Terry Bollea (HULK HOGAN)

Hulk Hogan OUTSIDE THE RING Chapter2 FINDING FAITH: I had gone to BALLAST BAPTIST CHURCH off and on since I was in first grade. The church was on the corner of the elementary school and my parents would sometimes bring me there on sundays. Church never had much of an impact on my life as a kid. We would go on sundays, come home, and never talk about God or faith the entire week. My parents said that going to church for an hour every week was enough. ALL OF THAT CHANGED WHEN I WAS 15. I don't remember if I was still playing football or if it was after I had quit but it was after practice that the Satterwhite brothers finally convinced me to come with them to the CHRISTIAN YOUTH RANCH. They had tried to get me to go ever since junior high. Knowing that I had a love for music they finally got me to go when they told me the youth band needed someone to play the guitar. SO I WENT AND ALL THE KIDS SANG ALONG IT WAS A REAL PEACEFUL ENVIRONMENT. The meetings were every week either on Mondays or Tuesdays but there was nothing else for me to do so I kept going. In between the songs I would listen to the lessons of REV HANK LINDSTROM especially JOHN 3:16 the one verse that REV. LINDSTROM would beat into everybodys head every week. Growing up I had always believed there was something more to us than just the body. Other kids would say things like "OH MAN I DONT EVER WANT TO DIE" and I remember saying "IM NOT AFRAID TO DIE BECAUSE I THINK IM GOING TO HEAVEN." I never understood the whole thing about believing but I just had a feeling there was a God. Whether its ALLAH or the HIGHER SELF every religion has a name for what they believe to be the higher spirit, energy, or being. BUT GOD MADE SENSE TO ME FOR SOME REASON. As a kid I also had my own source or reasoning, "IF IM GOOD ILL GET GOOD GRADES IF IM A GOOD PERSON THEN ILL GET INTO HEAVEN." I thought of it like being on Santas checklist. When I met Hank Lindstrom that reasoning stopped. He said to me, "YOU KNOW WHAT MAN? YOU CANT GET INTO HEAVEN THAT WAY." "WHAT DO YOU MEAN?" I asked " YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT JESUS CHRIST AS YOUR LORD AND SAVIOR YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT THAT WERE ALL SINNERS YOU KNOW? AND THAT GOD GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON HE SACRIFICED HIS SON TO PAY FOR YOUR SINS." for some reason I took a real interest in what he was saying and I kept asking him to read me different passages from the BIBLE. What They all seemed to say is that you don't necessarily have to do good YOU JUST HAVE TO BELIEVE. After what happened to my brother ALAN I definitely wanted to go down the right path and do the right thing I didn't quite agree that you could just go out and murder people and then all of a sudden, "OH I BELIEVE IN JESUS CHRIST," and all will be forgiven then you will walk through the pearly gates of Heaven when you have died. To me it felt like acknowledging everything I already knew that everything wasn't just surface level or materialistic. THERE WAS SOMETHING MORE. WHAY DID I BELIEVE IN GOD? Maybe I was just too scared not to: I don't want to say I don't believe in God cause oh my God what will happen then? All I know is that I could tell the difference between my body and what I felt in my spirit. If you believe in your spirit than you believe in JOHN 3:16 which is the foundation of being a Christian and what I believe in and then youre not afraid to die anymore. And when youre not afraid to die than youre not afraid to live. I didn't completely understand the power of it at that time but I did feel something shift in my life at that point. I followed that feeling knowing that I had been saved and that I would have eternal life when my body no longer had life in it. That Christian youth ranch really helped lay the foundation of strength and resolve I would need to accomplish everything in my life and that foundation certainly helped me get through the rough times that were to come many years later. I remember maybe 5or6 weeks after these things had happened and I had first raised my hand , to accept Christ ,with the other kids I had said to myself," I THINK CHRIST DID DIE ON THE CROSS FOR OUR SINS." Being saved is not some big evangelical moment, its not some over the top thing, its not joining some sort of cult or something. Its just accepting what it means to be a Christian. I continued going to that youth ranch every week through the rest of high school. Over the years Rev Lindstrom and I have kept in tough and his teachings remain in my mind today even when I spend my sundays in the ring instead of in a pew.

CHAPTER 18 SECRET REVEALED: After Linda filed for divorce I felt like I was bouncing around in a pinball machine for a couple of weeks. Sometimes Id run into someone who wanted to talk with me and Id just unload on them about everything that was wrong with my life. Public appearances were very hard for me too. To be mobbed by fans who wanted to see HULKAMANIA MADNESS and pose for pictures with me flexing my muscles was nearly impossible for me.
