Life Without Limits (16 page)

I still experience fear when I am called to speak to many thousands of people, sometimes tens and hundreds of thousands. I go into remote areas of China, South America, Africa, and other parts of the world where I have no idea how people will receive me. I’m afraid I’ll tell a joke that means something entirely different in their culture and they’ll take offense. I use that fear to remind myself to always run my speeches by my interpreters and hosts before I risk embarrassment.

I’ve learned to welcome my fear as a source of energy and as a tool to focus my preparations. If I’m afraid of forgetting my speech or messing something up, it helps me concentrate on reviewing and practicing my presentation.

Many fears are useful in that way. For example, it is a good fear that motivates you to snap on the seat belt because you don’t want to be injured in a car accident. If your fear of catching a cold or a flu inspires you to wash your hands and take vitamins, that’s good too.

Too often, though, we allow our learned fears to run amok. Instead of simply taking precautions to avoid catching a flu or cold, some people take it to an extreme by locking themselves in their homes and refusing to go outdoors. When our fears keep us from doing all we can do or from being all we can be, they are not reasonable.

I have a friend whose parents divorced when she was young. Her mum and dad fought all the time, even after they broke up. Now
she is a grown woman, but she is afraid to get married. “I don’t want to end up like my parents,” she says.

Can you imagine never having a lasting relationship because you are afraid it might not work out? That’s a sick fear! You can’t think of marriage as nothing but the first step to divorce. Remember the Tennyson poem “ ’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”?

You can’t possibly have an enjoyable and fulfilling life if you are paralyzed by fear of what might happen someday, somewhere, maybe, somehow. If we all stayed in our beds every day because we were afraid of being struck by lightning or bitten by a malaria mosquito, it would be a pretty sad world, wouldn’t it?

So many fearful people focus on the
What if
when they should be saying
Why not?

• What if I fail?
  
• What if I’m not good enough?
  
• What if they laugh at me?
  
• What if I’m turned down?
  
• What if I can’t keep up with my successes?
  

I understand that sort of thinking. Growing up I had to deal with major fears—the fear of rejection, the fear of inadequacy, the fear of being dependent. It wasn’t just my imagination: my body lacked the standard equipment. But my parents told me that I should always focus not on what was missing but on what I had and what I could create if I only dared to follow my imagination.

“Dream big, Nicky, and never let fear keep you from working toward your dreams,” they said. “You can’t let fear dictate your future. Choose the life you want and go for it.”

So far, I’ve spoken to diverse audiences in more than nineteen
countries around the globe. I’ve taken my message of hope and faith to vast crowds in stadiums, arenas, schools, churches, and prisons. I never could have done that if my parents had not encouraged me to acknowledge my fears and then push past them.

You and I will never be as dominant in a sport as Michael Jordan was, but you can be like Mike in using fear as a motivational tool to keep chasing your dreams and the life you want to create.

Laura Gregory was a very smart school friend. I could always count on her to say exactly what she was thinking. She did not mess around. One day in our first year, Laura asked, “So you have a teacher’s aide to help you at school. But who takes care of you at home?”

“Well, my parents do,” I said, though I wasn’t certain what she was getting at.

“Are you okay with that?”

“With my parents helping me? Sure, what else would I do?”

“I mean with things like getting dressed and showering and using the bathroom?” she said. “What about your dignity? Don’t you think it’s a little weird that you can’t do that on your own?”

Laura didn’t mean to hurt my feelings. She was a truth seeker, and she truly wanted to know how I felt about every aspect of my life. But she touched on a sensitive subject. One of my greatest fears growing up was that I was a burden on the people I loved. The thought of being overly dependent on my parents, and on my brother and sister too, was never far from my mind. Sometimes I would wake up at night in a cold sweat, terrorized by the thought of my parents being gone, leaving me dependent on Aaron or Michelle.

That fear was a very real one. Sometimes I was nearly overwhelmed by visions of dependency. Laura’s blunt questions about
my dignity helped move me from being
tormented
by that fear to being
motivated
by it. Questions about my dependency had always lingered on the edges of my consciousness, but after that day I put them at the forefront of my mind, and I decided to address them aggressively.

If I really put my mind to it, just how independent could I become?
Motivated by my fear of burdening my loved ones, I created that mission statement—even though at the time I had not a clue as to what a mission statement was. My fear gave me a driving passion and the strength to push myself.
I need to do more for myself. But how?

My parents always assured me that they were there to help me and that they didn’t mind carrying me, lifting me, dressing me, or doing whatever I needed them to do. But it bothered me that I couldn’t even get a drink of water by myself, and someone always had to lift me onto the toilet seat. As I grew older, I naturally wanted more independence, and I wanted to look after myself more. My fear gave me the determination to take action on those desires.

One of the thoughts that really stirred me to action was the image of me being a burden on my brother Aaron once my parents were no longer around. I’d often worried about that because if anybody deserved a normal life, it was my poor little brother. I felt like God owed him that because for most of his life he’d been stuck helping me, living with me, and seeing me get so much attention. Aaron had arms and legs, but in some ways he got the raw end of the deal because he always felt he had to look out for me.

My decision to become more self-sufficient, as much as any concern, was a matter of self-preservation. Laura reminded me that I was still dependent on the kindness and patience of others. I knew that I could not always be so reliant on that. And pride played into it too.

I am fully capable of having a family one day, and I would never
want my wife to have to carry me around. I want to have kids and be a good father and a good provider too, so I thought,
I need to get out of this wheelchair
.

Fear can be your foe, but in this case I made it my friend. I announced to my parents that I wanted to find ways to care for myself. They were, of course, worried at first.

“You don’t have to do that. We’ll make sure you’re always cared for,” they said.

“Mum, Dad, I must do this for you and for me, so let’s put our heads together and figure this out,” I said.

And we did. In some ways our creative efforts reminded me of the old
Swiss Family Robinson
movie. Stranded on an island, they all pitch in and devise amazing gadgets for bathing, cooking, and surviving. I know no man is an island, especially a man with no arms and no legs. Maybe I was more like a peninsula, or an isthmus.

My mum the nurse and my dad the handyman first came up with a method for me to shower and shampoo my hair. Dad replaced the round knobs on the shower with levers that I could move with my shoulders. Then mum brought home a hands-free soap dispenser with a foot pump, used by doctors prepping for surgery. We adapted it so I could use it to pump soap and shampoo by stepping on it.

Then my dad and I came up with a design for a plastic holder to mount on the wall for an electric toothbrush. I could turn it on and off by pressing a switch and then brush my teeth by moving back and forth.

I told my parents that I wanted to be able to dress myself, so my mum made shorts with a Velcro strip that I could slip in and out of by myself. Shirt buttons have always been a challenge for me, so we found shirts that I could slip on and off by throwing them over my head and wriggling into them.

My major fear had sent the three of us on a mission that was both challenging and fun as we invented ways for me to be more independent. Remote controls, cell phones, computer keyboards, and remote garage-door openers are a blessing for me because I can operate them with my foot.

Some of the solutions we came up with weren’t exactly high tech. I learned how to turn off our home security alarm using my nose to push the buttons, and I used a golf club wedged between my chin and neck to turn on the lights and open some of the windows in the house.

I won’t go into great detail on it, for obvious reasons, but we also devised some ingenious methods that allowed me to use the restroom by myself. You can see some of our methods and devices on this YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DxlJWJ_WfA
. Be assured, there is no restroom footage.

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.

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!

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!