The Universal Truth
Every person walking around right now is carrying something. A diagnosis. A learning disability. Anxiety. The wrong personality for their field. The wrong background for their ambition. Something that's supposed to limit what's possible.
And here's what I've learned covering the world's conflicts, interviewing presidents, and reporting from war zones: the people who change the world aren't the ones without limitations—they're the ones who refused to be defined by them.
My father understood this before it became a bestselling concept. His mission wasn't to fix me or cure me or make accommodations for me. It was to adapt me to the world rather than demanding the world adapt to me.
That's not just a parenting strategy. It's a principle for building extraordinary humans.
What Makes Someone Extraordinary
I've spent my career around high achievers. CEOs. Combat veterans. Political leaders. War correspondents who walk into gunfire. And here's the pattern nobody talks about:
None of them are extraordinary because they avoided adversity. They're extraordinary because someone taught them to walk through it.
My father did that by:
- Refusing to let me be a victim of my diagnosis, my bullies, or my limitations
- Teaching skills that didn't come naturally—200 push-ups a day for self-esteem when school, friends, and athletics wouldn't provide it
- Making me practice being human—taking me to his business lunches, tapping his watch when I talked too much, then postgaming every interaction like game film
- Being there at 4:20 every day when I came home destroyed, then putting me back together before making me go back the next morning
He didn't do this because he was a therapist or had training. He did it because he believed in what I could become more than he believed in what I was.
That belief changed my life. And that belief can change anyone's.
Why This Message Matters Now
We're raising a generation that's been taught to avoid discomfort. To need accommodations. To identify with their struggles. To see adversity as something to be removed rather than something to be conquered.
And we're watching those kids suffer for it.
The most dangerous thing you can do to a child—or to any person—is convince them they're defined by their limitations. That their diagnosis is their identity. That the world should bend to them rather than them learning to operate in the world as it actually exists.
I'm proof that's wrong.
Born Lucky has resonated from Morning Joe to Steve Bannon's War Room—169 interviews across the entire political spectrum—because this truth transcends politics: resilience is a learned skill. Self-esteem is earned, not given. And nobody has to stay stuck being who they are today.
