It'due south not a joke.

The only parts of my body I can motion are my optics and lips. My hands, feet, arms, and legs, are almost totally paralyzed, managing the occasional twitch and nix more.

And nevertheless… I accept an amazing life.

Using spoken language recognition technology, I've written articles read by more than 5 1000000 people. I've also congenital several online magazines that accept, shockingly, fabricated me a millionaire.

"This tin can't be real," you say. "You lot did all this, and you can't freaking move?"

Difficult to believe, I know, but information technology's true. I do information technology all from home, sitting in my wheelchair, speaking into a microphone.

I've traveled a adept bit too. I've lived in San Diego, Miami, Austin, and even Mazatlan, Mexico. Hither's a photo of me living the proficient life south of the border:

mazatlan-beach-with-islands

I look totally miserable, don't I? Poor baby. 🙂

Not to imply it's been easy, listen you. During my 34 years, I've had pneumonia 16 times, recovered from more than 50 cleaved bones, and spent literally years of my life in hospitals and md's offices.

But I'k still here. Not only have I survived my status, only I've built a life most people but dream about.

And starting today, I desire to talk about how.

Over the coming months and years, I have a great bargain to share with yous, but I thought we would brainstorm with the biggest lessons I've learned, lessons I've paid for in blood and tears, lessons that have saved my life, over and over and once again. Let's begin.

Lesson #ane: If You lot Can't Win the Game, Alter the Rules

Well-nigh a decade agone, I was totally dependent on Medicaid, the U.S. government-run health insurance, to pay about $120,000 per twelvemonth in medical bills. On the one hand, I was immensely grateful, because without it, I would've certainly died, but I was also trapped by their benevolence.

You see, Medicaid has income limits. If I made more than $700 per calendar month, I would lose all medical coverage. Doctors, caregivers, medications, everything.

It was basically an ironclad contract preventing me from e'er getting a regular job. I had a college caste, plenty of ambition, and even a few job offers, but I couldn't accept any of them, because the government wouldn't allow me.

It seemed like a hopeless situation. If I got a task, I would lose my health insurance. If I didn't go a task, I'd exist forced to alive in poverty forever. At that place was no mode to win the game.

Then, I changed the rules.

One of the job offers I received was from a small online magazine named Copyblogger, but instead of accepting it, here'south what I told them: "I'll work for you for gratuitous. Don't pay me anything. The only grab is, old in the futurity, I'm going to inquire yous for some favors, and if I benefit work for you, I'd really capeesh your aid." They agreed, and then I spent the next 2 years working 40-80 hours per week, mostly complimentary of charge, although they did find ways to throw a few dollars my way every now and again.

During that time, I explored moving to Mexico. By moving there, I could reduce my wellness expenses from $120,000 to $eighteen,000 per year. $102,000 in savings!

Eventually, I pulled the trigger. I called my boss and said, "Retrieve how I said I would ask for favors one solar day? Well, it's time. I'thousand starting a consulting practice, and I'd love some aid getting clients." The adjacent day, he allowed me to reach out to about 50,000 readers, and I filled my entire customer roster inside 24 hours.

Then I moved to Mexico, abandoning the U.S. healthcare organisation entirely. Within xxx days, I was making more $10,000 a calendar month, living in a beachfront condo, and paying for all my own wellness care expenses.

How?

By non playing the government's game. Instead, I created a dissimilar game, a game that worked past my rules, a game I could win.

"Simply Jon," you say. "You don't empathize. My situation is hopeless."

Bullshit. The options available to you right at present may exist hopeless, but you lot can always create new ones. It's non piece of cake, only if y'all're strong enough, yous tin turn whatever situation to your reward. The key is to develop that strength in advance. Here'southward how:

Lesson #2: Hurting is Power

At some bespeak or another, life punches anybody in the face.

The dial may be difficult, or it may exist soft, only information technology's definitely coming, and your success or failure is largely determined by the answer to a single question: how well can you have the punch?

Practice you lot gyre around on the ground, weeping and moaning? Do you rock back on your heels but so go along going? Or take you been punched so many times already you don't fifty-fifty notice?

Personally, I'm a living example of the last i. If you desire to know what it's like to live with a severe inability, merely imagine that every morn 6 big guys sneak into your room and shell the hell out of you lot. Most days, the beating isn't so bad, and yous tin limp through your day. Every at present and once more though, they continue punching and kicking you until you lot're bleeding and broken, lose consciousness, and wake up in the hospital breathing through a tube.

That'due south the best way I know to describe my life. Since the day I was born, muscular dystrophy has given me a daily beating.

The upside?

It's made me incredibly potent. I tin take any punch life throws at me without even breaking stride.

Lost $100,000 on a business concern bargain? No biggie. Cardinal employee quits? Yawn. Getting audited by the IRS? Wake me upwardly when something important happens. Adjacent to fusing my spinal vertebrae together, shattering my legs, or nearly drowning in my ain mucus, none of it is honestly that big of a deal.

This, my friends, is the advantage of pain. The more than you experience, the more you can handle in the future, and the less information technology knocks you off your game.

The manner you reply to that pain is another matter, which we'll talk virtually in a moment. For now, the point I desire to make is this: if you feel depressed and weak, unable to cope with the difficulties of life, it's not because you are a flawed human being. It's because you lot were unprepared for the hurting yous are experiencing. The problem, ironically, is that you lot oasis't suffered enough.

The opposite is also true. If you want to become a stronger and more capable person, the smartest matter you tin do is systematically (and safely) increase your pain tolerance.

For example, Tim Ferriss recommends lying down in the middle of a crowded public place like a supermarket or a coffee shop. You lot'll feel similar a fool, merely the feel will condition you to deal with embarrassment and discomfort in the future.

The bottom line?

The degree of success you achieve in life is straight proportional to the corporeality of pain yous can tolerate. If you always want to achieve big things similar building a successful business, becoming the best in your field, or irresolute the world in some manner, y'all need to commencement training yourself to endure the pain all those things crave. Information technology'll also prepare yous for the adjacent time life punches y'all in the face, which is inevitable.

The only caveat is you accept to continue the correct mindset. If y'all respond to pain the wrong style, it makes you weaker, non stronger. Permit's talk almost how to make sure that doesn't happen…

Lesson #iii: The Secret to Survival

In 2006, a teenager who we'll call Beak was belatedly to piece of work at Wendy's. Worried that his boss was going to burn him, he decided to floor information technology, driving through the urban center at 85 miles per hour, weaving in and out of traffic, running carmine lights, and squealing effectually corners. At kickoff, everything went fine, but so something happened…

He plowed into my minivan going through an intersection. He was going so fast that it most ripped the unabridged forepart of the van off, spinning me like a summit in the street. My caput went through the window, knocking me out, and when I woke up, I was stuffed underneath the dashboard, my 300 pound wheelchair lying on height of me, blood squirting out of my caput, my legs shattered from my toes to my hips.

van-crash

I spent the next month in the infirmary. The bill was about $130,000, and not surprisingly, I discovered expert ol' Pecker had crappy insurance, paying out a maximum of $twenty,000 for the blow. To summit it off, doctors predicted information technology would take an entire year to recover plenty to work or become back to school.

In other words, I was fucked.

Every bit if it wasn't plenty that I was already dealing with Medicaid, poverty, and muscular dystrophy. Life decided to pile on a footling extra, just to come across how much I could take.

And honestly? It was a miracle I didn't crack.

How easy would information technology take been to sink into despair? Or rage confronting the unfairness? Or maybe even take a little bit also 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, merely information technology was besides because I deliberately shifted my perspective.

The people who struggle most are the ones who can't have the ceaseless unfairness of life. They become then consumed with what should accept happened, the way other people should have behaved that they go incapable of dealing with reality.

If I immune myself to be angry at Beak for even ane moment, I may have sunk into a pit of rage and despair so deep I would've never climbed out of information technology. Instead, I forced myself to say, "Okay, this is my life now. What's side by side?" Later on all, I couldn't modify what happened. The only thing I had control over was how I responded to that change, and the offset and most critical response was total and complete acceptance.

A lot of people view credence equally weakness. They think that, if they accept what'southward happened to them, they'll be albeit defeat.

But it's the opposite. It'southward simply by acknowledging reality that you can create a plan to alter that reality. Credence, equally it turns out, is the first step to victory.

Post-obit the accident, I hired an attorney who fought the insurance companies, the hospital, everyone. It took months, but he somewhen settled my medical bills and gave me enough money to buy a new car, totally debt-free. Meanwhile, I focused on my rehab, completing it in half-dozen months instead of the year doctors predicted, and I resumed my life even healthier than I was earlier the accident.

The point?

