Cella Quinn from Dishwasher to President of Investment Firm

Cella Quinn was born with a gift, an advantage: far above-average intelligence. She is a MENSA member, an association of people with IQ in the top 2% of the entire population. But this “gift” was of little use to her for quite some time, thanks to other birth disadvantages.
She was born with a severe cleft lip and palate, a birth defect that is a split in the roof of the mouth and the upper lip, and that produces “mangled” speech. It is often accompanied by a deformed nose. Cella described hers as looking like “a Quonset hut with one corner of the roof collapsed.” The crude, minimal surgery of the time did not help her speech. Her speech was so unintelligible to many, she carried a pad and pencil with her to communicate with. Her jaw, teeth, and face often ached. Cella had a very difficult time in school; other children picked on her, and even teachers presumed her stupid.
“When you can’t speak,” Cella said, “people think you are stupid. My family, teachers, other children thought so and even I started
to believe it.”

She was 16 when she left home, catching a bus to the nearest big city, with $44 in her pocket. She had no plan, no idea where she was going; she only knew she had to escape where she was. She got a dish-washer job at a drug store lunch counter, she was able to rent a basement room from a black woman who worked as a prostitute. This woman encouraged Cella to improve herself, to continue her education and to push to do something with her life. In conversations, Cella learned that the woman owned real estate and even invested in stocks, something that both surprised her and motivated her.
A dentist, who stopped for coffee each morning at the Walgreens lunch counter, got a note passed to him one morning from Cella. It read: “My teeth hurt so much. I can only pay you $5 a month. Will you help me?” The dentist arranged for her to receive surgeries and subsequent dental care, at a total cost of over $3,000. Cella remembers bursting into tears over the sum. However, she worked at multiple jobs, paid those bills, paid to attend business school to become a secretary, and saved up to pay for plastic surgery for her nose. Then she worked her way through the University of Nebraska, obtaining a degree in journalism after twelve years. For the next seven years, she worked in Lincoln, Nebraska as a reporter. An ad for a trainee for Merrill Lynch intrigued her. She soon began a career with Merrill Lynch. Somewhat to their surprise, she did well and after seven years, she was recruited by Smith-Barney and made a vice-president. Cella Quinn went on to achieve truly extraordinary success as a stock broker, investment advisor, ultimately as president of her own investment firm.

Her personal lifestyle has mirrored that of the rich and famous, complete with a mansion with a swimming pool in its living room, luxury automobiles, civic leadership, and security.
How did this woman manage to persevere through so many disadvantages and hardships to achieve such success?
She says her conversion was never easy. “My self-image was terrible,but due to a combination of necessity, an occasional push from
someone else, and gradually discovering abilities, I moved ahead.” Early in her selling career, she consulted a psychiatrist to improve her self-esteem. He told her she was not “stupid” as she believed; in fact, to the contrary, she was extremely intelligent, and he urged her to take the MENSA examination-and she passed!

Finally, she began to understand that she need not be held back by any of her childhood traumas, and that she could take pride and confidence from the progress she had made. “Dr. Maltz’ ideas made it possible for me to go from an 88-cent-an-hour
dishwasher to owning my own investment firm,” says Cella Quinn.

Regardless of the impetus, the important point is that Cella Quinn tested the “truths” about herself and discovered they were not
true at all!

Be inspired by this example and test every believed but limiting “truth” in your self-image’s inventory. You too may very well discover some of the most inhibiting are not true at all.

 

Thanks to Rishikesh Vaidya for sharing the Story

Taken From Book Maltz_MaxWell The New Psycho Cybernetics