“Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within.” - Helen Keller.

In order to carry a positive attitude in life, one has to accept one’s self first. I had some good help in this department.

My family never treated me like I couldn’t do something, they encouraged me to try anything. I tried to walk, falling down and scraping my elbows. I tried talking, at times unable to be understood. I even tried liver and onions. Trying and liking, are two different things. So I’ll let others have the liver and
onions.

Our emotions play a large part in our life. We need to accept all of our feelings. Sadness, anger, jealousy, envy, confusion, excitement, happiness and fear are manageable emotions.

If you have any trouble accepting any of these emotions, make a list of the ones you have trouble accepting. When confronted by one of these emotions, think hard why you have a tough time
dealing with it. Write it down. Keeping it at the top of your consciousness, you’ll be able to find a way of accepting it.

I went through many of these emotions and had to tackle them. Jealousy was a big one for me. Watching others do things I wanted to do, knowing full well, I’ve tried them and can’t do them. I
had to come to accept this, so I found things I could do well that others stumble with. This way I was able to accept what I couldn’t do and move on.

I bet, if you’re even a tiny bit human, you like to blame others when things go wrong. For some strange reason, we love playing the part of the victim. We will always be a victim until we learn to forgive. We need to forgive others as well as ourselves.

At a motivational seminar, I heard a parable of a snake and forgiveness. On a teenager’s sixteenth birthday, a car is something a teenager looks forward to. On this particular birthday, a father had a small present wrapped for his son.

The son expecting keys to a car, unwrapped the present to find a bible. So let down, the son threw down the bible and stormed out the door. He never forgave his father nor returned home.

Many years later the father died and the son returned home for the funeral. There waiting at home for him was the same bible sitting on the fireplace. The son picked up the bible and started to thumb through it. Something fell to the floor out of the bible. He looked down to see a car key. His sixteenth
birthday car key.

It isn’t the snake bite that does the serious damage; it’s chasing the snake that drives the poison to the heart. Forgiveness is a very powerful tool for increasing your love for yourself and you capacity to love others.

We help our self-esteem by forgiving ourselves and others. We can also use gratitude to boost our self-esteem. Don’t you feel good when someone says thank you? You can share that same
feeling with others.

Being alive is the simplest thing to be thankful for. Each day to wake up and live through another day.

I could easily go through each day regretting a life I could have had without a disability. I don’t. It’s something that is out of my control. I am thankful for the life I have. The perspective I have, the family, the friends but most importantly I am thankful for the challenges I face every day. What are you thankful for? Happy Thanksgiving!

Having a disability and trying to find a job sometimes is a very long and hard process. I still get the cold shoulder even with the Americans With Disabilities Act in place. Talking with others with disabilities, I know it’s not only me. 

Companies have asked me how they could better integrate more people with disabilities. From my own experience plus doing some research on the subject, here is 6 steps to take. Some of the following comes from the President’s Committee on Employment of People With Disabilities.

1. Commitment. Let all in the company know of your organization’s commitment to employing, advancing, and retaining people with disabilities. If the boss wants it to happen, everyone else will also. And, don’t just publish it once; make it an often-repeated statement. Remember, workforce diversity includes people with disabilities.

2. Recruitment. Let it be known that you are aggressively seeking job candidates with disabilities. Send your vacancy announcements to disability-related organizations and agencies. State right on the job announcement your interest in receiving applications from people with disabilities. To just state on the announcement that you are an EOE doesn’t convey that you are searching for people with disabilities.

3. Interviewing. Train your interviewers to learn how to screen-in qualified applicants with disabilities. Look at essential functions, qualifications of the individual, and ways to make reasonable accommodations.

Don’t let the disability distract you as you evaluate qualifications. Have the interviewers remember that it could be them on the other side of the desk. Everyone deserves an opportunity to prove themselves, disability or not. Be sure any tests or medical exams are performed in accordance with Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

4. Placement. Be sure to test accommodations and adaptations once the person is on the job. Ask the employee with a disability to help guide you in the process. Together you can find solutions to possible problems in accomodations. Rework accommodations and adaptations, as necessary. 