We've all heard the cliché near turning lemons into lemonade, merely to do that, yous tin can't be pissed off at the lemons, get into denial about the beingness of the lemons, or go depressed because you lot're tired of making lemonade. You just have to grab a lemon and squeeze the shit out of the motherfucker.

Or better yet, just discard the lemons-to-lemonade metaphor entirely. Here'southward a much better way to call back virtually it:

Lesson #4: The Art of the Counterpunch

Recollect how we talked well-nigh the importance of existence able to take a punch?

Well, it'south just the outset step. Once you lot've built some endurance, it'southward time to learn how to fight dorsum.

Consider this:

In boxing, every beginner learns the importance of the counterpunch. Past attacking you, your opponent has to let his guard downwards, and it creates a brief but very real opportunity for y'all to sneak in a blow. Y'all just take to train yourself to spot the opening.

Ironic, isn't information technology? The all-time time to set on your opponent turns out to exist right after he attacks you. In fact, the stronger the assail, the bigger the opportunity for a counterpunch.

And it'south true for more than just battle. In life, every difficulty carries with it a corresponding opportunity of equal size.

For instance, let'south go back to the automobile accident from the last department. I mentioned how I got an attorney to settle the medical bills and defended myself to rehab, completing it in half the fourth dimension, merely I didn't tell you the all-time role of the story.

In between rehab visits, I had a lot of complimentary time on my easily. A lot of people would've flopped downwards in front of the Telly and zoned out, but thankfully, I had the presence of listen to recognize the opportunity. I'd always wanted to write more, but I'd never had the time… until the accident. So, I seized the opportunity and got my gimpy ass to work.

At first, it was but a journal, a way of jotting downwards my thoughts and emotions equally a manner to cope with the trauma. I enjoyed it so much I decided to start a blog, and within 60 days, it got nominated as one of the best blogs in the earth. Following the nomination, I got an offering to help run an up-and-coming magazine, the one that eventually helped me launch my consulting practice when I got to Mexico, allowing me to live the life of my dreams.

Was it luck? A mere twist of fate that turned tragedy into triumph?

Not at all. Information technology was a deliberate counterpunch, a way of taking the forcefulness of the blow life had dealt me and turning information technology to my advantage.

Information technology's just 1 of many throughout my life. Here are some more:

Punch: None of the cool kids in school want to exist friends with me, considering the wheelchair makes them uncomfortable. I become an outcast.
Counterpunch: I hang out with the other outcasts: nerds. They teach me how to code, and I'g writing my own software by the age of 12.

Punch: I can't play sports, go swimming, or any of the other fun stuff kids practice. I'm stuck inside, trapped in a body that tin't move.
Counterpunch: To keep from going crazy, I read one-half a dozen books a week. By the time I graduate high school, I've read more most of my teachers.

Punch: I get accustomed into MIT, but I'm dirt poor. For a twelvemonth, I beg for help, merely everyone ignores me. I accept to pass up the offer.
Counterpunch: I use to my somewhat crappy local university, and they offer me a full scholarship. I graduate debt-free.

Again, information technology looks similar luck, but it's not. The people we call "lucky" are ruled past the aforementioned fickle paw of fate as anybody else. The difference: when that hand turns against them, they expect around, and they spot the opening.

The moral of the story:

The side by side time life punches y'all in the face, cease for a moment and enquire yourself this unproblematic question:

What'south the counterpunch?

No matter how bad the situation, no thing how hopeless it seems, there is ever an opportunity to turn it to your advantage. Yous only have to field of study yourself to spot the opening, then find the courage to use it.

Lesson #5: How to Find the Courage to Confront Anything

The centre monitor flatlined.

I was lying in a shabby trivial bed in a nursing abode you've never heard of. For years, I'd drifted toward death, and blessedly, mercifully, it was finally here. My heart stopped, my limbs quivered, and my bowels allow loose, filling the air with a sickly stench. Ane last breath escaped my lips, and I was gone.

A few minutes afterward, a nurse walked into the room, wrinkling her nose at the stink. Pulling out her clipboard, she glanced at her watch and wrote down the time of death. Next, she pulled out her telephone and called the morgue. "Got another one for you lot. Room 305," she told them. With that, she pulled a canvas over my head and left the room. Two days later, they cremated me, and that, equally they say, was that.

Pretty depressing, right?

Obviously, none of this e'er happened. I wouldn't exist writing right now if information technology did.

