00:00My friend Ed was driving way too fast. At the time we didn't realize he may have
00:05had too much to drink. Ed lost control of the wheel of that car and he crashed
00:10into a mound of sand, sending that car hurling into the air before tumbling
00:15back to earth. One of the first times I came to, that's when one of my doctors
00:20said this, he said, Scott in case you don't recall you're in a bad car accident. You've
00:24broken your neck and have a very serious spinal cord injury that has left you
00:28paralyzed from your chest down. Diagnosed a quadriplegic. It wasn't long
00:35thereafter I was being told that we confined to this chair for the rest of
00:38my life. 30 days into this experience laying there I started getting some
00:43movement back in both of my wrists. In the back of my mind I started thinking to
00:47myself that no matter how difficult life would be going forward, that everything
00:52would be okay.
00:57When I first started pushing a wheelchair, that's when one of my doctors
01:05though pulled me over and he goes, Scott look we know you're getting some
01:11movement back in your arms, not uncommon, but I think now more than ever you need
01:16to understand the seriousness of your spinal cord injury and come to realize
01:21that the movement that you're getting back in your arms is as good as it's
01:27gonna get.
01:31I don't know if that is exactly what he said, but what I heard was, you might as
01:38well go ahead right now and give up hope. Give up hope on the idea you ever come
01:42out of this chair. But the problem was, I bought into his words.
01:49My vision darkened. To make matters a little more difficult for my parents,
01:53they were 2,000 miles away and I literally stopped taking their phone
01:58calls. Four days later, dad got me on the phone and he demanded to know what was
02:07wrong. So I made an executive decision to tell him and all he said was this, I was
02:13out there two weeks ago for your birthday, your attitude was off the
02:16charts. Remember how I reached down, put my arms under your arms and hoisted you
02:21into the upright position? Do you recall what that felt like? Of course I do.
02:27Will you do me a favor? Will you go back and recapture that mindset and reowner it
02:33again? In the meantime, don't be upset with me. I'm gonna have words with that
02:38doctor. And then come the next morning, when I woke up, I could not believe my
02:48eyes. Standing at that doorway, looking back at me, was my dad.
02:58Letting me know in a sense, everything would be okay.
03:06And if I learned anything from dad, that no matter how difficult life is for you,
03:11in that moment you can always change the way of thinking. And that's when I made
03:16the profound decision that I was willing to fail but I was unwilling to quit
03:21while knowing that nothing worth achieving ever comes too easy. But to
03:26succeed, that takes grit. But what is grit? Grit, my friends, is your passion to
03:32persevere. Grit is what keeps you off the sidelines and back in the game of life.
03:40Whether something I learned in my life so many years ago, and I know it to be
03:45the truth, don't ever let someone else's beliefs paralyze you from achieving those
03:52things you believe in your mind that you just might be able to achieve.
04:32To thrive, to beat the odds, and achieve extraordinary results in your own lives,
04:38don't give up too soon.
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