Verona resident Scott Chesney is a nationally recognized motivational speaker. He helps people through adverse situations for a living. It’s a career that Chesney, once a star athlete at Verona High School, built after he was paralyzed by a spinal stroke. He lives with paralysis, but he doesn’t allow himself to be paralyzed by fear. And he has a message for his friends and neighbors in Verona who now feel paralyzed by fear of the novel coronavirus COVID-19: We can get through this, and we will.
Chesney has recorded the motivational speech we all need right now, and Verona Mayor Jack McEvoy posted it to his mayoral Facebook page. It’s 48 minutes long, you’re going to want to listen to every minute of it.
“Today I am honored to share this message from my dear friend, Scott Chesney,” McEvoy wrote. “His message is one of hope and education. It challenges us to change our way of looking at things and it helps us to look ahead, past this difficult moment to a time when we, and hopefully the world will have healed. Scott is living proof that coming out of the other side of adversity makes a person stronger, smarter and likely, better equipped to handle the fear that we’ve been experiencing due to Covid-19.”
While not minimizing the challenges we face right now, Chesney believes that we have the power to move through our present adversities to get through to better days. “It’s in times like this that character can come forward,” Chesney says.” ‘I got this’ can translate to ‘We got this’.”
Give it a listen: