When you are dealt a bad hand, you can choose to exercise great Positivity or you can wallow in self-pity. It is your choice. Iesha Champs made her choice. She chose her attitude and went from homeless to law school. Read her story and see how great Positivity can change your world.

I first saw this story on ABC News on Sunday, April 15.

Exercising Great Positivity

Iesha Champs, 33, of Houston, had a tough childhood. Her parents were addicted to drugs so she lived with her grandparents for a while before being placed in foster care. She eventually dropped out of high school.

When she was 19, she became a mother and had to get a job. She later went to have four more children. At one point she was homeless.

Then, almost 10 years ago, Champs said, one of the members of her church called her with a message and a reminder about a dream Champs had since she was 7 years old.

“[She said:] ‘God told me to tell you that you need to go back to school to get your GED because that lawyer you want to be, you’re going to be it,'” Champs said.

Champs said she was skeptical. At the time, she’d lost her job and had lost all of her family’s belongings in a house fire. She was pregnant again and had just learned that her children’s father had cancer. She said she felt hopeless.

Champs decided to start studying for the GED because she had nothing to lose. Once she got her GED, she didn’t stop. She applied and was accepted to Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University. Champs said getting through those three years of law school was a family affair.

“I went through law school, not by myself. I had such an amazing support system,” she said. 

Champs called her children “mini lawyers,” not only quizzing her with flash cards and serving as her mock jury before examinations but also stepping up to cook dinner and helping get each other ready for school each morning.

“My children mean the absolute world to me. … There have been so many times that I wanted to quit law school — I probably quit 10 times in my head already. … ” she said. But she didn’t let her circumstances or her past define her future.

“I look at these graduation photos and I say, ‘This is here a woman who knew that the odds were against her and she destroyed them,'” Champs said. “I mean, wow!”

The Bottom Line:

Law school is hard enough for someone blessed to live in a healthy family situation. But many of those with a pain free past do not succeed in law school because they have a bad attitude.

That is not Iesha Champs! She understands you can’t overcome long odds without exercising great Positivity. Now her children understand that as well!

Question:

Who do you know that was dealt a bad hand yet exercises great Positivity?

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