I really am just a weird-looking bloke, I thought.
Grief overwhelmed me. I allowed myself to wallow in self-pity for a good five minutes. But then a voice from deep inside said, Okay, like your mum says, you’re missing some bits and pieces, but you have some good features too.
I thought, Name one. I dare you. Just find one thing, and that will be enough.
I studied my reflected image a little longer and finally came up with something positive.
I have nice eyes. Girls have told me I have nice eyes. I have that if nothing else! And no one can change that about me. My eyes will never change, so I will always have beautiful eyes.
When you feel your spirits tumbling because you’ve been hurt or bullied or disparaged, go to the mirror and find one feature you love about yourself. It doesn’t have to be a physical characteristic. It can be a talent, a trait, or something else that makes you feel good about yourself. Dwell on that special something for a while. Be grateful for it, and know that your beauty and value come from the unique person you were made to be.
Don’t cop out and claim, “There is nothing special about me.” We are so hard on ourselves, especially when we compare ourselves unfavorably to others. I see this especially when I talk to teenagers. So many of them struggle with feelings of inadequacy, or the sense that no one will ever love them.
That is why I make it a point to tell them, “I love you just as you are. You are beautiful to me.”
Those are simple words from me, a strange-looking stranger. I offer them in most of my speaking engagements for schools and youth groups. My simple words always seem to strike a chord. In fact, the response is usually quite remarkable.
The typical reaction begins with a muffled whimper or a smothered sniffle. I’ll look out to see a girl with her head down or a boy with his hands over his face. Then the powerful emotions will sweep through the room like a contagion. Tears will flow down young cheeks. Shoulders shake from stifled sobs. Girls huddle together. Boys leave the room to hide their faces.
The first few times this happened, I was taken aback. What’s going on? Why are they responding so strongly?
My audience members themselves have answered those questions. After my speeches, young and old, they line up to hug me and share their feelings. Again, the response is overwhelming. Often they line up for hours.
Now, I’m a handsome enough bloke, but people don’t stand in lines for hours to hug me because I’m so dashing. What really seems to be drawing them is that I unleash a pair of powerful forces that so many are lacking in their lives: unconditional love and self-acceptance.
Kristy’s is just one of many e-mails and letters I receive and personal conversations I have with people young and old who’ve thought about taking their lives because they’ve lost their ability to love themselves. When you are hurt, you build walls to keep from being hurt again, but you can’t build an interior wall around your heart. And if you will only love yourself as you are, for all your natural beauty inside and out, others will be drawn to you, and they will see your beauty too.
LOVE YOURSELF ENOUGH TO LAUGH AT YOURSELF
Our friends and loved ones can tell us one hundred times a day that we are beautiful and we are loved and that the hard times will pass, but too often we shrug off the supportive words and hang on to the hurt. I did that for the longest time. My parents would spend weeks trying to undo the damage done by one or two kids who teased me on the playground. But finally when someone my own age reached out, I was transformed. When one girl in my class told me that I was “looking good,” I walked on a cloud for a month.
Of course, a short time later, I woke up at thirteen years old with a pimple on my nose. It was not pretty. It was a huge, ripe tomato of a pimple.
“Look at this, it’s crazy,” I told my mum.
“Don’t scratch it,” my mum said.
What would I scratch it with? I wondered.
I went to school feeling like the ugliest dude on the planet. Every time I passed a classroom and saw my reflection in the windows, I wanted to run and hide. Other kids stared at it. I kept hoping it would go away, but two days later it was even bigger, the largest and reddest pimple in the universe. I began to think it would one day outweigh the rest of me.
The monstrous deformity would not go away! My humongous zit was still there eight months later. I felt like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Australian. Finally my mum took me to a dermatologist. I told him I wanted the pimple removed even if it took major surgery. He examined it with a huge magnifying glass—as if he couldn’t see it—and said, “Hmmmm. It’s not a pimple.”
Whatever it is, I thought, let’s just get rid of it, shall we?
“It’s a swollen oil gland,” he said. “I can cut it off or burn it off, but either way it will leave you with a scar bigger than this little red dot.”
Little red dot?
“It’s so big I can’t see around it,” I protested.
“Would you rather be scarred for life?” he asked.
The giant not-a-zit remained on my nose. I prayed and fretted about it for a while, but finally I realized that the bright red bulb on my nose was no more of a distraction than my lack of limbs. If people aren’t willing to talk to me, that is their loss, I decided.
If I caught someone staring at it, I made a joke. I told them I was growing an extra nose to sell on the black market. When people saw that I could laugh at myself, they laughed with me and empathized. After all, who hasn’t had a pimple? Even Brad Pitt has pimples.
Sometimes, through our own doing, we make little problems big by taking them way too seriously. Having a pimple is part of the deal. We are all perfectly imperfect human beings, some of us maybe more than others, but we all have our flaws and our shortcomings. It’s important to not take every little wart or wrinkle too seriously because one day you will have something truly serious go wrong, and then what will you do? So stand prepared to laugh at life’s little knocks on the heads and bumps on the nose.
