Life Without Limits

  I am thankful for Laura’s little talk with me about my dignity, and I’m thankful for my youthful fear of being dependent and a burden on my family because it motivated me to become more independent. Mastering even routine tasks that others take for granted did wonders for my self-confidence, but I might never have pushed myself to do it if not for some potentially negative emotions that I turned into positive energy.

  You can do the same. Tap the energy generated by your fears of failure or rejection or similar fears, and use it to power positive action that puts you closer to your dream.

  FEAR FRAMED

  You can also counter fears that might paralyze you by fighting them with fear itself. Think of your biggest fear. Let’s say it’s a fear of getting up in front of a huge audience and forgetting your speech. That’s one I can identify with. Go ahead, visualize the very worst happening: you forget your speech and they boo you off the stage. Got that image? Okay. Next, visualize yourself giving your speech so well that the audience gives you a standing ovation.

  Now, make the choice to go with the second scenario and lock it into your mind so that every time you prepare to speak, you move past your fear of the boos and go right to the standing ovation. It works for me, and it can work for you.

  A similar method for moving beyond a fear is to go back to your memory file of real-life experiences in which you have persevered and overcome challenges. For example, when I feel fearful and nervous about meeting an important person such as Oprah Winfrey, I just tap my memory bank for a shot of courage.

  You’re scared to meet Oprah? What’s she going to do, cut off your arms and legs? Wait, you’ve already lived more than twenty-five years and traveled the world without arms and legs. Oprah, I’m ready for you! Give me a hug!

  STUCK WITH FEAR

  When I was a kid, I had what seemed like a very natural fear, a fear of doctors with needles. Whenever I had to get my school vaccinations for measles and rubella or the flu, I’d hide from my mum. Part of the problem was that doctors had a limited number of places on my body where they could stick me. With other kids, they could do either arm or the butt. My abbreviated body offered only one target site, and since my bum sits very low to the ground, it was especially painful for me, even when they administered the shot high in my hip. Whenever I received a shot, I couldn’t walk for a day.

  Because of my disability, I’d spent a good part of my youth serving as a pincushion for doctors with needles, and I’d developed a very deep fear. I was known for fainting at the mere sight of a hypodermic and syringe.

  Once in grade school, two school nurses who apparently didn’t know either my history or much about human anatomy came up on either side of me, pinned me between them in my wheelchair, and gave me shots in both shoulders—where there is very little muscle or fat. It was excruciating. The pain was so bad, I asked my friend Jerry to walk alongside me and steer my wheelchair because I felt faint. Jerry took control, and sure enough, I blacked out. Poor Jerry didn’t know what to do, so he steered my wheelchair into our science class, with me hanging over the side, and asked the teacher for help.

  Knowing my great fear of needles, my mum didn’t tell me or my brother or sister that we were headed to the doctor for our school inoculations. When I was about twelve years old, we had a wild visit that became part of family lore. Mum claimed we were just going in for our school “checkups.” My first tip-off was in the waiting room. We’d seen this little girl about my age go into the examining area, and then we heard her screaming as she received her shot.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked Aaron and Michelle. “They are giving us the needle too!”

  My fear kicked in, and I went into a panic. I was crying and yelling, telling my mum that I didn’t want to get a shot, that they hurt too much and I wanted to go home. Since I was the oldest child, the younger kids followed my brave and shining example. They too started caterwauling and begging to go home.

  Our mother the nurse had no sympathy, of course. She was a veteran of the hypodermic wars. She hauled her howling and kicking and clawing pack into the examining room like a marine MP dragging drunken soldiers to the brig.

  Seeing that sheer panic and pitiful begging was not working, I tried negotiation with the family physician. “Don’t you just have something I can drink instead?” I bawled.

  “I’m afraid not, my son.”

  Time for Plan B, as in Brother. I turned to Aaron and asked him to help me escape. I had a getaway all planned out. Aaron was to distract the doctors by falling off the examining table so I could squirm out of my wheelchair and make a run for it. But mum intercepted me. Ever the opportunist, my little sister bolted for the door. A passing nurse grabbed her in the hallway, but then Michelle wedged her little arms and legs in the doorway so they couldn’t get her into the examining room. She was my hero!

  Our hysterical cries could be heard throughout the clinic. Staff came running because it sounded as though we were being brutally tortured. Unfortunately, the reinforcements quickly took the wrong side. Two of them pinned me down for an injection. I screamed like a banshee.

  I kept squirming just as they went to jam the needle in my bum. I jerked around and forced the needle to go in and pop out again. So the doctor had to jam it in me again! My screams set off car alarms in the parking lot.

  How any of us—my siblings, my mother, or the clinic staff—survived that day, I’ll never know. The three of us wailed all the way home.

  Because I was so afraid, my fears made the pain worse than it would have been if I’d just let them administer the shot. In fact, I doubled my pain because I did not manage my fear. I couldn’t walk for two days instead of just one!

  So keep that little fable from my life in mind: when you let your fears control your actions, you are only asking for serious pain in your bum!

