My Greatest Gift

My Greatest Gift Podcast
For me it’s about achieving what can be achieved. It’s about not comparing yourself to others but measuring yourself against yourself and your abilities or capabilities. This implies a knowledge and emotional maturity to accept yourself and what and who you are.
I try to live by the following guidance:

• The Golden Rule, do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.
• You don’t know someone until you walk a mile in their moccasins.
• Do what you Love and the money will follow
• Reap what you sow

My grandpa taught me that everyone has something to teach you and everyone has something they can learn from you. He was an amazing person probably one of the smartest and wisest people I’ll ever know. He was a logger a laborer and ended his career as a janitor. My grandpa taught me many things about life I attribute my spirituality to him and my grandma. I am very spiritual but not overly religious. I also attribute my attitude of hard work and working to overcome from my grandparents passed on through my mom.
My disability runs in my family. There are a number of us now. Some accept it for what it is and others don’t. I am a bit of a black sheep for calling it what it is, blindness, and living openly with my disability. I’m the only one who has a white cane or who has had a guide dog. Others in my family with the same disability have made the decision to drive, illegally. I pity them and they resent me. It’s all good.
My mother decided to raise me differently. She raised me to be able to self advocate and be the agent of change. As I’ve aged I’ve mellowed. Mom succeed I’ve been called the most successful change agent ever seen or a force of nature. I tell them I’m an act of god and insurance doesn’t cover it. All in good fun of course. My mom taught me responsibility and accountability and gave me the drive to go and find out what I can do.    So far there haven’t been many things I can’t do. Driving for instance but we are all safer because I don’t.
I have learned one or two things along the way. Patience took my mentor Wendy a long time to teach me. Tina and Bob gave me a ton of emotional maturity and Manfred taught me that you need to make decisions as you will never know what’s on the other side of the decision until you do. My long time friend Larry continues to teach me about friendship.
I like to think that greatest gift is my tenacity, the drive to overcome to learn to be flexible and adaptable and find a way to make it happen. Getting over my bad self and getting on with it.
That’s about all I have to say about that.