Sarina Russo is the daughter of an Italian immigrant farmer in Australia who built a business empire based on her desire to empower young people to gain confidence and enter the workforce.  She didn't initially know exactly what she wanted to do.  She figured it out by realizing what she didn't.  She wasn't always the assertive go-getter that led her to dine with the U.S. president and other influential leaders.  In fact, there was a time when it looked like she was destined to stay home and work for her family until the best suitor was chosen for her.

To read her autobiography, "Meet Me At the Top" inspires us to reach inside ourselves to tap into our own hidden talents.  Are you aware of your potential? She reveals her perception of success in business: how to launch and market yourself, how to recruit for a business, how to enhance  your performance, how to negotiate effectively with clients, how to build a brand how to develop qualities in yourself that will inspire other people to have faith in your potential. Consider these ideas derived from Sarina's life which could help us all see our lives differently:  

1) The pain associated with struggle is preferable to the pain of regret.  You're better off taking steps to put an idea into action than wonder if it would ever have worked.  After disillusions by school and dissatisfied with her life as it was, Sarina left home with a dream to create a new life.   She had little money and admittedly struggled to 'get on her feet,' but she never has to look back on her life and wonder what would happen if she didn't try.

2) Be grateful to former bosses who fire you.  Without being thrown out on your figurative rear, how else would you learn to stand up on your own two feet? Think of animals that are born learning to stand up already and how humans are coddled in some places for so long, they would never choose to leave! To fall into a state of complaency wouldn't enable you to grow.  Sarina had a variety of secretarial and stenographer jobs and her personality wasn't always compatible with employers and co-workers. More than once she tried to get an old job back and was refused because former employers thought she needed to move forward not backward.

3) Appreciate every experience for the stepping stone it is.   You will have your ups and downs but every experience offers wisdom if you choose to see it.  You can learn more about your strengths and weaknesses, what kinds of risks you're willing to take and what you're willing to lose in light of the bigger picture. 

4) The best revenge is to define & experience your own success.  People will always judge and disagree with your views and aspirations.  You're better off not wasting your energy in fights with naysayers. Channel it instead to create a life that makes you feel good about yourself.  You have no reason not to take advantage of the time you're given. Create your own opportunities.

5) Don't hold back.  In pursuit of your dreams, you'll realize it would benefit you to appraoch people who know more than you do.  You'll realize you'll have to learn to stick up for who you are and the value in what you aim to do.  Develop self-confidence and express yourself in ways that convince other people that you're a force to reckon with. First, you must convince yourself.