Tim Allen: From Drug Dealer to Successful Comedian

Do you want to be successful? Do you want to do great things with your life? If so, there’s something important you need to recognize. There is only one person responsible for the outcome and quality of your life, and that person is YOU.If you want to success and greatness, you must take responsibility for every facet of your life—everything!  Yet assuming responsibility for oneself isn’t easy in this modern world. We have been conditioned all our lives to blame every external circumstance and every other person around us for the parts of our lives we don’t like. We blame our genetics, our environment, and the poor job done by our parents. But the blame doesn’t stop there. After we grow up and leave home, we continue to blame all our failures and flaws on our spouses, bosses, friends, lack of money, lack of opportunity, lack of education, the influences of the media, the lousy economy, and even our children. We have been conditioned from birth to look everywhere for the root cause of our difficulties except in the most logical and most realistic place: ourselves.If there’s one thing the Bible teaches, it’s personal responsibility and accountability. Yes, the Bible also teaches us to love and care for one another, but these directives are based upon the understanding and presumption that a man will first be inclined to help himself. So if God is going to hold us accountable one day for the lives we have lived on earth, how can we pretend that we can get away with blaming poor circumstances or other people for the outcome of our lives? That excuse won’t work on Judgment Day, so it won’t work now. All of us must hold ourselves accountable right now and judge ourselves against the standard of our own potential.

The cold, hard truth is that at this very moment you are living the results of your past choices and decisions.

And just as the present reflects your past, so the future will reflect the choices you make starting today. Nothing else can help you. Nothing else can hinder you. Your life is in your own hands, and your hands alone have the power to shape your destiny.One of the most important aspects of taking responsibility for your life will be your own willingness to confront the obstacles, the circumstances, the people, and the personal challenges that lie between you and the goals you have set. There is no victor’s crown without a struggle. There is no prize without a fight. There is no overcomer without something to overcome. The challenges of life are the things that make most people quit and become most people’s excuses. But the “greats” don’t make excuses. They accept the responsibility of confronting the challenges in their lives.Most people want to see change in their lives, change for the better. They want to grow. They want to learn. They want to take the stagnant parts of their lives and revive them. They want to win the battles they have been losing most of their lives. But you cannot change what you’re not responsible for. As long as the fault for your problems lies with someone else, you can’t do anything to change those problems. The person with the power to change something is the person with the authority and responsibility to change it. So if you want change, you have some work to do, just like I do. Before you can even begin doing that work, you need to accept responsibility for the thing you want to change. You need to admit to yourself that you—and you alone—are able to turn this ship around because you, and you alone, steered this ship into its present waters.

You must become a participant in your own rescue by taking ownership of your own destiny.

When you accept the premise that there is nothing you can do about your plight in life, you become chained to the life you have. You become a prisoner to your circumstances. But your deliverance from all your limitations begins when you admit that you are responsible for where you are and you are the only person who can do what it takes to get out of where you are. Your life begins to turn around when you realize your choices and decisions put you where you are, and therefore, your choices and decisions can turn things around.If you have been through bankruptcy, for instance, your choices and decisions put you there. If you have been through a divorce, your choices and decisions put you there. If you have been through a business failure, your choices and decisions put you there. Of course, there were some outside influences that added to the demise of that aspect of your life and, of course, other people played a role in the failure. But you are primarily the person that you are and standing in the place where you are standing because you made the decisions that formed you and your present circumstances. Take responsibility! You created the present, and you can create the future.Perhaps you’re thinking, But Dave, you don’t understand. You don’t know what I’ve been through. You don’t understand what people have done to me. Don’t tell it to me. Tell it to Helen Keller, a blind and deaf-mute who became one of America’s greatest writers and political activists. Tell it to George Washington Carver, a slave who became one of our nation’s greatest scientists, educators, and inventors. Tell it to all the men who returned home after World War II to build factories, businesses, schools, and churches. Tell it to the founding fathers and early immigrants, who got off boats with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, yet carved a nation out of the rugged wilderness. Tell it to Abraham, Moses, Gideon, Jeremiah, and other great men of God who were called from humble origins to do great things in spite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles and resistance. Tell it to any of these people. Go ahead! Whine and complain and detail all your heartaches and disappointments, and see what they say.If you are like most people, you have all these “reasons” why you cannot be great or why you cannot do great things with your life, and you have hidden behind these “reasons” far too long.

