Sometimes, who you are can seem to be divorced from who you want to be. Making that connection can be hard, but it’s exactly what Elisa Neven-Pugh aims to address.
“What I want to try and do is give people a way to stick to their New Year’s resolutions,” she said with a laugh.
On May 18, Neven-Pugh is giving a motivational speech in Cochrane to help people with positivity, achieving their goals and more. Born with cerebral palsy quadriplegia, Neven-Pugh hasn’t let that stop her from striving for exactly that.
She has been active in pushing for businesses in Cochrane to increase accessibility for wheelchairs, seniors or anyone else. For her commitment, the Town of Cochrane awarded her the Equity and Inclusion Champion of the Year in 2016.
Part of her speech’s goal is to help others defy expectations.
“We need to step out of the box,” Neven-Pugh said. “There’s a lot of people stuck thinking, ‘This is who I have to be. I can maybe change a little bit, but this is who I have to be all the time. This is what I was born into,’ but there’s so much more possible.”
Instead, she wants people to focus only on where they want to be, and find practical ways of putting themselves there. Any type of self-development program, like an exercise plan, offers something tangible to achieve – it’s more than a notion.
“The person you want to be is actually right with you,” Neven-Pugh said. “You just have to make a commitment to be connected to that person.”
Promoting herself as uniquely enlightened isn’t what she wants, either. She said she has had moments of doubt, and she got a lot of help along the way – be it from the employers and teachers that took a chance on her, or the Family and Community Support Association of Alberta.
“I have the same struggles. I have the same issues. Some days, I don’t want to do my homework,” Neven-Pugh said.
She wants to help others down the same awesome road of life, she said.
The speech will take place on May 18 in the Aspen Room of the Cochrane RancheHouse, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $15, and can be found at Addie’s Quilt Shop in Cochrane or at the door to the event.