  That was some good chocolate! Thanks, Mum!

  This is my favorite photo (6 months old). Happy, confident, and cute— right? My blissful ignorance was a blessing at that age, not knowing that I was different or that many challenges awaited me.

  At 2½, driving and getting acquainted with my first set of wheels. Watch your feet, guys!

  Always one of my favorite places to go and play with my favorite cars and trucks. I loved the sand in sunny Queensland, and at 3, I’d jump the ripples of the little waves on the shore.

  My brother’s and my favorite game to play was Battleship. I sometimes used my arms but in the end it was clear that I managed to accomplish most tasks more efficiently on my own without the aid of prosthetics.

  As Joni Eareckson-Tada said, “We’ve all got wheels.” I feel a sense of liberation when using my custom-built electronic wheelchair.

  (Photo courtesy of Ally)

  Mission accomplished: I graduated in a double-major at Griffith University with a Bachelor of Commerce in Financial Planning and Accounting in 2003 at the age of 21.

  Me with Mum and Dad (Dushka and Boris) at the Anaheim Angel Stadium before I went onstage in front of 55,000 people in 2009.

  Hangin’ with my brother, Aaron, and his wife, Michelle.

  Soaking up the summer and catching up with my beautiful sister, Michelle.

  Working out hand signals with my instructor as I go scuba-diving in a pool for the first time to get a feel for it. Cool experience!

  My amazing experience surfing with Bethany Hamilton in Hawaii. She was gracious in giving me a tandem ride while I searched for the courage to find my balance on my own. (Photo courtesy of NoahHamiltonPhoto.com)

  And the beach goes wild! (Photo courtesy of NoahHamiltonPhoto.com)

  Palms sweating right before a large congregation in Ghana!

  Wherever I travel around the world, I try to encourage whoever I meet that they can overcome adversity with faith, hope, love, and courage so that they may pursue their dreams. The joy of these boys lifted me up and I’ll never forget the time we had in South Africa in 2002.

  It still excites me to get in front of any crowd, any
where, of any size to be with kids, play, and just be! Being with children helps me stay down-to-earth, especially kids from Colombia who love to play soccer!

  (Photo courtesy of Carlos Vergara)

  I’ve had the honor of meeting many inspirational people who have left me breathless. I’ll never forget how Jeanette encouraged and inspired all that were blessed to know her. Some would say that she lost her fight to cancer, but I’ll say her loving Heavenly Daddy carried her tired body home. She lost nothing and she left us brokenhearted, yet she let us see how strength can be perfected in weakness.

  (Photo courtesy of Tony Cruz)

  HERE WE GO!

  SEVEN

  Don’t Let Your Face Plant Grow Roots

  As you might imagine, I had a long black-and-blue history of falls and face plants as a child. I toppled off tables, high chairs, beds, stairs, and ramps. Lacking arms to break my fall, I usually took it on the chin, not to mention the nose and forehead. I’ve gone down hard many times.

  What I’ve never done is stay down. There is a Japanese proverb that describes my formula for success: “Fall seven times, stand up eight.”

  You fail. I fail. The best of us fail, and the rest of us fail too. Those who never rise from defeat often see failure as final. What we all need to remember is that life is not a pass-fail test. It’s a trial-and-error process. Those who succeed bounce back from their bonehead mistakes because they view their setbacks as temporary and as learning experiences. Every successful person I know has messed up at some point. Often, they say their mistakes were critical to their success. When they flopped, they didn’t quit. Instead, they recognized their problems, worked harder, and searched for more creative solutions. If they failed five times, they tried five times harder. Winston Churchill captured the essence of it when he said, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”

  If you can’t overcome your defeats, it may be that you have personalized them. Losing doesn’t make you a loser any more than striking out makes a great baseball player a benchwarmer. As long as you stay in the game and keep swinging, you can still be a slugger. If you aren’t willing to do the work required, then losing isn’t your problem, you are the problem. To achieve success you have to feel worthy of it and then take responsibility for making it happen.

  In my speeches, I demonstrate my philosophy on failure by flopping down on my belly and continuing to talk to the audience from that position. Given my lack of limbs, you might think that it would be impossible for me to get up on my own. My audiences often think that too.

  My parents say I taught myself to rise up from a horizontal position as a toddler. They’d put pillows down and coax me to brace against them. But I had to do it my way, the hard way, of course. Instead of using the pillows, I’d crawl to a wall or a chair or couch, wedge my forehead against it to get leverage, then inch myself up.

  It’s not the easiest thing to do. Try it if you like. Get on the floor on your stomach and try to rise to your knees without using your arms or legs for leverage. You don’t feel very graceful, do you? But what feels better, rising up or staying down? That’s because you weren’t made to wallow on the ground. You were made to rise again and again and again until you have fully unleashed your potential.