Laughter has been shown to reduce stress by releasing endorphin hormones, the body’s natural relaxant, boosting your immune system and improving your blood flow while also increasing oxygen to the brain. Not bad, eh? Studies have also shown that laughter makes you more attractive. A double bonus!
BEAUTY IS BLIND
Do you know what is really laughable? Vanity is hilarious, because just as soon as you think you are looking good and sexy and worthy of the cover of People magazine, along comes a life lesson to make you realize that beauty really is in the eyes of the beholder, and what is on the outside is not nearly as important as what is on the inside.
Recently I met a young Australian girl who is blind. We were doing a Fun Run to raise money to provide medical equipment for needy kids. This girl was about five years old. Her mum introduced her to me after the event. The mother explained to her that I’d been born with no arms and no legs.
Blind people sometimes ask to touch my body so they can comprehend what someone without limbs is like. I don’t mind it, so when this girl asked her mother if she could “see” for herself, I gave permission. Her mum guided her hand over my shoulders and over my little left foot. The girl’s reaction was interesting. She was very calm as she felt my empty shoulder sockets and my strange little foot. Then when she put her hands on my face, she screamed!
It was hilarious.
“What? My beautiful face scares you?” I asked, laughing.
“No! It’s that hair all over you! Are you a wolf?”
She had never felt a beard before. When she touched my stubble, she freaked out. She told her mother that it was sad I was so hairy! This girl had her own idea of what was attractive, and obviously my beard was not on the list. I wasn’t offended. I was glad to be reminded that beauty is definitely in the eyes—and touch—of the beholder.
CELEBRATE YOUR YOU-NIQUENESS
We humans are a silly bunch. We spend half our time trying to fit in with the crowd and the other half trying to stand out from i
t. Why is that? I’m guilty of it, and I’m sure you are too, because it seems to be universal, part of our human nature. Why can’t we be comfortable with ourselves, knowing that we are God’s creations, made to reflect His glory?
As a schoolboy, I was desperate to fit in, just as most teens are. Have you ever noticed that even the teens who want to be “different” usually hang out with kids who dress, talk, and act just like them? What’s with that, mate? How can you be an outsider if everyone you hang with wears the same black clothing, black nail polish, black lipstick, and black eyeliner? Doesn’t that make you an insider instead?
Tattoos and piercings used to be a rebellious statement of rugged individualism. Now soccer moms in the grocery have tattoos and piercings. There has to be a better way to celebrate your individuality than following the same fads and trends as every mum at the mall, doesn’t there?
I’ve adopted an attitude that might work for you. I’ve decided that my beauty lies in my differences, in the fact that I’m not like everybody else. I’m uniquely me. Nobody will ever call me “average” or “just another guy.” I may not stand tall in a crowd, but I definitely stand out.
That attitude has served me well because I often draw strange reactions from children as well as adults when they see me for the first time. Kids tend to reckon I’m from another planet or I’m some sort of monster. Teens tend to have lurid imaginations so they assume I was maimed by an ax murderer or something equally gruesome. Adults leap to strange conclusions too. Often they suspect that I’m a mannequin or a Muppet.
Once when I was visiting relatives in Canada, they took me trick-or-treating for the very first time. They found a big scary old man mask that covered my entire body, and then they carried me door to door. At first we didn’t get much reaction from people, until we figured out that they didn’t think I was real. We finally realized this when a woman dropped some of my favorite lollies in my bag, and I said, “Thank you! Trick or treat!”
The woman shrieked and jumped backward. “There’s a child in there?” she screamed. “I thought you were carrying a doll!”
Well, I am pretty cute, I thought.
When I’m feeling frisky, I’ve been known to take full advantage of my uniqueness. I love to cruise around shopping malls with my cousins and friends. One day a few years ago we were in a mall in Australia when we spotted a window display for Bonds underwear, which is the Down Under version of Hanes or Jockey, a briefs brand that has been around for a long, long time.
The male mannequin was wearing a pair of Bonds “tighty whitey” underwear. He had a body just like mine: all head and torso, no limbs—and a nice six-pack of abs. I happened to be wearing my own Bond brand drawers, so my cousins and I decided that I too could serve as a window model. We went into the store. My cousins hoisted me into the window display case. I then took up a position next to the mannequin.
For the next five minutes, I baited mall rats. Whenever window shoppers stopped or glanced at me, I twitched, smiled, winked, or bowed—to their utter shock and horror! Of course, this bit of punking provoked uproarious laughter from my co-conspirators watching from outside the store. Afterward they made the case that if my public speaking career ever faltered, I could always find work as a department store dummy.
LIGHT IT UP
I’ve learned to laugh about my disabilities and the strange responses they provoke, but there is an even better method for overcoming doubts about your self-worth or your inability to love yourself as you are. Instead of dwelling on that pain within, reach out to ease someone else’s pain. Put your focus on someone else in need.
Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Raise money for orphans. Organize a benefit to help earthquake victims. Find sponsors who’ll donate money if you take part in a charity walk, or bike ride, or dance marathon. Rise up and reach out.
