IN BOOK, PASTOR ENCOURAGES OTHERS TO IGNORE NAYSAYERS
‘Ignore the No’ author, who brushes away ‘no,’ says dream the impossible
Again and again the Rev. Stephen Albert was told “no” about things he wanted to do. But then he went ahead and did them anyway. He was told he couldn’t start an Interfaith Awareness Week, but then he did — and it grew around the world.
He was told no, he couldn’t make it through college, but then he ended up with a doctorate.
“If you have a dream, you can find a way to make it come true,” said Albert, cofounder of the Poway Interfaith Team and founder of the World Interfaith Network.
As a college teacher over four decades, Albert saw students get hung up on the idea that they could not accomplish something. He’s met hundreds of people who gave up trying to achieve something because they were told no, they couldn’t.
So Albert decided to write a book to encourage people to go past the “no.”
His book “Ignore the ‘NO!’: Empower Yourself to Do the Impossible!” just came out and is about “how we can go beyond all the ‘nos’ we received early in life and eliminate any barriers which we may have created in our mind when we want to try something new,” said Albert, who with his wife, Abigail, is co-minister of the All Faith Center in Poway.
“I want to inspire people who feel discouraged or unhappy in their life to know that they can reach their dreams and beyond,” Albert, 75, said.
The 72-page book is Albert’s 20th work and follows his 2020 book, “A Rainbow for the World.” He also authored “Reboot to Interfaith,” which is about finding peace through mutual respect of each others’ differences, in particular, differences in faith. His other recent titles include “Infinite Possibilities & Beyond” and “From Religious to Spiritual: The New Thought Experience,” co-authored with the Rev. Hal Lingerman.
Albert weaves in his own experiences of being told “no” and how he
overcame the negativity.
“I had an inner desire to be an architect when the college counselor told me that I was not college material,” Albert said. His parents never went to college; in fact, his father never graduated from high school. But his parents began putting a few dollars away every week in a college fund for Albert.
He went on to earn four degrees, an associate in engineering from Penn State University, a bachelor of architecture from Drexel University and a master’s in environmental psychology from the University of Colorado, Boulder, along with a doctorate in religious studies from Emerson Theological Institute.
“Especially during my 44 years of college teaching, I have met many young people who have been raised with ‘Our people don’t go to college’ and ‘You’ll never be able to do that,’ ” Albert said.
Albert encourages readers
to go beyond the “no.” The book talks about miracles and the use of what Albert calls “Previous Thought,” which means thinking ahead and preparing for the next step.
“We must not allow others to limit us just because they cannot see our potential. And we have to stop limiting ourselves due to fear or because what we want to do hasn’t been done before,” Albert said.
Albert points out that he had a stroke in 2003 when he was 55 and open-heart fiveway bypass surgery in 2012, but that has not kept him from doing some of his most significant work since then, such as starting Interfaith Awareness Week in 2017. In 2019, he founded the World Interfaith Network, which connects interfaith groups around the world. The network has nearly 300 members and is recognized in 107 countries, according to Albert. Its mission is to foster mutual respect among people of different faiths and cultures.
Since 2004, he has counseled rehab patients and their families on how to “reboot” their lives to better health. For 16 years until COVID-19 stopped face-toface visits, he volunteered at Palomar Health Rehabilitation Institute in Escondido.
“Rev. Dr. Steve is one of the finest examples of someone who can take hardship and disappointment and turn it around to become a blessing for all,” said one of the book’s reviewers, the Rev. Wendy Craig-Purcell, spiritual leader and founder of The Unity Center in San Diego.
Asked if the book is spiritual, Albert said, “Everything is spiritual. We believe everyone is a child of God and we each have the free will to listen to that small voice inside which gives us ideas and dreams beyond the beliefs that we were brought up with or which society limits us by. Through my inner drive and God’s grace, I surpassed the naysayers.”