Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story^[2]

I don’t know. I don’t know how long can you know that there is something bigger for you, and yet you ignore that.

Don’t we do that? We tell ourselves that? I’m gonna take on a bigger picture in myself; I really will recess my career, relationship, health.

When? Later! Right?

We always do this. I am. I just can’t because I’m busy right now, and we get so wrapped up in the moment we make this promise to ourselves later.

I pushed away school to later. I pushed away taking, stepping into my life in the biggest sense. I push that away later. And when you push that away, you’ll push away even the most important things.

Cause I sat on my friend’s couches and I realized they were complaining, and complaining and complaining, and I sat down and I said to myself, you know what, and I just stood up and look at my friends and say, “Guess what guys, I don’t know where I’m sleeping tonight, one of your houses maybe, maybe outside. I don’t know what I’m gonna eat, I don’t have... I don’t have... I don’t have...

“But you know what I do have: two hands and two feet. I have a brain in my head and air in my lungs, and what else do I really need?”

Like what else do you really need to begin a day to lead the life you know you are meant to lead? You know in your heart what it is. You know. And what more do you need to change before you step into that? I stood up, and I looked at them, and then next feeling which has been the biggest resource in my life since—gratitude.

You can either pick one thing in life, resentment or gratitude, get on the side, I promise you. I looked at that moment and realized I may not have my mother ever again, but I had these resources. I had myself and I could go forward.

I remember that the feeling inside of me, and a need to change my life, and that voice at the back of my head—it took on the specific question, and the question was“What if ...?”

You know that voice in the back of your head and said “what if…”? “What if I tried that much harder?” “What if I pushed one more time?” “What if ...?” It’s the part of you that dreams.

A disempowered conversation will do a couple of things that will look for blame, and it’s concerned with the past. It’ll go, “What happened before? Why didn’t it work out?” It will count what is not there.

An empowered conversation is unconcerned with blame. It simply says, “what’s next?” and it steps forward with a willingness to be responsible for what happens next. That’s the difference between empowered and disempowered conversation. And I stood at that doorway and I knew nothing in my history took away from the fact that I still had a choice.

Life is a miracle. You don’t have to be stuck in a situation that you are in. If there is something in your life that is holding you back, you have to identify what that is, because, I promise you, there is a way to break pasted.

I want you to identify that voice inside of yourself and begin to trust it. And ask yourself what is it that has been in my way and how do I unblock that? Dig deep inside.

Life does not wait for anyone, and your life isn’t later. Your life is right now.

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