The power to not take no for an answer comes from hope. Just a little bit of hope is powerful. Hopelessness is like a bulldozer trying to push you off an emotional cliff into despair.
Hope says no, I’m not going there.
When hopelessness speaks to you, how do you answer?
If you refuse to accept that there’s no hope and choose to fight back you’ll find power.
Hope gives you the power to not take no for an answer.
Hope gives you the power to not take no for an answer. Click To Tweet
A POWERFUL STORY
The power of not taking no for an answer altered a man’s life in my book Because You Matter: How to Take Ownership of Your Life So You Can Really Live.
It’s Tom’s story but the power started with his mom.
Here’s an excerpt of his story from the book.
Tom is an extraordinary man. We met when I lived in Arizona. Had he not told me; I never would’ve thought he was disabled in any way. Tom was born with cerebral palsy and undiagnosed Asperger’s. When he was a baby, the doctor told his mother, he would never walk. Tom’s mother refused to believe it. Where Tom is now, and what he’s accomplished is beyond remarkable…
One of the first things that impressed me about Tom is how he took ownership of who he is and how he processes information. When having a conversation with him and something he associates with the autism takes place, he points it out and sometimes chuckles. He’s comfortable in his own skin. I find that amazing. Here is a man who would have all the reasons to be uncomfortable, but he’s not. His positive nature was instilled in him by his mother early in his life.
Positive nature is really an understatement. What Tom was given by his mother was a profound treasure that gave him the power to take ownership of his life. I’m flabbergasted at this woman. She was audacious, courageous, and tenacious. Understand, Tom was born in the fifties. Back then,
“women did not go against doctors in the white coats and tell the doctors what they can do with their stethoscope.”
A few years ago, Tom told me the story of the first time he crawled. He was about two years old. Before that, his mom had been told to ‘just buy him a wheelchair.’ Instead, she worked with him at home using a creative and progressive technique to cause his brain to register the nerve response. Her friends didn’t approve. She didn’t care. Tom’s dad built a box three inches high, and they filled it with crushed granite. They put railings on either side for Tom to hold onto.
“My mom would kneel in front of me. She would grab my bare ankles, my bare feet, grinding them against the gravel in a walking motion, and it would hurt.”
Over and over and over, she did this. Until the day it happened. Tom was in the living room, and he saw an extension cord. It captivated him and he went to go get it—crawling for the first time. Tom’s mom scooped him into her arms, grabbed the extension cord, and drove to the doctor’s office where she burst into a patient’s room to see the doctor. As they were all objecting to her behavior, she launched the cord down the hall, placed Tom gently on the floor and exclaimed, “Watch!” as Tom happily crawled to the extension cord. Jaws dropped. The impossible just took place.
Although crawling was an amazing milestone, Tom dreamed of walking, and his mother was right there with him. In the interview, Tom shared his incredible story.
“She just wouldn’t take no for an answer. And this is how far she took it.”
Tom’s mom took him for therapy at an Easter Seals clinic to work on walking when he was two. At the clinic, as he struggled to get his feet to work properly, his mother spoke to everyone in the room: doctors, therapists, everyone. She instructed them she wouldn’t allow any negative words to be spoken while he was working. There would be no “you can’t do that” or “it’s too much of a struggle” or anything to get him to quit. She demanded that if they were going to say anything negative, they had to get out of the room.
“I don’t want him to hear anything negative out of anyone’s mouth.”
With his tiny hands gripping the bars, his feet dangled beneath him. On the floor laid a ladder. It had fire engine red and black rungs on it. Propped up on either end of the ladder were mirrors. When he struggled, he’d look to his mom for approval. She’d smile “keep going” then direct his attention to the mirrors. She wanted him to focus on the mirrors and not on her. The mirrors were for visual cues of where his feet were. When a foot went sideways, he could move it straight by seeing where it was, and then put it where it was supposed to go.
This grueling process went on and on for what felt like forever to Tom. His mom’s friends abandoned and ostracized her telling her to get Tom a wheelchair and forget about all she was doing. But she ignored the negative. At the clinic, she made sure they never said anything negative to Tom.
“They didn’t believe it would work. But they never said anything negative.”
Tom walked out of the clinic unaided when he was seven!
“The last day of therapy, I walked down a stairway by myself, I held onto the railing. One step at a time. When I left, my mother made all the naysayers and the therapist that didn’t think this was ever going to happen stand up at the top of the stairwell and watch me walk down the stairs. All the way to the first floor.”
Little seven-year-old Tom took it slow. He didn’t stumble or fall. All the way to the bottom with all the disbelievers watching. And then she gave them a verbal thrashing.
“Don’t ever tell a child what they can and cannot do. You don’t know what they can accomplish. And for you guys, for people, adults to talk it down because you think you know better is not right. Maybe they can’t do it. Maybe they do have limitations. But you don’t know where those limitations lie…
Tom developed the same attitude as his mother of ‘not taking no for an answer.’ In elementary school, he wanted to play sports. But because of the cerebral palsy and being almost legally blind in one eye, he knew it wasn’t going to happen. Instead of wallowing in self-pity he took ownership of what he could do. He got an idea…
—
And the story goes on in the book where Tom used that power of not taking no for an answer over and over. Because of it he became the ball boy for the Phoenix Suns and landed other jobs you’d think were impossible for him.
The power of not taking no for an answer made the impossible, possible.
The power of not taking no for an answer made the impossible, possible. Click To Tweet
WHAT NEXT
- Have you used the power of not taking no for an answer? Please share with us in the comments.
- Get a copy of Because You Matter and read the rest of Tom’s story here.
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I’ve been through a lot in my life, but one thing held me and that is hope. Now I’m on the other side of the hard times, but your post is a good reminder of what it exactly it was that got me through.
Cheering for you and all your overcoming.
Yes indeed, hope is so powerful. Glad it felt good to read about it and remember.
Thanks for sharing.