By Bethany Lange
Herald Reporter

EVANSTON — New York Times bestselling novelist Richard Paul Evans visited Evanston on Saturday, April 22, to speak at the 2017 Women’s Conference: Our Favorite Things.
The conference, which is in its eighth year, is an annual tradition put on by Evanston Regional Hospital for the women in and around Evanston.
Before the conference started in earnest, Hospital CEO Jeremy Davis announced that the hospital has just hired a new OB-GYN who will start this summer, Dr. Micah Pullens will return to Evanston in June and the hospital recently hired a full-time cardiologist and has two urologists visit twice weekly.
There will also be a clinic for sports physicals from 8 a.m.-noon on Saturday, May 13, at Uinta Medical Group. All physicals will have a discounted flat $20 rate, and $10 from each physical will be donated to an athletics or Scouting program.
Davis said patients shouldn’t assume it will be cheaper to go elsewhere but should talk with the hospital about ERH’s new program to address healthcare cost concerns.
In the day’s featured presentation, Evans spoke about his experiences and struggles growing up and how he became a bestselling author, focusing his talk around his newest book, “The Four Doors: A Guide to Joy, Freedom and a Meaningful Life.”
He focused on how people tend to undershoot in their lives and be controlled by a fear of risk and failure.
“I think people live below their potential for accomplishment and happiness,” he said.

Evans began and ended with a map analogy, saying that people form mental maps as they go through life. However, mental maps are flawed or incomplete. For instance, he said, a Salt Lake City map will not be a good guide for Chicago, just as his former belief that all women could not be trusted because his mother abandoned him was inaccurate.
He then transitioned to his first principle.
“You are not a mistake of God or nature. You are here for a purpose,” he told his listeners.
Evans has tried to find out what sets apart the people who clearly changed the world, and when he read biographies of famous (and infamous) achievers, all believed they had something important to do in life.
Evans said it is possible to know and not believe or to believe and not know, but belief has greater weight.
He pointed to the similarity of structures at the molecular level to the structures at the universal level, then said there is a “still, small voice” that guides each person (a term Evans attributed to Ghandi but which is also in 1 Kings 19:11-13 in the story of Elijah).
Evans asked the audience to begin tuning into that voice in their lives before moving to his second point, which is escaping the trap of paradigm.
Evans said two examples of paradigm (worldview) traps are fear and victimhood.
Evans said creativity and imagination are the key to breaking out of paradigm prison, as was the case with people like Walt Disney, J.C. Penney and Mark Twain, who all grew up in remote rural areas in Missouri. Their surroundings provided the space to develop the creativity that made them giants.
Evans said today’s culture glorifies victimhood — and thereby makes the cage desirable. On the flip side, just as the best grapes grow in poor soil, humans can thrive not just through but because of adversity.
Evans’ own adversity spans his childhood as well as his Tourette’s Syndrome. He was not diagnosed with the syndrome until he was 40, though — and it was a diagnosis that gave many of his childhood struggles a name.
His doctor said Evans’ Tourette’s is a gift, as his struggles gave him the perspective he needed to reach people through his writing — including the doctor’s own wife, who, after their little daughter died, had been nearly suicidal until she read Evans’ book “The Christmas Box.”
Evans said he has also had fans say his characters, such as Michael Vey (who also has Tourette’s in the “Michael Vey” series), are their only friends.
He then moved to his third point about magnifying life both to examine it closely and to make it bigger. He said a novelists’ trick is to play the “What if” game, which applies well in real life as well.
“The greatest shackles we wear in this life are forged by our own fears,” he said, adding that people frequently embrace failure because they fear failure, thinking too little of the possible gains.
Evans remembered his high school years when he had a crush on the most beautiful girl in the school yet never summoned the courage to ask her out, succumbing to his insecurities. Some years later, though, she told him she had had a crush on him as well.
It was this story that he kept in mind when he went to an authors’ conference with his self-published book, which no publisher had accepted. Evans said he stepped up to an empty seat on the bestselling authors’ stage and brazened it out.
The following year, his book was the New York Times second bestseller and Evans was personally invited back to the same stage.
Evans’ fourth and final point was the importance of building a mental map around love. He said love does away with fear and victimhood both and helps people expand beyond their imprisoning paradigms — and in so doing, it is the most powerful of the “four doors.”
“We love the people we serve,” he told his riveted audience before finishing his presentation.
After the keynote presentation, the day overall was packed with things to do, including shopping, food, photo ops and classes. For a little more than an hour, Evans signed books and Miss Rodeo Wyoming Abby Hayduk visited with attendees. There were also 19 breakout sessions throughout the day, featuring both locals and people who traveled to Evanston for the event.