5. Training. Any employee’s success hinges on proper orientation and training. Be sure all such programs are accessible to your new employee with a disability. Also, make sure training programs that lead to upward mobility and career advancement are available and accessible.

6. Awareness and Sensitivity. Explain to all workers involved the principle of reasonable accommodations and the particular accommodations or adaptations that have been made.

One thing that strikes me is the number of companies that complain many of their employees don’t really care about their jobs, show up late, or just don’t show up. Knowing as many people with disabilities as I do, that is not a major problem with us. We search high and low for work. We are the largest minority with the highest unemployment rate. Ask your fellow employers what having people with disabilities on their payroll means to them and the one word they’d tell you is dependable.

If you want more proof, watch the upcoming episode of Extreme Makeover on ABC this weekend, November 9, 2008.

Comment and take a guess on why I put a Lion on my website. There are clues on the site. Stay tuned for the answer!

Hint: There is nothing similar with a lion and a badger.

Making a difference can be done by one person. No matter your background, doing something accomplishes something. Doing nothing accomplishes nothing. This political season is no exception. No matter if you are fed up with the negative ads; hate one party or the other; have a personal agenda to make sure one certain issue is considered over another; not voting accomplishes nothing.

I hear another sigh: you hate the long lines at the polls. Especially those of us with disabilities, this can be a huge pain. But it doesn’t have to be. You can do what I’ve already done. Absentee vote. Check your state and local county clerk’s office for the time frame and how to absentee vote. This allows you to go in, or vote from home on your time. No major lines to wait in, no angry mobs to deal with, and you can then say you accomplished something.

My only advice: Research your candidate against the others. Don’t just vote for someone based on an ad (Most ads are misleading!). Research their websites to see what they stand for. Just because they may say they are in favor for something you like, they may also oppose something else. Also research other sites to find out what’s written between the lines. Research both pro and against sites. You do enough research and you will come across issues everyone agrees with and then weed out those that were misleading or down right false.

Does it sound like a little work? It is! But our way of life is affected by those we elect. Even after the election, don’t be afraid to have your voice heard. If a candidate said they’d do one thing and afterward doesn’t, call them on it. Call or write their office. After all, they work for us. Make your voice one that matters.

OK, you need to keep in mind that this is a sporting event and athletes can get hurt. I’ve been watching coverage of the Paralympics on and off (See my links on the side to see coverage), but catching this crash on YouTube, the first comment on the YouTube page made me laugh.

“you shouldn’t laugh.
Do they wave yellow flags and send the pace chair out?”

You can see the full race online as well. I was hoping they’d re-run this race…not so much because of the accident, but because when the remaining racers came around to finish the race, an official ran onto the track right between the racers. Without his involvement, the race could have had a different outcome.

How do you define yourself? How do you define others? How often do you see the positive in others versus the negative?

The air was warm and the sun was high, on this Saturday afternoon. I decided to get into a pair of shorts and a tee-shirt and take a book down to the park. Although a lot of other people had the same
idea, I found a picnic table under an old elm tree just right for reading on. Kids were playing on the swings across the grass and a patchwork quilt of beach towels were filled with guys and girls in-between.
I brought along a book I had started the night before, getting a few laughs from Rodney Dangerfield.

I really didn’t get too far into the book, when a young girl and her mother came along. They were looking to squeeze one more beach towel down into the patchwork quilt on the grass. The girl turned and looked
at me with a very perplex puzzle face. It’s as if she’d never seen anyone like me before. The girl tugged at her mother, “Why does that guy look so funny?”

The mother turned and looked at me. By now I had stopped reading, knowing the girl was talking about me. The mother bent down and half-whispered, “He’s like uncle Fred, he has a disability.”

The girl still looked puzzled, “He doesn’t have a wheelchair like uncle Fred.”

