation, they “nurse it, curse it, and rehearse it.” Instead, Tim urges everyone to accept the Now and take an inventory of what is working.
Another common thread is a sense of unworthiness: “I don’t think I deserve to experience this because of past setbacks.” Tim reminds us that God has forgiven our past mistakes and we need to renew the way we think. When a challenging situation arises, we should ask: “Why is it here? What is my lesson?” God often steers us into unknown corners (spaces and places we’ve never been) as part of his divine plan.
Tim also stresses the need to turn up the volume on our lives and get our “shouts” back. Disappointments can knock out the shouts and reduce our voices to whispers. To prevent that from happening, Tim advises shouting on purpose. He takes a moment each day where he inwardly shouts about what is going well in his life.
Quotable Quotes
Your dream has a voice.
A comeback is not a go-back.
Your life isn’t about a big break. It’s about one significant life transforming step at a time.
Play it down, pray it up, and look for the wisdom.
Darkness will surround, but it doesn’t have to get in.
If you’re trifling, the real YOU will say, “Get it together.”
There is a lesson in all our failures: We can fail forward.
Joanne Guidoccio 
That sense of bodily reaching out, leaning in direction of different individuals, is embedded throughout the word grace.” We get it from the Latin gratia, which acquired right here from the Greek charis, which initially meant favor,” as in a gift or act of kindness that one individual extends to another, in a gesture of offering. He spoke of the grace of the households who lost members of the family; the grace that Reverend Pinckney would preach about in his sermons; the grace described in one amongst my favorite hymnals, the one we all know — Very good Grace. He’s proper to convey it up, to point out us how grace could be perceived, and that it’s value noticing.
Love all those quotes Joanne, what an inspirational man.
I also found Tim inspiring. I’m picking up his book. Thanks for dropping by, Kath 🙂