The way we experience reality comes from the inside out. Circumstances, events, and people outside of us don’t determine our experience – what we think about those things determines how we experience life. This is the story of someone with no limits, even when life seems to be undeniably full of them.
At some point or another, life punches everyone in the face.
The punch may be hard, or it may be soft, but it’s definitely coming, and your success or failure is largely determined by the answer to a single question: how well can you take the punch?
– Jon Morrow
Jon Morrow is one of the world’s most successful bloggers. He can work from anywhere in the world, travels whenever he wants, sets his own hours. His businesses bring in seven figures a year and he’s sold some of his blogs for millions of dollars.
Jon was born with the privilege of being male and having light skin.
He was also born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, so he’s almost completely paralyzed. The only part of his body he can move is his face, but he can still feel pain throughout.
Other people with Jon’s condition live in nursing homes and (in his words) are set in front of a television to watch Jerry Springer all day. They don’t socialize, they don’t work, they don’t own businesses, they don’t travel, they don’t live in resorts, they don’t enjoy a full and amazing life.
Since he was born, Jon’s annual medical bills have exceeded $120,000. His parents were not wealthy. He went on Medicare as an adult, but if he earned more than $700 per month he would lose all coverage. He wanted to work, so he worked for a couple years for free.
Eventually he realized he could drastically decrease his medical bills if he lived in Mexico, so he moved there and started a blog. With the income from his businesses Jon was able to pay his own medical bills and live in a beautiful resort in Mexico.
Jon wasn’t supposed to live for more than a few years, but he managed to create a good life for himself against some relatively extreme odds.
Then one day, he was in a car accident that crushed his vertebrae, shattered his legs, and took a year to recover from. This is in addition to already having had pneumonia sixteen times, recovering from more than fifty broken bones, and almost drowning in his own mucus.
How easy would it have been to sink into despair? Or rage against the unfairness? Or maybe even take a little bit too much morphine one day and end it all? But I didn’t. Mostly, I was able to handle it because I’d been conditioned by all the other difficulties of my life, but it was also because I deliberately shifted my perspective.
The people who struggle most are the ones who can’t accept the incessant unfairness of life. They become so consumed with what should have happened, the way other people should have behaved that they become incapable of dealing with reality.
If I allowed myself to be angry at Bill [who caused the accident] for even one moment, I may have sunk into a pit of rage and despair so deep I would’ve never climbed out of it. Instead, I forced myself to say, “Okay, this is my life now. What’s next?” After all, I couldn’t change what happened. The only thing I had control over was how I responded to that change, and the first and most critical response was total and complete acceptance.
– Jon Morrow
Jon knows that his experience of life is determined by his thoughts and his perspective, not by his circumstances. When he didn’t like the game, he changed the rules. Maybe he was born with the privilege of knowing this is possible – fortunately, this privilege is available to all of us, already and always. Every one of us has the freedom and ability to choose which thoughts we listen to. We all have the freedom to choose our perspective.
You can be one of those people. I know you can, and so I came here to tell you…
Today, you might feel too poor or sick or unlucky to reach for your dreams, but you’re not.
Today, you might feel too tired or depressed or sad to even try, but you’re not.
Today, you might feel like an outcast, forgotten by your friends or family or anyone who might help you, but again, you are not.
You’re still breathing, my friend. That’s all it takes to stage a comeback.
So, say it with me now, would you?
“I will never, ever give up.”
Say it. Believe it.
And then recognize you’ve begun the journey to becoming totally unstoppable.
– John Morrow 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything But His Face
♥ Anna