“Some people don’t need wheelchairs.”, the mother replied.

The young girl continued her quest for answers, “But why is his arms like that?”

Even though they weren’t looking directly at me anymore. I could see the frustration in both of their faces. I put my bookmark in the book and walked over to where they were standing. Some of the other people enjoying this sunny afternoon started to take an interest in what was going on.

I think I kind of startled the young girl when I walked up behind her. I looked at the mother, “Can I help?”.

The mother looked relieved when she saw me standing there, “I hope so, my daughter is asking me why you look so different from her uncle Fred. Fred has Cerebral Palsy and is in a wheelchair. When she saw you, I guess she got confused.”

I bent down a little and looked at the young girl, “What’s your name?”

The girl looked up to her mother, who nodded at her, “Sarah.”

In a couple of minutes I was able to find out a little about her so I could tell her in a way she would understand about my disability.

“Do you remember listening to your mother’s stomach before your little brother was born?”

She nodded with a little grin.

“You remember how much he moved around in there?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, when I was little and inside my mother’s stomach, for a short time I didn’t move around. So my joints got stiff. When I was born, the doctors weren’t able to do anything. So my arms only move so far.
Does that make any sense to you?”

“Yeah,” Sarah beamed, “Because your elbow is locked up you can’t move your arms as well as I can.”

“Right.”

I spent a little more time with Sarah and here mother before I went back to read some more of my book. As I left I couldn’t help but over hear Sarah say, “That’s a nice man, mommy.”

Because I took the time to talk to her, Sarah found out that there are many different ways people can be disabled; everything from getting hurt in an accident to being born with a disability. But no matter
how it happens, each person wants the same thing; to be treated with the same respect that you would want yourself. Even Rodney Dangerfield needs a little respect now and then!

With school coming back into full swing, I put together a few things you can use in the classroom. Check out the download page for each item. First off is a nice background for your monitor. No matter what you’re doing you’ll never want to give up!

While reading your text books, keep your place with this bookmark. You’ll want to keep reading.

Lastly, have your students, or anyone for that matter, check out the snippets ebook for some motivation unlike anything you’ve read before.

Even more stuff in the works. Stay posted by signing up for the rss feed.

“I once met a man with a disability

Who knew no bounds in adaptability

The longer I knew him, the less it became.

To those who shy away, to those with disdain

My heart goes out with genuine sympathy

Not with pity and not with enmity

For they are the ones who are truly handicapped.”

By: William Coles

From strawberry to vanilla, we all have a certain flavor we like. Preferences make us different. Actually, many things make us different, but that is a good thing. Wouldn’t it be boring if we all looked alike, dressed alike, acted alike, and spoke alike? The problem lies with the fact that we dislike those differences and call someone else’s differences inferior.

Take for instance the Swedish wrestler who received a Bronze medal at the Olympics. Granted he wanted Gold, but who wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t want the opportunity to stand on the international stage and be declared a medalist? Of the billions of people in the world only a handful get to compete in the Olympics and only a few of them actually get a medal. So what’s the problem?

Sure it wasn’t good enough to win the Gold medal, but instead of cherishing the opportunity, he throws down his medal and storms out. Basically slapping the face of every competitor there because he thought he was better than all of them. Because of some “judging issue” he didn’t get the Gold, so he says. Because of his abilities he was able to compete. Because of his differences he was able to stand out. But, because of his self-centered attitude, he has taken something to be proud of and disgraced it.

Differences make us unique. Everyone of us have challenges, but not the same challenges. Life would not be life, if we had no challenges. Our differences through these challenges have created many wonderful things. We’ll use the Olympics again as an example…if we did not have differences, then maybe we’d all be swimmers. There would be no wrestlers to compete. If we had no differences, no one would win the swimming competitions because our abilities to swim would all be the same.

Please come down from your self-centered platform and stand side by side with those who are different. It’s because of them that you have this opportunity in the first place.