Transcript: Nick Vujicic on Love Yourself a Bit More, Love Each Other a Lot More

Here is the full transcript of Nick Vujicic’s Love Without Limits – Bully Talk

Listen to the MP3 Audio here: Nick Vujicic on Love Without Limits – Bully Talk

Nick Vujicic – Life Without Limbs

How you guys doing? Good, good good good good.

Well guys, I was born this way, and there’s no medical reason why that happened. My brother and my sister were born with arms and legs.

And sometimes in life, things happen that don’t make sense. My doctors never thought that I’d be able to walk, and today, I’m walking. I’m from Australia, anybody want to one day go to Australia? It’s such a cool place. And I now live in LA; I’m a Southern California boy.  So I only live about four hours from here.

And today I’m going to tell you, man — I love freaking people out. One day I’m in a car, I’m in the front seat — I’m not driving of course. Can you imagine if I’m driving a car? They reckon they can put a joystick — that thing that controlls my wheelchair — we can put that in a car. Like how fully sick is that? Imagine if I get pulled over by the cops? Can I have your driver’s license please? Yeah, but, it’s over there; you’re going to have to get it.

Imagine if I’m in big trouble! Put your hands up! Uhhhh.. Get out of your car! Uhhhhh…

So I’m in the front passenger’s seat, we’re at the traffic lights, and this car comes up next to us and this girl’s looking at me. And I’m looking at her, she’s looking at me, I’m looking at her, she’s looking at me, I’m looking at her. All she sees is my head, right? She has no idea that I have no arms and no legs. So I’m thinking, cool. I’m going to freak you out.

So I get the seatbelt in my mouth, and I loosen it like this, so that I can freely move. And she’s looking at me like “why are you eating your seatbelt?’ So I pull it, the belt is loose, I can move.

Now she’s looking at me, full 100% attention and focus. And just imagine all you see is my head, all right? You might want to put up your hand to your face to cut off the rest of my body. So you can really see the effect, so…That’s it, exactly.

Here we go, ready? I just did this. And her face, man. She was like — she nearly ran the red light, man. It was so good.

My parents always said, Nick, you don’t know what you can achieve until you try it. And the doctors looked at me and said, he’s not going to walk, he’s not going to go to school, he’s not going to do anything in his life.

And then my parents; they just loved me like crazy, and said you’ve got to try. Try this, try that, try this, try that, and I’m thinking sometimes, like, Mom and Dad, you’re crazy, I have no arms and no legs. How would I ever be able to do this or do that?

But they encouraged me, and they loved me. And as human beings, we’re waiting for stuff like that, we all want love. Everybody say it — loooooove. Very good.

We all want love. I went to school, and I wanted to be cool, you know. You go to school and you want to be accepted. So, you see these guys, and you’re like, oh man, you know? Everyone swears, like every third sentence. F this, and F that, and F’n this, and F F, like, what, they think they’re cool, you know. And so I’m thinking, maybe I need to be like them to be cool.

And then you compare each other with how we look and I wish I was smarter, I wish I was taller, I wish I was shorter, I wish I was more popular, I wish I did this, I wish I didn’t have that. I wish my life was different. That was me when I was about 8 years old; I looked at myself, and I looked at everybody else, and everyone else had more than me. And I’m asking, why? Why me? Have you ever asked the why me questions, but get nowhere?

If I had no answers from the doctors, and if I had no answers from my parents, I still have a choice, every day in my life, to keep going or give up. You see this book up here? This is my favorite book in the whole wide world. This is my favorite book, the bible. And here I am – and here I am, and for me, that’s my full potential in all that I can be here on earth. And so encouragement takes me closer to all that I can be, and discouragement takes me away.

You see, it only takes three seconds for someone to tease me when I was at school, and just say ewwwww, you’re ugly. Ewww, you can’t do this and you can’t do that. Some of you are thinking, like, man, seriously? You had kids picking on you? How heartless are those kids? Picking on me with no limbs? You would probably say, well, I’m not that bad. I wouldn’t pick on a kid with no limbs. But why would you pick on anyone? Well, because it’s fun, it’s just culture. OK, we’ll get to that.

But for me, facing all that stuff? I’m getting these seeds, everyone say seeds, S-E-E-D-S, seeds. Have you seen the pictures of the sequoia reds up here in California? These huge trees. Like some of the trunks could be nearly as big as this room. I’ve seen those photos where they’ve actually dug out a tunnel in a trunk of a tree — you can drive a full-size SUV right through it. That all started with a little seed.

If you leave a seed of lies in your heart and in your mind, and you don’t know the truth? If you don’t know the truth, you will die with the lie. I started dying, because I started believing what I was told.

I want you to know the three things that I needed to come to in my life is the truth of my values, the truth of my purpose, and the truth of my destiny. I want you to know something. In our mind, we put ourselves down all the time. I want to ask you today, do you think I’m cool enough to be your friend? But I don’t swear, I don’t use the F-bomb, am I still cool enough to be your friend? But I don’t tease people, am I still cool enough to be your friend? But I have no arms and no legs. Seriously.

You would be my friend, even though I have no arms, no legs. So you’re telling me it actually doesn’t matter, right? If it actually doesn’t matter, for how we look, then why do we tease one another for how we look if it actually doesn’t matter? Why is it that we look ourselves in the mirror, and we say, well, we’re having fun! Oh yeah, man it’s just part of culture, man.

There were twelve people one day teased me. Taking me away from my hope. 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Don’t worry, I won’t fall off, because if I did, I’d break my arm.

But twelve people teased me one day. And I can put a pretty brave face on but cry on the inside. For real. Oh, it doesn’t hurt! Yeah, it hurts. There was this one bully, I became his target for three weeks. And every time I’d go by him — I was 13, he was 17. I was in my chair. I’m only 4’9″ in my other chair, my old chair. He’s like 6′ something, so he’s huge, right? So I’m looking up at him, and every time I’d go by him, he’s like, “Hey, there’s Nick! He has no…” And you can imagine what he said. And I’m like, what’s his problem, man?