Page 96 - The Power to Change Anything

Make the Undesirable Desirable 85

ior itself from loathsome to gratifying, from pleasurable to dis-
gusting, or from insulting to inspiring.
It sounds impossible, but if you ask gifted influencers, their
unequivocal answer will be, of course you can. And you
must.

TUESDAY AFTERNOON
It’s 3:17 Tuesday afternoon. Terri is carrying a CD loaded with
financial data from the accounting office to the Delancey
Street Restaurant. The manager asked her to bring it over
ASAP, so she logged into her computer, burned the data onto
the disc, and headed for the restaurant.
What surprises Terri is how quickly her feet are moving. She
can’t recall the last time they moved this fast. From the time she
was nine, she had perfected a purposefully casual gait. She took
great pride in her “I’m okay/you suck” approach to life. No mat-
ter that this attitude had landed her in jail for most of her
adolescent years. No matter that it earned her a manslaughter
conviction after someone looked at her sideways in a bar.
Nobody was going to tell her what to do. Nobody.
So why is Terri walking so fast now? It’s been 19 months
since she was offered a tour at Delancey Street rather than serv-
ing her last five years in prison. Every semester, Terri has
attended Delancey’s graduation ceremony. It’s a grand gather-
ing where all 500 residents of the San Francisco campus crowd
into the main hall to celebrate each other’s progress. The first
two times Terri was recognized for her accomplishments, she
stared at the floor and ignored whatever they were saying
about her. “Who gives a flying leap that I now know how to set
a frigging table? This is all a stupid game, and I’m not playing
it!” When the applause for Terri had died down, she walked
back to her chair, unaffected.
But last week they talked about her diploma and her pro-
motion to crew boss. She looked over at Dr. Silbert, who was