Born with no arms or legs, Nick Vujicic built a ridiculously good life - proof most limits live in the mind.
Nick's title for chapter one and his whole message: stop waiting to be rescued, and become the encouragement somebody else is praying for.
At seventeen, his school janitor, Mr. Arnold, told Nick he would become a speaker. Months later he told his story to a small group - and discovered that his suffering was exactly what let him reach other hurting people.
At ten, bullied and depressed, Nick tried to drown himself in a bathtub - and stopped because of what it would do to his parents. Hope, he says, is what carries you until the purpose you cannot see yet shows up.
Nick's acronym for FAITH is the book's backbone: trusting that God has a plan for a life that looks broken from the outside - the trust that later put a man with no limbs on a surfboard next to Bethany Hamilton.
Chapter four: your worth is not set by other people's opinions or by appearance. Accepting your flaws - and learning to laugh at them - is the starting point of confidence and of accepting others.
You cannot always choose your circumstances, but attitude is a daily choice. Nick names the ones that lift a life: gratitude, action, empathy, and forgiveness.
The rest of this summary — and the one thing to do this week — is in the PDF.
Download the free PDFThe big idea is carried by a life. Nick Vujicic was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1982 with tetra-amelia syndrome - no arms and no legs. Childhood brought bullying, loneliness, and depression; at age ten he tried to drown himself in a bathtub, and stopped only because he pictured what his death would do to his parents. This book is the story of how that boy became a man who swims, surfs, and speaks to millions.
Two anchors saved him: his parents' steady love and his Christian faith. Nick was one of the first disabled children in Australia to be mainstreamed into a regular school. Reading the Bible story of a man born blind, he came to believe his life had a purpose he could not yet see - and at seventeen the school janitor, Mr. Arnold, told him flatly that he would become a speaker. Within months Nick was telling his story to small groups, and he had found his purpose: helping other people find hope in their own hard situations.
