C'mon, Let's Live BIG!

We’ve been focusing the Radiant Living blog in the month of January on setting you up for living more the life you want this year. We began with Three Tips for Making This Your Year to Live More Empowered, to help you feel less held back by your disability and actually be the launching pad to your happiness and fulfillment. We then moved on to Expanding the Dream, honoring the great Martin Luther King, Jr, and encouraging you to focus on the content of your character so that there will be children one day living in a nation where they will not be judged by their disability but by the content of their character. Then last week we offered One Word and Seven Sentences to Empower You, complete with a download of seven affirmations to help you live more confidently with a disability.

Now, we’re encouraging you to live big!

As I mold and shape the guiding principle of Radiant Abilities as helping others with disabilities to live fully with a disability, I realize Self-esteem and confidence is the thread through all I do – videos, courses, articles, resource material. This is because from both my personal life and my years as a counselor, I see time and time again when you have a healthy self-esteem and confidence, the barriers of a disability are so much more surmountable.

To me, disability is such an introspective experience. The world is slowly evolving its perspective on disability to see people with them as valued, competent, and needed. But let’s face it, the world still has much catching up to do on that. I could be a very old lady by then!

In the meantime, I have a life to live – and so do you!

If you focus on nurturing and growing your self-esteem and confidence, you feel radically different about your life and your disability. A shift happens in your thinking from:

Hardship, difficulty, frustration >> problem-solving, empowering beliefs, what’s possible!

This then leads to something we just don’t talk about in the disability world: living big!

I recently came across the best definition for this elusive term of playing big.

Big stands for greatness – extraordinary results. Pursue a big life and you’re pursuing the greatest life you can possibly live. To live great, you have to think big. You must be open to the possibility that your life and what you accomplish can become great. Achievement and abundance show up because they’re the natural outcomes of doing the right things with no limits attached.

-The One Thing, by Gary Keller with Jay Papasan

I remember as a young child, trying to come to terms with having CP, being so different from everyone I knew, and things being so hard to do, but thinking with fierce determination, No matter how hard it will be, I’m going to get the life I want. This CP is not going to limit me.

Living big with a disability is about staying focused on your dreams, on what makes you feel happy and alive. Living big is about learning and growing your interests and abilities. Living big is about asking for help in reaching your dreams, getting guidance, and then roadmapping the way there, whether it’s a career, relationship, level of independence, education, or something more on the wild side, like skydiving or walking on hot coals.

live big! The world needs you to do that so they can catch up with us because as Keller and Papasan say,

Only living big will let you experience your true life and work potential.

So…..what’s one way you’ll play big this year?? C’mon, live big by sharing on the Radiant Abilities Facebook page. By the way, have you checked out the new Facebook Live videos, focusing on dating, relationships, and general empowerment?