Spencer Miller

TV Show Host – Actor – Author – Motivational Speaker

My name is Spencer Miller and I have spent my life in a wheelchair due to Cerebral Palsy. I make my living as a Late Night TV Show Host, Motivational Speaker, and Author. That may sound like a funny thing for someone only twenty seven years old and in my situation to say, but I’ve been at it for over seventeen years now. I spoke before my first audience at the age of six, have hosted my own online radio show / now late night online TV Show for the last 4 years, and have published my autobiography in 2010. My message isn’t just for those who find themselves in wheelchairs like I am—my message is for everyone. I’ve shared it across Canada—from boardrooms of successful corporations to schools to sports locker rooms to just about anyplace that invites me. The vast majority of my audiences are not disabled.

I am here to tell you how to take what you have and learn how to make the most of it. I’m different than other motivational speakers. You won’t find me on infomercials teaching people how to get rich quick or selling tapes you can listen to in your car telling you that you are poor because you want to be poor. There are no secrets or miracles involved here, because there really are none. I’d love to be able to tell you there were, but that just isn’t my style and it isn’t my message. This is plain, simple straight talk.

My message is aimed at your well-being, not your pocketbook. If what I have to say happens to improve your situation financially, that is even better, but I am here to teach you how to be a better person. In this book, you will learn by example–not only from my own life experiences, but from those of some very successful people as well as some everyday people I have met along the way. As you read this book, I hope that you will learn courage, self-esteem, and above all compassion. Those are my messages.

Of course, it is my hope that this book will also help to open your eyes to the problems and issues that disabled people face every day, but I also hope that you will be able to expand that view and apply it to everyone you meet. In this book, you will meet, among others, people like Knicks’ coach Isiah Thomas, Canadian radio star Dean Blundell, Princess Diana, John Cena of World Wrestling Entertainment, entertainer Justin Timberlake and retired baseball superstar Roberto Alomar—quite a varied list of people. Each one of them, and many more, have touched my life in one way or another. Through my contact with them, I hope you will learn that there is more to a disabled person than just their wheelchair, their sight or hearing, a prosthetic device, or whatever else their disability entails, and that if you are willing to get close enough to them, you might just find a very good friend sitting in it that chair, behind those dark glasses or wearing that hearing aid or prosthetic.

You should realize that everyone deals with disabilities of some kind every day. Whether it’s not being able to walk, being in a slump or not being able to find a job, it really doesn’t really matter. It still constitutes a problem that needs to be dealt with and practical solutions must be found to overcome it. I hope that you will get the message that no matter how bleak your situation seems, there are ways to lift yourself up out of that bed and get on with your life. Nothing will change unless you let it, and sitting home feeling sorry for yourself just isn’t productive. Very little of life happens within the confines of your house, and nobody is going to come knocking on your door looking for you with help. The world is that great big place outside your front door.

There are plenty of people in my situation who I suppose do just that. They sit back on the couch or in their wheelchairs and let boundaries turn into boulders and boulders turn into mountains until there is nothing they can do to get around them. That’s one way of living with adversity, but it isn’t the right way. A long time ago, a very special man named Roberto Alomar told me that things are only boundaries if you let them be. If you fight hard and figure out how to get around them, even if it’s a little harder and takes a little while longer, they merely become simple speed bumps on the road of life. Take them slowly and carefully and you can get over them and move on. Given the choice of fight or furniture, I’ll choose fight every time.

Someone once told me that if you believe in something, you can achieve it. I like to think that despite my problems, I am living proof of that. I have done more in my young life than most people do in an entire lifetime. And I will continue to do it. Life is a journey, and I make sure I keep a bag packed, ready for wherever my journey takes me. I think of life as a series of stepping stones. With each one of them comes a special lesson and I get everything I can out of each one I roll across along the way

I hope my story serves as an inspiration. That is my intent. It is my hope for this book that everyone who picks it up and reads it—from teenagers to people seventy years old and well beyond—will get something out of it. I hope that everyone connects to it—even if it is on a different level. And lastly, I hope when you read about me, you will think to yourself, if Spencer Miller can get off his ass, I bloody well can, too. Because the truth, and the only truth that really matters, is that you can.

Sincerely;