Friend, break free from your limitations to achieve all your God-given potential!

Tim’s Story

Tim is a great real-life example of somebody who learned this principle in time to avoid disaster and turn his life around. In fact, I’d say that Tim turned his life around 180 degrees, because he finally woke up to the fact that he had to take complete personal responsibility for everything that had occurred in his life in the past and everything that would occur in the future.Tim grew up in a middle-class home with five brothers and a sister. When Tim was eleven, his father was killed in a terrible automobile accident. Tim quickly found the deck stacked against him in life. Like so many young boys, he struggled through high school and college, but then, as an adult, he finally had the personal freedom to act upon the fear, anger, guilt, and other pent-up emotions brewing within him as a result of his father’s death. So Tim started living in the “fast lane” and supporting his lifestyle by selling drugs. Eventually, Tim was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for the behaviors he had chosen for himself.In prison, Tim had a “pivot point” moment. He woke up and came to his senses, realizing that he was pretty messed up and had nobody to blame but himself. Yes, life had dealt him a terrible blow, but life had dealt worse hands to other people who had managed to live happy, productive lives. So Tim made a conscious decision to change. He knew he alone was the one responsible for his imprisonment, and he knew he was the only person who could turn his life around. He began to work on himself.For one thing, Tim realized that he had a lot of suppressed anger. He was angry about his father’s death and angry that he had been forced to grow up without a dad. He was angry that the early years of his life had been disrupted and that he had not been able to enjoy the things other boys his age were privileged to enjoy. He felt sorry for himself and was angry with his father who had died. He was mad at the whole world.

Tim dealt with his anger by turning it inward. He had destroyed his life and really messed things up.

When Tim finally put all this together in the solitude of his prison cell, he made a decision to accept full responsibility for his past failures and, more importantly, for his future potential. He took definitive steps to change things in his life. He read books. He organized prison talent shows, where he served as the master of ceremonies. And he started telling jokes, because he had a natural talent for humor. Then, upon his release from prison, Tim was fortunate enough to land a great job at a leading talent agency.Over time, Tim really excelled at his trade. He got noticed, not only for his work, but also for his talent as an actor and comedian. His performance company even approached Disney with Tim’s capabilities, and Disney offered Tim a role in a major television program. Tim turned down the offer, however, holding out for something that fit him better. Disney made two more offers that Tim rejected. Tim wanted to take responsibility for the direction of his own life. He had his own idea for a television program, and his idea just didn’t match up with Disney’s. Tim turned down their repeated offers and worked instead to make his own personal dream a reality.Eventually, Tim was able to star in his own television show, a show he conceived that fit his humor and talent perfectly. The show was about a man who was the host of his own handyman program on television, and the show became a major hit with the American audience. By now, you have probably guessed that I am talking about Tim Allen, creator and star of a number one television show, Home Improvement.Just thirteen years after his release from jail, Tim Allen starred in the top television program in America (Home Improvement), had the leading role in a major motion picture (The Santa Clause), and had the number one book on the New York Times Bestseller List (his autobiography, Don’t Stand Too Close to a Naked Man). I’d call that a turnaround. How about you? And it all began when Tim Allen made the simple decision to accept responsibility for his own life.Do you think Tim Allen would have become successful if he hadn’t accepted responsibility for his own life? Of course not! He would have kept traveling the same worn-out path of repeated self-destructive behaviors that landed him in jail in the first place. He would have continued to be angry and feel sorry for himself. In prison, Allen was no benefit to himself, his wife, his family, his friends, or society, but you can see how dramatically he increased the value of his life to the people around him and to himself by simply owning up to his past decisions and accepting responsibility for his future ones.

In a moment of revelation, he went from being a drug pusher to being a future box office millionaire. Not bad for an ex-con!

So, let me ask. Where are you headed in life? Making life changes is both difficult and uncomfortable, and if you are like most people, you just settle for the easier path in life and stay put. Then you complain about your life. The “greats,” however,  are people who refused to accept the status quo. They were men and women who realized their lives were 100 percent the product of their own choices. Nobody else put them where they were when their moment of enlightenment came, and nobody else could get them to the Promised Land. They accepted responsibility for themselves and started the lonely journey to excellence and greatness. YOU can do the same with your life! Realize all the great potential your Creator has placed within you and do what it takes to reach your dreams!