We live in a world where our perception of ourselves, others, and all that surrounds us is so influential in the lives we live. As a speaker I love learning from everyday experiences, and as someone living with Cerebral Palsy I get some very interesting perspectives which if articulated right have universal lessons within them.

Every day that we are out and about people are quick to make assumptions about one another, and in looking into the lives of others there are three assumptions I meet on a regular basis.

The first assumption is ‘check out that guy's style, he’s a hunk’. There are always people who are going to see the best in us straight away, do we see what they see? Maybe there’s a lesson in that?

The second group are people who walk past us and notice nothing, these are people so focused on what they know and where they are going but sometimes they may just miss something really awesome - this is where the saying ’take time to smell the roses’ comes from.

By looking around we may just grow more than we know. The third group of people are those who are like, what the heck, look at that guy, look how he walks, is he drunk or something. Oh maybe he’s one of the ‘disabled’ people, he’s probably on a benefit or something, but he’s pretty well dressed, maybe he’s like a trust-fund kid :-).

This third group of people are cool because they notice everything but the unfortunate thing is that they put challenge ahead of opportunity. Now, people are welcome to their assumptions but my concern is that when they hit a spot of adversity in their own life, the hurdle is going to be much more difficult to leap over and it is not our situation that makes us but our attitude, yes our attitude determines our altitude.

Can I encourage us all to be opportunity centric, to put opportunity ahead of challenge because when we see the best in things we see the best in us and we jump high.