Disabled motivational speaker shares his ‘ridiculously good life’ lessons

Twenty-seven-year-old Nick Vujicic was born with no arms and no legs, and yet he has learned what it means to have a “ridiculously good life.”

“I’m officially disabled, but I’m truly enabled because of my lack of limbs,” Vujicic writes in Life Without Limits: Inspiration for a Ridiculously Good Life.

Attributing this positive attitude in spite of his physical limitations to his “beautiful God,” he learned that “there’s a greater purpose for all things.” Still, it took this son of an Australian preacher a while to get to that perspective.

From 8 years old, “feeling like there was no hope and feeling like I was becoming just a burden to my parents and not believing that I’d become self-sufficient, employed, married, have a family,” Vujicic decided it would be better if he would “just disappear.” He attempted suicide at age 10.

“Three times in the bathtub I turned over and tried to drown myself,” he said. “The first two times I rolled over, I thought I was doing a good thing by relieving my parents of their biggest burden—which was me—but the third time I realized that there was something worse than my parents having a son without limbs, it was a son without limbs that gave up, so I couldn’t go through with it, and I thank God for that because you don’t know what’s around the corner until you actually go around the corner.”

Now, with the help of three caregivers that rotate every 10 days, he can walk, swim, surf, and with the help of his two-toed left foot, even type 42 words per minute.

“With every limitation, there are blessings that come with it—and that might be offensive to somebody who’s dying of cancer, whose mum and dad just split up and so on, and I never belittle anyone’s pain—but in my life, you will see the examples again and again how we have a choice to really just concentrate on what we do have and stop complaining about what we don’t have and live life to the fullest, knowing that we have a true destiny and a true purpose (in) the One who gives me peace,” he said.

At age 15, Vujicic came to a personal faith when he read John 9, the story of the man born blind to give God glory in his life. “I just wanted to know that God knew. That was the greatest and is the greatest comfort today, that God knows, He knows your pain. He will not let you go through more than you can handle. If you trust in Him and lean not upon your own understanding, He will direct your paths. He will be with you till the end.”

Now living in California, he is an internationally successful motivational speaker and preacher, traveling to six continents, and has become wildly popular on YouTube, with millions of views for videos showing him surfing, speaking or simply brushing his teeth.

“That’s the beautiful thing about having no arms, no legs, how God packaged this, that we can cross over boundaries, build bridges and all that, but mainly it’s because I know that I’m not alone,” he said. “I think fear of being alone is the biggest disability of all. … You can be complete on the outside, but if you’re broken on the inside, there’s no point.”

In Life Without Limits, he offers advice on when to seek the guidance of others, how to graciously ask for and accept assistance and how to know when it is better to strike out on your own. Believing that “brokenness can be a good thing,” Vujicic shows how he learned to accept what he could not control and focus on what he could.

Doubleday Religion will support the release with a national publicity campaign, radio satellite tour, author tour to New York, Los Angeles and Virginia. There will also be extensive promotion with the author’s organization, Life Without Limbs.

To order the book in hardcover, e-book or unabridged audiobook download, call Random House at 800-733-3000.