Merely it could've happened. Years ago, if I'd made dissimilar decisions, I could've hands concluded up in a nursing home somewhere. Crazily, it could however happen now. A few missteps, and I could lose everything, dying cleaved, useless, and alone.

And I'll exist straight up with you:

Information technology scares the hell out of me. More than anything. You could pull out a gun, shove the barrel in my mouth, and outset counting, and information technology wouldn't even come close to scaring me every bit much as the scene I described.

Dying is one thing. A pointless decease where no one notices or cares is quite some other. To me at to the lowest degree.

Here'southward why I am telling yous this:

Every now and again, somebody asks me how I plant the courage to motion to Mexico with no coin, no friends, and no backup plan. There are a gazillion unlike means it could have gone incorrect. I could've been robbed and murdered by thieves along the highway, scammed by immigration officials, or starved to death because I couldn't afford food. Let'due south face up it, Mexico tin be a dangerous place, and moving there in my condition was absolute insanity.

I knew this. I've never been i of those delusional people who thinks nothing bad will ever happen to them. On the contrary, I was pretty sure I was about to dice, and I was scared shitless. When nosotros collection across the border, I was sweating and shaking so much I was worried that clearing guys would think I was on drugs.

Then, why did I practice it? Why didn't I plow back to the relative safety of the U.S.?

Well, my thought process went like this:

Worry:I could be scammed by immigration officials.
Response:Truthful, but that's nonetheless meliorate than dying in a nursing home.

Worry:I could exist killed past robbers forth the highway
Response:Truthful, merely that's withal better than dying in a nursing home.

Worry: I could starve to death because I can't beget food.
Response:True, simply that's yet better than dying in a nursing home.

In other words… yes, I was terrified, but a deplorable, serenity petty expiry in a nursing home terrified me more. I consciously and deliberately harnessed that fearfulness, using it to propel me to do things anybody idea were insane.

And that's how courage works. The people we think of as heroes don't accept a mystical power to transcend fear. To them, the alternative to taking action is but unacceptable. They exercise what needs to exist done, non because they desire to, only because they feel in that location is no other selection.

Aforementioned for me. To get myself to have activity, I didn't meditate, clear my heed, and proceed to practise the impossible with calmness and conviction. I woke up each morning and pictured what would happen if I didn't deed. I envisioned the eye monitor, the nurse, my torso being pushed into the flames. I deliberately put myself into a state of such intense terror that everything I had to do felt manageable by comparing.

It's dark, I know, but information technology'due south besides an immense undercover. If y'all find yourself paralyzed by fear, the only style out is often to discover something that scares you more. Imagine what will happen if you do zero, make information technology and so real in your mind that yous're about to jump out of your skin, and then harness that free energy to do the crazy things you need to do.

To be articulate, I'm not suggesting you alive your life in fear. The moment you've faced down the impossible situation, end torturing yourself. Adopt a positive attitude, and go about your life.

Just if y'all're just trying to survive?

Fright is fuel. And so burn, baby, burn.

Lesson #6: Embrace the Crazy

pirate-jon-smaller

The world is total of people who will tell you to "exist reasonable." Y'all should have reasonable goals, reasonable expectations, a reasonable attitude.

But mind…

Was it reasonable for me to give up all my government benefits and move to a land non exactly known for its stellar medical care?

Was it reasonable to work forty+ hours a week for a company that didn't pay me a dime?

Was it reasonable for me to start a business when failure would've meant starving to death on the streets of Mexico?

Non in the slightest. It was really pretty crazy.

Here'south the thing, though:

If you're in a crazy state of affairs, sometimes the only manner out is to make a bold move that appears insane, merely it's not, because the alternative is worse.

For instance, I'll readily admit that working for a company total-time without request for a penny in return is a dumb idea nearly of the time. Compared to the alternative of not working at all though, information technology's actually a smart motility.

The problem is, we're not used to thinking that mode. We're and then used to evaluating options on their own claim that we get paralyzed in situations where all the options are bad.

The solution is to train yourself to at least admit the crazy alternatives. Whenever you're making a decision, enquire yourself, "What are the options I'm not considering considering they seem as well crazy?" You don't accept to choose the crazy choice, simply y'all should still train yourself to recognize it, considering there might come up a day when you lot need information technology.

