The Rule of Three

Chapter 14

In 1991 while I worked and greatly prospered in the TV Commercial Industry, I attended a two hour Self-Awareness Workshop at The Omega Institute in New York. When the workshop began the leader addressed the entire class with the following question: “How would you like to do something different with your life one day?” As I watched the whole class including myself say yes by raising our hands, I remember thinking: “Sure, why not, who wants to do the same thing forever.” I also remember my next two thoughts came with a little anxiety. “What one thing would it take for me to risk everything I had accomplished in the film business with all the safety and security it had given me? And how would I know when it was the right time to do it?” It took me ten more years to discover the answers.

I had heard The Rule of Three explained as both good things come in threes and bad things come in threes. In 2001 three things came to me that regardless of whether they were good or bad, led me to change my life forever. The first involved Horses. The second was about Love. The third had to do with Humans.

In May of the next year I went to my 40th High School Class Reunion. My class was supposed to meet in room #502. I peered into the room, looked at all the people and could see it was obviously not my class. I continued down the hallway thinking they had made a mistake in room numbers but every other room on the floor was empty. I walked back to room # 502 to take one last look inside. The same people as before, a couple of large heavyset gray haired women and a few old baldheaded men all standing around talking. Then one of the old men looked at me and said: “Hi Tim, it’s me Jeff Brown, member me?” I was speechless. I hadn’t made a mistake. It was my class.

I stayed for about forty minutes reminiscing with a few of my classmates, said goodbye and left for home. It was one of those “Twilight Zone experiences” where I felt like I had actually time traveled back forty years. But it was not a television show ...it was my life. If my class was that old...I was that old. What happened, who took all my years?

That October on a cold Monday morning in New York City I was sitting at my desk at Timothy Hayes & Company Inc about to make my first sales call of the day. It was something I had enjoyed and done for more than thirty years. I looked at the phone but I just couldn’t pick it up. I thought: “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Out of nowhere my next thought was of being in the Self-Awareness Workshop ten years earlier where the leader had asked the class: “How many of you would like to do something different with your life one day?” I remembered asking myself: “How would I know when it was the right time to do it. And what one thing would have to happen for me to make the change?”

All at once a stream of thoughts of the 2001 life changing 3 things of Horses, Love and Humans passed through my mind like the CNN Breaking News Banners at the bottom of a T.V. Screen. Any one of these occurrences could have been the “One thing” that would have to happen for someone to change their entire life…I had three!

I picked up the phone but instead of making a sales call I called the one person I had always trusted more than anyone in my life…my big brother Dennis. I told him I was closing my company, leaving New York City, where I had lived my entire life, and moving to the country to work with horses and humans. He said three things: “Congratulations, you’ll be great and… I love you.”