I was reading David and Goliath by Michael Gladwell who is one of my favorite authors. The book was about how perceived weaknesses bring out hidden talents.

There have been periods of my life where I assumed that my disability completely screwed me out of life. The more and more I that I write and speak I realize that my disability influences the way I think and the way I look at the world. That’s not to say that I  don’t wish I was not disabled, let’s not get carried away.

When I was in college, I started to look at how my disability affected my studies. I could not write stuff down, I could only listen. I could not study without assistance which forced me to study only when I could find help. I was lucky because my mom was there if I needed her. When I took tests, I had to dictate my answers and sometimes I had to repeat myself to people I only met 10 minutes before. Yet, I was doing very well, even making it on the dean’s list often. I asked...

Back in the summer of 1974 a young exchange student from Iran went back for the summer from Cal Poly Pomona in Southern California. When he went back home for the summer before his senior year, he told his mom that he wanted to meet a girl and marry her before he went back to Cal Poly for his senior year. His mom didn’t hesitate to start inviting all her friends with daughters to meet her son.

Two weeks before my father returned to America, he met my mom. This week, they are in Hawaii celebrating their 40th anniversary. With one grandkid and another two on the way (by the way, my wife Leslie is pregnant again and this is the first time I’m sharing it on the internet), they are as happy as ever.

If there are two people that understand the notion of sacrifice and love, it’s my parents. As hard and challenging it is to be disabled, in a way it’s harder to be the parent of a disabled child. Yet, they did everything in their power to make my sister and me feel...

Here are 5 simple thoughts I came up with that will make life better, make you more successful and will give you control over your destiny.

1)  I like to believe that life does not come to us, we have to go out there and get it. With that said, I admit that there are times when we do have to let go and let it come to us.

2)  I believe in hard work. What you should do is analyze the situation and see what you need to do to accomplish your feats and allocate your time, resources, and energy accordingly.

3)  I believe that any successful person should just withdraw from the world and think about life–what they want, and how to achieve it. Take an hour a week just to withdraw, turn off the cell phone…and just think.

4)  When times get challenging we become more disciplined. When times are good, it’s in our nature to not be quite so rigid, and this does not benefit us in the long-run.

5)  Take the time today to develop a strategy that will...

Every goal has incremental steps to achieving it. There are people who don’t want to commit fully to all the steps. When you try to skip steps, you are gambling with your dream. In the past, I have been guilty of trying to skip steps and gamble with my dream. When you gamble, you might win or you might lose, you might get lucky, you might stumble across something amazing. Most likely, the way to an amazing life is focusing on the fundamentals.

For this video blog, I want to do something a little different. My buddy Chris is going to talk about one of my favorite concepts: the issue of overcoming.

I hate the word “overcoming” because I haven’t overcome cerebral palsy, I deal with it. The reason why Chris loves this concept is because he owns a gym. I jokingly tell him if people overcame weight loss, you would be out of business.

Problems rarely disappear. People just deal with them in a different manner. I deal with my handicap every single hour of my life. Even if there were a cure for cerebral palsy, who I am would be influenced by being in a chair for over 35

On Sunday, I went to my cousin’s baby shower. His wife happens to be my wife’s best friend. When I got home, I was planning to watch the Dodgers take on the Giants on ESPN because I don’t have the Dodger network. Direct TV has not made a deal with Time Warner so anytime they have a Dodger game on ESPN I have to catch it.

My best friend of 30 years, Patrick was going to BBQ some hamburgers and sausage. I asked him to post on Facebook that we were having a BBQ. A good friend of ours, Matt whom I’ve known since 5th grade liked my post. I called Matt and half an hour later he showed up at my house with his wife and five kids.

The Dodgers swept the Giants and I got a chance to catch up with one of my good friends. Sometimes we lose sight of what really matters in life. We get caught up in making life extraordinary that we forget that one of the most amazing parts of life is just connecting with friends you haven’t seen in months.

I’m back with another video with my buddy, Chris Stevenson. In this episode I share what I learned from writing my new book, Big Dreams Take Small Sacrifices.

I talk about how I learned that my sacrifices as a disabled man are unique and that everybody’s sacrifices are unique, as well.

I am always thinking about what I’m going to write next. I have ideas for about five different books.  I also am focused on getting out there speaking again.  The process of booking me is long and takes time to build a machine that will fill my schedule with paying gigs. In the past I have not fully committed the resources or the time into this task. Over the years, one thing I learned is patience. If you asked me about patience a decade ago, I would have said, “Why be patient? I can’t wait!”  Part of being patient is knowing when to let life’s ebb and flow take over.

What I’ve learned about success is not running to a safe haven when things don’t happen right away. In the past, I ran to marketing when things were not happening as quickly as I wanted them to. Or, I would say to myself, “I need to write another book. That will do it.” I love writing and I love marketing but that’s only two pieces of the...

For this blog, I am going to take a quote from my brand new book, Big Dreams Take Small Sacrifices. Today’s quote is “Work with reality, because when you fight reality, you always lose.”

We all wish that life was a little bit easier, traffic in Los Angeles was not as bad, or that the boss was not an idiot, etc. There’s not a day that goes by where I wished I was not disabled. I’m surrounded by non-disabled people every day, I mean, they are all over the place: on TV, at the store, they’re everywhere! They kind of freak me out! Jokes aside, writing Big Dreams helped me realize that if I want success, I have to make sacrifices as a handicapped man and often times I feel that I am forced to pay a handicapped tax on my dreams. Like any tax, I hate to pay it but I do because I know if I pay it, then I’m closer to my dream. If I fight reality and don’t pay the handicapped tax, then the only person losing out is me.

Your reality is your...

This week I’m doing something a little bit different. I’m shooting videos with various people to add more substance to my blog. This week I uploaded a video with my buddy Chris Stevenson about the fundamentals of life. One of the overarching themes of my book is focusing on the little fundamental tasks to achieve success. Often times, we assume that it’s the big things that cause success but it really is the little things that we do every single day that lead to our big dreams.