Here's a current instance from my life:

I cope with a off-white amount of back pain. This surprises some people, because they assume I can't feel anything from the neck downwardly, just I tin. My disease only affects the motor neurons, not the sensory ones, then I'k able to feel simply every bit much every bit anyone. Almost days, the hurting is manageable, but sometimes it's unbearable.

The typical treatment options: narcotics, anti-inflammatories, herbal therapies, surgery, do, stretching, chiropractic adjustments, acupuncture, a new wheelchair seating system, and lots of other reasonable things.

But what are the unreasonable options?

In club of increasing craziness, I could…

  • Purchase a $5,000 bed that's like floating on a pocket of air, lie downwards in it, and never move over again, conducting all my business from bed for the residual of my life.
  • Destroy all the nerve endings in my dorsum, making it totally numb. Believe it or not, this is an actual medical procedure. It's called denervation.
  • Sever my spine, losing not but sensation but also the ability to breathe without a respirator. Obvious drawbacks, and I'thou non certain I could get a physician to do it, but still improve than the last option…
  • Suicide

Am I seriously considering any of these options?

Hell no! The pain isn't nearly bad enough to take such drastic measures.

Merely it's besides comforting to be prepared for the worst. No matter how bad information technology gets, I ever know I have options. If I'1000 forced to explore those options, I've prepared in advance, then I'chiliad not trying to figure information technology all out in the moment.

The bottom line?

No thing how impossible the state of affairs seems, you lot're never trapped. There are always options.

And that brings united states to the final lesson…

Lesson #7: Never, never, never give up

My mother rammed her hands into my ribs, forcing the air from my lungs. I coughed, the mucus rattling deep in my chest.

And so I screamed.

A few weeks earlier, I'd caught pneumonia, a respiratory infection that's dangerous for a salubrious person and a well-nigh-death judgement for someone like me. I didn't accept the force to cough the mucus upwardly myself, so doctors taught my mother to thrust her hands into my ribs, supplying the necessary force.

And information technology worked, simply then something terrible happened:

My ribs cracked. Worse, the bones would grind together and fracture a picayune more every fourth dimension my mother helped me coughing.

Merely nosotros couldn't stop. If we did, doctors were absolutely certain I would suffocate and die.

So, literally hundreds of times per day, my mother would shove on my cleaved ribs. I screamed, I cried, I begged her to finish. Still a child, I couldn't understand why she had to hurt me so much. Even today, I curiosity that she could bring herself to do it.

Just she did. For weeks.

One dark, when I was lying in bed, wheezing and whimpering, she brought this little plaque of a quote from Winston Churchill and put it on the table beside me. It sits on my desk now.

100_1412

"Say the words," she said.

I shook my head. "It hurts."

"Whisper them, then," she said, and and so I did. Every night, she would push on my ribs a dozen times before going to bed, and every dark, she would make me whisper the words…

Never, never, never surrender.

Hokey? Yeah, but information technology worked. I never gave upward, not because I was strong or dauntless or special, but considering my mother wouldn't allow me.

And now I desire to do the same for yous.

Sooner or subsequently, we all reach a point in life where our trials become unbearable. Determination turns to despair, cocky-confidence becomes self-pity, and our hope for a better tomorrow dwindles and dies, replaced by a grim certainty that our life is over.

But it's not. Nosotros simply demand someone to remind us that triumph over adversity isn't about beingness the strongest or the smartest, the "perfect" man who tin can overcome anything life throws at them. On the opposite, the greatest victories are won by the weakest people, living in the darkest times, facing monsters that make fifty-fifty the stoutest heroes cower and run.

And notwithstanding they prevail. Not through riches or genius or even luck, but by setting their jaw, bracing their feet, and weathering the storm. They don't defeat misfortune; they outlive it, clinging stubbornly to their spot, absorbing blow after blow, roaring their defiance into the wind until their lips crack and their vox breaks, and however notwithstanding they find the strength to whisper, "I volition never, ever give up."

You lot tin be ane of those people. I know you can, and and so I came here to tell you…

Today, you lot might feel likewise poor or ill or unlucky to reach for your dreams, but you're not.

Today, you might feel too tired or depressed or sad to fifty-fifty try, but you lot're not.

Today, you might experience similar an outcast, forgotten by your friends or family unit or anyone who might help you, only again, you lot are not.

You lot're still animate, my friend. That's all it takes to phase a comeback.

So, say it with me now, would you?

"I will never, ever give upwardly."

Say information technology. Believe it.

And so recognize yous've begun the journey to becoming totally unstoppable.