  Now and then when I demonstrate my rising technique in my speeches, I’ll run into a glitch of some sort. I usually speak from an elevated platform, a stage or even a desk or tabletop if we’re in a classroom or a conference room. At one school appearance, I flopped down before I realized that someone with good intentions had spray-waxed the top of the table before my speech. It was slicker than an Olympic ice rink up there. I tried to rub a spot clean of the spray wax so I could get a grip, but no luck. It was a bit embarrassing when I had to give up on the lesson and call for help: “Could someone please give me a hand?”

  On another occasion, I was speaking at a fundraiser in Houston to a large and distinguished audience, including Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, and his wife, Columba. As I prepared to talk about the importance of never giving up, I went down on my belly, as usual. The crowd fell silent, as usual.

  “We all fail from time to time,” I said. “But failing is like falling. You just have to keep getting back up, never giving up on your dreams.”

  The audience was really into it, but before I could demonstrate that even I have the ability to rise again, this woman I’d never met came scurrying up from the back of the room.

  “Here, let me help you up,” she said.

  “But I don’t need any help,” I whispered through gritted teeth. “This is part of my speech.”

  “Don’t be silly. Let me help you,” she insisted.

  “Ma’am, please, I really don’t need your help. I’m trying to make a point.”

  “Well, okay then, if you are sure, sweetie,” she said before returning to her seat.

  I think the audience was nearly as relieved to see her sit down as they were to see me get up! People often get emotional when they see what it takes for me to simply lift myself up from the floor. They relate to my struggle because we all struggle. You can take heart in that too when your plans hit a wall or hard times hit you. Your trials and tribulations are a part of life shared by the rest of humanity.

  Even if you create a sense of purpose for your life, keep hoping for the possibilities, have faith in your future, appreciate your value, maintain a positive attitude, and refuse to let your fears hold you back, you will endure setbacks and disappointments. You should never think of failures as final, never equate them with death or dying, because the reality is that in your struggles you are experiencing life. You are in the game. The challenges we face can help make us stronger, better, and more prepared for success.

  THE LESSONS OF LOSING

  You could view your failures as a gift because they often set you up for a breakthrough. So what benefits can be derived in defeat or setbacks? I can think of at least four valuable lessons failure gives us.

  It is a great teacher.

  It builds character.

  It motivates you.

  It helps you appreciate success.

  It is a great teacher

  Yes, defeat is a great teacher. Every winner has played the loser. Every champion has been the runner-up. Roger Federer is considered one of the best tennis players of all time, but he doesn’t win every game, set, or match. He hits bad shots into the net. He slams serves out of bounds. He fails to place the tennis ball where he wants it dozens of times in every match. If Roger gave up after every failed shot, he’d be a failure. Instead, he learns from his misses and his losses and stays in the game. That’s why he is a champion.

  Does Federer always try to hit the perfect shot and to win every game, set, and match? Certainly, and so should you in whatever you do. Work hard. Practice. Master the fundamentals, and always try to do your best, knowing that sometimes you will fail because failure is on the path to mastery.

  My younger brother teases me about my early years of developing as a speaker when I often failed to find an audience. I’d beg schools and organizations for the chance to speak to them, but most turned me down as too young or too inexperienced or just too unusual. It was frustrating sometimes, but I knew I was still learning the ropes, figuring out what I needed to know to be a successful speaker.

  When Aaron was in high school, he’d drive me all over the city searching for even a few people willing to listen to me. I’d speak for free just for the experience. Even then my price was often too high. I must have rung up every school in Brisbane offering my services at no charge. Most turned me down initially, but every no just made me push harder for the next yes.

  “Don’t you ever give up?” Aaron would say.

  I didn’t give up because every time I was turned down it hurt so much that I realized I’d found my passion. I really wanted to become a speaker. But even when I did manage to find an audience willing to listen to me, it didn’t always go well. At one schoo
l in Brisbane, I started badly. Something distracted me, and I couldn’t find my way back on track. I was sweating through my shirt. I kept repeating myself. I wanted to crawl off in a hole and never be seen again. I did so poorly I thought word would spread and I’d never be asked to speak in public for the rest of my life. When I finally finished and left the school, I felt like a laughingstock: my reputation was shot!

  We can be our own harshest critics. I certainly was that day. But that flubbed performance made me focus even more on my dream. I worked at honing my presentation and delivery. Once you accept that perfection is just a goal, screwing up isn’t so hard to handle. Each misstep is still a step, another lesson learned, another opportunity to get it right the next time.

  I realized that if you fail and give up, you will never get up. But if you learn the lessons of failure and keep trying to do your best, the rewards will come—not just in the approval of others but in the fulfillment of knowing that you are making the most of every day allotted to you.

  It builds character

  Is it possible that messing up can build you up and make you more fit for success? Yes! What does not destroy you can make you stronger, more focused, more creative, and more determined to pursue your dreams. You may be in a rush to succeed, and there is nothing wrong with that, but patience is a virtue too, and failure certainly will develop that trait in you. Believe me, I’ve learned that my schedule isn’t necessarily in God’s day planner. He has His own time line and the rest of us have to wait for it to unfold.