Roloff crafts successful life
?The confines of a hospital bed for months at a time may have been a lonely place, but it was there that Matt Roloff learned his most important lesson.
A lesson so crucial, he said, that it eventually helped him craft his successful life.
As a child, Roloff, star of The Learning Channel’s hit television reality show, “Little People, Big World,” spent a great deal of time in health facilities for treatment of problems associated with dwarfism. With limited visiting hours at that time, an anticipated visit from his grandmother proved extra special when he was presented with a push puzzle.
“She came on Sundays, so I worked all week on that puzzle to work it out to show her when she came back,” Roloff told the audience Thursday at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus. “It had Superman on it. I finally got it just before she came, and I propped it up so that she would see it. Then a nurse came in and messed it all up.”
Roloff said he began to quickly fix the puzzle and correctly created the picture again before his grandmother’s visit.
“I didn’t give up. I didn’t just not try to fix it. I realized how fast I could do the puzzle the second time. It was at that moment that I knew what resilience was,” he said. “I was training myself then that when bad things happen, to look for the good in it.”
Roloff’s visit to the campus was full of such stories from his childhood to help encourage students to find their own resiliency and craft an extraordinary life.
From the hurdles he overcame as a child, as he moved into a successful business life in programming, Roloff credits passion as a way to find dreams just outside of his reach and the ability to pull them back in.
With his successes tightly tucked under his belt, Roloff pushed on, eager to tackle his next dream — this time a family. He met Amy at a little people conference and after the two married, the couple began to raise four children, one of whom also was born with dwarfism, on their family farm in Oregon. Shortly after, the family became the stars of the reality show that documented their daily lives in an attempt to promote diversity and inspire individuals with disabilities to face life’s challenges with courage. The show ended late last year after nearly 250 episodes and garnered the family international fame. While the family has been enjoying their time away from the cameras, Roloff said the possibility is always there to return to television, when the time is right for everyone.
Roloff also enjoyed success on the farm as well as authored several books and developed a business that supplies stools for little people to hotels across the country. He also travels the country as a motivational speaker.
At the Fayette campus, Roloff advised students and audience members to remember the importance of accepting diversity into their lives.
“You have options. You have a choice to reach out to people who could become a powerful force in your life,” he said. “I’ll leave you with this: Craft your thoughts because they become your words. Craft your words because they become your actions. Craft your actions because they become your habits. Craft your habits because they become your character. Craft your character because that becomes your destiny.”