Chris Norton
Benefitting Chris Norton Foundation
Chris Norton was living his best college football player life when a split second decision during a kick-off tackle left him paralyzed from the neck down. He was given a 3% chance of ever being able to move again. But those odds didn’t really work for Chris. Fueled with determination, he set a goal for himself that he would walk at his college graduation (and later down the aisle to now wife Emily) and became a viral hero in the process. He shares why choosing your thoughts each day is crucial, and how narrowing frustrations can connect you to a happier, more fulfilled life.
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In this episode, we talk about:
How Chris was injured on the field.
What his thought process was while it happened.
Struggling with dependency through recovery.
How he kept hope alive when facing challenges and adversity.
Using his pain as his message.
His thoughts on fatherhood and how he’s coping.
Wise Words
“So I hit him with full force, full speed, but I miss timed my tackle just by a split second. Instead of getting my head in front of the ball carrier, which was what I was trying to do, my head collided right with his legs and in an instant I just lose all feeling and movement from my neck down. So I hear the collision of players, the whistle blows, the pile clears off, but I can't move. I'm trying so hard to push off the ground, but nothing in my body is working. It feels like someone just turned the power off to my body... and little did I know at the time that I just suffered a severe spinal cord injury and my life would never look the same after that.”
“So at that point, I just close my eyes and begin to pray. I just pray to God to just let this be some scare or maybe just some message that I'm supposed to receive about maybe I don't need to play football anymore. I just start bargaining if I won't play another sport again, just let me be able to walk again. I just want to walk please, like whatever you need, just don't change my life. I love my life, don't ruin this, don't change my plans and I'm also just trying to escape reality. I don't want to see or witness what's happening around me and watching my life. It felt at the time, destroyed.”
“I felt like I went into this Twilight zone of processing and trying to figure out is this real. Again, I was still in this mode of just, how can this be, is this really happening? Is this just like a bad dream that I'm eventually going to wake up from? After he said that, everything else he said after that, I couldn't tell you what he said, it just was a blur because I was just processing that 3% and it wasn't a 3% to walk, it was a 3% chance to move or feel and so as I'm processing this and trying to understand it, I felt this fear of no way, this can't be my life. I had to get back to college. I had to get back to who I was and I can't let this ruin my life. I have to beat this, I'm going to beat this and it was just like a moment where I'm not going to be part of that 97%. I'm going to be part of that 3% and they could have given me 1%, I would have felt the same way. I felt the sense of desperation of no way I can't let this happen and I just felt this burning desire to overcome it really. I was scared, don't get me wrong, I was terrified, but it was that fear of the alternative that made me be like, I have to step up. I have to do everything in my power to get better.”
“I can remember the first time they gave me this wash cloth rag bath, where they literally are just wiping my legs and arms and body down and watching them move my arms and legs around and not feeling that it was mine. It just felt like it belonged to a stranger and the vulnerability and the uncomfortableness to just let some strangers come in and just bathe you and help you with the bathroom, it was all these things that you never wanted, somebody to be a part of. Now all of a sudden, it's just like a revolving door of all these people coming into your room and checking on you and it was horrible. I just went from the most independent moment of my life in college to dependent as a baby really. So that was really hard as a guy and just as a person that letting go of that and letting go of that control.”
“I'm not the only one with struggles and challenges. Most of our challenges you can't see, and I know there's someone listening to this right now who's going through something just as bad as I've gone through, if not worse, but you just can't see it and so we need to treat everybody with kindness and love and encouragement.”
“While I am very optimistic and positive, that's just my nature, thankfully, and it's also something that I work really hard at too. Every day I'm very conscious about how I'm feeling. I listen to my thoughts and not really process my body and I listen to what's off. What do I need to do more of, what can be better? And so I'm always making that choice to see the possibilities and not my disability.”
“I am human, I have my off days and I try not to have off days, I try to just have maybe like off hours or off minutes. I really try to narrow down my frustrations or my moments of not feeling my best. I really try to work through those as quickly as possible where it doesn't drag on for a whole day or the next day.”
“You can also use that pain, that mess for a greater cause and a greater purpose and find great fulfillment out of it if you choose to go that route.”
“Probably the most difficult thing I have found with my injury as of late is grieving the dad that I wanted to be. I wanted to be the dad that was in the pool playing, that was throwing the football and playing catch and show them how to swing a bat and teach them to go fishing and to just be a really hands-on active dad and I can't be that dad and that's really hard. So there are moments where it literally just takes me to tears when I can't do some of those things. But when I try to focus on is just to be the dad that I can be, and I can be a loving and present dad and a cheerleader for them and I can vocalize and try to communicate the best I can to show them how to do things but being a loving and present dad I think the greatest dad that you can offer to your kids and that's what I try to focus on.”
“I stand for hope, love and kindness. I know those words get tossed around a lot, but they're important. We're all human and we all need those things.”
Links
Website: chrisnorton.org
Charity: Chris Norton Foundation