When Scott Burrows became paralyzed from his chest down in a car crash, his doctor effectively told him to give up hope. Luckily for him, his father was there to tell him what to do when they try to make you give up. This is a story of determination, and the obstacles that we allow to stop us.
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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.