 At the end of the month I flew to Texas for a appearance and when I flew back I started my whole WOE IS ME routine with the guy the sitting next to me. I went on and on about all the misery in my life, MY WIFE FILING FOR DIVORCE, MY SON FACING CRIMINAL CHARGES EVENTHOUGH HES BEEN THROUGH SO MUCH ALREADY WITH BEST FRIEND BEING IN THE HOSPITAL,AND MY BACK HURTS SO BAD THAT MY LEGS START TO GO NUMB IF I SIT TOO LONG,NOT TO MENTION MY FEET START SWELLING EVERYTIME I GET ON A PLANE. I JUST KEPT COMPLAINING ON AND ON.
All of a sudden someone tapped my shoulder. I turned and I saw this dark-skinned woman sitting behind me with the most peaceful face. She said to me, "YOU SHOULD READ THIS" and she handed me a copy of THE SECRET by Rhonda Byrne. It was book who became a giant bestseller and was featured on OPRAH. There are also spoofs of it and whole groups who think its a bunch of mumbo jumbo so they do all they can to hate it. But I had never heard of it when she handed it to me. "IF YOU READ IT IT MAY HELP YOU." she said. The guy next to me was getting tired of my complaining anyway so I thought WHAT THE HECK. When I opened it up it hit me like a lightening bolt about how much I saw myself in it. I GET CHILLS JUST THINKING ABOUT IT. Since Im a fast reader I read the book as fast as I could just taking in its revelations about the "law of attraction" the idea that were personally responsible for everything that happens in our lives. To get a better handle on the whole idea I went back to the beginning and began to read again- this whole idea that what you think about you bring about. That your thoughts conscious or unconscious dictate the reality of your life. This idea seemed to trace back to when I was 15 when I was reading the Bible there was a certain phrase I had read "ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE" WAS GOD REALLY SAYING THAT EVERYTHING WE EVER WANTED OR NEEDED WAS THERE FOR THE ASKING? ALL WE HAD TO DO WAS ASK? WAS THIS BOOK REALLY SAYING THAT I COULD CHANGE MY LIFESTYLE IF I CHANGED MY WAY OF THINKING? Before I was done the airplane landed in the airport at Tampa. I wanted to get all the way through it again so I just kept reading. When the lady who gave it to me started to leave she said I could keep it. I thanked her and when I took it home I read it again and again that night. I wish I could have found that woman to thank for what she had done for me from giving me the book because that moment marked the start of whole new journey in life. I journey that would lift me off the treadmill of misery that I had been on far too long. The funny thing is I started this journey much earlier without even knowing it-in those moments when I started praying for happiness, when I had a gun in my hand wandering if life was still worth living, and when I backed away from Linda the day before Christmas. Unfortunately I would have to go a lot further down this path before I would understand what any of it meant. Im not a philosopher or a preacher so all I can tell you is how THE SECRET and all these other books I started to read at the beginning of 2008 helped me change my life for the better. In the beginning of 2008 I devoured book after book and reread those books over and over. I also bought the DVD film version of THE SECRET and watched it again and again. I loved seeing these spiritual leaders and life coaches come to life on the screen. People like MICHAEL BECKWITH and JAMES ARTHUR RAY. I got so obsessed I started to put the DVD on repeat on the DVD player in my black Mercedes so every time I got in the car it would play on the pop up TV screen on the dashboard. The more I read and the more I listened the more I started to connect the dots in my life going all the way back to my childhood. I had pulled out a Bible again. I thought about what it meant to walk in the spirit of Christ. I thought about the teaching of REV LINDSTROM at the CHRISTIAN YOUTH CAMP. I thought about the old moral code I use to live by- that simple code of wanting to be good and not bad. I started to change my opinion on every single thing that had ever happened in my life. RIGHT THEN AND THERE ALMOST OVERNIGHT. For far too long my thought had been consumed with the problems of my marriage, the pain in my body, the horror of Nicks accident and, Johns condition. ALL I HAD THOUGHT ABOUT WERE THE PROBLEMS IN MY LIFE. MAYBE I HAVE BEEN HIT IN THE HEAD TOO MANY TIMES BUT IM TELLING YOU AS SOON AS I STARTED PAYING ATTENTION TO THE LAW OF ATTRACTION AS SOON AS I STARTED NOT PRAYING TO BE HAPPY, BUT BELIEVEING THAT I COULD BE HAPPY AGAIN, HAPPINESS STARTED TO FIND ME.