When I do that, I discover what is perhaps the best solution for anyone who has failed to turn on the light of love within.
If you can’t resolve your own issues, be the solution for someone else. After all, it’s better to give than to receive, right? If you don’t love yourself, then give yourself away. If you do that, you’ll be amazed at how valuable you feel.
How do I know that? C’mon, mate, look at me. Look at my life. Do I seem like a happy and fulfilled person to you?
A nose job won’t bring you a life of joy. A Ferrari won’t make you admired by millions. You already have what it takes to be loved and valued; it’s just a matter of releasing and maximizing all that lies within you. You won’t always be perfect, and that’s perfectly fine. The idea isn’t to attain perfection in your lifetime; it’s to seek it.
You want to keep striving, keep growing, keep giving all you have to give so that, in the end, you can look back and say, I gave it my best shot.
Take a look in the mirror right now and say, “This is who I am, and I accept the challenge of becoming the best I can be.” You are beautiful because God created you for His purpose. Your challenge is to find that purpose, fuel it with hope, drive it on faith, and put your you-niqueness to the highest possible use.
Loving and accepting yourself is the only surefire cure for self-pity and victimhood. Drugs, alcohol, and promiscuity offer only temporary relief, and eventually they bring only more pain. When I came to see myself as a child of God and a part of His plan, my life was forever changed. You may not be a believer in Christ, but you can believe in your value and purpose on this planet.
BE A FRIEND AND BE HAPPY
My best advice for finding inner happiness is to reach outside yourself, to use your talents and brains and personality to make life better for someone else. I’ve been on the receiving end of that, and I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that it changed my life.
I was sixteen and a student at Runcorn State High School in Queensland. I usually had to wait an hour or so after school for my ride home. Most days I’d hang out talking to other kids or to a great guy named Mr. Arnold. He wasn’t the principal or even a teacher. He was the school janitor. But Mr. Arnold was one of those people who glowed from within. He was so at peace with himself, so comfortable in his coveralls, that everyone respected him and enjoyed being around him.
Mr. Arnold could talk about any subject. He was spiritual and wise. On some days he led a Christian youth discussion at lunchtime. He invited me to join, even though I told him I wasn’t big into religion. But I liked him, and so I began attending their sessions.
Mr. Arnold encouraged kids to talk about their lives at these meetings, but I always turned down his invitations. “Come on, Nick, we’d like to hear your story,” he’d say. “We want to know more about you and what you’re thinking.”
For three months I refused. “I don’t have a story to tell,” I’d say.
Finally Mr. Arnold wore me down. The other kids were very open about their feelings and their experiences, so I finally consented to talk about my own at the next meeting. I was so nervous, I prepared note cards with bullet points. (Nerdy, I know.)
I wasn’t expecting to impress anyone. I just wanted to get through it and get out of there, or so I told myself. A part of me also wanted to show the other kids that I had the same feelings, hurts, and fears that they’d expressed.
For ten minutes that day I talked about what it was like to grow up without arms and legs. I told sad stories and funny stories too. I didn’t want to seem like a victim, so I talked about my victories. Since this was a Christian group, I did say that there had been times when I felt God had forgotten me, or that I’d been one of His rare mistakes. Then I explained how I’d gradually come to understand that maybe there was a plan for me that I just hadn’t figured out yet.
“I’m slowly learning to have more faith that I wasn’t a mistake,” I said, trying to get a laugh.
In truth, I was so relieved to get through my talk that I felt like crying. To my amazement, most of the kids in the room were crying instead.
“Was I that bad?” I asked Mr. Arnold.
“N
o, Nick,” he said. “You were that good.”
At first I thought he was just being nice and the kids in the group were pretending to be moved by my speech. They were Christians, after all. They were supposed to be nice.
But then one of the guys in the group invited me to speak to his church youth group. Then another invitation came from another kid for his Sunday school class. Over the next two years, I received dozens of invitations to share my story to church groups, youth organizations, and service clubs.
I had avoided Christian groups in high school because I didn’t want to be labeled as the do-gooder preacher’s kid who was all about religion. I acted tough and sometimes cursed so I could be accepted as a regular guy. The truth was that I had not yet accepted myself.
Obviously, God has a sense of humor. He wrangled me into speaking to just the group I had avoided, and it was there that He revealed my purpose in life. He showed me that even if I was not perfect, I had riches to share, blessings to lighten the burdens of others.
The same holds true for you. We share our imperfection. We need to share the beautiful gifts we’ve been given. Look inside. There is a light inside you just waiting to shine.
FIVE
Attitude Is Altitude
When I created a company to handle my corporate speaking engagements, I named it Attitude Is Altitude because without a positive attitude I never would have been able to rise above my disabilities and reach so many people.
You may be tempted to scoff at the concept of “attitude adjustment” because it has become such a staple of motivational posters and coaching materials. But there is real power in controlling your attitude, adjusting it to counter moods and stop behaviors that may threaten your ability to live without limits. The psychologist and philosopher William James, who taught at Harvard University, said that one of the greatest discoveries of his generation was the realization that by changing our attitudes, we can change our lives.