Life Without Limits (18 page)

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, anywhere, 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!

A
s 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.

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.

1. It is a great teacher.
   
2. It builds character.
   
3. It motivates you.
   
4. It helps you appreciate success.
   

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.